Out and About Western Australia- Lane Poole camping prt 2

As we continued our trip, the road got dustier and dustier,

The road surface was actually red dirt, and are very notorious for becoming dusty really fast and sticking on cars, we had to keep our distance to ensure that we can still brake effectively. I’d seen quite a number of Kangaroos appearing out of nowhere, and unlike possums or rabbits, hitting a Kangaroo can do serious damage.

When we arrived at Lane Poole, we were greeted by park marshals asking for a park entry fee of $6.50 per person at the gates. Upon handling over the money, we were given a park map and also a rubbish bag.

We decided to camp at Charlies flat because it had provisions for having a camp fire. There are other camp grounds like Chudith that does not allow open fires but has a sheltered BBQ area.

Anyway, we got there around noon and it was pouring down, so we hasten our effort to set up tents,

I’d bought along my giant inflatable flip flop to use as an air mattress.. again, having an old car was great, I need not worry about scratches

Since the ground was wet, we decided to check out Chuditch sheltered BBQ area and prepared our lunches.

After lunch, we went for a walk around Chuditch, the view was ok..

As the night drew closer, we prepared for dinner back at our Charlies flat camp ground

We started a fire in the fire pit, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The fire pit was well setup with a pivotable tray for cooking.

Cooking around a camp fire was indeed challenging as we could not see what we were cooking,

The night was really cold and with the sky being cloudy, it was really dark. At 9.30pm, we thought it was midnight. After playing a few camping games and telling stories, we went to bed. This was the view inside my tent.. pretty cool huh?

The night was really cold and I was really glad i had my air mattress to keep the cold from coming up from the ground. I was also lucky in that I had a double layer tent with an inner netting. In the morning, the interior of the tent wall was covered with condensate and it kept the water from dripping on me.

The next day, we explored the area, and found that the Nanga Mill campsite was heaps better than the one we were at.. arghh.. such is life…

We also did the King Jarrah walk, It was not as interesting as I hoped it would be. Its pretty much walking though some short tree forest for hours and hours with no interesting lookout or geographical feature. I guess coming from New Zealand, hiking here just do not seem that nice.

Anyway, as we finished the loop, we reached Nanga Falls,

The waterfall was not what I’d expected, its more like a drain. I was expecting a waterfall that I could at least go for a dip. To put it into prespective,..

Yeap, its pretty small.

Anyway, Camping in Lane Poole was great but that’s about it.

Out and About Western Australia- Driving to Dwellingup (Lane Poole camping prt 1)

After all those effort getting the car into shape, It’s only fitting to take it out for a drive, so I rounded up some of my new friends in Perth and headed to Lane Poole ( a camp site not far from Perth,) close to Dwellingup.

Seeing that this was an overnight camping trip, we started early and filled the car with supplies and camping gears

The trusty corolla has an average size boot, but we still managed to utilize every inch of it.

The drive was rather sceanic, but it’s nothing compared to New Zealand.

The drive to Dwellingup took about an hour and 30 mins, it was a great felling driving the old car.. reminds me of my childhood times when my mum had one of these,

When we arrived at Dwellingup, we had a toilet stop. Both of  my other friends’ cars were Toyota Camrys. My car sure looked old in the photo below.

We’d decided to visit the info centre since the toilet was just next to it. It had this scary sculpture with a guy and an axe in front of it, made from welded scrap metal.

Dwellingup information centre

Apparently Dwellingup used to be a prisoner’s camp, and they had a very big fire and there were quite a few casualties.  As such, inside the info centre, they had this old Mack fire engine.

The photo does not actually convey the size of te thing. The wheels of the fire engine was actually as high as my my hip.

Anyway, seeing that we are on our way to a camping trip, we started to make up stories about ghosts, and how the scary scuplture will come to life and hack us to bits at night.. but we soon realize how immature that was and we moved on.

The road to the camp site was actually unpaved,

Times like this I was glad that I had an old car and not something new and precious..

To be continued….

Fixing the Mighty AE71 Corolla-Changing the Timing belt and tuning

I don’t know how the other bloggers find the motivation to blog as often as they do, especially when they have a proper job.  I think its to do with dicipline, which is something I must work on. I am usually really easily distracted and checking something on the net usually result in  hours and hours wasted browsing the net.

Anyway, in continuation with my previous 2 posts, and possibly the last one I will do about fixing my car, this post as per the title is about changing the timing belt. When I got the car, the mileage on the car was about 230,000 kms. Usually the timing belt should be changed every 80 to 100 thousand kms, and seeing the condition of the car, I doubt that the timing belt was changed when it clicked over the 200 thousand kms mark.

I bought a timing belt kit from a local auto shop Repco, surprisingly they still keep stock of these kit even though the car is 25 years old.

The item on the left is a crank pulley puller. Normally the crank pulley is seized on the crank shaft that a minor tap is not sufficient to loosen it, hence a puller is required.

Before removing the crank pulley, all the belts connected to it were removed, including the clutch operated thermo fan normally attached to the water pump.

When I tried to fit the crank pulley puller on the crank pulley, I realized that the radiator was too close to it, so I removed the radiator to clear some space

This is how you use a crank pulley puller

A quick turn on the middle threaded shaft will pull the pulley away from the crank shaft.

Anyway, the timing belt on the car was indeed a bit worn. It was a genuine Toyota item and small cracks were starting to appear on the face of the belt

Good thing I was bored and decided to change the timing belt, otherwise if the belt breaks while the engine is running, the engine would have been a writeoff.

After taking off the crank pulley, I removed the lower timing belt cover, cleaned it and marked the numbers with a white marker so that when I tune the car, I can see where the timing is at.

Normally, before taking the timing belt out, the proper way to change the timing belt is to turn the engine until all the marks on the cam wheel and the crank pulley points to TDC (top dead centre,) but I was lazy. Since I had my white marker with me, I marked the old belt and the position on the cam wheels, and then transfered the markings on the old belt to the new belt by counting the teeth, and fitted the new belt on. This way the fitment of the new belt should be as per the old belt.

After fitting the new tensioner and idler pulley, I reassemble the covers, pulleys, the belts  and the radiator.The car is back to its usual self again. I can now drive on the freeway with the engine singing away, and not worry about the engine letting go.

I also bought a timing gun, dwell meter and a vaccum gauge for setting the timing and also adjusting the carburettor to ensure that the car runs optimally.

I realize most readers are probably bored with my car fixing blog, so I guess I’ll skip that bit.

The car runs great now, but still guzzle a bit of fuel (13L/100kms,) not sure if thats normal, maybe cars around that era are not that efficient.

Fixing the Mighty AE71 Corolla-changing brake hoses

After discovering that the brake hoses were perishing while changing the inner tie rod, I started to have this horrific thought that the brake hose might pop every time I apply the brakes. I guess i could always rip the handbrake and let the car spin to a halt should that actually happen.

Anyway, just to be on the safe side, I bought some brake hoses, brake fluids and a bleeder kit to change the hoses.

While changing the hoses, I realized there was only one brake hose in the rear, so I returned the extra hose that I bought.

The rear brake hose did not perish like the front brake hoses, but it was very stiff, so I changed it anyway.

Removing all the brake hoses didn’t take long. All the hoses seemed to have hardened in some way or the other. The front brake hoses were particularly bad as the braided portion were starting to show

The front brake hoses were in 2 sections, but the one I bought only came in a single length. The coupling in the middle of the front brake hoses fitted into a bracket on the strut.

Since the hoses I bought didn’t have any attachment points, I decided to use grommets in the bracket to prevent the hoses from being ripped to shreds by the bracket.

After fitting all the hoses, I topped up the brake fluid reservoir and bled the brakes from the furthest to the brake closest to the brake master cylinder.

I hosed off any excess brake fluid under the car and took the car for a spin.

The brake peddle felt really firm when depressed now, and its good to have that peace of mind again.

Fixing the mighty AE71 Corolla-steering tie rods

My AE71 corolla seems to have a mind of its own when driven fast (100km/h) on the freeway, not to mention the 3 speed automatic seems to be geared a bit short making the engine sing along at that speed. The corolla would sway left and right and a turn of the steering wheel of up to 25 degrees would yield no response, making driving the car a bit challenging if not scary.

Thinking this was not normal, I crawled under the car and have a look, and low and behold, the right steering boot looked like this,

The left steering boot was no better.

Perth’s soil is mainly sand and God only knows how long ago the boots let go.

For those of you who are not familiar with the mechanics of a car, the steering boot protects the tie rod from dusts and other contaminants. If contaminants manage to get its way into the tie rod, it would wear out the ball part of it. Simply put, the wear will cause sloppyness in the joint and this in turn causes play in the steering. Easy.

Jacking up the car and wiggling the front tires revealed that there was significant play in the steering joints.

Time to take things apart to fix it. First, I removed the wheels. (i made sure the car was securely on jack stands and the tires were under the sill, those who know me will know I had a bad experience with a car falling on me breaking my right arm about 2 years ago.)

Next I removed the outer tie rod bolt connecting the steering to the steering knuckle,

Then I used a tie rod remover to remove the tie rod from the steering knuckle (its amazing how tight taper fit can get. )

Once the tie rod taper “pop-ed,” i marked the inner threaded sleeve of the outer tie rod and removed the clamping nut that keeps the thread from undoing.

Removing the outer tie rod and the torn steering boot revealed the worn inner tie rod. Yeap, that’s the steering rack that its attached to.

To remove the tie rod, I had to straighten the locking washer,

Once the washer was straightened, I undid the inner tie rod from the steering rack using an adjustable spanner.

See what I mean, the grease in the tie rod was missing and there was significant play in the ball joint

I purchased a pair of new tie rods from WA suspension. The Repco and Supercheap autos that I went to didn’t have the tie rod listed in their catalog for some reason.

Before fitting the new tie rods, I applied some thread locker to the threads to ensure they do not come apart.

The new tie rod was tight.

To protect the new inner tie rod, I also fitted some new steering boots.

I then bolted everything back. There was no more play in the steering now.

unfortunately, or fortunately depends on how you see it.. I discovered another problem,

The brake hoses were severely worn. Its hard to believe cars like this is still allowed on the road without periodic check. In NZ, WOF check would have detected all these issues. No wonder there were heaps of broken down cars on the side of the road here.

Anyway, I’ll change it next time as I have to buy the hoses first.

Back to the Tie rod change. Since I changed the length of the steering tie rod, this would affect the Toe setting of the car. I placed some useless flyers under the front wheels as slip plates and use an old school tape measure method to set the to back to 0 degrees.

The car drives straight and steering was tight.  The difference was night and day, and the car is so much safer to drive now.

Out and about Perth- Sculpture by the sea

Back in March, My friend Liz came over from Adelaide  for a visit (Check her blog out, apparently she started her blog after reading mine, and her’s looks so much more advanced than mine now.)

Since I got my cheap run around car, I thought it would be a nice gesture to show her around Perth, and coincidently, Sculpture by the Sea was in town that weekend.

If memory serves me right, it was a particularly hot day, and the beach was really crowded.

I felt a bit embarrassed that my old clapper didn’t have a working air conditioner, but luckily Liz was a cool sport and didn’t complain at all.

Sculpture by the beach featured lots of very big artwork littered all over the beach, some of them were really hard to distinguish from junk, such as these burnt out containers

Others were quite obvious, such as this big trike made from tin, yeap that’s me in the photo.

My personal favorite was this big watch, the strap was actually rusted steel but it looked the part,  yeap, that’s me again cam wh0ring

One other notable art piece was this big pencil. Despite having a “do not touch sign,” the kids continued to touch it.. I always wondered how they anchor the pencil on soft sand, as it was pointy. It would be interesting if it fell.

Anyway, Perth was recently rated as the 5th most livable city in the world. I guess with free art shows like this (not including the $15 brochure explaining the artwork,) and free movies by the river, its not hard to believe.

The bought an AE71 Corolla..

My time as of late had been spent fixing up a car that I bought for $600AUD.

Yeap, its a 1984 toyota Corolla AE71, with 1.6L 4A-C (Carburetted) Engine. The shape of the car is the same as the corolla DX or KE70, but with a different engine.

For a price cheaper than my bicycle, I thought it was a great buy. Sure the car blows a bit of smoke during startup, but it didn’t smoke much when i am driving around and it still pulls hard for a 1.6L

The interior is surprisingly clean for a 25 year old car.

Unfortunately its an automatic. That means no happy skids for me (the corolla is a Rear wheel Drive). This could be a blessing though, as I had a history of over modifying cars and spending a fortune on them.

As for the body of the car, well, if you are not familiar with the corolla DX, AE71 or KE70 (chassis code,) its probably one of the squarest cars around and it almost seemed like the designer used a ruler to draw the car up.

There was a bit of rust on the body, but nothing structural, the rust were mainly at the bottom of the passenger door, below the fuel flap and on the rear arches.

The front seemed to have a light ding, which is why the bumper isn’t that straight. Same goes for the rear.

Anyway, I do see potential with this car..  there are possibility that i could change the front to an early model japanese quad headlight variant and drop a 4age (injected) with manual gearbox into the car in the future. And possibly drop the car and put some deep dish rims on it, similar to an Australian example here.

That is the ultimate old school look that i will be going for if i do keep this car.

Why would i do that? well, because it has a potential to drift

Toffe Apple with a hint of JDM from MeZ Productions on Vimeo.

Eating Out-Big Bowl Noodle House, Northbridge Perth

Perth has quite a lot of Asian food places for a small city. Quite a number of them are located in Northbridge, just across the railway tracks from the city.

One weekend, after walking around Northbridge around noon time, we decided to give Big Bowl Noodle House (408 William Street Northbridge,) a try.

The shop front was nothing spectacular, in fact, it looks really boring and tacky.

As per the shop name, the shop’s specialty was noodle soup, but what makes this noodle house different from the rest was that they make their own noodle. Upon entering the shop, 3 noodle making machines can be seen sitting on the right hand side of the kitchen. There were signs not to take photos of the machines, so I didn’t take any close up photos of them.

The menu was a simple laminated paper.

We had to wait outside and make up our mind what we wanted as this shop was really packed on the weekends. I always have this belief that a good restaurant is one which there are lots of people in it, and this one surely fitted that criteria. lets hope the food is as good as its hyped up to be.

I can’t remember the exact name of the dish I ordered, as this was a few months back, I think its “wat tan hor fun.”

My friend had a simpler fired noodle,

Yeap, the food tasted as good as it looked. I rate the food slightly higher than average. Not too bad for the price too. However, the portion served was a bit smaller than what I used to get in similar noodle houses in New Zealand.

Eating in this noodle house sort of reminded me of some of the common noodle houses in Malaysia. Overall, i recommend it.

Out and about- LotteryWest floating films

Wow, I’d been quite a slacker as of late. I just had a quick look at my blog and I realized that I had not been updating my blog for a month now. Anyway, life is still the same here, still looking for that elusive professional work, joined a church group, brought a cheap car ( will blog about this later as i spent a lot of time on it.)

Anyway, back to what I was going to blog about.

I heard that there was a free movie by the swan river called the LotteryWest floating films- part of the Perth Festival 09 events (Perth international arts festival) back in March s0 I went to checked it out.  According to their website, there were 3 free screenings, and I attended the one at the Riverside Gardens, Bayswater.

I arrived at the venue about an hour early to secure a spot directly in front of the floating screen.

Surprisingly, there were not much people there then despite it being a free event.

As the time grew closer to the screening time, more and more people came..

Being part of the arts festival, there were musicians there playing the bongo drums  and some arty farty people on stilts walking amongst the crowd.

As the sun sets, the breeze started to pick up and it was really pleasant, for once there were no flies around. The movie started on time and being a family event, they showed a japanese cartoon called ” kiki delivery service.”  Despite being out doors, the sound was really well set up and the visuals were really clear.

Overall, it was a very well organized event and a great evening out.

After being in Perth for 6 months, I think Perth is a great place to be. I initially thought its going to be a boring place, but there are heaps of free things like what I just blogged about, it just takes a bit of time to look them up.  I also went to another event a few weeks ago called, “music under the moonlight” which again was a free event. Again the crowd was not overly huge, the event well run and there were no rowdy people in sight.

New Toy- Dahon Folding bike

When my other half came early February, I didn’t have a car and i figured I’ll get her a bike so we can cycle together.

She initially tried riding my bike but she said the top tube was a bit too high and since she never had the privilege of riding a bike growing up in Hong Kong, learning on my bike was a bit daunting for her.

So off I go researching on the net as to what’s the best bike for her to learn on, something that is low and small. I read on a famous Singaporean blogger’s blog, MrBrown, that he had some folding bikes and they fit the bill. They looked funky too.

I checked the prices on these bikes at a local bike shop, unfortunately, for some reason, bike shops in Perth seem to put quite a large margin on their bikes, maybe they thought that because of Perth being the most isolated city in the world, they can do that.

So I’d decided to buy it online.  I tracked down a website that’s in Sydney that sell these bikes called Cellbikes.

They had the Dahon range of folding bikes too, and naturally because this was going to be a beginners bike, I bought the cheapest Dahon bike there, the Dahon 2009 Eco 3, for $449AUD. Cell bikes also had a promotion going on when I bought the bike, ie if i purchase more than $500AUD worth of stuff, shipping is free. Since it worked out cheaper for me to buy a helmet, locks, and lights at the same time rather than paying for postage, I added those to my cart.

1.5 weeks later, this arrived at my flat.

It was well packaged and quite small too compared to the packaging my Ghost bike came in.

Upon unboxing the bike, i noticed that all my side orders were neatly packaged and jammed into the Dahon box.

The helmet and the lights looked awesome, and come prepackaged with batteries!!

Anyway, the main course was yet to come. The Dahon box has a reminder that the bike needs adjustments prior to riding for safety reason.

I was curious as to how a bicycle can come in such a small package, and upon opening the box, it was almost unreal how they can fold the bike so compactly.

Pulling the bike out of the box…

The bike was partially assembled, all that was required was inserting the seat post into the bike frame, fitting the pedals and twisting of the gear change cable to ensure a smooth shifting of all  6 speed gears. 5 mins later…Ta DAA

The bike was a bit twitchy to ride compared to my bike because of the small 20″ rims. My other half likes it heaps and she was riding it low rider stylez…

Anyway, another thing i read on the net was that these Dahon bikes can fit into a $1 IKEA bag…unfortunately, I think that only applies to the 16″ wheels version.

Oh yeah, I bunny hopped the bike and because its really light weight, I get quite a bit of pop out of it.. obviously my other half did not see the fun side to it and was a bit upset that i was abusing her bike. Anyway, hopefully she will learn how to ride soon so we can terrorize the neighborhood.