new to 4th gens, just bought 88 gts . i have some questions....

Hi branman, welcome to the forum! You'll find answers here to pretty much any question you have about your car. If you want to know everything about the ST162 in one thread, read Stigs labour of love - JDM TEMS, Corona 162 - 2 & 4 door and many more jdm oddities

To summarise your questions though;

Pressing the power switch on the gear lever just tells the tranny to hold onto gears for longer before changing up, it won't magically make engine more powerful (haha we wish)

Swapping the dash out isn't too difficult, there are just a million clips and harnesses to undo. Some pics of removal here. Or cover it with a dash mat and forget about it

Facelift - If your car is an '88, it's a facelift model. Some people call them the Series 2 or Mark 2, but Toyota never differentiated. Anyway, so in mid 1987 the Celica received a mild cosmetic makeover. The front corner light/indicator assemblies and grill are slightly different, and in the back the taillights are slightly different. The GTS models got new wheels. There were also some minor interior colour changes. That's really about it, mechanically the cars were identical. If you're thinking of doing a conversion, note that the taillights are a straight swap, but the grill and corner lights are not. Some pics of our members cars to illustrate:

LionTR's series 1 grill and corners:


Stig's series 2 front end:


Seank90's series 1 taillights:


rickstar22's series 2 taillights:


Series 1 GTS wheels (couldn't find a decent members photo, this is from wikipedia):


Celicasteve's series 2 wheels:


Cheers

Matt

 

No problem

 

Welcome B,

We like pix
Where do you hail from?

Mines an ' 87 GTS prefacelift with a post facelift lights grille and corners (almost pnp haha)

Vic

 

I like the more prominent CELICA script on the series one front end, so I frankensteined the top half of a series one grill onto the bottom half of my series 2. Only had to shave one plastic tab slightly to make it fit

Before:


After:

 

I was gonna do that too but I wanted to get away from the black eyebrows... So it was just easier to go complete. At that point I discoverers that they don't match exactly but I'm leaving it since it works good

 

Yeah the white-out look is nice, and no-one else would notice they're not perfectly straight. We'll just call it "character" eh?

Something else I discovered by mixing & matching parts from different cars is that the colour of the clear plastic part of the upper grill and the headlight eyebrows differs slightly (could be different amount of tint in different batches, could just be different amounts of UV exposure?), and also the grey cards behind the plastic differ slightly as well (in both the colour and the line pattern). Again, not something that 99.9% of the population would ever spot, but once you've noticed it you can't un-see it

 

We are an anal bunch haha

 

Also note that the HVAC control panel on the 86-87 Pre-facelift was redesigned for the 88-89 Facelift and do NOT interchange.