My Celica

Its not as bad now as it was, from what i can tell is that the needle bouncing is for the most part an issue with it drawing power from the same source wire as the component that is moving it. my needle still bounced and i even installed an aftermarket guage and wired it to the fuse box. well after i saw it behaving the same way as the stock one i ran a wire straight to the battery to the guage and it didnt dance at all. so i then found an empty fuse spot in the engine compartment and installed its power wire there, no more dancing and a more accurate reading. my thought is the ppower wire the main system is getting its juice from is inadequate. as for the system being able to handle the increase in amps, no warm or hot wires so far so its all good

 

i made a spacer to put behind the alternator upper bracket so it would sit snugly in place, used the piece i cut off the bottom of the alt to get it to sit right. as for the longer belt ill have to look up the part number for ya, i think i have the box in my trunk. the pully didnt line up perfectly so i got a small pully spacer off ebay to push it out so the belt will line up, still havnt installed it yet since i dont have the right sized socket or an impact to remove the nut from the pully so i can install it. when i do i will replace the belt again, its only a 10 dollar part so no big deal.

 

:kingsorry been extremely busy lately, the chunk I took off using a hacksaw, they have other ones that are the same model of alternator but have different housing configurations on them. I only used this one because of the amperage and because I was able to buy it from Craigslist for only 20 dollars. Btw the dancing amp guage is caused by a inadiquate power wire coming into the interior of the car, or a bad connection at the firewall. I know this because even after the alt swap it still bounced alot and it even did it with my aftermarket guage. However when I hooked it up under the hood I didn't have that issue. So I ired it to a fuse box under the hood to get an accurate reading. Oh and its not a bad ground, I've added sooooo many found wired its crazy lol.

 

update

Bit of an update, replaced head gasket water pump and a bunch more seals and gaskets. if i do anymore to this engine it will be rebuilt since everything else has been replaced lmao...
i Did some mods to my grill, i noticed some sort of silver overspray or just old paint and it was an eyesore on my grill, so i pulled it off and began to sand it, after a bit of time and a ton of finger cramps lol, i got it all cleaned up and other than being a flat black it loked a ton better, i went ahead and shot some clear on it and now it looks like new. while i had it apart i was looking at the silver pieces that ran acros the frontend and on top of the grill and decided to try something i havnt seen on here before. so once again i got some sand paper out and sanded all of the silver paint off of the back and decided to paint the back of it black. i left the celica letters silver and i got to say i am loving the look of it. before you could barly see where it said celica and now it really stands out. Photobucket is having site issues at the moment so here is a link to where i uploaded the pics,
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...073741825.100003521332775&type=1&l=ed6b2377f3
I thought about leaving the inside of the letters clear and installing some reflective tape and leds behind them to make them glow blue. hmmm perhaps a mod for a different day hehe.

edit. pics







what she looked like before i did all this, notice the silver tint on the grill

 

i know, the poor car looks a ton better now! Im loving how it looks, now i have to do all the rest of the body work so i can finally get some decent paint back on her. lol:afro

 

Did a ton of sanding today, clear coat is in gawd aweful shape. i thought it looked a bit odd before and now i know why, someone had repainted her from the doors on forward bot not the top or the rear, and not very well either lol. But its ok since im not sticking with the blue. I was never fond of that shade of blue and with the rust and the rest of the body work im doing i dicided finally on a color. I didnt have the stuff i needed to do what i wanted on the exterior body so i decided to go ahead and shoot some color, figured if i didnt like it then it wasnt a big deal since the only time you can see it is when the trunk is open lol, took a bit longer than i had planned on and i didnt get it done before the rain began to spoil my fun. So i will have to finish it later but i got to say im loving the results, it just looks sooooo much cleaner and shiny. So yellow it is, now i still plan on doing some gloss black on her as well, just trying to figure out exactly what before i paint the exterior. Keep in mind that i will be making slow progress on this car as i have to be able to drive it. i dont have the luxury of being able to tear the whole thing down and do everything at once over the course of a week so i will post the progress as i go. More than likely i will be doing something like a coat a week till its all done, of course this means alot more work because i will have to keep masking things off and removing what i can which i think looks a hell of alot better than simply taping things off lol.
Here are some pics, i got the bottom area done but had to stop on the underside of the trunk lid when it began to sprinkle.





as u can see the underside of the trunk lid can use a few more coats, i only got one coat on before the weather literally rained on my parade lol.


Sad thing is this is now the best looking paint on my car lol. Naturally the red parts inder my hood will have to be reshot to a different color lol.

 

minor update, so i saw some rust bubbles under some paint and taped it with a hammer to break it away and a huge portion pretty much dicintergrated. so now that is going to be a joy to repair but the rust has to go. Thankfully this is the worst of the rust spots in this car, which is why i decided to start here on the drivers side, passenger side isnt near as bad and wont take as long to do. Tomorrow im going to find some sheet metal to fill in the hole and fasten it in place, i dont have a welder nor do i have access to one so ill have to get a bit creative. The only other spots on this side was on the fenderwell, not that bad. They arent perfect as id like em to be, so im not quite done with them but it already lots better than before.






LMao on the pizza box comment, I had some laying around so i figured id recycle them and make them useful hahaha.
Yeah i like the color too, I love the color black but i see soo many black cars around and honestly im tired of that rather bland color, My choices of color was , red, blue, white, black, or yellow. The shade of blue i could get i didnt like at all, Black was too blah for me, as for white ive just had too many white cars in my time lol, The red i seriously considered bot once again a color i see very often, so i figured ive never seen a yellow celica and i like it. Now for my comments about some colors being bland, well to the others on this site who happen to have cars using those colors, your cars look fine, just isnt for me, i cant help but feel like if i went with black red or white then id just be doing the same thing that i see done all the time on here, for me i have to make my car my own.

Hey steve, i want to incorperate some gloss black into my paint scheme, Cant just have one color, got to keep it interesting. I was thinking Its a gt-s, so i was thinking something like a stripe down the sides that say gt-s -------- and then break up at the end. nothing gawdy just about 6 inches wide overall positioned a couple of inches off the bottom of the car starting at the front fenderwell on the door side and running down. Ugh i wish i could describe what i see in my mind. lol.

 

didnt make any preogress today because gf was home and she tends to friggin demand all my spare time lol. that and it rained all day and my wipers stopped working once i got to work so i figured out what the issue was, a bolt in the little silver box that mounts on the firewall right behind the intake, anyway that bolt that held it in place was too long and interacting with the rods. easy fix but i still wound up removing the wiper motor and cleaning and regreasing it.

Here is a pic of a yellow celica, no stripes though but this is the basic idea, naturally mine will look a bit different as i am repainting the trim around my windows and doing some black work, that and mine is a coupe where this one is a hatchback.

i want this body kit lol.

 

Yeah i wish mine looked that good lol. Been a busy day, omg im tired now but the bad stuff is fixed, got a little more sanding still but i ran out of paper lol.

 

NO i used some screws to place a piece of plastic inside the hole about an inch below the surface, sanded it well and drilled a few holes in it for good measure just so the filler had something to hold on to. Given the previous rust situation i decided against using a piece of sheet metal as it would just rust under the bondo and cause issues further down the line. I really, really wanted to cut and shape a piece of metal to weld in place but i dont have the tools to shape it, nor the resources to weld a patch in place so i had to make the best using what i had. I did however use tin snips to cut away as much of the rust as possible and i used some of the rustoleum spray rust converter to help keep the rust gone. It will likely come back eventually But it will take many years and who knows if i will even still have this car by then or if it will even be in one piece lol. I really like the car, its just been quite a lemon since day one it seems all i do is dump more cash into it and do what i can to keep it running. Im happy to say finally i can drive it and not worry so much about something catastropic breaking or leaking. The only issue im dealing with now is a noise that the transmission is making. i know its is the tranny because i hear it when i start the car, noise goes away after i put it in gear, but comes back while driving it, only time it isnt present is when i am changing gears. its not a whining but almost sounds like a rubbing sound. its really hard to explain but it wasnt doing it before the head gasket blew and overheated the engine, i think that when the egine got hot it cooked my tranny fluid. I plan on changing it and installing an external tranny cooler so that the engine temp wont have any effects on the transmission fluid temp and vice versa, right now when i climb a hill the temp goes up pretty good and eventually goes back down, i think its the fluid getting hot and making the engine run a bit hotter. I'd do about anything for a 5 speed in it instead lol. Oh well maybe someday ill actually find one of these cars in a junkyard so i can salvage a tranny.:naughty