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jackeo21's GX61 MKII Hardtop couch spec.


stylez

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Slowly been working away at parts of the engine bay getting everything tidied up, hiding lots of loose wiring, and painting parts/cleaning. I love red valve covers, so the purple ones were painted in a wrinkle red. Inlet also changed colour. One other thing that annoyed me was the factory inlet piping, so for now I've ditched it and put the filter straight on the throttle body and made some exhaust heat shields to keep things cool and tidy.

The front suspension in this thing is atrocious, like driving a waterbed on wheels. 

Took Shock Apart:

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yep, rooted. Bottom of the shock is all cracked and split, leaking oil and rendering the shocks useless. I would say these are originals. Next challenge is finding new replacements. 

While I'm at it i'll give the suspension a nice tidy-up and replace some bushings, as they're perished and rotted from 38 years on the road. Hoping to keep the current ride height but stiffen it right up, that's the goal.

Hit the discussion if you can help me find some shock inserts - google doesn't give me a definite answer on the ones I require. Have heard MA60 supra ones may work.

Cheers.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Little update

Got my front headlight and with minor adjustment yet to be made it should be perfect. Took some work in finding it but that's about the biggest hurdle overcome. The front is nearly ready to go back together, after some radiator mounts are made and some snapped bolts are removed.

In other news, I went and installed new nolathane bushes in place of the worn out old rubber ones. This should help with stiffening up the car a little. Found some mint lower arms with good bushings and brand new ball joints so those have been installed, too.

Shocks had been put on order 3 weeks ago but got lost in shipping. Replacements are due to arrive next Wednesday. Then it can finally come back down to earth for the rear to be renovated.

More engine bay renovations have been happening. Installed a new starter cable, battery terminals, and secured heaps of loose wiring and brackets that had been flapping in the breeze. 

Next is to pull the 5 puck clutch and replace it with something more street-ready. The 5 puck is so violent that it is near impossible to drive comfortably, makes for a super harsh ride. Diff will be coming out at the same time.

that's all for now!

cheers

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  • 2 weeks later...

The hardtop got engaged this week.

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New wagon needs boatloads of work, but more focus is on the hardtop.

New shocks finally arrived after much waiting as they got lost in shipping. The new rear shocks are from an Isuzu elf and stiffen the car up nicely.

Currently being driven to the point of insanity with the headlights. When turned on, the dash lights and rear lights work fine, however I get nothing at the front. No headlights, parks, or indicators. Not even hazards. Only thing I can think to check is the modules, even then I'm not sure that's my issue. When I turn the lights on, I can hear a click from the engine bay relay but nothing much happens from there. If you can help me, I would love to hear from ya.

Next on the list is to redo sections of the exhaust, secure lower p/steer lines, and put the front together.

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  • 1 month later...

Cheers to absolute legend @crustywhip for sorting me a whole box of interior trim, door rubbers, windows, regulators, and most importantly two mint front guards, one of which has already found it's way on the car. Cheers to @The Bronze for hauling the bits up the country for me.

Now that the front is together, only minor things left for a warrant. Need to stop annoying exhaust rattle, put my new front calipers on, and get the headlights working again. 

Front guard will be painted at some stage but for now it's not too much bother.

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goes so hard. I get many "when is it getting a turbo" comments, but for what it is it definitely doesn't need one.

till next time

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  • 1 year later...

How it all started,,

Warning Sharn

I was originally hunting for a X chassis in the beginning of Jan 2019, more specifically a X71 H/T TC24.

Viewed a few single cam 1g’s sedan and hard tops in NZ but they were too far gone.  A few months later I realized I wouldn't be able to find something to match my expectations (TC24 H/T) so I decided to look in Japan.

I contacted Jesse at Stacked inc (awesome guy to deal with by the way)

After a while of bouncing back and forward with him and bidding on various cars in auctions only to lose. I came across a TC24 Sedan on YAJ that peaked my interest and suited my budget, it was a lot cheaper than the rest due to having minor body issues and it failed Shaken.

Turns out this vehicle belonged to an employee from the workshop Motor Fix I’m sure you might’ve heard of them..

The seller was very excited with the possibility of the car coming to New-Zealand, he tried to help out every way he could, I had someone view the vehicle and take as many photos as they could to send to the compliance officers here in NZ. Unfortunately It just wasn't going to work with New-Zealand’s strict compliance rules, I battled for months with the compliance officers sending photos and calling asking for updates. After reviewing the photos they deemed the car “uncompilable”

The seller was very disappointed and even offered to repair the car in japan for discounted labour through Motor_FIX.

 

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This was the photo the compliance officers were most concerned about; they said this would’ve been an estimate in 10k to repair because the whole panel would’ve been rusted. After asking them if I could get the repair work done in japan they told me I should look for alternative options.

Back to the current car..

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I will try and backtrack accurately from the day I got it, this wont be much of a "build thread" as the hard stuff is already done.

Last build thread I had was on Auszoku but the forums have gone now.

Picked the car up, took me a bit of getting used to the clutch but It was sweet by the time I got home. The rear end seemed to be quite spongy (you'll see later) apart from that I was grinning ear to ear.

Simple things first...

Got the lights working 

Gave it a wash

Put on my 15x7.5j and 8j SSR formula Mesh.

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Drove it for a little bit on the off occasion, eventually got sick of the slop in the rear end so decided to jack it up and have a look.

Was greeted with this..

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Something was causing the diff to smack on the ground, further investigation revealed the rear crossmember had torn and the bolt wasn't holding anything on....

 

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Ended up scoring a T-Series Xmember from a user on here which did the job.

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Ditched the single spinner replaced it with a F series 4.1 LSD

Diff Mount was showing age, I couldn't source anything from Toyota so had a urethane mount made up from the guys at Autolign.

Old:

 

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New:

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I decided to get things underway with the suspension..

Got some spare struts for welding coil over to stubs from @dspec_tt31 I made sure to use the same brakes that I was going to weld the BC’s to avoid brake caliper spacing issues.

Did a lot of research into the BC adjustable suspension for the MX73, and spoke to a lot of knowledgeable people.  I wanted the vehicle to be as low as I could get it but still be able to pass certification. I ended up ordering the “ultra low” set of BC coil overs through Redline, they had a 10mm shorter spring and shock so I figured this would be more than fine.

Before I got them welded I sought out advice from fellow X chassis owners and old-school GC’s. A lot of the issues people ran into seemed to be that the coil over thread would bottom out because the silver ring on the bottom was preventing more adjustment.  Unless you cut the silver ring off the coil over you didn’t get as much thread adjustment, the problem with this was you had to leave a certain amount of material inside the coil over for plug welding to the stub axle and if you cut the silver ring and welded it lower you wouldn’t be able to pass certification.

I had two people turn down the job because they just couldn’t understand the reason for less material for them to weld and because cast to spindle was a big no, they couldn’t see how it would make it any lower.

Eventually after having a chat with Tim at TTT automotive we came up with a plan to get the most thread adjustment out of the insert as possible whilst still retaining the appropriate amount for plug welding.

With some trickery this was the result..

 

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Started to hunt around for a Chaser R/H corner light, which I quickly learnt wasn’t an easy task..

Messaged anyone and everyone, ended up using Instagram as a means to contact people within Japan and try and get them to source me something, many hours and late nights after work were spent on google translate. In the end a user pointed me towards a listing for a rusty wrecked hard top in Nagoya just outside of tokyo. I had an agent check it out for me and it turns out the old guy wanted the whole car gone or nothing else no parts for sale.

 He wanted 300,000 yen at the time which I respectfully declined.

I then had a lead on one in Russia from a X chassis enthusiast but the guy couldn’t sort out the shipping and then stopped replying to my messages.

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It looked like I wasn't going to find one anytime soon so I toyed at the idea of running a PFL light with a filler panel to wrap around the fender too resemble the facelift light.

It wasn't until one day I was browsing Facebook at work and came across a listing for GX61 chaser corner lights on one of the Cressida groups from a seller called Retro Auto parts https://www.facebook.com/retro.autoparts his location said Kuala Lumpur so I enquired about shipping, turns out he was currently in NZ and in Auckland on holiday and had the lights with him! I couldn't believe my luck! It turned out he was about 15min from my work so went and picked up a L/h and a R/h after work.

Before:

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Obtained some period correct bits for the interior.

OBA30 

Chinchilla Dash mat

Custom wooden gear knob done by a user on here

Patlite (not pictured)

Tulip Ashtray (not pictured.

A nice set of Pioneer parcel shelf speakers and some half seat covers and interior is basically complete.

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Did some general upkeep/maintenance

- Tidied up wiring

- Lube Service

- Had issues with surging and loss of power so replaced old Bosch 044 pump with AEM 400LPH

- Speedo only worked half the time and when it did it wasn't accurate so tried the basics lubing the cable etc, noticed the cable barely reached the back of the cluster. Bought a new cable which i was led to believe was longer but turned out to be the same so ended up running a 90 degree angle adapter from the gearbox to get a bit of extra length.

Result is a definitely better but still plays up on the odd occasion.

 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

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