Story time!
You OGs may remember me from my old BG. I've been quiet for a while since letting her move on to her new owner. I miss that car just about every day. 9 years of memories were a lot to give up, but it was time.
I've gone through a few other daily drivers. I think I've landed on the one that I'll keep for a while - a super clean '07 Outback Limited, monotone black with black leather. Automatic. Sunroof+moonroof. A nice place to sit while stuck in traffic. Before that, I bought an '00 Outback Limited, two-tone black and completely beat. Just junk. Sold it to a friend who wrecked his pontiac. Went back to driving the old BG. Then came a very boring old-man-blue '06 Outback, base model aside from the all weather package, with filthy beige interior. It was too boring.
Of course, that's not what we're here to talk about - we're here for the coolest car.
PROJECT: RUST MISSILE
OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE RUST
And here she is, in all of her clapped-out glory:
I picked this up for $200 about a year and a half ago. I had a ~2-month-old baby, a newly stay-at-home wife, a new mortgage payment, and zero expendable income. No title, not running, 400 miles away. Seems like a good idea, right?
Let's go back ten years prior. I was 15. Feeling the car itch hard - I needed wheels, bad. I didn't even have my license yet, I just needed a car. Helping my older brother's tinkering with a '68 Firebird, an '85 Celica Supra, and then an '87 Supra Turbo gave me the sickness. I needed a car bad. Because of his Supra addiction, I got into old Toyotas. I lived in Northern California where old, RWD Japanese cars were king, and I really wanted a Supra, or an AE86, but most of all, I fell in love with the early Celicas. I would have settled for anything from the '70s or '80s, really but nothing ever quite worked out. A year later I found myself moving 800 miles east and 5,000 feet higher in elevation, and ended up with the BG, my first car. I all but forgot about my Toyota kink and got really in to the local Subaru scene. It was hot back then, and the builds were all about function and cleanliness.
Ten years later, I found myself needing a car that was easier to commute on, and I was getting very tired of what the Subaru scene had become - all about stance, form over function, stretched tires, ridiculous camber, blowing huge vape clouds, mods for the sake of showing off on the internet and "breaking instagram" or "changing the game" or whatever. They were ruining depreciated WRXs with mods that used to be more associated with the clapped-out Honda crowd. Anyways, maybe I'm turning into an old fart. Whatever, music was better in the 70s through the 90s and I increasingly find myself more interested in the old ways and less in what's hip now. Quality over quantity, buy once cry once, all that. I needed something new to me but old to the world, and something that could be a blank canvas. This picture from this speedhunters article had been my desktop background and phone wallpaper for about a year, and I had been really starting to feel the itch for an old Japanese car again, especially after convincing my buddy to buy a clapped out 240Z and watching the amount of enjoyment he got out of getting that thing running with a set of triple mikuni sidedraft carbs. Having JDM Legends as a local presence and going to their meets didn't help either.
And so, while using autotempest to look at craigslist listings in my state and neighboring ones, I came across a $200 title-less Celica being sold as a parts car up in Idaho, about 400 miles away. I sent it to my brother (as we would often swap local craigslist finds over Google Hangouts) joking that it would make a great LeMons car. He managed to convince me that it was too nice to throw away for LeMons. I started getting ideas. I somehow convinced my wife that I needed this car. She caved, I convinced a buddy from my local group of Subaru buddies to borrow his father-in-law's truck, I rented a U-Haul trailer, and we left at midnight, driving through the night to get to Meridian, ID, bought the car at 6AM, heaved the traction boulder out of the trunk, loaded it up onto the trailer, and got it back home into my little townhouse's garage by about lunchtime. All the time spent watching Roadkill had inspired me to do something crazy.
And with that, I had begun to fulfill a dream that had been lingering in the back of my mind for a decade - to own a classic Celica.
I managed to find some old paperwork in the car and discovered that amongst all the junk inside the car, the thing was mostly complete. It was a real GT with factory air conditioning (although that had been dismantled, but it was included!) and a seized 20R. Using the paperwork I managed to find the facebook page of the previous owner - just a kid, he thought he was going to be a drift racer, he got in an accident and also borked the engine. I found pictures of it looking pretty straight and clean (despite the fact that he rattle-canned it flat black over the rare factory silver paint with GT stripes), driving it in the snow and doing a huge one-tire-fire burnout. I tried to get ahold of him but he wouldn't reply, so that avenue for getting the title did nothing.
With no money at all, I took to just cleaning things, refinishing the grille and headlight bezels with a LOT of time and elbow grease with some #0000 steel wool, removing all the spraypaint and years of corrosion, leaving some beautiful stainless and chrome trim. A lick of paint made them look pretty nice:
I filled out the paperwork to have a new title issued in my name, and let it sit for quite some time, letting life get in the way. Work really halted on the car, and I had no money to spend, no time with a baby and a career, and my wife complained about how gross it was. At some point along the line a local sold me his old 20R for $25, and I put it on an engine stand and partially dismantled it. It didn't leak a drop of oil and had decent compression, but it did have a broken valve spring. I took it apart and let it sit for a while. I kept a little hotwheels Celica on my desk at work to remind me of it. Some months later, I finally took the paperwork in, paid $20 in tax, and they issued me a fresh, clean title. My motivation to get the thing running was renewed.
I have access to a 3D printer at work, and so I picked up Fusion360 (free CAD software!) and started teaching myself CAD. I love the interiors of these classic Toyotas, although for the '76-'77s there are a few updates I dislike compared to the earlier '70-'75 models. One in particular is the redesigned HVAC surround. So I decided to design a backdated HVAC panel that fits the updated cars. Here's the prototype:
Remember the buddy with a 280Z? He added the period correct flares to his car and upgraded to 10" wide wheels (on all four corners), so he gave me his 15x8s:
Did I mention that with the stock suspension, it sits higher than an 05-08 Outback?
Family members all gave me money for Christmas, and for the first time in a while I found myself with some actual money to spend on the thing, and so work has resumed. I bought a Weber 38/38 carb, about the biggest one you'd want to run with an otherwise stock engine, and a whole bunch of supporting parts like a Holley fuel pressure regulator and a full gasket kit.
also featuring: mystery roof squash
Block got a lick of silver paint (so you know where it's leaking from. I've never built an engine. It's gonna leak.) after being cleaned with a LOT of degreaser and carb cleaner:
And the latest and coolest part so far: The first nice thing to go in to my car. Through a work hookup, I managed to get my driver's seat reupholstered for free. I'll be going back and having the same guy redo the rest of the seats after my stipend resets. I just got that back yesterday, and it feels GOOD!
And that brings us to today. It's cold and I'm trying to be quiet and not wake up my wife and son from their naps, and I'm in a writing mood for once. My only other build thread for this is on a private forum, and SL-i was always my favorite car forum. So here it is. Hopefully I'll have it running and driving this spring.
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Originally Posted by Lancaster6
