I'll post a quick recap of what's been done so far, but mostly, she's just sat in the garage for the last few months. I finally got started on her again yesterday. Oil came out looking black, black, black (Which is awesome because she's loosing coolant, to some unknown place)
Below follows the account of Alexandra:
So.... she popped up on craigslist. I'd seen her there about a month ago, and decided the price was too high for what was being sold. And here she was again, for a cool grand less. I told myself: "Self, you have Gracie and Hannah to care for, a man can only have so many women in his life!" And that seemed to be working, until my dad said, "you should go drive it". And I did. And now I own it. Funny how that works.
Anyway, she's rough, but she's a 93 Alltrac. She's got a crappy bodykit that is falling off, one of the worse and most half-assed paint jobs I've ever laid eyes on, the door sensor always reports that the door is open, killing the battery, she has an awful bodykit, some of the most classy wiring work I've ever laid eyes on, and still has the stock radio! oh, but the pop out cup holder is missing.
Without further ado, here is Alexandra:
I haven't decided how I feel about the wing, but the rest of that kit has got to go.
Crappy bodykit plus missing corner light
Already a to-do list:
- Order RC bumper
- Replace struts and strut boots
- replace wheels
- get bumper
- new stereo
- Fix door lights
- new fluids, new wipers
- Figure out what else needs work
You can see the lovely paint mess. An aftermarket blowoff valve, and an IC without its box. and a radiator that is leaking. I'm hoping to find some fluid on the garage floor in the morning, otherwise I'll know exactly why the kid I bought this from was selling it for $4K
The front bumper came off, well ripped out two of the mounting holes on the bumper and I took it off. I think i've found an RC bumper and crash bar, so that's exciting. I've also fixed all of the warning lights but the ABS. But mostly I've been buying up fun stuff, so here's some pics.
Got a bunch of stuff at pick'n'pull:
The most most exciting thing to find was a full set of floor mats. They're dirty, but they have very little wear on them, and so many of these have a giant hole where the foot for the gas pedal rests. A little cleaning and they'll be good to go.
Also picked up a couple things from pitcelica over celicatech:
And picked these up from a guy over at AT.net:
Those are porsche 911 Brembo callipers for the front, although I still need a stock sized set of STi rotors to make them work. Should be everything else I need however except new pads. These things are absoultely massive:
Went to pick n pull and got myself some very nice parts off a car that had been broken into and vandalized. the Interior was abosultely trashed (and covered in something that made me glad i was wearing gloves). But the outside was mint. Got a front bumper with turn signals and fog lights, the faux-cf trim peice, and all three pieces of the rear spoiler.
Also tracked down the ABS problem to the rear right speed sensor:
This is where things get tricky. Toyota discontinued this part, and the dealers can't get it for me. On top of that this sensor is unique to the 1992-1993 Celica alltrac's, no other car uses it. Hopefully though, since only the wiring was cut I'll be able to just repair this. My plan is to strip back the heavy rubber parts, solder the wires, heat shrink each of them, then use larger heat shrink to cover the coating. Then I'll get some braided stainless steel (I'm thinking I'll cut up a sink or toilet feed line) and jbweld that over the fix. If that doesn't fix it up I'm in trouble because Oregon requires that I have working ABS since my car came equipped with it. :sigh:
On the bad side: I repaired, and then replaced the rear ABS sensor, I still have an ABS light. At this point I'm gonna chance it and see if they fail me. I'm concerned that I might have a dummy cat anyway, so I'll find that out too. It'll be fun.
On the other hand lots of fun things have been showing up at my door:
A set of JDM clear corners from Lithia Toyota, they're great and can get a lot of JDM parts.
A pair of Whiteline strut tower braces, they're pretty beefy, and should stiffen her up quite a bit, hopefully this will make cornering a lot more fun
My new Whiteline swaybar and Twos'r'us endlinks. For a kick, the new bar won't fit over the stupidly large aftermarket exhaust that a previous owner installed, and I had to pretty much destroy the stock endlinks. I'm debating whether to put the stock bar on with the new endlinks or not. I'm leaning towards doing it, since the car will ride real funny without it.
Here's the real treasure, found a local guy selling an RC bumper. It doesn't have the crash bar and has a few scratches on it, but otherwise completely intact, including the all of the clips and screens. It's a pretty good find.
Going down to the DMV before work monday to get new trip permits issued, then I'll be able to test the rings on the axles to make sure that's not the ABS problem. If it is, I'll get parts ordered to fix it, otherwise off the DMV. I do have a lovely leak, that I'm pretty sure is coming from the drivers side front axle, so I'll need to drop and tear down the transmission. I'll probably just do all the seals at the same time, and maybe an LSD
Well, I finally managed to get the Whiteline swaybar in today. No pictures, sorry, I was in a bit of a hurry. Put some gas in her and took her out for a drive today. Definately have a bad wheel bearing, and a lot of noise when driving. I'm gonna have a better look in the morning and hopefully get it into the DEQ tomorrow.
I got my smog test done just fine, and title work sent off so hopefully I'll have a title in the mail in the next week or two.
Keep finding more classy work. Discovered that they welded up the original holes for the spoiler, and with the damage that they did to the deck lid to get that stupid wing on I'm just going to get a new one, and a new rear bumper. Also finally got around to getting most of the little pieces of glass out of the back (the kid I bought it from replaced the rear glass after someone smashed it one night). Almost got the stupid bumper off today, but I'm gonna need to get the rear wheels off to take all of the screws out. I can only find two screws there, but it feels pretty stuck. I'm hoping its just bondo. I'll be picking up a sander and a few other tools tomorrow to start getting some of the paint off and seeing what I've got. In the meantime, pictures:
Wow, it's been a while. I have a title, and I have started dropping money like a fool. I think I picked an appropriate name, I wanted something classy and expensive sounding...
Anyway, I decided to get rid of the old tailgate and get a new one. Foolishly I left the wing thinking that I had one, only to discover that the narrowbody hatchback wing does not fit the widebody. Doh! But, I went ahead and swapped the hatch. I also got the rear bumper off, and I got a very expensive package.
isogone4good came by and we made short work of the hatch:
My 7th gen Hannah peeking around the corner at her sister
Getting the bumper off was fun. I spent a bunch of time with an icepick digging the head of the screws out of the bondo (and the bondo out of the heads of the screws), so I could get this off. After looking at the skirts It's gonna be a lot of that to get those off. Theres a little surface rust where the bumper rubbed on the body, but the metal feels solid and it's not deep. So hopefully tomorrow a little work with a wire wheel and some rustoleum will hold it over till paint
And the expensive things arrived finally!
[url=https://flic.kr/p/nJsgAK]
I should have tires for those pretty little babies tomorrow. So just waiting for more packages to arrive and finish taking the body kit off
Started getting the interior buttoned back up, got the new wheels mounted, I'll post pics of that soon.
Two weeks ago I went up to Canada and picked this bad boy up:
This is the GT4 RC hood that goes with the GT4 RC bumper sitting in front of it. I'll need to get rid of the top mount inter cooler and go to a front mount (since this hood has a giant heat evacuator rather than a hood scoop. I also need to come up with washer nozzles that are specifc to this JDM/EUDM specific hood. That'll be fun.
And that's where she's at today hopefully I'll get her in for paint and body work soon. Although I've been saying that for over a year
