We head back to our friend Dan’s back garden, where we initially found the AE86. We check out his collection of forgotten Japanese cars to hear his plans, reminisce about old stories and collect a sensor for my 4A-GE engine.
Getting closer to that first start on the AE86, we fit the clutch lines, add gearbox and clutch fluid and mess around with hidden throttle linkage from SQ engineering.
So after a massive chunk of progress, we were onto the brakes. I thought this would be smooth sailing after fitting the engine box and other chunky bits. It turns out this would be one of the most temperamental parts of the build. The bias valve to the rear was faulty and wasn’t allowing fluid to the back brakes. It took us a good few hours to figure this out. You might have seen it in the video.
We install brake lines on the AE86 and eventually get the callipers to work. As usual, it’s not without a slice of typical Trueno torture!
At the time, I didn’t realise just how important this day would be. In well over three years, the ae86 hadn’t seen the light of day on its wheels. After we fitted the engine and box, we decided to push the car over to Flips to fit the manifold, sort a Flexi pipe and do the exhaust.
This was another one of those incredibly productive weekends. During covid, things were patchy, and progress ground halted for much of Christmas 2019/2020. With lockdowns and everything in between, the car progress had stopped, and it wasn’t until May/June 2020 that things started to move again.
This build has always been feast or famine, massive chunks of progress in the shed or small dribbles of effort. Over this weekend, our friend Darrel had re-adjusted the clocks to zero, as we felt the car deserved it. It had never come with the original Clocks. If you are a long time viewer of the build, you will know that the clocks were out of an AE92 supercharged FWD Levin, along with the entire loom.