Name is Allen, I reside in a small town in Washington state. Moved from Portland, OR.
Keep in mind, while owning these cars what I did for fun was junkyard raiding. I would purchase all the contents of a car from a yard and cart it home.
At a point, I had an entire car in the garage minus the shell and glass. I had enough left over to build another car minus interior and a couple body panels.
I bought my first AE in 2002, an 87 SR5 Coupe with quarter panel damage. Basically the one no one ever wants. Paid 750 for it. Ran like a champ for 3 years but leaked oil like no ones business. The GTS Swap happened in early 2005. Everything from a GTS was swapped over including the power mirrors. Had a rebuilt motor, dynoed at 99hp at the wheels.
My other pride was an 86 GTS Coupe I bought north of Seattle in a little town near the coast. I got it back, neglected to check the coolant one day and overheated the motor and blew the headgasket. I had a 'friend' who would help me with some of this car stuff, taught me a little bit but mostly stole from me. This car sat for years without a motor and rear axle (sold to a friend while this sat idle).
I was able to purchase a 3tc swap with sidedraft (I think mikuni 44s) carbs. It was a bolt in, simple, couple wires. I also had finally found another LSD axle and threw it in the back. I drove this around for a bit, it mostly sat because it was incredibly loud. It shot fireballs all the time, ran rich, burned the eyes. It wasn't super fast, but it was stupid and stupid made a lot of friends.
While in Spokane, WA visiting a friend at Gonzaga my GTSR5 had an electrical fire and burned. Had a good friend (whom I lost contact with now) help me and tow it back. I am still appreciative to this day.
I stripped the GTSR5 and took the 4age down to a short block and resealed it, put it back together and threw it back into the GTS where it belonged.
Bought some front bumper that was 'cool' back in 2006 or 2007 and went dirt drifting. If there was anything loose on the car, you would have found it after 5 minutes. A group of 5 of us did this for at least 6 hours.
After collecting parts for a year, I was ready to redo the suspension and steering. Added a GTS manual rack, column with hub extension, SPL coilovers, extended lower control arms, NCRCAs, Swaybars, and SS HTS rear shocks.
At the end of the road in 2007/2008 I was working on a F22 Swap from a wrecked S2000. I never got it fully done.
TODAY
At the beginning of April I have purchased a 1986 hatchback from my friend James. I purchased the car before I had even gotten it road worthy because I knew he took great care of this thing and I have purchased other vehicles from him before. It needed brake work, I put in a new master cylinder and booster over the weekend to get it road worthy. I had a clutch master to put in at the same time but I accidentally ordered the wrong one.
I intend on restoring the vehicle, not to factory but a resto-mod.
I did the stripped out corolla thing years ago and I don't want to venture down that route again. It was fun and wild to drive my old corolla but I want to drive this daily and without problems. The end product for this car would be a 1UZ swap. There will be a lot of work before that.
I will try and bring informative DIY segments for everyone as I do things along the build.
I had ordered a couple of things and decided that today would be a good day to fix up some parts of the car.
On the schedule:
-Spark Plugs, Cap, and Rotor
-Front Brakes - Rotors, Pads, Bearings, and Lines
-Rear Brakes - Rotors, Pads, Lines, and center brake line
-Clutch master cylinder, clutch line, and slave
-Exhaust manifold
-Oil Change
First order of business. Get it in the air and start on the brakes.
Got one side done fairly quick. :thumbsup:
This was the drivers side. The sliders were dry and had no grease.
Outside pad was nearly on metal, inside was worn diagonally.
My co-worker Steven was helping me out through out the day. He actually did the header install on his own.
Rockin' and Rollin' around the car.
This was the last set I did, Drivers side rear. The rotor was badly grooved, like a record. The rear brake pads looked new, but since I had bought a complete brake system, I changed them anyway. Sorry, I didn't keep the pads.
After the brakes, I put in NGK Iridium plugs.
Next, I spent my time taking the clutch master out and Steven took the stock exhaust manifold out.
No-name header I purchased. Beats an exhaust leaking into the cabin making me dizzy! Clutch Master on top left.
I have the new clutch master in, now I am tightening everything up.
Steven had the top half of the manifold in, spent some time grinding out the two stud holes because they weren't exactly right.
Tightening up the last two bolts to the exhaust.
This manifold did hit on the lower part of the firewall. Nothing a ballpeen hammer couldn't take care of.
I also had purchased this from a customer recently. It has a bad crank, I will be putting a new motor into it and refreshing it for my girlfriend to drive. It needs a thorough cleaning, new interior parts, some POR15 on the underside and skid-plates. Its going to be our adventure rig.
Next on the agenda
Distributor Rebuild, the current one leaks oil fairly bad. - ordered and arrived
Bushing kit install
T50 Inspection and breakdown, new seals and install
New clutch and flywheel - Would need to order, going with a 212mm
Water Pump Install - have a brand new one
Hunt down a manual steering set-up
Freshen up the interior
I have had this idea in my head for a while.
Whenever I start my car, it seems as if every piece of plastic rattles. There are some especially nasty rattles coming from the hatchback area. Today I took out all of the hatch plastics, cleaned them up and put felt discs on the bolt holes and plastic keeper holes.
Now, there is no vibration coming from the hatch area, just the dash!
I had wanted to use Thermo-tec - Thermo-guard FR one sided foil on all of the plastics around the car between the plastic and the body. My goal, as lofty as this may sound, is to have a quiet interior. Very likely the opposite of what everyone else on this forum wants. But I don't care.
Today:
Here are all the rear plastics out ready to be cleaned and getting the felt discs put on.
These are the felt discs that I am putting at every bolt hole. I don't have a normal sized hole punch, just something I stole from the girlfriend. I would make a hole and bore it out with a phillips screw driver. However I could to get this idea to work!
While cleaning the rear speaker mounts, I couldn't get the color to come back. They are too damaged by UV rays. They scratch easily and hardly responded to any of my Novus brand plastic cleaners or Megulairs dash cleaner. At some point I either need to replace these, paint them or wrap them in vinyl.
Here is one after I spent 20 minutes with 4 different plastics cleaners...
Putting on the felt discs.
On the larger panels the foam was coming off. Sprayed with my trusty super90!
On the panels that detach to service the tail lights, I cut the discs in half and stuck them on the side where the tabs insert first to make the panel taught.
Last part of the hatch was the spare jack cover, and it was warped. Not sure how but I had to do something with it. I had some weatherstripping from the winter left over. I believe it was 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch. It is a very effective foam stripping. I peeled off the old strip of foam slowly, it came off in 4 pieces.
I had bought a blue drivers side kick panel from a friend and it was time to put it in! It was a bit dirty when I got it.
A slight crack, I used some super glue on it. The old kick panel which I should have taken a picture of had a hole in it and several cracks.
I went out for a test drive and there are NO rattles coming from the back!
There are all sorts of rattles coming from the dash!
Next things to address, getting a AISIN clutch master - the one I installed doesn't have enough 'throw' to fully engage the clutch. I believe the bolt coming out of the cylinder is shorter than it should be. I have had this problem before and solved it with a factory clutch master, which I should have done in the first place. :rolleyes:
I have my Distributor rebuild kit, so that will also get done this week.
I have had a climate control panel with cables for a week now, today I decided to install it.
Here is the one that came out of the car:
The clip that controls the heat/cool function was broken.
To my surprise the other black cable also came off and didn't have a clip holding the cable down. leaving the recirc/fresh cable as the only one that worked properly.
The off/low/med/high switch on the new assy was broken, it only had off/low/med. Something internal to the switch was bad, along with the light wiring being cut and looks like a burn mark on the back.
There is a screw holding in the off/low/med/high switch, but no way to put a screw driver on it. This was the only way I could get it off. Very slowly.
Even with the new switch fully tight it still moved when you select a position. I used some super glue on the pin and left it alone for 15 minutes.
Newish heater control panel ready to go back in.
I had tried to get the other panel cover off, but it cracked almost immediately. I will have to put up with this for now.
After installing I have one little snag, the cool/heat switch doesn't fully go to cool. It goes most of the way, I may have ran the cables incorrectly. When I go back into the dash later on I will try and reroute the cables so it operates smoother. Everything else works great! Now I have defrost selector and heat again! It would only blow cold air at my feet before!
