STOPPING AND TURNING: Skyline jack-up time

June 1, 2009 11:38 am Published by

Skyline maintainence time! I noticed the front brake pads were looking a bit thin, and since there are quite a few events coming up, I thought it would be a good idea to change them.

Also, why is there an Emotion CR-Kai sitting there, test fitted on the back? Oh, I’ll never tell!

I installed some fresh IDI pads when I bought the car, and this one had already worn down this much.

However, when all four were pulled out, something became kind of obvious. The pads on the right are from the passenger’s side caliper, which is obviously sticking. The pads on the driver’s side still had plenty of meat on them, which was kind of annoying.

Rather than put new pads in, I stuck in the half-worn old ones that the car came with. Lockheed! Fighter-jet-spec brake pads eh? They don’t feel quite as responsive as the IDI pads, but they work well and don’t make as much dust. Sorry it’s a bit out of focus. All of these pics were taken with my phone.

Check out this Corolla that was in the workshop. It was left-hand drive for some reason.

At the same time, I tried to figure out why two of my R34 GT-t wheels had slow leaks. After a bit of the old soapy water treatment, it turned out that I had two broken valve seals. I probably broke them while carelessly mounting a tyre, but it was an easy fix.

Also, the kind of drift angle you can get out of a standard Skyline has been annoying me a bit recently, so when my housemate Yoshio suggested that a pair of S14 Uras tie-rods that he had lying around might be a good idea, I tried installing them.

In this pic, Yoshio is installing some shortened steering knuckles on his AE86 in front of his parents’ house. Shortly after this photo was taken, Yoshio’s Mum came out to offer us some green tea ice cream and fruit. Not a bad way to take a break.

Uras tie rods have a built-in spacer on the end as well as a longer thread, so you can pull a bit more steering angle. Everything fit where it was supposed to, but the car ended up with massive toe-in. We thought that the rods would have been OK to install, but even when wound into the rod ends until they hit the end, there was still way too much toe in.

We took them off and chopped about 10mm to try and get the thread further in the rod end, but that just caused another problem. See how the inner side of the thread on the S14 part is a lot shorter? Even if it’s wound in all the way, there’s not enough adjustment to cancel the toe-in.

Not wanting to waste all that time and just put the standard rods back on, Yoshio went to 3UP and picked up some tie rod spacers instead while I did some other things. The Skyline now has a bit more angle to play with, and is a lot more fun. I really should get some shortened knuckles for it…

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This post was written by Alexi

9 Comments

  • Laurence says:

    I wonder if they are the same CR-Kai’s from the car in this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG6A8U_Y3Y8

  • grant says:

    Is that an Alfa Romeo Giulia sedan in the background?

  • Shane says:

    I wonder if you’ll do a write up on installing these shortened knuckles?

  • Mitz says:

    we don’t see many KE10 corollas here in australia i have one but its not in condition as good as that

  • Kevin says:

    i have the same problem with brake pads in my corolla but mine is the other way, the driver side is worn while the passenger side is still very meaty.

    an install write up would be very much appreciated. 🙂

  • jeremy says:

    cool, its good when you change stuff and it actually makes a positive difference.

  • Jake says:

    hey it looks like fun working on an r32 lol
    i ope those tie rods make a big difference

  • Daniel says:

    great to see some down to earth happening in these blogs! love it!!

  • Bry says:

    If you want to use those tie rods, you might need to cut down your tie rod ends as well. I just put some 30mm threaded lock spacers in my 180, and had to chop down about 18 threads off my tein tie rods, and about an inch off my tie rod ends to bring the toe back out to normal.