kirk28

all finished, although hasn't yet been polished-buffed since the respray (still), i got a hold of some original JDM mini aluminium 'chrome" rainguards (above the windows) thanks to al_feinted for getting me the rear door ones from PAP in Aucks. artistically devoid photo's, it's obvious im no photographer. above with period gold pinstripping, whoa! it got a complete service, new fluids, new cam belt, new water pump, tensioners leads blah blah, new rear muffler, brake pads. so no lowering (i prefer a smooth ride over stauncher look) no big wheels, no engine upgrade, just a nice comfortable and practical, easily WOF'able wagon. All standard nana specs. Not a rocket obviously but will cruise all day on the open road on 120km'h easily (still has the beep beep beep which is kinda cool, lets you know when the Cres is breaking the law, bad ass, then just turn the stereo up and ignore) and it's economical too. So im pretty happy with it, but im looking at moving overseas again soon, so have to either find cheap storage for it or sell .

a feature of the car, which makes it an awesome daily is the room it has, lots for a medium sized beast. Old wagons are where it's at as the seats lay flat. They are hinged and slide forward, giving lotsa room without having to go to a really big wagon or a van. seats down there is 1.95m of flat load space, easily fits a single mattress in the back, it's great for weekend camping or get aways.

the interior is usual early 80's Jap, brown contrasted with light beige cloth, all the rage of executive motoring in Nippon at the time. Now all cars have grey interiors mainly, boring. Shampooed the seats, and door cards came up really good new dash, alarm and mandatory mp3. Lacquered the wooden gear knob, looks new now.

ok, so time for interior tidy up. Due to nana ownership, the interior was pretty damned good condition, no rips or holes etc etc. The dash had a crack in the top, but the donor had a mint one so that went in. While the dash was off, i got the sparkies to wire in the alarm. The wagon has a rocker switch on the dash to lock and unlock the tailgate. But the passenger doors didn't have central locking. Stink. So i used the donor car's motors and bolted them in, got the sparky to wire them all to the tailgate lock/unlock button on the dash. So all 5 doors lock, unlock with the alarms keyless entry-- how it should be.

perving around the metal recyclers one day and i found another gx60 wagon! in what one might call 'well used condition' with a mere 460,000km on the clock. It was a real doer-upper. Anyway i managed to get the tail lights (farken hard to get) chrome, and rear glass for spares. This one was badged a Mark 11 and lower grade trim, no styley woodgrain on the back either. rust, the ultimate tool in weight reduction.

so, off i went to the sign writers for them to apply it. The guy was a total cock, and refused to put it on as "it is a waste of time, it will fade blah blah" so i explained to him that the original shit on the car had done fine for 26 years, and this is the proper vinyl i got from America. He didn't believe me that i got it overseas, so i showed him the receipt, and he looked at me like im nuts. Yeah im nuts, so fuckin what?, put it on. while the windows were out, i took them off to get tinted in 35% all around with UV block, got the sunroof done in 5% as they cook ya good in summer. Also since the rear windows were out i decided to get new headlining, as the original perforated stuff was brittle and ripped in the rear, since the rest of the interior was in such good condition off it went to get retrimmed.

i replaced the broken electric aerial with a new Yokowo jap replacement, then set about replacing the rear woodgrain trim that was removed for the paint job. This was a headache, i was given the run around by all the NZ signwriters, vinyl shops. After investigating it thoroughly, nothing suitable was available in NZ. The stuff that i could get was crap looking, and wasn't rated for outside use or UV resistant, so it would last 2 years max. Not good enough. So i contacted a firm in Memphis US of A, who made woody kits for Chrysler and aftermarket vinyls for other brands. I ordered it on Thursday and was on my front door step the following Tuesday. It was a lighter colour than the original stuff, cost me just under $400 but was the closest i could get, and would last 20 years.

i tracked down a mint JAF badge (the car still has the original membership tag on the drivers door jamb). Also needed a spring loaded stand up hood ornament to set off the look of being a prop of the set of Dallas. Cressida ones are around but hard to find, so i found an equally hard to find ornament of an early 80's Cosmo. the grille was just placed for the pic, i cleaned it up after, in the pic you can see inside the wheel arch before i put on the inner protectors, shows the tectyl that is loaded everywhere in this thing. Also i got some new key guards for the door locks. My neighbour had bought them 20 years ago but never used them, so they had the old style toyota font, and didn't have the newer toyota logo. wicked. electric fender mirrors back on

so finally got it back, time to put the wucker back together, a task complicated by a) me working 70hrs a week at that time, having stripped it some 2 months before c) the shed i was using had been "reorganised" meaning having to find bit's and pieces among the bits and pieces. In the interim, i scoured HEAPS of wreckers looking for mint chrome etc..everytime i went somewhere like down to Welly or over to the bay i checked out all the older off the beaten path wreckers, Foxton wreckers are pretty good, lotsa old school shit. I found a set of factory mudflaps for it off a sedan...score! (it's the little things that count).

ok so finally in the paint shop.. old lacquer paint on these things usually craps out, it looked terrible for sure the last owner had at some stage repainted the top half of the car. They were consistent in keeping with the 'half' theme and it was a half-assed attempt. The roof and bonnet were cracked and bubbling messes, meant ALOT of sanding, and the outside was taken back to metal.

so the next step was to replace the cracked manifold, the donor car also had a munted manifold, so i tracked down a set of 1G extractors, brought a self heating universal O2 sensor, and phoarwwwww the 1G badness just got badder. I continued to use the wagon everyday until the wof and reg ran out, when i started to strip it for the repaint. around this time i was tossing up moving overseas, i was nearly close to selling it to a guy who left a note on my windscreen in town, but decided to wait and see for a few weeks. Glad i didn't.

I brought a new clutch kit, slave and master clutch clyinder for the conversion. Toyota's of this vintage are dead easy to work on, the whole thing took 3 hours tops from start to finish, complete bolt in affair. Also notice i found these 6.5" JJ 14" gold lattice wheels off a 1980 280zx..kinda suits the JDM standard 80's bling look. Since i wanted to keep the car standard and original, i decided against the simple upgrade to a 1G-GEU for now.. when i got it the car showed 151,000km and despite being an early Jap import im inclined to believe this is genuine due to it's history in nz, and the condition of the car -- all bar superficial things. The wagon was tectyled when first imported by it's first NZ owner in 1989. This shit still drips outta the drainage holes, really good stuff as the wagon is testiment to it's effectiveness. The car was totally rust free except for three isolated areas, where the tectyl hadn't quite reached. I got these professionally cut out and plated, and the area's rustproofed. in between the roof and the rear tailgate under the rubber petrol flap. Not a spot of rust anywhere else on the whole car.

OK, this is kinda long, and if you don't have broadband, turn back now. last year i decided to sell my 1983 MS112 Toyota Crown Royal Saloon. Not an easy decision, but i got it when i was 16, so owned the sucker for nearly 10 years. I also had a 1993 Celsior and a Telstar for my work runabout (Crowns are pretty thirsty so once petrol got over $1.30 i wasn't enthused about the prospect of running it everyday). Im a big fan of the early 80's Toyota's, and generally like cruisers, so was getting very bored with the mid 90's Mazda/Ford deal. So time to find something more appropriate as a daily. So goodbye Crown. SO i happened upon this 1981 Cressida GLi "Custom Extra Wagon'. They are pretty rare, most GX60 wagons were sold in the US/ Canadian markets. Less than 8% of GX60's were wagons, with the majority being the lower spec'd Corona Mark 11's. Very few JDM GX60's were badged soley as Cressida's, most being Grande's. The old boy i bought it off had had it since 1991, covering 60,000km in that time. It sat in his shed when he never used it. It has the ubiquitous 1GEU 'power' plant. AND WAS AUTO, ohhh yeah! I drove it like this for a few months; chalked paint, boarded up rear quarterlight,broken grille (where a Labrador's head was planted) sigma steelies, blown exhaust manifold, one fender mirror--- dirty harry styles. the engine was a wicked runner, for some reason it was cheaper on gas than my run about Telstar shit box, i kinda got attached to the wagon and decided to restore it, keeping it standy. My Celsior was getting too exspensive to run and this was so much more practical than the Telstar, and the Tellie just 'aint got no class. In the meantime i bought a Nissan President, so i tossed up the feasibiliy,while i had always wanted a Pres, it was an impractical 2.2 tonne beautiful piece of Japacana. I consulted the abacus, and sold the Pres so i could pursue with the restore of the Cres. i know one car per thread but this wasn't a project and i sold it so i could do up the Cres, so in a roundabout way it was part of the project. my favourite part of the car was the tailgate, complete with American apeing woodgrain 'applique' - Mom.apple pie and rice! SO the auto must go..and viola! one 1981 Grande with low kms and a W55. The car looks in ok nick in the picture, but i can assure you it wasn't..it was so rusty with more bog than steel. It had been sitting under a tree in kapiti for two years ran ok but the radiator was shot to hell, i drove it back home to the Naki, it creaked, groaned, over heated and took nearly 4 hours but made it..

cool cheers, i have the bighorn switches, so do you mean get the plug that comes off the bighorn motor as well? cheers.

Ok, i have the regulators out of a cressida (gx60) for my wagon with windy fuckers (no like the windy, yes windy spelt the same as WINDy). It is a bolt up affair, which is easy peasy, i have also used the donor car's central locking motors (keyless alarm coming)-they bolt up nice, and have factory reliability versus the taiwan shit motors and crap you have to mount yourself.. Here's the question for anyone electrically minded (im handicapped when it comes to wiring anything).. I don't want to use the donor car's power switches, as it would mean changing over the door cards, which means the introduction of a bulky arm rest that the switches are fitted into. Also my door cards are mint, and match the seats, and im big on originality. I found some 'flush fit' switches outta a 1988 Izusu Bighorn, they bolt to the door and mount straight onto the door cards---so will look legit and i keep my door cards. Now if i mount all regulators, motors etc, the auto elecy would just need to run wiring to all four door motors, and then sus out the 4 wires that come from each swtich to the corresponding -up/down wire on the motor loom for each window...well that is my logic anyway... So, anyone know if i am correct in my assumptions? i can't be assed ringin the sparkies cos they always say the same thing--'bring it in" and the car isn't mobile atm but i wana know before i start reassembling anything on the fucker. So roughly is it a simple job for an on to it auto sparky? and roughly how long do you think it would take them? to help things i have a wiring diagram for the cress, and have the original cress power window swtiches as well.. Ok now give me some answers.