The Moonlight Collection

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Trust me to turn a one hour job into two days. Ever since I had the SSR MK3s built there was some fender scraping on one side in the rear (which is why I decided to switch it up briefly and have one side swapped around front to back). This is partially because the rear arches are probably uneven and filled with bog and partially because I had the wheels built without measuring anything. 

Seeing as I was doing a Whiteline stock order I added one of their adjustable panhard rods and try to square up the rear diff. First issue was one of the nuts stripped threads so I had to cut that off and made a hash of it, then I was trying to do this job without unbolting the 4 control arms which meant the diff was super hard to move around so I gave up and went home to sleep off my hangover. Day 2 I straight away unbolted the four control arms and life was considerably easier. I need to get another castle nut to replace the one I cut off but otherwise it's on now. Also a little bonus is the control arm bushes appear to have been replaced so they're still nice. 

Seems like I was also adjusting it the wrong way so rectified that and I think it's about even on both sides now. Keeping in mind the guards are filled with bog so also not really even. 

I was thinking about doing a slight one way height adjust on the rear but might leave it for now until car is back to driving and see how the clearance is. Long term plan is not to use those wheels anyway. 

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I won't bombard you with 50 more Panel Barry Hakosuka photos but this one is a huge milestone. The majority of the fabrication and rear end structure have been completed and the final weld up is on! The chassis is now razor straight, likely straighter than when it came out of the factory.

I can't remember the last time it had a rear end on it? It's been over 5 years for sure. The back panel you see there is the original one which he's using to get the correct holes for welding then will be replaced with a brand new reproduction item that I've provided. 

Onto the front and to my amateur eyes it doesn't look nearly as bad as the rear but I'll leave it to the professionals on that one. He will have a poke around, clean up what can be cleaned up and replace what needs replacing.

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Even after spending like $150 on some beefy blades I still can't cut these damn rollcage boxes out. They must be made of uncutanium or something. Congratulations rollcage boxes, you live forever. I even tried to grind down the top so it was flat but that would have taken 20 years, ain't nobody got time. I'll just get the new carpet and then try to cover them somehow, maybe use the old carpet to make up something; not sure yet. 

So after that disappointment I found a distraction. I mentioned some time ago about the trims around the windscreens being terrible to look at and it just so happened I had some trim paint laying around. I think they came out great, but now they're a little too shiny compared to the rest of the car.. hopefully over time they'll fade a bit. I'll get some more paint and tape and do the rear to match. I do have the trims to go around the front and rear windscreens however that's a windows out job and I don't really want to find out what's underneath. 

This is what 20 year old underseal looks like when it's wire wheeled off. 

While I was in between coats of the windscreen seals I removed the side trim and wired off the remaining crusty old underseal coating that was put on. Unfortunately as you can see lots of the paint also came off so I will spray new undercoating there and re-install the trim after giving it a polish. Originally those trims use plastic clips to hold them on but mine was riveted so not sure if I will rivet again or maybe use screws instead. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

In typical Alex fashion I started a job without having all the bits to complete it. 

That mess I posted yesterday got covered up today with new underseal but I ran out so only have the one side done so far. I've just sat the trim on there loosely with some incorrectly sized screws but you can get the idea. I think it turned out pretty good. 

The trims looked pretty nasty after years of sitting around so I hit them with a bit of scotch pad to get rid of the muck and surface rust. That'll do. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

Aftermarket carpet sucks. I learnt this the hard way I suppose. The Celica carpet was already aftermarket by the time I got it and it was super old, dirty and chopped to hell. In my attempt to try and freshen up the interior this year I decided to get one of those moulded carpets. I quickly realised I'm not made for an upholstery career. 

They say you should start from the rear and move forwards when fitting them up. The problem I quickly found was that these are not quite right for this car. Research suggests that they are in fact moulded off TA23 not TA22, a small but important difference. TA22 did not even have carpet like this from the factory, more like glorified floor mats. 

My cutting skills are terrible as I was getting annoyed by this point, and the blades were getting blunt. I initially wanted to wrap it under the seat base however the seat sits directly on the body with no room to move so that was not possible. Additionally the roll cage mounts in the rear are in the way of the seat bottom which is why its curved up on each end. I'm not sure what the OEM TA22 carpet looks like but I believe there are some clips that it can use to hold up, but I've not actually seen any factory standard TA22 carpets in person before to compare it. I'll paint the floor black and the rear around the seats so it is less noticeable but yeah, disappointed with my efforts on that one. 

Another thing about the TA23 vs TA22 is the TA23 side rocker sill things are designed for the edge of the carpet to go underneath and bolt down, TA22 are not. That means more rough cuts along the side edges too. 

As you can see, lots of bits cut off. Anyway I got the front kind of fitted up as best as possible (remember those fucking blocks in the way) and installed the seats back. I'll need to replace these as it turns out as there is some damage on both of them (more than just superficial and foam). 

Then I got her fired up and went for a burn and I didn't care about the carpet at all. The fuel is probably 2 years old by now and it still worked mint. Sadly I don't have a phone mount but the sounds on song were excellent. The panhard rod I put in stopped any rubbing that I could tell and actually the car handled surprisingly well. 

It goes, stops and turns just like it should. Good car.

[mlracing.co.nz]

Not too much done today, but I did get a replacement headlight for the one I broke ages ago when I was fitting the others. It was not actually intentionally meant to be a blank space. 

SEV Marchal! I always liked the look of yellow and of course the sweet cat logo. I will just run one, a little bit of style perhaps. 

Plugged it in and it works fine so that was easy. Although I need to figure out why the passenger outer light turns off when the high beams are on. Not super high on my list of priorities seeing as it's unlikely to ever be used anyway. 

I finished putting undercoat on the driver side so installed the side metal trims just using some screws. Not the best but it's what I could find that fits. Gotta fuck with the dick you got. Not sure they will stay in there securely so I'll have to keep an eye on it. 

When I was out taking these photos just down the road some guy gave us a toot and a thumbs up on the way past and I was only out there for about 2 mins!

Unfortunately (but probably not unexpected) my front demister blower isn't working. I can't remember if it ever worked but I might look at trying to get that going again as it could come in handy. The rear demister I'm fairly sure is totally cooked but that's not such an issue as the front. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

OK last post about painting trims. This time I did the rear but it didn't turn out as good as the front I don't think.

I had to get some new tape and I think this tape is probably shit (it is because I got the cheapest one) and it let a bit of the paint bleed through the edges. I tried to rub some of it off with isopropyl and solvents but it ended up just rubbing the paint off as well. Same problem with using a blade, the paint is so bad the blade just sliced it. 

Then I thought about it and figured it was dumb to stress about these little bits when you look at how the rest of the car looks anyway haha. 10 footer with an instagram filter all day. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

Panel Barry is a stickler for door gaps. Suppose he wouldn't be panel Barry if he wasn't a gap commander. These dogleg panels (his words) which cover the front portion of the rear arch were not lined up well with the doors and it was throwing off some other things. These little panels have always been messed up since I got it, probably since 30 years ago to be fair. 

So out comes the cutting and welding tools again. 

The doors also weren't perfect so fixed that up on both sides. 

I'm happy to hear, and his words "This is the end of the real time consuming type of repairs". We'll see about that I suppose as he works the front. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

I'm on the home stretch for the first part of the interior freshen up. The painting went well as you can see, much improved over the crusty red which was there before. I didn't bother to clean up or dry ice anything just scuffed and spray with my favourite Rustoleum 2x. I also tidied up that little bit of fuel pump wiring as well before putting the seat back in. 

Why didn't I paint the upper part and the sides? Basically I got lazy but also realised there would be scope creep of doing the roof at the same time so I'll take care of that in the near future. Problem is those upper side panels (called sail panels in some places) don't exist anymore. Any that I could find are brittle/fucked or fibreglass/metal which I don't want. Ideally I would like some super good condition OEM ones so I can have them reproduced.. if anyone has any let me know. 

I also thought it might be interesting to get some Butaketsu (C130) Laurel front winkers and see what they looked like. Seems like they're a little large I think for the small front of the Celica. Oh well. I will likely replace the original Celica lenses with clear ones as well as clear front corners in the future. 

I was trying to avoid dealing with this disaster, and still mainly have managed to avoid doing anything but I did try to file in some grooves to make the winder work, maybe it worked a bit better as I was able to get the window up. The window frame or regulator (is that what you still call it if it's not electric?) must be bent because it's quite difficult. Eventually this will need to be addressed I suppose but not today Satan. 

How's the weather tightness

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Reassembly continues. Might need some new seatbelts though. 

She looks good cleaned up, only a little bit of leaking inside. Will do my best on the windows then be ready (as it can be for now) for Sunday meet. Excuse my spamming, just loving the look of it now; especially considering where it was when I got it! Seeing as I'm pretty happy with it must mean it's time to change it again.

[mlracing.co.nz]

I would like to introduce myself as the world's biggest idiot, but more on that later.

This weekend on the Celica (which I said to myself I wasn't really going to do anything on for a while, ha ha) I wanted to finally get around to painting the rocker cover. She's pretty tidy under there, even though most of it's hidden.

Mildly concerning chain marks.. but not enough to do anything about. Chain seems tight.

Plugs overall not super terrible considering they've been running like 3 year old fuel. Will replace these anyway, as well as the rocker cover rubbers and half moons as they're hard as rocks now and there's a lot of goop in there too.

I used the VHT wrinkle paint and a heat gun, simple process except I would not recommend doing the old Vaseline trick for the accented parts. That works well if you aren't trying to use blowing air to do anything but the problem I had was it actually blew the wet paint off the Vaseline'd part and onto the other stuff. This meant I had to re-do a few bits and as a result it's a bit patchy.

Compared to how it was.. much improved. Problem is now the rest looks shit, how good is scope creep.

So onto why I'm an idiot. Remember how I was struggling a bit to get the wheels evened up and had rubbing issues.. well you might notice something. Yeah I had two different size wheels fitted. I must have told my tyre guy fit one tyre to each size and I'll do some playing around.. and then never switched it.

However, as I looked at things closer I realised actually the new barrels were welded to the wrong wheels. What I mean is there are two inner barrels same then one each outer lip where it should be matching lips on matching barrels. Sooo I have some new tyres to go on another car and I'll take these back to get the lips swapped at the same time and then all should be good in the world again.

[mlracing.co.nz]

All done. Plugs came in and gasket came in so I finished up the install. Previous gasket was rock hard as you'd imagine and covered in gasket goop. I didn't use goop this time (time will tell if that was a good idea or not) and definitely used up some back credits with leaning over to scrape off what was on there. I couldn't get any half moon rubber bits for the back so those are still gooped in though. Perhaps I should get some manufactured. 

This makes me realise a few things. I need to get rid of that K-Tuned breather filter which was put on years ago because I just had it laying around and it fit and I'll need to get a new oil cap, or somehow try to restore that one. The plug leads are annoying me too because they're not actually entirely correct. Again, seems difficult to find some which are black and also to suit 2TG that fit nicely. I'd like to get the little bracket that bolts onto the top to keep them in order as well. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

So seems like I've missed out on a couple of updates of Panel Barry's work, was getting too carried away with the Celica. 

As we move forward now the windscreen cowl area needed some work. Previously the upper and lower cowl was drilled off and now the surface rust underneath has been treated and some portions replaced with new metal.  

Some how a drain that goes in the lower panel of the cowl went missing so that was recreated. I can't really be mad about it as things go missing in transit or just from being around various workshops and in storage over the years. We were debating whether or not to make this vent as the chances of it being driven around in wet weather is slim but you never know. 

Another area which we debated about was the edge of that panel which you can see in the engine bay. It was a bit rusted and I thought maybe we don't need to worry about it but you can clearly see it when the car is all back together so it needed to be taken care of. 

Up next is the headlight bucket area which we both agree won't be restored to factory spec as that's too over the top but will be cleaned up a bit. Also some additional repairs around the windscreen frame before that can be welded back together. 

Thanks must go out to Mr.Mk1 for the photos of a mutual friend's Hakosuka to help with recreation of the missing drain.

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While those other wheels are off getting fixed up the Celica is kind of immobile because in my infinite wisdom I never thought to get the tyres I took off those wheels put onto some other shitty wheels I have laying around. As a result I can't really move it around however it is now a great time to get the Longchamps to fit on the back as they are the intended wheels for the time being. 

However, we have a problem and I'm not talking about the paint/panel work. 

I did some more fiddling with the panhard rod again (quickly coming to hate that) and kind of got it a bit more centred but that wouldn't quite do. 

This was my first time cutting the inner arches of guards so I'm definitely not going to show how that went but let's just say there was equal amounts bog as actual metal in these ones. 

Oh, I also cut the springs in the back but realised after I did that I had cut them at the wrong end LOL. However that kind of worked showing me how the car could sit. I'll get some more and cut them at the proper end next time as I imagine the actual ride quality will be quite bad now. 

This is basically the perfect height for me in the rear, granted it is currently jacked up at the front a bit but I think even when it's even it shouldn't change too much. I think we'll have clearance for movement but won't really know properly until actually taking it out. I did get it fully angled and it did seem to clear just before hitting bump stops so could be OK. 

The passenger side is sitting a little higher it looks like? Could be an illusion from the wheel not being in quite the same place though. I was able to cut the passenger side guard much nicer than the driver side as I had a better idea how to do it quickly and more smoothly. I'm thinking I might just slip a 3mm spacer in there to get it about even and call it a day. 

I will need to go back and flappy disc the cutting so I can goop it all and try to seal the rust in otherwise it will be a problem in 20 years. Plus if you look under there (please don't) it looks terrible and also it's pretty sharp. 

Ah and let's not forget the exhaust that looks like it's going to delete itself soon.

[mlracing.co.nz]

Got the other wheels back which means I also got tyres put on some runaround wheels for the front which means I could put the Celica back on the ground. Weather has been a bit average today so naturally I went for a drive around in the wet to ensure I got ample moisture inside those guards I just cut up. 

But really the idea was to check for rubbing on the rear tyres which we are clear! There is definitely about 1cm height difference between left and right but I did a quick whip around with the tape measure and found the opposite side front is up about the same amount so I suspect that's why the difference.. or at least part of the reason anyway. Just cut springs problems. 

The exhaust will only get lower when the front comes down to a level I want so this may need to be resolved sooner rather than later, or we'll just see if it resolves itself somehow. 

Predictably the ride quality was terrible but I did get some more springs to cut at the correct end so maybe it will help? Too cold to do any sealing of the guards up today so will have to wait until it warms up a little to continue with that. This is also the first time the car was running with the new rocker cover paint and gaskets, seems like no leaks and hopefully that helped to set the paint a bit more if it needed it. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

In today's instalment of panel Barry chronicles we're working our way to the front end. This car being old as it is and it's hard life has had accident damage in the front. This caused the chassis rails to be bent as well as some front panels to be twisted. Actually some of this damage wasn't fully known until other things were started, as is always the way.

As always, an excellent job was done to fix that and up and make sure it's dead straight with new metal welded in after another session on the machine.

I was able to find a hand-written diagram that had some chassis dimension measurements too recently which was quite amazing so have sent that over as well to help with verification.

You can see he's tidied up around the headlight area and now working on the alignment for the rest of the front panels. There is another panel that goes behind that lower valance which was totally murked so it's likely he'll make a new one rather than fix up the original one.

And this is how that whole area under the front windscreen turned out. Was a major job that one and most of it you can't see.

He's requested I send him the front stuff like headlights, grill, radiator etc as well as engine crossmember to make sure we're square and things fit properly before welding in the front panels so I'll try get that arranged as quickly as possible.

[mlracing.co.nz]

Plenty more to do on the Skyline while we are waiting for the other parts to be shipped over. As mentioned earlier the front had suffered some crash damage from it's previous life and this meant that the front panel mounting needs repair. 

As the original panel was quite nailed and rusted it was just easier to make another one. You can see how it connects to the rear front panel to mount it up. 

The bumper mounts have seen better days too so they will need attention. 

Looks more complete every post. 

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Perhaps not super relevant to car builds but maybe they will be part of one of them over time. I've never cut apart a wheel before and lots of people seem to do it so how hard can it be? 

I've had a bit of a break from doing car stuff lately which has been nice but it's mainly because I need to spend money to make things happen and I don't have money, also it's been too cold. What I do have is lots of wheels, a grinder and spare time. I also was binge watching some Barrel Bros videos which hyped me up.

After cutting a while with a grinder that was too small I managed to cut enough of the weld away to then get some chisel action going and smack the front off. I've now ordered a larger grinder for future wheel cuts so this will be considerably more tidy going forward. I wonder if there's some kind of jig I could get or make to have the cuts perfect though, excluding getting a giant lathe. 

Split apart you can see the edges of the face got a bit mangled in places, that's due to the grinder not being large enough and having to use some angle action. In future this should be mitigated however one I cleaned the edges up a bit it would still be fine for welding new lips on, except I don't know how to weld. 

Here are the bolts that came out of the wheels, more corrosion than bolt. One of my Japan friends cleaned up some bolts putting them in toilet bleach and water for a while so I made a concoction of that and also added solvol (industrial hand cleaning stuff) so will see if they clean up at all in the next few days soaking in there.

So I need to find somewhere near my shop that can do diamond cutting and also aluminium welding that will do wheels. Probably not too difficult to find. I already have contact for the wheel lip place that everyone uses so no drama getting new lips for all the different wheels. 

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Front bumper beam is completed, took a little more than expected as it has some slight curve in it but that's all done now. The next thing that was completed is the bumper irons mounting points as one side was bent up so that was repaired. 

Aside from the final preparation of welding roof and rear all together there was some little repairs done around the gas filler and rear windscreen filler panel which need cleaning up. Also a weird drain hose that maybe was put in after the fact? Looks like some kind of previous repair that was botched in. 

[mlracing.co.nz]

The next sacrifice for my wheel tomfoolery is this 13" starshark. I don't know why I have a 13" starshark. I suspect some whisky was involved in that one as I'm 14" for life. Anyway as you can see it's pretty old and crusty as per everything in my life so I figured why not try a new Rustoleum colour and learn about some new tape as well. 

Previously on this adventure I mentioned about bleed from the cheap ebay tape I was using so I ordered some fancy 3M edging tape. This tape seems more plastic than the other paper-based tape which is probably excellent for stopping bleed but makes it much more difficult to cut cleanly, at least that's what I found. I did a quick scuff over for the old yellow and also ruined the lip in the process by trying to get out as much of the old pitted crust as possible so now it looks matte and uneven.

As you can see I taped around the edge and there's a little gap between the face and the lip which I could (for the most part) slip the blade into in order to get a clean cut. Then after that some more masking and the usual plastic around the outside treatment and into the paint booth. 

Couple coats of this  blue (which actually looks a bit more tiffany blue in real life) and then some gloss clear coat which I've also never tried using before. 

Once the paint was dried and tape pulled off you can see some bleed still but this is actually not from the tape. The reason this happened is the lip is so pitted the paint actually went underneath the tape as there was a gap. 

Also to the surprise of nobody, paint doesn't stick well when the prep is poor. 

Anyway perhaps the finished product is better than the start product? Learnt some more things along the way.

I think in my head the best way to approach this type of wheel would go like this:

1) dip or soda blast it first to get the old shit off
2) Cut the lip off
3) Paint what you want
4) Diamond cut the one star as sanding for an hour for an average finish was not fun
5) Weld new lip on

That way you'd get a clean paint job. I may still do that just for kicks.