SR1978

While working in Auckland purchased a polishing kit and filled in some weeknight boredom with polishing some stuff I had bought up from chch, Polished the bellhousing for the t50 with a couple of other bits and when I was back in chch one weekend polished the head on the motor to get the 'unboltable' bits done and clearcoated before the engine had to go in the hole.

Carried on tidying up the front end got carried away and ended up sandblasting the lot, spent hours using a mates sandblaster which was pretty small but did the job in the end. Instead of just painting everything back plain black I decided to hunt out a different colour for a laugh, after everything had been etched and primed I settled on a ducati subframe bronze which I had mixed up then paired it with some sweet matte clear. Came up really good the photo's don't really show how the bronze came out at all but it's sort of a metallic but matte, it will probably get scraped to shit with the car being so low but oh well. Also fitted new nolothane throughout the front, looks pretty good re-assembled and fitted got it finished right before I went up to Auckland to start working around October last year. I really just have to finsih the front suspension now which only involves purchasing some new inserts and getting someone to tig the platform thread onto the shocks for crack testing then I can paint and fit.

In between panel and paint also did a bit of mucking round with the front end and steering, the car always suffered pretty bad from sloppy box. No one likes sloppy box.. So instead of replacing the the steering box with another that was probably going to be just as bad I decided to convert it to rack & pinion. After a bit of measuring it was decided that a kp starlet rack was going to be the best option, so collected the bits then had Todd (Driftnmaz) graft the rear half of of a starlet x member onto the te3# x member mounting the rack and mounts etc into the correct position, he also modded the pedal box for hydro conversion while he was at it. The finished rack enabled x member turned out awesome, really stoaked with it, the starlet rack was paired up with a late ke70 coloumn which fitting for cert also included fitting the factory ke70 firewall rack entry hole and the factory bolting points for the rack into the factory firewall. The end result was tidy and maintains all the factory bolting points for the steering coloumn so I hopefully shouldn't have any issues come cert time. Also scored some ae86 p/s knuckles so the steering has a bit of extra lock if I ever need it I guess. It's all bolted together steering now and works like a dream, I used late ke70 rack ends but they only just fitted so may need to look for something longer.

No doubt missed a bit but build thread up to date now;

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/46931-sr1978s-78-ke35te37-levin-project/?p=1465282

Need to stay motivated and get this piece finished!

Marcus

As mentioned on the previous post I made a couple of small mods to the body before painting the inside out as I was keen to get this car as low as legally possible, retaining the solid rear end as it wouldn't seem right going IRS with a car that was never meant to be. I'm still working through the suspension side of things so will post as I progress with them, have some mostly finished nice low front adjustables ready for crack testing and some heavy rear leafs a friend was using in his race car to repack with my centres. Once I trialed the ae86 rear end it became pretty obvious that the car needed to be lower than where the diff sat legally so made up a notch for the diff head and had a friend weld it in to get the needed 40mm travel/clearance for cert. Heaps of clearance for the diffhead now but the housings pretty much sitting on the chassis rails, I still want it to end up around the height of the third pic but to go lower but I'll have to look into notching the rails too so need to look up what's needed there/what I can do for cert. I'm also going to be running a lower profile tyre than whats in the pic so will get some more low there but I've been trying not to rely on that.

I also picked up a stainless drop tank for the car cheap off trademe, cut out the spare wheel well and plated it up but it hung dangerously low once the car was back rolling so added some 3" box section to raise it up but as always this just created more work. I had planned to just fill the tank inside the boot and make up a splash guard/funnel thing with a drain around the filler but raising the tank left zero room for that so I opted to make a filler behind the number plate which ended up consisting of the factory filler tube from the rear pillar, some 3" pipe to the panel and a bit of stainless 2" bend dropping down into the tank, I'm using a Torana flip down number plate holder on the outside and just need a 2" 45deg fuel proof joiner to finish it off.

Carried on working through the joys of fixing more rust inside and out, finally after lots of welding, bare metalling and por15 I got the car to the stage it is panel wise now, the outside is still primer which I'll have to take back completely before I go further as its been on there for a couple of years now. After the mods for the drop tank and diff notch I also fully undersealed the car and all inside the guards etc and the entire interior/inside boot has been sprayed 2k black throughout. For some reason when tidying up the engine bay I decided to start shaving a few things in the engine bay and got carried away. This is a stupid idea. Don't ever do this. I suppose it looks good now its finished but the lengthly process of adding steel plate everywhere, then nutech, hours sanding the nutech and a final skim of bog is not cool it takes months longer than expected and will eat your soul.

Around the same time I started the mission of hunting out the Levin parts for the conversion, sourced them from all over the world; Japan, Peuto Rico and the US (The US guys love our NZ spec bumpers and are always down to trade parts for them!) So far I have the te3# bonnet with the large offset vent, bonnet chrome to match, te3# xmember, Te37 tail lights, JDM Levin grille and Levin script badges. I'm still hunting the JDM guard badges (Levin lightning bolt) and a proper Grille badge which is the same script font but slightly bigger (I have two boot ones) and the elusive roof consul that these came out with which contains a map light and 70's style 'OK monitor' I'm being pretty fussy with this build so I won't be fully happy until I find the last few bits, I'm sure they will be out there I just have to get on the hunt again.

I've also spent alot of time collecting other main parts for the build mostly locally and some from Japan, a bit of a list from memory;

Te71 2tgeu 262 head model, rebuild previously with mild cams and porting, older script style rocker cover swap

40mm Dellorto DHLA carbs and factory toyota 2tg intake mani

T50 with forward position shifter

Ae86 T series disc rear with TRD 2way

Ae86 vented front brakes and struts (currently building into adjustables)

Ae86 disc handbrake cables

e3# cusco strut brace and camber plates

Ta22 alloy rad

Genuine toyota clutch master and slave (Now rebuilt)

2tgeu excedy clutch

Large drop tank (who knows why..)

2tg unknown japanese extractors

Fibreglass lip and ta22 duckbill that I need to mod to fit ex. japan

'straya spec' rear window louvres

Various factory ke35 parts that were better than what my car had originally; interior, chrome etc (Like a whole car worth haha)

Discussion Thread

Hey guys,

My names Marcus, lived in Christchurch for the most and know a few of the Chch OS guys but have recently moved to Auckland. Have been a member for a few years but first time posting one of my projects, since I'm coming to nats this year I figured it was about time I did one on my bucket of bolts. I've had the car since 09' and dailyed it for a couple of years before pulling it off the road from what started with the excuse of " I'll fix that rust and re-spray it something not blue" It was around this time I discovered the T series powered ke35 variant and became hell bent on building a replica, maybe the only one in NZ? Some of this build thread will be out of sequence but I'll do my best to group the areas of the build separate to make it simplier until I get this thread up to date.

Here's the car before it got pulled to bits, some of you may recognize it from back in the day, it has the plates SR1978 (Govt. issue fluke not personalized) and was paper certed in 1998 for all the mods it still had when I bought it, It's been a bit of a slut previously, from memory I'm like the 14th owner! Used to see it around all the time before I bought it and in the time I had it on the road I've had at least two people spin me the 'I used to own this car back in the day' yarn haha

As I metioned before the car started off with rust work, there was alot of bog filled holes under the paint. Replaced sections of the floor, sills, drivers A pillar and several other area's trying to use cuts out of parted cars where I could to retain factory swages etc. Around this time I also found an obsession with wide 2/3pce japanese wheels and so had a local guy who was good with steel and had played with guards before do some work on them, mainly the rears which were cut from the inside about 20-30mm back from the guard lip to keep the double skin for strength and lifted up for more clearance the re-welded, the guards were also pumped massively to fit some 14x9 F1 racing? (similar to longchamps) that I had at the time, I was super happy with the end result which allowed me to run the wide wheels I wanted but also retained the factory lines which was something I really didn't want to lose.

Name: Marcus

Location: Christchurch

Cars you own: Current: Toyota Ka67 carina wagon (daily) Ke35/Te37 levin replica (project)

Mods to them : Ka67 Carina - 14x7.5j, 14x8.5j ssr Jilba's, lowered, resprayed toyota 148 silver, sounds, jaf badge

: Ke35/Te37 replica (project still in build but so far..)- 14x8j, 14x9j ssr xr4, custom adjustables front, te37 parts imported from japan grille, tail lights, badges, bonnet, guard mirrors. 2tgeu mild cam/porting, 40mm dellorto's, ta22 alloy rad, t50 forward position, ae86 tseries converted to leaf, TRD 2way lsd, custom steel guards widened to tuck wheels, rear arches raised, stainless droptank and floor modded to suit. Cusco strut braces, catch can, short shift, list goes on and still not finished!! Paint soon then get it back together, aiming to finish it this year.

Link to pics sorry not sure how to resize

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How you found out about oldschool: Clubk

Anything else you want to add: I like lamp