Bilbo's Scrapeyard Spec Eunos

I love DOOM so that works for me haha.

Indeed, they are Lockwood ones that were in the car when I got it haha. They look good lit up with my red and purple LEDs, but not so amazing in the day haha. Saying that I remember Hammy from Nutz forum sent me some designs years ago for some gauges, I'll need to have a look through those, see if I can get something printed!

It had a fair bit on it, but it all remained stuck to the pad itself. Was quite happy it wasn't as strong as Tigerseal, I didn't have any of my tools and literally just used a flat edged file to lift it all up haha. No idea how it didn't break!

Ooh, I had considered something like that, could be very smart to house the gauge in that actually! 

Wheel fitment looks particularly good in this photo:



I also started de-stickering the dash and it's looking better already:



Interior still has a fair bit more to do but it's already looking a lot less busy in there, and a bit smarter.

Haha true, but honestly, that's pretty rare now, the Yaris while lowered has tons of ground clearance so any journey where I know the route is bad I just take that. The 5 is mainly used as a fun vehicle on decent roads, so the underside is left largely unsmashed these days haha.

Honestly having the daily it's no trouble, the 5 I avoid using for any journeys where I'm going somewhere built up that might have speed bumps. For B roads and most places I use it for I rarely if ever hit the floor at all tbh.

Here we go again haha



Apart from a knocking driveshaft change, the one part of the car I've never touched, upgraded or serviced is the prop and diff. So naturally these 2 parts failed on me this weekend.

Was doing 70 overtaking a motorbike. Heard a loud noise, I thought the bike had dropped a couple of gears and was going to race off. Turned out it was me making the noise. So I pulled in at the next sliproad and waited for my mate to recover me. As I got slower the noise got slower, and it was a central sounding noise so initially I assumed it was gearbox. My overrun did seem a bit louder than usual that day.

Once back at the workshop we got it straight on the ramp, and it became apparent that the noise seemed to be coming from the propshaft. So we took it off expecting a damaged/destroyed UJ. And that's exactly what we found. The front UJ on the prop has 2 pivot points, up and down, and side to side. Well one of those pivot points was basically seized solid, you had to bang the end on the floor or hard with your hand to get it to move. Clearly this prop was done, so I went and got another.

When we returned we realised the nose of the diff was also making a knock noise, as seen here (click for video):



Not cracked it open yet, but we're pretty sure it's the nose bearing that's gone, as well as at least 1 tooth on the pinion that has broken. The tooth suspicion was confirmed when we drained the oil:



Anyway like I say, the diff is the only thing I've not touched. It's a welded VLSD my mate had done when he owned the car, so it's been in about 5 years and perhaps 60,000+ miles. It worked, it made no noise, it didn't whine. So I just left it as I was planning an upgrade anyway.

The drained oil is without question the most HORRENDOUS looking oil I have ever seen in any diff or box I have ever come across!



It was completely silver, the drain plug had maybe like 2mm thick of metal shavings on it, as well as the chipped gear tooth. The oil literally looked like silver flake paint, with a ton of flake in it! Bear in mind that after the noise started I drove perhaps under half a mile further before stopping, so this diff had been having some issues for some time!


So I scrambled around for a day trying to find a diff, but this time I wanted a later diff, anything with a 7" ring gear, as I wanted to fit my 4.7 ratio into it. Now obviously I plan to build it into a fully refurbed and rebuilt Fuji, but before I go dropping money on something like that, I want to know that I even like the ratio first. So I grabbed a welded 4.1 off of a friend for £60. Now fully disassembled:



All going well so far, this diff is in good condition inside, and was welded by someone competent, which is always good. I have confirmed the new ring and pinion are the correct size, which is good, and have worked out the exact ratio of the new setup will be 4.625 (ring teeth/pinion teeth), so it's not a 4.78 like the Americans use, but will still be pretty lairy.

Only difference so far is this:



The inner/shaft bearing on the existing pinion is larger than the one on my 4.6 pinion. Now obviously I can change them, the internal diameter is exactly the same, but knowledgeable diff people talk to me. Anyone know if perhaps there was a different size bearing used on pinions at some point? Maybe this ring and pinion was set up for a particular diff housing that only comes on LSDs? Like I say the new ring and pinion themselves will fit, same length/diameter etc. just this one bearing is different. Let me know thoughts!