_Matt

Here’s the last exhaust I made for a VK commodore. Twin 2.5”. Made the mufflers/resonators as straight through louvred type. Sounded really good and not too loud. 

Finished the other side 4-link mount.

Bought some more wheels too. 13x6.5j SSR MKII's. Gave them all a beadblast and polish, still need some paint at some stage.

Bought some new screws for the headlight trim, gave the trim and headlights a polish and assembled them.

Made some new chassis rails out of some 50x50x2.5mm box section. It nearly perfectly slid over the existing chassis rails, which was ideal for plug welding it.
The front of the rails/foot well section has gained 25mm of ground clearance now, which makes the sills and chassis pretty much flush, before the chassis was quite a bit lower.
Also extended the rails to go all the way through the rear seat foot well and up to the rear chassis section. Should be way more rigid now!

Cut out the floor that was hanging lower than the chassis rails and made some new panels and welded them in.

The other side is a bit more work, as it will have an exhaust tunnel going through there as well. I should hopefully be able to tuck the exhaust right up above the lowest point.
Once that's done the sills and chassis rails will be the lowest point in the centre section of the car. Might need to look at whether I raise the front crossmember or not.

Made a start modifying the 4-link mounts.

As you can see they originally hang quite a bit lower than the sill.

New mount all welded up. Should be heaps strong enough!

Cleaned up a bit.

17mm socket just fits through the channel to tighten/loosen the bolt. Might swap to Allen head screws, as the paint/underseal mightn't leave enough clearance.

The lower arm is nice and level now.

Next was to do the upper arm mounts. This is it all done coming through the floor under the rear seat. The seat just doesn't fit, but should be an easy fix by bending one of the wire spring things a little.

Top arm angle looking much better. The arms should intersect pretty close to where I guessed the instant centre of the car will be.
Just have the other side upper mount to finish off.

Sent a bunch of stuff of to be zinc plated. Some didn't turn out as shiny as I'd liked, but not all of it's that visible and I think I'll get the engine and gearbox mounts powder coated any way.

Picked up these two ST140 Corona Coupes off @Simon a few weeks back.

For those that don’t know about them, the “complete” one was running a 1UZ and W series box and t-series solid diff. The other has an IRS rear end mocked up. Both currently have no running gear though. 

Old and mostly dead build thread click here.

Not 100% sure on what I’m doing with them yet, but the Starlet needs finishing first anyway. Will slowly collect parts that pop up in the meantime. Need another uncracked windscreen, apparently A6* Celica’s are the same, if anyone knows of any.

Looking forward to starting them one day in the future!

Filled about 50 holes in the engine and removed all the brackets I no longer need.
Laser cutting a sheet of all the filler pieces made it way quicker and easier!

Where the chassis rail kicks up at the firewall is a known place where cracks can form. There was already one about 8mm long on the passengers side. Made some gussets and welded them in.

Found some previous repairs around the rear hatch on the body. I think they just ground out the rust spots here and then bogged it up.

Cut out and welded new steel in there.

Another one here, this time just a piece of steel brazed over the top of the rust holes.

Fixed! As well as a few more bits around the seal.

Picked up a pair off TA22 Celica fender mirrors from YAJ, that you can kinda see. I think they look good, but hard to tell when half the cars missing.

Bought a Estima F series diff.

Stripped in right down, cut off all the brackets and then noticed one of the housing tubes was very bent! One end was out by at least 10mm.
Had a go at straightening it, wrapped some chain around the tube and some big u-channel, and then used a bottle jack and heat to push it out.
Came out pretty good, close enough to then shorten it.

Drew up a jig that held it all square and inline. Shortened it by 105mm a side, so it's the same dimensions drum to drum as the factory diff.

Bought some MRP adjustable 4-link arms off @Cdarust

Got a Altezza Torsen LSD head to swap in.

Made some upper and lower brackets for the diff.

Borrowed @oftensideways rotisserie. Going to raise the rear 4-link body mounts up. About 50mm higher for the lower mount, which should make the lower arm level and somewhere between 50-100mm higher on the top arm. The angles are currently far too much and I've gone this far so may as well, will be good to get rid of the lower body mounts as they're the lowest part of the car. It shouldn't effect the rear seat too much either.

A couple months ago this got featured in the NZV8 magazine. @Snoozin did a wonderful job!

Got sick of the doors not shutting correctly. Had my parent's bring back some Altman latches from the US on one of their trips over.

Relatively simple to install, but modified a few things so they work a bit nicer and installed some electric solenoids.
Need to sort some more door seals as these ones leave some large gaps in places.

The final thing that needed doing to "finish" it off finally got done!
Mark Dunn in Levin did an awesome job on the upholstery. We made new plywood seat bases and he built up foam for the seat. We made it thinner than the factory one, so I could sit a bit lower and further back. The seats are also way softer now!

Some random pics from the past couple of months.

At some stage I also swapped out the fog lights for the grill guard, as they weren't mounted that great and were cracking the bumper panel. Will modify them and put them back on one day. 

No.2 transmission is on it's way out. Can smell it burning the oil when going up large hills. Have changed the filter and flushed the oil and no difference. Took it up to drag day and it decided it only wanted to use third gear after the first run. Did a couple more 21-22 second runs and then parked up for the rest of the day. When we left it was back to normal. Unsure whats going on there. Had a suggestion it went into limp mode. Have another trans there that I could swap in and see what happens with that one, otherwise really considering manual swapping it!

Bought a set 13x6.5 Work Equip 01's. Will refurbish them and then decide if I want to run them.

Also scored this off Yahoo Auctions a while back. Has the plugs and also came with some black dash parts.

Decided on how to raise the tunnel. Bent the handbrake section up to match the height of where the old gearbox tunnel top piece had to go. Then made up some filler pieces to fill the gaps. Plan was to keep it looking as factory as possible.

Had to remake the crossmember as it needed to be built up higher. Used some tube that matched the radius and bent it to suit.

Welded in filler pieces.

Cleaned up.

Next was to make some strips to fill in the sides. Had contemplated making them with the factory swagings, but decided it would be easier to flatten them out and make the strips flat.

Then the tunnel to firewall gap needed filling. Made a paper template, transferred it to the steel, cut it, formed it and it nearly fitted perfectly first try.

All cleaned up.

Up next was the firewall cutout for the dizzy blank cover to sit in. Tried again to make it look factory, which I think turned out pretty good.

Stripped out all the sound deadening with dry ice. Have only cleaned off the residue from the passengers seat and footwell area.
Pulled out all the wiring as well. Need a F-series diff now.

Decided to try and get this thing riding a bit nicer, previous suspension setup was a little soft and hit the bump stops a bit too often, and with the extra weight of a 4age it would of been worse. 
Went with a set of Fortune Auto's coilovers all around, since I'll end up chucking an F series or similar diff in and I have the skills to strengthen the rear strut towers.

Picked up another pair of struts, cut them down and and blasted them.

Wound them all the way down and the front ended up a little higher and the back's a bit lower. Might try and get the front down a bit more, to at least were it was.

Made a stainless distributor blanking cover.

Bought a Flo's upper water outlet, as it looked to be the much simpler and tidier way of doing the cooling system. Needed a RWD waterpump (inc pulley), thermostat housing and a little bypass pipe to complete the setup.

And of course with everything else, when you change one thing you have to change something else. The FWD alternator bracket fouled on the thermostat housing, so I got a RWD one from Japan.

Borrowed some Flo's 4age to K series engine mounts and made up my own.

Sitting in the hole. Had to space the engine mounts out by 8mm, possibly because of the Cusco mounts being thinner than factory ones?
Dizzy relocation kit installed, had to cut a bit of a hole in the fire wall for some clearance.

Stripped the interior, pulled out the dash, heater, seats, carpet and scrapped off some sound deadening around the gearbox tunnel.

Cut a big ol' hole for the J160 to fit. Probably didn't need to cut so much out, but to make it easy to drop out and fit, some extra clearance was needed. Also wanted it to sit up above the sills and chassis rails.

Made up a gearbox mount. Added two extra body mounts further back so that it spreads the load a bit. Has heaps of ground clearance as well.

The J160 shifter needed moving forward as it lined up with the end of the handbrake. Cut up the original shifter housing and welded it on to some ali tube and 12mm plate.
Spent hours on our little lathe turning up the adapter bits. Works mint, barely any flex and feels like it should.
Moved it 200mm forward from the Altezza position, 50mm more than the SQ kit and 40mm back from where the factory Starlet one was.