6G Celicas Forums

Have you ever thought about selling this car? Lol

Are you still in Colorado? Or have you headed back to the midwest?

Daniel,
Good to hear from you. I hope all has been well. I'd love to drive the car out and we get together some time at a meet or something to that effect if possible.

It's your car, you should be able to drive it after all haha

I'll be able to get some more pictures when I get the car back. but It feels comparable via visuals to a TRD spoiler in terms of height. Eurou wing pics show it well.

Sure did.
I had the car "built" about a year after I got the clip from you in cincinatti, then of course the recaros, Eurou, projectors etc came from you as well.
Have driven it over the last 10 years but I can't wait for it to look as nice as the amount of work I have in it for sure.

I haven't seen you post on here in years, so glad to see you touch base.
You wouldn't happen to have a RHD ebrake with the metal floor plate for it would you? haha.
Still in Wisconsin??

Let's see if this photo sharing thing finally works. Only took like 10 years to get it painted.






Decided on installing the Eurou Wing

When I bolted the halfcut subframe in, it is in exactly that same condition with exception to the fact I added the struts that were missing. So its a definite maybe.

Pretty sure all the bolts are tight. I have shop down the road that always has skylines, miatas etc out front. Probably just take it there so he can put it on the lift with all my spare SS parts, see if they can make something work.

Dan,
do you feel like the superstrut "darts" when you get it past a certain point in a corner? Or does it just corner well?

I ask because if I make a right hander in mine it feels ok, almost normal. But if I make a left hander, christ almighty hold on. On a track it would have darted down to the inside on the apron.

Inherently I know that there's a joint issue somewhere in the superstrut, been too lazy to actually diagnose it and change parts, but wondering if the right hander or the left hander is the problem after re reading some of the last years posts.

Yeah the RHD swap still exists and so do I haha. I drove it more this year than I have in a long time but its spent most of its time under car cover. I have a tendency to get myself into too many projects, the last several years I've been renovating my house, so it's taken all my time and money. I got a quote to have the car fully stripped and painted, came to about 3-4k.... so we'll wait on that.... and I'm getting married next year, so god knows when this car will ever see fresh paint....

But I feel our projects in some ways overlap man! I'm glad to see you really going at it this deep. You are 100% correct you didn't really want to drill out those spot welds. Ask me how I know. The panels are absolutely sandwiched and layered in there. The firewall swap was terrible that I did, think I drilled over 180 out before being able to actually get the new one offered up.

on a side note, your attention to detail has been great. I'm an Engineer and can fully respect the work here. I don't know if I would have gone full billet on the welding fixture, even that feels like over kill to me, but i understand your paranoia! If you ever want to sell your DXF's, I think there would be several guys around the world willing to take a look at doing the conversion this way.... myself included.

Looks like you've done just about everything the way I would have, and probably more so to be honest. Like who seriously makes a custom sway bar??.... lol my lazy azz would have for sure welded one up with some couplers!

Awesome to see these updates.

Still looking forward to seeing this progress.

there was the guy from the Beams owners group who deleted his ENTIRE thread because he was tired of hearing people complain about his build, but it was like 120 pages of supercharged rotex beams goodness. But he lowered the compression on the motor so it would take the boost and had full stand alone unit. He also was wayyy too meticulous on the construction, making his own cast pieces etc. Mandalay I think was his username. He had that in an MR2.

I had this happen once and the slack in the timing belt didn't take up correctly and it jumped time after I put it back together, weak spring on the tensioner. Ended up with 90PSI and the engine wouldn't run right.

On this engine though, especially if it runs, I think you'd know if it had skipped time.... valves and pistons being what they are.

Man,
Keep documenting this stuff. I don't drive mine enough to really worry about this type of stuff I don't think, but it scares me to death just because of parts availability. I have some spare head valves and springs and miscellaneous other equipment, but between this engine and the superstrut..... whew.

Do you just happen to have spare head gaskets and studs laying around?

Do you still need this part?
If so what is your budget and time frame?

If you still have the turn signals I'll take them. I have a broken one on the front left.
Let me know

I guess it depends on how bad you want the car back together. that rear mount is a pain in the ass to change, but all things considered, really nothing "wrong" with an OEM mount.

Are you planning on putting the engine in from the top or from the bottom on the subframe?

:slow clap:

Hard to believe all that out of a 4cyl. Can't believe the block is holding together.

I'm personally a fan of the boosted beams idea. But I think you have to somehow reduce the compression if you're looking for BIG power. The thread was deleted because dude got butt hurt that people were still making suggestions on his build, but MR2OC used to have a thread by Mandalay with like 200 pages where he SC the beams and made I think north of 350hp conservatively. The dyno information may still be in the dyno thread over there i'm not sure.

Morale of the story is, I've been considering the same thing. Can I boost mine, even though it has 11.5/1 CR, with something small, like 5-8 psi and get away with it and still have VVTI? Tough to say if the juice is worth the squeeze, but they are 4th gen rods after all.

I was looking at maybe a link ecu plug and play or a haltech elite 2500 with the adapter harness kits that would bridge over from 2jz harness to haltech ecu. What I don't know are the harness plugs the same size and shape between 2jz/3sgte/beams or whatever so that all you have to do is correctly program the pins on the ecu? 5s and 3sge are the same, so it's worth a shot if you wanted 1 ecu and adapter harness to run 2 engines, or good standalone control of boost and vvti for the BEAMS.

STILL looks great.
Keep it up.

Still probably a top 5 car for me on here. Like it came from the factory that way. Keep on keeping it classy. Beautiful.

Excellent to hear.
Glad you got her sold. Definitely done right.

There you go! that's a dandy. Your old build thread was a solid inspiration for me to move forward with mine years ago.
Car looks really good!

I'd probably stay the some color honestly. It's like a gray blue color, I think called Slate Blue Gray? On the few spots of paint that look good its a really nice color.

Noberto,
Car not awd because of the cost of parts and transmission availability with beams power to be honest.
I could use a Rav4 manual transmission to get the gearing the BEAMS would like, but would have to get inventive on the rear diff to match up the gear ratios.
Or I could use a legit e154 and try to find a floor pan and all the goodies for the rear end, but over coming the fuel tank issue, the floor pan issue, just didn't seem like good value for the money.

If I had 10grand to blow on the car, i'd get a Haltech, have a custom turbo manifold made or strap on a supercharger, up the HP, then wouldn't feel bad about using e154 gearing. But I worry about the car being a dog with that transmission without serious power upgrades.

You weren't kidding when you said you were going to bump it.
Got a quote for paint, $3000 to do the whole car. Too much stuff going on with the house to spring for that to be honest. Car starts up and runs and drives. I take it to work about once or twice a month. More in the summer than the winter.

I need to get the front end inspected. A pinch squirrely in hard left handers. Could just be alignment, but if its a worn out part I'll be going "gt4 play the easy way" to get some new front end components.

I was quoted by a shop close to me about 3K to do the body work, rust repair and respray of the slate blue gray on the car. But this is ohio, not California so I guess theres that.

Sucks on the time frame bro. At this point get the car together and enjoy it. Cant worry about the small stuff.