Matt's back! With a new Celica...

Hi everyone,

I've been a couple of years away from the forum scene, trying to build a career, fixing a house, pay the bills, all the stuff that get in the way of playing with my favourite toys. But I'm back, and with a new car

First though, some quick updates on the two cars I had previously started threads on;

The silver one - I amassed a mountain of parts for it while it sat patiently under a cover on my front lawn for the last three years. Unfortunately while it was waiting for me to get around to installing any of these parts it quietly deteriorated under its cover - its rusting quite badly and everything made of plastic or rubber has crumbled. Unfortunately it's not going to see the road again, but it has provided a lot of valuable spares for another car. More on that in a minute.

The dark blue one - Still sitting in the garage awaiting restoration. I replaced the rims with a set of 7th-gen 15's but other than that I haven't done a thing to it. Needs a new drivers side door and front guard and the rust in the sunroof fixed and then it's good to go. Should be a nice little daily when I get around to fixing it.

So after three or four years of walking and catching public transport I decided I wanted a cheap runabout so if the Mrs was out with our Rav4 I could at least go to the shop or whatever. I spied a 1988 ST162 ST on eBay for $1300 (that's the same spec as the USDM GT: 3SFE motor, rear drum brakes, 4-stud hubs, poverty-pack interior). It looked pretty straight, it was registered and came with a heap of spare parts, and it was only 10 minutes from my house. Long story short, it came home with me the next day.

Here she is:



It's got 230,000km on it and so far as I can tell has had a pretty good life - there's not a dent on it nor any rust so far as I can see. I have an idea it's had a minor front-end accident at some point though because the grill mounts were all busted, one front indicator is off a series 1 and the other is off a series 2, the headlight buckets are painted white and the headlight covers don't quite line up with the bonnet properly, but its perfectly straight underneath with no signs of chassis repairs or distortion so I'm not concerned with the cosmetics for the moment. It's also got two brand new front mudguards on it which have been painted very poorly, but again thats an easy fix later on. They've also had a go at painting the roof with similar results (I assume the clear coat was peeling, as seems to be standard fare on mid-1980s Toyotas) and the rear spoiler, which I doubt was original to the car either. The exhaust sounds great too, I asked the guy selling it what they had done to it and he said it was like that when he got it. I stuck my head underneath when I got it home and found that it has no cat, no resonator, no nothing just a straight pipe until the factory original muffler right at the back (which probably blew through years ago anyway :lol

So. Now I've got an ST, but with the gun 3rd-gen 3S-GE motor sitting in my garage waiting to be installed I don't really want to be stuck with rear drums do I? And I've also got two sets of 5x100 wheels that I've already bought that now won't fit this car. What to do? Luckily (?) as mentioned earlier I've got a car sitting on my front lawn that I can't move any more that happens to be an SX model with rear discs and 5x100 hubs. Swap time. Unfortunately the changeover wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, turns out there are some very minor and weird differences between a Series 1 SX and a Series 2 ST which meant the car was up on stands for a couple of months longer than I anticipated, however it all worked out in the end and here are the results - on the front I've got ST184 calipers with EBC Redstuff pads, 278mm RDA rotors, and KYB shocks:



On the rear I've got the standard ST162 rear calipers with RDA rotors and EBC Ultimax pads and Monroe shocks. It's also got Goodridge braided brake lines all round:



I'm running stock springs and the shocks are just factory replacements, I haven't decided which way I'm going with suspension just yet so I threw on the cheapest solution to get through the annual roadworthy inspection :lol

Here's some more tasty parts that went in while I had the front end apart - K-MAC camber/caster strut tops. I haven't given it a proper alignment since they went it, just basic tape-measure and digital level measurements. It tracks straight but has a bit of bump steer that I've got to figure out how to dial out.



The car is also now riding on 7th-gen 16" wheels. I haven't taken any pictures of it with them on yet, but you all know what they look like :lol

Good to be back on the forums, and I look forward to providing more updates soon

 

Thanks Steve, you're right, there is certainly something about these cars that gets under your skin

Interior is in good condition as well, no rips or tears in the seats. Dash is a bit bubbly, but i have a good spare to put in it. Will put some pics up next time I'm pointing the camera in its general direction.

 

lol, we have very similar tastes in modifications don't we? I have the same Fidanza flywheel (although mine is still in a box under the bed, not in the car) and an S54 and LSD waiting to go in as well Your car looks great as always :thumbsup:

 

Turns out slotted and dimpled rotors make a lot of noise! Hoping once everything beds in they shut up a bit (I've only got a couple of hours on them at the moment).

Also just realised I don't currently have a spare wheel that will fit over the brakes. Hope i don't get a flat any time soon :lol

 

A little more work done this weekend. So the K-MAC camber/caster strut tops I installed have done good things for the handling, but are NOISY as hell. This pic shows how they work, basically the strut is bolted to the centre plate, to adjust it you loosen the three shock tower nuts, move the strut around to where you want it, then tighten the three nuts back up which clamps it all back in place.



So even though there is a pillow-ball locating the shock absorber in the centre plate, what you've essentially done is solid-mounted the shock to the body of the car :lol: Despite the manufacturers claim that "there is no potential for noisy operation", it's bullshit noisy. So I made some rubber tabs to replace the aluminium washer/spacers that came with the kit. Much quieter now



I also installed a set of camber bolts in the bottom of the front struts. I don't know whether its just 28 years of wear and tear or whether the minor front-end shunt its had at some point in its life has stuffed the suspension geometry, but I can barely get any negative camber into it. When I bought it you could tell just from looking at it that it had positive camber, so I bought the KMAC strut top kit to correct it but even with the strut tops set to full negative I was only getting 0 degrees static camber (mind you, this is measured with a digital level not any sort of fancy aligning machinery, but positive is positive and negative is negative no matter what you're measuring with, imo). With the camber bolts in the bottom of the strut set to full negative I've now got -0.5 degrees on both sides. It'll do until I finish sorting everything else in the front end.

Anyway, here's a pic as she sits at the moment. Hasn't been washed in a few weeks, and man do those EBC pads chuck some dust out :lol:

 

Weekend work - new dashboard!

Old dash out:



I highly recommend buying/borrowing/downloading the Big Green Book if you're contemplating doing this, it makes life so much easier.

Old dash/new dash:



Top tip: The tiny corner vents are incredibly brittle after years in the sun. This one was a bit dirty so I ran it under the kitchen tap and when I tried to dry it with a piece of paper towel one of the fins snapped . Had to superglue it back on.



The car came with a horrible JVC stereo installed. It also came with two other Toyota radios (neither of which were the original either), so I had a pretty fair idea that I was going to find a birdsnest of wiring back there when I took it out. Was not disappointed:



All back together

 

Woohoo! The car passed its annual roadworthy inspection today :hurray

Either they didn't notice or didn't care that it has spacers on the rear wheels and no catalytic converter (both big no-no's over here) :lol

The guy did tell me that it'll need some suspension work as the bushings are pretty knackered. I've got some big plans in that area next year though

 

New steering wheel went in today

It's a Grant GT Rally. I really wanted a 4-spoke wheel for maximum 1980's awesomeness, they're surprisingly difficult to find though. Very happy with this, though the horn was a pain to get working (apparently a well-known issue with Grant wheels)

 

If you take your steering wheel off, there is a ring of copper on the back, when you press the horn pad this ring hits the contact that grounds the horn circuit and makes the horn sound. I'll take some pics tonight of the wheel i just took off the car to show you. I would wager that on your car, with the wheel in the straight-ahead position the copper strip on the back of the wheel has worn at the point of contact with the horn wire and doesn't touch it any more.

 

There are three screws and two clips on the back of the wheel that hold the horn pad on, undo the screws and then the horn pad can be pulled off from the front.

Edit - found a pic of the back of the wheel. That ring of metal is the contact strip i was talking about