4AGEMAD

Far should probably update this aye...having a child kinda holds things up lol

Couply photos of cleaning the cluster and final install of the dash 

Running a Nardi deep corn now but dont have any photos

 

heres a video of the cornering lights working in correct function

another shot found from the drift day 

 

made a few changes since also, painted the bumper correctly to the car, sent my a3a's to pine and have been widened to 8J which im suuuper stoaked with how they look now

drove the car almost every weekend where i could, took her to a few car meets etc but the ol bluetop wasnt cutting it

 

ive had this thing stuck with me for about 7 years now, what better time to use it than now! 

wanted to strip it apart again to make sure all checks out and change the crank back to standard as ive now learnt that knife edged factory cranks arent probably the way to go.

Mated it up to the j160 i also have waiting, had to grind down the bell housing in a few spots and 'massage' the tunnel a little which turned out mint along with the shorter cusco engine mounts

 

heres something that might be of interest, heres a comparison between (left to right) a buggered factory mount, new TRD & new Cusco - trd and factory should be the same height lol

 

Engine and gearbox sitting happily on its own! 

 

decided to make my own vacuum block off plate with alloy from bunnings

 

next job was to remove the fuel tank, so stoaked to find no rust inside the tank and barely any around the under body

"Pockets are mint!"

 

that should cover for this year...haha fingers crossed i can get this ol thing fired up in a months time. 

have all the parts basically to finish the job, sending driveshaft to engineers tomorrow to get shortened and i might seal the inside of the fuel tank with the kit from por15?

got all this time i figured i may aswell put it to good use. 

just before lockdown i quickly went to my lockup and grabbed every part that i needed then got stuck in. 

first to come out was the dash 

Also i managed to get the clock facia off with out breaking it!

new vs old, ill fix up the old one at some point and wrap it in vinyl or suede some day 

havent quite finished the dash yet, currently setting up miracast ;) will update when its all done

 

my heater controls were never working properly and on inspection found quickly what was wrong. 

looks like a few things had gone wrong. when i first got the car from japan i noticed the heater tap looked very corroded, upon removal it was also seized. so replaced that and found the controls were funny...well go figure lol.

also after removing the heater controls all of the cables themselves were very hard to actuate, bit of lube and its all working correctly

also had a new faceplate as you couldnt even make out the pictures in the old one

next thing was to fit central locking to go with my alarm, have always been wanting this as its become a pain to keep unlocking the passengers door from the inside

took me a couple of attempts to get it sitting right without putting too much pressure on the door card as there not much room anywhere really 

was really careful not to rip the original plastic (someone already had on the drivers side though...) also fitted a new drivers door handle and interior handle surround with new door card clips.

but turned out ok, was lucky it has factory electric wing mirrors so the doors already had grommets for the wiring to go through 

 

have got quite a few things to do on the front end so ripped into that 

I also managed to loose one of the hard-to-find fog light lens' on the track which im gutted about but on the flip side i have another set of autocover fog lights to go on now, just currently making new covers for them

being an se spec 85 it never came with the 86 cornering lights and looking online how to wire them in, no-one ever seems to make them work how theyre supposed to which bugged me. 

after spending hours on researching i managed to find one real lowkey random video on youtube of a guy using time delay relays! all made sense after that. 

found some 2 second hold delay relays and sealed them up so could keep them outside of the cabin to save wiring etc

instead of using an ignition 12v feed you use the headlights lowbeam 12v so they will only operate with the headlights on, then indicator pulse is used as the signal to switch the relay on which powers up the cornering light but because theres a 2 second delay hold, the pulsing of the indicator doesnt effect the operation of the cornering light! 

 

will take a video of it in action later 

 

with that sorted, i treated all of the rust i could get to which is all currently surface stuff which is great.

next i had the issue where the headlights at night would be constantly wobbling up and down

found the arm that runs to the motor wasnt tight, quick clean up and re-grease sorted it out.

polished the headlight trim and fitted all new screws and bolts in place of the rusted out ones

then finally added the new garnish 

will repeat for the other side but i ran out of paint, though i found a company who might be able to deliver so will wait till then.

 

will try finish the interior today and hopefully can sort some more paint to complete the front end and fit the zenki lip ive got 

A few months more, we all decided "f it, we keep talking about it" so booked ourselves in for a session of drifting at Auto atsumaru in Taupo.

my clutch has been munted right back from when it came over from japan so that was the first thing to be done...in obvious 2 weeks out from the track day lol

turns out one of the release bearing clips decided it had enough and flew around the bellhousing at some point. had to fashion up a new one from a fwd clutch kit i had

i got distracted along the way and found this for cheap

and to complete the setup

 

fitted a buddy club fixed back seatrail (which is for sale now) and my old bride zeta 2

 

disassembled my omori oil pressure gauge as it needed re-calibrating and wanted to replace the lights to LED's 

 

that was basically all i needed to do get ready for the track besides minor bolt checks and a wheel alignment 

spent about 8hrs polishing my wheels

from this

to this

travels up went well. got quite nervous on the line ups but by the end of the day could somewhat hold a slide whilst ringing out 2nd gear 

 

ive had this crack free dash for about a year now so should fit it soon lol.

also have a stack of other bits and pieces i need to do on the thing but hopefully amongst me getting a new job and x-mas ill be able to make time for her

Last piece was to fit the 3pt seatbelts to rear outer seating postions

And she flew through with no issues at all!!

three days before Toyota fest, was a massive mish but we made it

Still have a stack of things that i want done, climate control panel is toast which i have a replacement for, rear light seals need replacing etc. Have everything there to go but will slowly get through it all and get the car to where i vision it to be. 

Lifes been CRAZY busy at the moment, me and the mrs are up most nights till 12 in the morning after work slaving on our old toyotas to get them ready for toyota fest (i keep meaning to show her how to forum).

But finally making progress and have a bit of free time to update.

Carrying on from previous post, assembled the brake caliper adaptors to hubs 

Next day after work, into fitting all suspension components so to have it driving and in for wheel alignment for cert.

Spent quite awhile bleeding the whole system, wilwoods were a bit of a pain with their tiny bleed nipples but came out mint and brakes soo much better than stock as youd hope lol

Relbuilt rear calipers and new rotors on rear, nice to have my handbrake working again..

Made up these hoops being the last piece for cert and had my friend whos a ticketed welder to glue them together

 

Went for cert today and she flew through no worries!!! Just needed to raise front slightly but no issue

The cert plate should arrive next week so just need to piece interior back together and add a high stop light then fingers crossed for compliance!

First upgrade was the lights, luckily i saved the raybrig style lamps from the starlet which was a perfect fit

 

Had a track day booked in taupo, had to mish it and get her all ready as i wasnt going to take it in its current sponge suspension form. The rear coilover setup bolted in nicely but didnt have time to get fronts welded up so just went with the '1 ways'in the front and threw in my rcas to reduce the bump steer

I had everything to go for my wilwood 4 pots but i got mixed up and didnt realise the caliper brackets i had were for the kp...

Diff was whining like a b!#ch, decided to pull it out and compare to my 4.3 cw&p. Quickly found my 4.7 is munted which is a shame. Took out the lsd and put it into my 4.3 diff head arrangement and setup backlash etc.

 

Picked up some new buddyclub seatrails on fasbuk for my bride, bit of fiddling about but i think i like them better than the bride rails tbh

 

Got rid of the wats for now as their 20 year old tyres were had it. Threw on the a3as that i had from the cressida which still had good tyres, will widen them eventually.

 

Only photo i got on the track, was such a good time, rear end stepped out on every corner. So a neat feeling to feel the progress getting better, next time i should have good brakes and suspension.

I had the front rotors skimmed before the track day but the rear rotors gave out on me, started shuddering and only wearing on inner pad so will have to re-adjust with a different method.

 

Day after getting it back, threw it on the hoist and did a 6 hour mish on it.

Went through all of the brakes, slides were seized, pads jammed then bled system. Regreased front wheel bearings and sorted out wiring to fog lights as they werent working. Still need to look into side lights though as theyre not going.

Checked over the whole car for compliance, looks pritty good for the age. Rear wheel bearings are toast, front rack ends are the worst ive felt in a long time and tyres are over 20 years old though everything else is sweet!

So new rack ends are on their way and already have axles with new bearings from my starlets build.

Purchsed a whole bunch of things for it in prep as ive got it booked for a track day in taupo already lol

All new front lights, replacement headlamps, silly stuff like air control panel, dials, knobs, wipers, seals. All to make it nice and fresh running. 

Purchased a replacement sunroof from mike shaw and grabbed the last sunroof seal tnz had in stock so will fit that at some point.

 

No one in japan wanted to open the sunroof so was a bit worried, but with a bit of encouragement she opens mint and no rust underneath which im super stoaked about.

 

Future plans is to put on a zenki lip, factory skirts and one of those bob tail wings on. Front bumper needs top section painted white too, dont really like the full black, looks funny. Have a Nardi classic leather to be fitted and want to check the exhaust.

Ive already got coilovers, wilwood brakes, j160 swap and my 20v from the kp days waiting to go in once its complied. 

Drove around today with dealer plates and am quite enjoying the standardness for now

 

 

Discuss and things - 

 

2006 - young kid keen on cars as most boys are, soaking up some fresh Import x material I recorded on vhs the night earlier because it was on past my bed time.

A good half hour in i see this guy (who now happens to be our local snapon rep)

Working on this car

Skip forward 10 years..many attempts and many heart breaks of not being able to own my dream car this finally looked like one i could purchase.

I sold up all my cars, saved up for years till i had a decent amount to get an ae86. I had seen this online last year but somewhat brushed it off in efforts to find a genuine hachi.

Basically the more i was saving, the higher the market price of 86s went... my wishes were for it to be a kouki (facelift) Trueno, 4age, tidy enough without much rust, wasnt bothered about notch or lift back and sunroof if lucky. Soo this car ticked all of that plus the price was in my range..

Curious was to why it had been online foraround 2 years i got in touch with stacked and soon found out it was an ae85 which i wasnt really fussed about.

The car is a top spec se ae85 so still has black interior, int wipers etc basically gt spec interior without the flashy seats.

Gave them the all go, and got the ball rolling. Rob took some pics of his next to mine when he got it lol @ monstertruck

Pritty lucky to beat the storm poor Japan just had too