New memeber from New Zealand

[vw1]

My name is Andrew Grebneff and I live in the hilly city of Dunedin, New Zealand, near the SW corner of the South Island. I’m coming up to age 49. I have had a fair number of vehicles over time, including a bunch of bikes, split-windshield (T1) VW vans, a 1975 VW Type 2 T2 (Bay) van with Toyota 4V 3.6-liter V8, a Hino Contessa etc. My first personal experience with Toyotas was in 1977, when my mother traded her 1976 Mazda 808 (Capella) in on a 1974 Toyota Corona RT104 1.8. This was a good solid car, though its performance and handling were nothing special. This was traded on a new 1978 Corolla SR coupe. This had the 1166 pushrod twin-carb engine with 10:1 compression, and in the years we had it its performance became better toward the time of its sale. It would do about 165kmh on the speedo with 4 adults aboard. Shaking like mad because of what in hindsight must have been a faultily-balanced driveshaft, which was never addressed. The next car was a 1975 VW Scirocco TS, 1.5 single-carb, which went like stink with its 115hp. By now I was into Toyotas myself, firstly with a rusty 1977 Toyota Corona RT104 facelift, to whick my friend fitted an 18R-GU 2.0 DOHC 8-valve with twin sidedraft Mikuni-Solexes. This can had fat alloys with 215 Firestone Cavallino Sport tires, and was dangerous... it would oversteer in a straight line, and in the wet was wild, even though the engine never ran properly and at best might equal as tock RT104 with 18R. With hindsight I can see that the wheel offset was wrong and the tires were dangerous traction-free rubbish. I put a used-import Toyopet-badged trunklid on it and sold it to a dealer, partly-primered and with rust, and next time I saw it it gleamed in its original olivy-green color. It sold and I saw it deteriorate... the rust reappeared, onbviously shoddily-filled, and the trunklid showed bad rust... the dealers replaced the rust-free one I'd put on with a rusty one! My friend (who fitted did a lot of work on my cars) had a 1970 Toyota Crown MS51 coupe, a big solid heavy good-looking car, into which he'd roughly fitted a 283 Chev and 3-speed manual. Eventually another 1970 MS51, which had been fitted with a gutless Holden (Australian GM, an Aussie-designed engine) 3.0-liter 183 iron pushrod six, turned up. These cars were rare... we only ever knew of 4 in total. So I grabbed it and had a 5.4-liter (327) Chev and Corona 5-speed fitted, along with an 8" Ford diff. I loved this car, but the diff was wrong and the rear tires rubbed the fenders; also the engine choice was wrong... I should have forgotten iron boatanchors and fitted a 5V 4.0 Toyota alloy V8. Foolishly I sold it, to someone who flew down from the North Island to see it. This was replaced by my return to VWs, with the Bay which I had fitted with a beefed 091 transmission and 4V Toyota V8. The entire job was botched, the engine and body trashed and court found "in my favor" but I still lost lots of money as well as having to sell the van for parts. I got married when I had a 1974 VW Passat S into which I'd fitted an Audi Fox injected 1.6 (the Passat is a fastback Audi 80/Fox coupe with VW badges), which flew, but eventually started becoming sad. This, along with a nonrunning Passat TS I'd picked up, went and was replaced by a 1988 R31 Nissan Skyline Passage pillarless diesel sedan with RD28 2.8-liter six. This was a disaster; apart from accumulating electrical faults wcich good autoelectricians could not figure out, the RD28 engine I discovered is notorious for bearing wear, warping heads and bore wear. Mine ended up with the wear at under 100,000km, and after I T-boned a Mazda Familia 4WD and wrote it off with only cosmetic damage to the Skyline, it had to go. A 1984 Mitsubishi Galant with headgasket leak replaced it and went fine for the year I had it. Meantime my wife sold her 1974 Corolla KE20 (4K engine) and bought a 1986 Corolla DX CE80 sedan1.8 diesel taxi, which proved itself over the years to be marvellously reliable; the only problems it had were a CV and rust (probably due to accident damage springing seams). Then a diesel 2.0 Corona Select sedan CT170 was added to the taxi fleet. The Corolla was sold at about 600,000-odd km, going strong... we were sorry to see it go. I bought a 1984 VW Type 2 T3 Caravelle GL (=Vanagon in US & Canada) with 3.8 Holden V6 and higher 4th & 5th gears. The trans lasted 2 months, I sold the engine and it has been sitting since 1998 awaiting resurrection. It has a Subaru EG33 engine and Porsche Turbo G50.50 trans installed but needs lots yet to get it going. I had a 1987 Toyota Hiace dual-slider 2.4 diesel (2L engine) medium-wheelbase part-time dual-ratio 4WD for a while, but it had rust and could not pass the twice-yearly inspection... basically any rust and the vehicle is illegal in NZ... insane or what?? I also had an engineless but tidy identical but RWD Hiace of the same year, and more recently a 1983 LWB (high-roof is mandatory with LWB) 2.4D Hiace (retrofitted from the original 1L 2.2), but again rust made me sell it.
The wife bought a 1994 Corona CT195 4WD 2.0 diesel sedan to replace the CT170 (which is now her private car at 650,000+km). The CT195, though utterly gutless, now has well over 500,000km on the clock (note: apart from the Skyline, which I had checked in Japan, all of these used-import diesel Toyotas will have at least 30,000km taken off the odometers when imported from Japan; the Japanese exporters routinely ask the buyers how much they want off, and the worst I know of is an Estima with 500,000 wiped off!!!!! Since then the NZ organized crime ring they call government has made it legal to "clock" cars), with no mechanical problems. But boy, does it need supercharging! At present I have a 1989 Corolla DX CE96 van. You can't imagine the meaning of "basic" until you've seen one of these... a wagon with extended rear deck, so no back seat; one sunvisor; no captive nuts or reinforcement on the rear seatbelt mount-holes; vinyl mat instead of carpet; flat gray vinyl doortrims; no plastic surrounds around the rear side-windows; vinyl front seats; no clock; no rear inside doorhandles; no rear-window heater or wiper... generic vertical rectangular H4 headlights in recessed gray plastic moldings. I have addressed most of these shortcomings. I managed to crack the 1.8-liter 1C's head when the waterpump failed, so bought a 1994 CV30 facelift (the V30 wagon got no facelift, nor did the sedan in the US) Camry diesel and took the engine from that for the Corolla. This later-type 2C-T (vacuum-pump on head) has turned the Corolla into a good-performing car, with a late-model Isuzu Bighorn intercooler. I did want a 3C-T, but FWD units are hard to find and crack heads... and I think my 2C-T has a cracked head too (sigh). Turbodiesels... you just can't have a diesel and performance too... or not for long, as they almost ALL crack heads, apart from Toyota's 1KZ-T. And our wunderful gummint has increased registration costs for diesels and this is due to go up again (well above gas car rego) and there's a "road user charge" by the kilometer, which is supposed to be for trucks damaging the roads, but is also applied to cars, and is increasing rapidly... they're trying to get diesel cars off the roads. So I'm looking at getting an upmarket1997-2003 AE115 4WD Sprinter Carib or Corolla xZ-Touring 4WD wagon (same years, totally different appearance) and fitting a big engine to it. Unfortunately the Toyota 2VZ-E/3VZ-E V6s are notorious for head-corrosion problems leading to total bearing failure (Toyota wreckers tell me to steer well clear of these engines), which leaves me in a quandary. I want a TOYOTA V6 engine. A 2JZ-T straight-six won't fit. Do I have to settle for something else? I can't stand Nissans, thought the 3.0 Cefiro (=Maxima) engine is supposed to be good (though how do you find out? Nissan diesel sixes are supposed to be good too... until you buy one, then everyone tells you what junk they are, engine importers refuse to bring them in, and yours fails)... won't touch a Mitsubishi. A Toyota xVZ V8 engine is far too big to fit and will destroy any Toyota FWD trans, and doesn't come with a FWD-based trans anyway. Advice?