As always, this started with the purchase of a car I intended to just use for a while, make some nice little changes to make it my own, and not go to nuts with it. Unfortunately after just a couple of weeks of ownership the car started running really badly, and a compression test resulted in these figures: Cylinder 1: 11.1 bar Cylinder 2: 4 bar Cylinder 3: 6.8 bar Cylinder 4: 7 bar wahhhh!!!! Also I bought the car knowing it needed a little bit of welding to sort out scabby rear arches, and some weird rusty area's where the a pillar met the sills, but as always, on inspection it was a little worse than we first thought.. Thank god Mr SteveO loves a challenge. Anyway, pictures do a much better job of explaining the two weeks of hardcore work that Paz, Steveo and myself have put into it. My broken 16v in a dirty engine bay That was no match for the Paz! Two hours to do a tidy job of removing it I think One of the area's of rust I knew about was under the brake master cylinder where it's obviously dripped at some point and not been cleaned up. It's only surface rust, but it looks pretty gross Mr Steveo got busy chopping out the rust down the Apillar. It was loads worse than I first thought. And the reason? Well someone had decided to repair a small bit of rust in the past by firing loads of body filler at it. Which resulted in it pooling water and doing this level of damage.. What the hell were they thinking? Some nice template making and really acurate use of Steveo's awesome Bosche Electric metal sheers, and it was time to get to the welding. Seriously chuffed with how it came out after the welds were ground back. Just the final peice where the sill meets the door to be fabbed. The other side was nearly as bad... Steveo could hardly bear to look at it Again, really happy with how this came out. On to the rears arches. We'd already chopped the rust out, but steveo insisted we pull it right back to a where the panels meet, and found that Toyota miss out some pretty serious structural welding inside the inner and outer sill, so that was done and again some great metalwork to make it like new. Grinding back the welds to make it a panel again Back to the first front Apillar work. I etch primed it, and it starts to look right again. While steveo did the welding Paz did an awesome job of prepping the engine bay.. A seriously horrible job!!! Steveo's busy in the bay, and you can also see the second front apillar repair, now etch primed and seam sealed. Well, it'd be rude not to stitch weld the engine bay after all of this hard work! Some nice shutz work on all four inner arches.. Just like new! Me and Paz went to town etch priming the engine bay with Upol acid 8 . Paz did more of the horrible work, steam cleaning, prepping and painting the front crossmember and lower arms. And what better to do on a Christmas Eve? Well I wanted to get some more done, and see what the new colour the whole car will be looks like.. I'm really really happy with it, (despite finding out that Beezy just painted his 86 in exactly the same colour ) And a sneak peak of the Driftworks exclusive 15x8" ET0 Rota Grid V.. Cookies and Cream!! More updates coming soon, but I'm pretty happy with the progress for two weeks work.
I've got a 20v from our new resident traders TJZ Engineering . I've got a TTT RWD thermostat housing, a Striker modified 36-1 trigger wheels for the VEMS ecu, and some Catcams that are the highest lift and duration whilst retaining the VVTI as well. I'm really hoping for a genuine 160bhp, but we'll see, as I really enjoyed the 16v on ITB's even though it was probably about 100bhp
sounds good, I think they are too underpowered standard. Have you been driving about birmingham before your engine troubles as I'm sure I've seen a glimpse of your car, sounded quite loud?
I forgot to mention the whole point of the car... I want an extreme alternative to the S15, and something to do lot's of laps of whatever track I want as well.. Something that's slow as fuck, requires a completely different driving style, and something that means I don't have to change tyres every two laps . All my buds have MX5's which are totally awesome on track, but I just couldn't hack the gayness, so I bought an older, shitter car for 4 times the price of an MX5 makes a lot of sense doesn't it
Yep, often found at 8.5k rpm on the streets of Birmingham . The car has an amazingly loud induction noise.
Send steveo round when your finished with him.. His work is awesome Looking good Phil. When you hoping to have it finished?
It's amazing how much time and money go into these old cars, I am constantly being told to sell mine and get a M3 or something similar with the money, I just can't do it as the heart rules the head. Are you planning to do on anything with the t50, although I think it should be ok if your gentle with it?
Loving this project, but out of interest, where youve done the "seam" welding, what was the reason for using tacks instead of 1-2" of seam welds? Just interested, as I personally prefer the way it looks as it seems more even, but is there a theory behind it? Look forward to seeing more progress
Not long after the new year with a little luck I didn't think I'd have problems at 160bhp? I'd love a quaife sequential, but that's not going to happen, so stock will do We've got them in 4x114.3 and 4x100
From what i have read the T50 box is ok if your nice to it up to around the 200-250hp mark but you can smash one with stock powers if you nasty with it Them rota's are nice mite get myself sum but need to sort a few other bits out 1st.
