Search the Community

Thought I might as well finally make a build for my car. I bought this MX5 as a rolling shell to replace my one which I wrote off at a drift day. Purchased as a rolling shell, the paintwork was pretty rough, had a cracked screen, no interior except a dash and steering column. First job was to get the windscreen removed so i could get a spare one installed. After removing the dash to get access i cut the screen out using a stanley knife then discovered why it had cracked. Found a small rust patch going up the entire side of the windscreen, so had to grind that out and prep it before getting AALAWS to install the new screen. Next thing was to swap all the rear panels, polybushed arms and the 7" torsen diff. Then was on to removing the engine and gearbox (Standard 1600 with 6 puk clutch and 5 speed) after cutting out the damaged section of chassis to make things easier. While the motor was out I took the opportunity to install the turbo drain. More to come, just trying to keep posts shortish

So I have decided to do a build thread on my 1987 Toyota Mark II so i can have a record of all the mods I have done and also so anyone else interested can have a look. I saw the car on Trademe about a month ago and fell inlove with it pretty much straight away, so i called the owner up and asked if i could come have a look that night. After giving it a look over and not being able to find any faults, apart from the minor rust on the underside of the bonnet, I purchased it and was extremely pleased. I quickly sold my Subaru before the turbo blew up. The mark II is a factory manual (w55) and has a 1.8L, 4cyl engine (1s). A f*ckload better on fuel than the Subey. The next day at work I put it up on the hoist to have a look underneath and replaced the engine oil, oil filter, diff oil, and gearbox oil. I also found that the driveshaft hanger bearing was f*cked so I ordered a new one. Oh my occupation is a Toyota mechanic by the way, so that comes in handy. After replacing the driveshaft hanger bearing the next day, i thought of what I wanted to do next. I got a fresh W.O.F and some rego so atleast it was all road worthy. So recently i have been looking at an insane amount of mark II and Cressida build threads on the net and have pretty much sorted the look i want to go for. Heres a pic of when i got her, only thing I had done is fitted the train hanger. As you can see, she is completely standard and waaaaaay too high. so I called in a favor from my dad , Iain Wilson, at Racelign/Autolign in Mt Wellington. He hooked me up with some Bilstein shocks for the rear, Dobi lowering springs all around and shortened shocks in the front. You cant really see how low it is in this picture but i will upload a decent pic tomorrow, also this was after I gave her a decent wash and polish. Bilsteins and Dobis. It rides so much better now and doesnt look like a boat. Ill upload a decent pic of how it sits tomorrow. Also I decided that I wanted a twin 2inch boso style exhaust, but not an over the top exhaust that goes over the roof or anything, just like, 300mm out the back on an angle. So I went and talked to Derek ( not sure if thats spelt right ) at Counties Mufflers, he was extremely helpful and gave me a few options, definitely recommend this guy to anyone looking for work done on their exhaust system. So what im going to do is remove the rear muffler and then have a splitter separating the 1 and a half inch exhaust into 2 2inch pipes. But when i removed the rear muffler tonight and started it up I decided I might fit a small muffler before the splitter because its offensively loud haha. So i cut the pipe just before the muffler, heres some pics. Tomorrow ill finish it off and put some pics of when its done. Heres some more pics of the car, ill update my progress tomorrow, cheers, Jake. Okay so today I got my new muffler. The entry pipe to it is '1 and a half inch' and then it has 2 '2 and a quarter' outlets. So it will go where the old muffler was and have 2 long 2 and a quarter pipes out the back. I havent fitted it yet as I got it a bit late in the day so I will have to wait till I can do it at work tomorrow. Heres a picture of it anyway. Will let you guys know the progress Okay, so, I got my exhaust on, heres the pics, excuse the bad welding but it was my first time welding on exhaust piping, and my third time actually welding haha, but this project is all about learning so here we go: Not sure what my next mod will be, hopefully some new rims if I can find some cheap, good looking ones. Might post some more pics of the car cruising this weekend, cheers

nothing special, but i guess these are kind of getting a bit harder to find in tidy shape nowdays. Owned quite a few different BF 323's and lasers and have always made awesome reliable cheap dailys, so when i got back from overseas travelling earlier this year I was on the hunt for solid tidy daily for under $1500. This popped up on trademe and had a $1000 no reserve, that immediatly got my attention, and quickly called the contact number to have a look and test drive. Car was super tidy and drove well, so kept it on my watchlist for a week. Ended up in a bidding war with 1 other person, and ended up paying $1500 for it. Kind of got caught up in the trademe bids, so was more than what i normally would of paid, but oh well. Got it and have been happy with it. This how it looked after picking it up, nice n tidy with only a few small paint marks and trolley dents. Found some cheap dobi springs on trademe, so bought and fitted those. Then kept my eye out for some cheap rims. Didnt want anything bigger than 15's to avoid the roller skate look. And ended up finding some factory GSR alloys with brand new tyres on them, so snapped them up for a decent price. Then finally got the windows tinted. Pretty happy with how it looks, could always bit a bit lower though ... so might look into a coil or two less here n there sometime soon.