mlracing.co.nz

Had a nice warm day today so got into the garage to have a fiddle. My goal today was to see how much of a pain in the ass it would be to fit this front chin spoiler. Turns out probably not terrible. Have had worse fitting parts. The most annoying part was actually pulling off that bottom chin part. I'd also had some parts arrive from Thailand which included new OEM front winker lights so mocked them up as well. Winkers mocked up but not wired in. Some cars I've seen have clear lights here and some orange.. I just went with orange to match the rest. Not sure which is correct? Front chin spoiler just roughly cable tied. Will need tweaking and a bit of bending on the fenders. Couple of tabs are no good on this as well so will need to cut them off. Apparently the car doesn't have lock stops. Seems like it's worse than I thought. Side note, somehow making a bad face bonnet would be awesome. Side note 2, all of my headlamps are different brands.

Early Xmas! Picked up this rear wing and also a front under spoiler. Rear wing is minty as you can see, front chin spoiler will need a bit of modding to get it to fit nice but should be all good. Won't bother to fit it properly or paint match it or anything for a while though. Have also toyed with the idea of flares but I don't think I'll need them. You can fit pretty solid width underneath the factory metal.

I really have to stop starting these posts with "haven't done much lately".. damnit. In Melbourne the weather is currently nicely between ice frost and thermo nuclear and I seem to have had a sudden surge in enthusiasm for the car. I've tested that washer bottle that was installed a few months ago so that works and I think I've got a few leads on the washer nozzle that I need too. Amazing that someone hasn't made a reproduction one considering you can pretty much get reproduction everything else. I also forgot I had a box of Celica spares so fitted up the sun visors, thrilling I know but it is a requirement for roadworthy. This leads into another reason why I'm being more enthusiastic. A friend of my flatmate I met a couple of weeks ago runs a shop with his dad and they do roadworthy testing, score! They'll also be able to fix all my shit stuff and make it good again. So aside from that I bought some tools and started playing around with wheels. These cars can swallow up quite a wide wheel; even in front! These ones are just 14x6.5 +6 (from memory) for both. They're obviously not final or anything just wanted to have a look see what kind of space we're working with. I definitely like the Mark III's on there. Maybe go for a mark 3 all round or mark 2 mark 3 pairs.. no idea; a wee while before I need to worry about that. Another thing I've always disliked are these shitty mirrors. They're obviously not the OEM ones and they look terrible as well as being flimsy. Unfortunately they have this bracket which the two bolts appear to be spinning by themselves.. I'll get some other mirrors then try again to remove it. I think due to the age (pre 1975) it's legal to have no side mirrors but it sure makes driving more difficult. Sharn thread

Me Melbourne also, have TA22 here. There's heaps of car meets coming up now that shithole winter is fucking off

Haven't done much to the car since moving house, I've just been getting on top of everything with budget and such. I had a new washer bottle arrive though as my old one was cracked and ruined. Fairly simple job, just pull off the old stuff and put new one in. Except that one of the washer nozzles broke.. of course. Anyway when the little grilles were off I had a poke around under for rust and such, apart from cracking paint and some dirt it's really solid. Old and new lines I have my doubts about how long this will last but it's how it is out of the factory so.. we'll see.

Went over to see Jon at Strange the other day and check the car. Was running like dicks, basically on 3-4 cylinders.. found all the spark plugs to be caked up from lots of turning on and turning off quickly. Jon cleaned em up and she went really well. Drives super nice now but the brakes aren't very good because it's missing a one-way valve in the vacuum line (which I've now provided him). I also sent him over new rear brake shoes and clutch line to install at some point. Now I just have to order a bunch of repair parts and away we goooo... might not be going on holiday this year.. Just because nobody likes a pictureless update.. Yeah it's got a loud af rotary inside..

So probably should update this.. a few things have happened lately. I put the car into Automania (a car show in Auckland for those not familiar), or more Matt (the organiser) asked if they could use it in the Nissan stand, looked all good. Probably the cleanest it's ever been actually. One of the conditions was they had to clean/detail it and Grant from Final Touch took care of that. Turns out I won a prize too, so now that car has won two prizes I haven't claimed LOL The second condition was I would exploit their free transport by having them send the car to Strange Workshop to get a whole bunch of stuff taken care of and start the road to road legalness. I asked him to do a fluid change on basically everything that has fluids and he put all these fancy ones inside.. I would've gone to the warehouse bargain bin personally. While doing the oil change he found a crack in the sump (which I knew was there but was hoping it would just fix itself) so I gave the go ahead to do a repair on it. The original plan didn't go quite as we expected as there wasn't really any access from the top side so just made a whole new edge bit. Also the diff was seeping so fixed that. While on the hoist he arranged for some panel guys to come around and check out what we'd be working with rust wise. Unsurprisingly (I also knew about these things) the side sills will need to be cut off and replaced/repaired on both sides. There's probably more stuff too but hard to know until start cutting. So far this area in the rear of each side appears to be the worst. Jon also replaced the rear brake lines and brake cylinders as both sides were flogged. Found some locally but didn't quite fit so he milled down what needed to be done to get em on again. Both of the original brake calipers on the front needed a rebuild but a while ago I bought these Hilux 4 pots which bolt right on, just needed to get new lines done up which Jon took care of as well. He bled the system up and it's all minty. I had replaced the discs a while ago with some slotted ones as you can kind of see. So now it's just sitting there while I drag ass because I want to drive it briefly when I'm back in NZ shortly then will give the go ahead to cut er down and throw all my money in the fire. Discuss -

What am I getting? The brake stuff? If so, can still get the parts easy from Japan, also you can bolt up Hilux 4 pots to the front without issue just need different lines made up.

So I had a bit of time internalising a difficult situation in my head lately about this car lately. I am moving house soon and initially wasn't sure I could keep the car due to space etc.. so was trying to sell it. Then after about 4 people came to look I got sick of dealing with people so decided I can make it work not selling it. Sure enough, friend of a friend is also looking for a place so boom bam we're going to check houses instead of apartments; thats means garage space. That means I keep Celica, success. But also means I don't have any money to spend on it because moving house and broke etc. Buut I did get to replace the side lights, one of which I smashed while reversing into the garage. I did replace both sides, not just the one. So yeah that's that.. on the big jobs. Gotta eyelign it before I drive it to new place though, she's a fair bit wonky. Yeah I'll look into a new guard sometime later.

Feels good to tick things off the list. As I have eluded to previously, the steering on this left alot to be desired. Pretty much all of the tie rod end joints were nailed and also the pitman arm needs replacing too as those joints on there are flogged too. My inner and outer replacement tie rod ends turned up but the pitman arm hasn't yet.. it's bloody hard to come by so hopefully it turns up. Old and new Bent bolts on the arms.. they were pretty much all bent. Done! Despite putting them back about same as they were.. yeah she's out quite a bit haha. Alignment was obviously on the cards anyway. Be gone! Ah so I did a boop on the garage late last year and just parked it up since the last update. Been busy and haven't had time to work on it or motivation/money for stuff. I still don't have money but I did have some time today so I tried to pop out as best I could the big dent. Before After That was just with me bashing around behind it with hammer/wood and pulling it out by hand. Couldn't be bothered to try take off the whole guard for now, just wanted it a bit straighter so it was better mounting for a new light. Probably end up getting a new fender, no major. Heaps of Celicas in Aus. I was also going to get new clear lights as well so that's not a super major either. As long as it can pass the roadworthy inspection that's all I'm concerned about at this time. I was going to take out the corner indicator but then seems like you have to take out the surround for the headlights and then maybe that grey panel that goes under them so I'm thinking I'll probably take all those out at some point and paint them black.

Moonlight carpentry in the house! One of the stupid things previous owner did was cut up the top parcel shelf for their hektik speaker setup. With no skill, no safety gear and minimal tools I whipped up a replacement with some ply from Bunnings. The mantra of measure twice cut once was swiftly ignored so as you can see the holes for the seatbelt bolts are.. accomodating. Turns out there was a few cut outs which didn't actually need to be there either (see along bottom) but oh well. Now I just need to go to bunnings or somewhere to get some carpet and glue it over the top and it'll be mint(er than it was). From the inside From the outside Old vs new Also worked out exactly which bits I need to get the front suspension, all of it. Well not really but will need inner and outer tie rod ends for both sides and pitman arm. Time to get the money out again. Also x2 I had a magnetic torch in my hand so did a quick bog test and to my surprise it's almost bog free. Just a bit around the arches but way less than I expected.

For some reason I have a memory of writing this out already but perhaps I just told it to so many people it felt like I wrote it. Apparently I have dementia. So the whole radiator thing, see exhibit A: The actual outlet on the radiator isn't even round.. which could go some way to explaining why the hose wasn't seating properly on it and water was seeping out the side. I ended up bashing it out a bit and making it rounder then jamming the hose on nice and good. Ran it for about 20 minutes and didn't leak water.. maybe it solved that problem. Also I noticed this (well probably noticed it ages ago but never REALLY noticed it, you know?). I wonder how I can repurpose this to make it work for EGT sensor, or perhaps O2 sensor? Probably O2 sensor would be better for tuning. Not sure because it has what looks like two bolts holding it in rather than what you'd usually have which is just one threaded thing. I'll have to work on getting it out to see if there is a threaded bit in the middle for a sensor.. looks possible. Also bought some wood to make a new parcel shelf but we don't even have power tools to cut it here. Who has a shed without power saw? State of it. It probably got attacked by sharks or something.

Honestly I thought it was going to be warmer in Melbourne by now, I'm using this excuse as to why I haven't done much. Also because I was a bit shitty about chinesium alloy radiatior being the wrong one (have refund now from seller at least). This is basically how it's been sitting for the last while because when I was last playing with the tail lights I found one had some kind of reflector in it so was trying to source some new ones/gave up because money. Also around the same time I was playing with red tint on the tail lights to get rid of the orange. That ended up much darker than I wanted and today I spent about an hour cleaning the red VHT tint shit off the one I tried it on (as pictured above). As it turned out I'm just an idiot and if I had realised that these could all be separated I could have just taken out the reflector thing, which is what I've done now. Without a doubt one of the lights has been changed in the past though. The other reasons I wasn't rushing to put the lights back in is these.. some rust around one of the light holes as well as these pressed in studs a few of them have come out of one side. I decided I didn't see that rust and just put it all back together using what was available. Most of the studs still work ok, good enough. Out of sight, out of mind. You can see the before(top), after (bottom) of the VHT red tint on the right tail light. I still want to get rid of the orange but will use Tamiya paint next time. I just couldn't remember which one it was but now I have the part number. It's still a little darker on the right side but shouldn't be enough to cause problems. Now off to get the correct radiator so I can run it for any length of time without water falling out!

So it's been cold in Melbourne, and I'm a bitch so I haven't been in the garage really, no motivation over the winter. And also need to buy a few things and money and excuses. So anyway before I went back to NZ last a guy from QLD sent me down some of the OEM hooks to hook the back seats properly. Mine were missing/cut off because of it's previous life as a race car so I don't know why they cut them off but they did. Anyway I didn't have any so he cut some out of a wreck he had and sent them down. I received them like this. Then I drilled out the spot welds and left with this. Now as I'm also a piece of shit I didn't really get any finished product but I had to drill through the welds on my original mounts because part of them still existed. Then I just put a bolt/nut through. It kind of works, better than it did at least. Problem is the massive square mounts where the cage was mounted preventing the seat from sitting properly anyway. Ugh, have to do something about this. #justaustralianinstalledsunroofthings How about those wheel nut seats though.. on the 13" Globes that are on there at the moment. All bad. In fact I'm fairly certain some of the holes aren't even perfectly round anymore. While I was waiting for the drill to charge I put on some 15x6.5 +38 wheels that I was going to (maybe still will) use on the my Accord. So much room for activities. Should be able to fit 8.5 under there without much issue. Many people go 8/9 I'm thinking 7.5/8.5, in 14" of course.

Yeah it worked out well, but the brake line is not the same which is annoying but chances are someone will make one that suits. Car like this has a big following now so it's actually pretty easy to find most bits and info. lol used combo of tin snips and bolt cutters hahah