sleeektoy

Some colour

Filled and reprimed today - a little more fill and sanding and it should be good to top coat

Primer applied

Top layer started today.. Paper template Hammered, bent, twisted and welded - then checked it against the straight shell I have in the shed.. And fitted/tweaked on the car ready to be welded

A little digging on the other side revealed more horrors in the drivers side A-pillar So... Rinse and repeat time Top layer to finish yet - ran out of new steel sheet..

And some other bits around the windscreen i'm working on now

Dads TIG welder was sitting idle at his place so one day i got it... watched a few youtube videos and got some instruction from dad. Test pieces all over the show and welding improved quickly Then promptly dove headlong into the dreaded windscreen rust. the base of the A-pillar on the passengers side being the biggest horror. Welding 1.01 well and truly mastered

Long overdue update So... Drag day Dec 2016 was a great days skids Pic - Thanks DCG photography On the way home - it rained hard - and i ended up with more rain pouring inside the car than outside from a leaking windscreen. The next day I pulled the windscreen and revealed some horrors beneath. It sat in the shed until this February - lack of motivation and lack of a welder !! Sheepers offered his old suspension to me earlier and this prompted more motivation.. Complete strip and rebuild from windscreen forward

WOW That hit must have hurt!!

Yeah mate - I lived in Pakuranga and the previous owner lived in half moon bay [edit]The one you wrote off wasnt black was it? There was a badly smashed one at East Tamaki wreckers for a while.

Since 2004 - I have just used and used the car for more tame show events and oldschool runs Classic Jap Meet With @sheepers at Galaxy of cars Ellerslie concours Oldschool meets... [EDIT] OH and a wedding

Just remembered - Before I took the engine out - in 2002 I was approached by Jacqui from NZ Classic car to do a "Old & New" comparison article with the 2002 Celica T-Sport

Ta Daaa!!! Even the headlight buckets got original olive zinc plating done I also found some original GT wheels for it so it was a great time to fit those too.

Comment away

Me being anal about everything being nice and original on this... I unwound all the wiring, cleaned all the gunk and goop off then re-wrapped it in nice self-amalgamating 3M tape. Also started re-fitting the restored/cleaned/painted parts. Re-plating the gold zinc really makes this look great too AND... Engine back in Bolting shiny bits on everywhere too.

Now - In parallel to the engine out/stripping - I had a spare 2T-G off at an engine re-conditioners - the original was well and truly rooted and ended up scrapped. New EVERYTHING just about, back when all the hard to get bits were still available new from Toyota [You may have noticed another brown celica in the garage - this was a "barn find" that I brought and sold along with another liftback shell to a Toyota employee - maybe another story later] Priming began. and parts cleanup too - dang that takes a lot of time to do!! [oops - the black celica arrived in the family now too] Red Colour

In december 2002 a self-brought christmas present meant it oficially became SLEEEK not bad for the measly $295 they were back then. And in early 2004 a decision was made to restore the tired engine and engine bay Plenty of Oil, gunk and exploding radiator everywhere!! Engine Pulled Everything carefully catalogued(chucked) into the boot. STRIPPER TIME!! The wire wheel type - sorry to get your hopes up!! And one small bit of rust to be fixed from battery acid awesomeness

We set off on Targa and had a great time - Al's 3 celica liftbacks plus my one on a rally.(4th one pictured below is now @Leeky1 's) and SLEEEK got very very grubby This Targa sealed a great partnership that had me servicing/co-driving for the next 10 years Now brakes were a bit dodgy after having covered 2200Km during Targa so these were all overhauled and within months were given the ultimate test... Whangarei Street Race in the year 2000!! Once the safety aspect of this circuit was sorted(hours of delays) we got out there and had some great fun. Great fun - the brakes were great but the engine wasn't so great with many blue smokes escaping from rooted rings after the event on the drive home. More clubsport - this time a motorkhana meant the engine really didnt like me and was using more oil than petrol. And ... another celica coupe was purchased that meant SLEEEK was garaged for a couple of years while i played with the white one

... member since 2004 and only now do i get around to making a project build thread for my main oldschool car - what a slacker!!! TBH i thought it had one, but all searching has failed to turn anything up. Anyhow - grab a cuppa for the life of SLEEEK as it has been in the last 19 years. Digging out the old pixels on paper this is how SLEEEK looked when purchased in 1999 ... meet skinny young me at 21 years old Now 1st thing that annoyed me was daily air topup of the firestone wide oval tyres on these volk 3 piece rims.. very loose and wobbly 3 piece rims. So Bridgestone Zona's and some Dunlop W10 tyres made me broke for the next few months.. I also liked clubsport so a day at the track in this was what it needed.. MG Car club sprint at Pukekohe 1999 At this time I met and befriended another celicaholic named Al - he was just prepping a celica for Targa NZ and asked for service crew assistance from one that knew celica's inside and out Amazingly - I now own all 3 celicas that are in this picture - it took 15 years to get them all under my garage roof.

A-series of unfortunate things could be unearthed looking at that excellent use of inlet gaskets.

Yay - rotisserie sausages for lunch!! ??

With those salmon shorts and lack of foot attire this looked like a one-man bottomless bike party

Front/rear shock absorbers OK? At higher speeds the smallest of imbalance in the wheels/tyres and stuffed shocks will make the wheels almost jump up/down causing vibration. Get someone to drive behind/beside you and observe the wheels/tyres(both sides) at the speeds the vibrations happen to eliminate this.