Freelica, $0.00, new trans, new life Options

[cheela]

When life hands you lemon, you make lemonade.
but what happens when life hands you a '96 5 speed celica ST, aka Freelica???

so, this thing just kinda almost literally fell into my hands. Thursday night my uncle hits me up on facepage and was like, "hey, i got this sitting in my yard, you interested?"

I'm like "swching! yea!" (but i didn't say the swching part)

so details are it was my cousin's car, they were driving heard a big noise? in the general engine bay/engine area and then it died. got it towed to my uncle's and it sat for 3 years. possibly spun bearings but we'll see once i dig into it some more.

Friday comes around, I'm like ok cool another celica would be nice to have to work on but I'm still kinda broke so i'll let it simmer for now. then my cousin was like, "eh yo, if nobody's interested, I'm junking it today!"

so I hit her up and was all like, "ey ho, i'm interested yo, how much ya want for it?"

she was like "free fiddy!" and I'm like free fiddy?, she's like yeah free dollars and fiddy. you just gotta tow it out and it's yours.
so she left the title with my uncle but forgot the key so that will be mailed to me.

so for the price of towing, i got me a freelica.

onto pick chars.

the pix my uncle sent me:





of course, first thing i do when it got dropped off was line up my green celi with it for a photoshoot. lol



then proceeded to clean the crap out of it.
BEFORE:

seats are trashed. had various smells of old pets and smoke.



seems to have taken a slight hit here. tail light's cracked and pushed in a bit...

came with a half torn apart system? lol

doors are typical of a midwest car. but seems to be the only bad rust i see on the body so far.

rear quarters looks surprisingly ok. this is the worst of it.


AFTER
gave it a quick wash to see what's left of the paint. hood's been spray canned and they didn't bother to mask anything so i had to spend some time scraping black overspray from the headlights and windshield....
she looks good from 30 maybe 20 ft.



dash cleaned up REALLY well. aside from the torn leather steering wheel (i have my stock one and a 3post to replace) and shifter, everything looks in relatively good shape.



I believe I should have an extra door panel to replace this if needed. there's dimples everywhere.

seats, I'll most likely trash. aside from having various stains and rips. the ever present smell of cigarettes just doesn't cut it for me and I still have my tan seats from my green one when I did the 7th gen interior swap.


overall, it only takes a bit of loving to make it able to sit next to my green one. they're both pretty happy I'd say


This post has been edited by cheela: Aug 27, 2019 - 12:03 PM

[bloodMoney]

bhahahaa don't tell me that, I'm already out of room in my new garage.

[cheela]

get a lift. room for one more....

[ds8]

Free is good. Good luck fixing her up. I've been tempted to buy another celica too lol

[cheela]

u should do it! they're all getting pretty cheap now. and you have the space for it now too.
I have 4 celicas now, but i had 3 before I bought my house hahaha so now at least I have room for all of them. lol

[antoine64]

What a great find! I got a 1994 from behind my neighbor's house for $300 back in 2008. it had a bad clutch and a couple other problems. it wasn't too hard to drop the transmission and change the clutch.
I drove the car until 2014 when a pizza delivery driver rear-ended me and totaled it. I used the insurance money to buy another one with a 3SGTE but I'd always wanted to fix the old one. Now I'm parting it out and junking it (see post on for sale area).

Do you want a black carpet in good shape, stored inside for the last 3 years? I'll sell it to you cheap.

I've got a bunch of other parts and plastics, wires, etc. if you need anything.

[cheela]

thanks! and that sucks about you celi but glad u got another one.
I've always wanted black carpet and somehow ended up with 4 celicas that ALL have tan interior... it's so weird.
since this carpet is really junky, I'm gonna try something first. I'm gonna clean it as best as i can and then try dyeing it to see how it turns out. if I like it, I'll do all my other celicas. hahaha but if not, i might hit u up for it.

[TimeslideZ]

Man good updates so far! I'd be so scared to pull my interior apart like that but since it's so dirty guess it's gotta be done.
That's funny you mention about wanting black interior as that's what Colin actually did when he had the Celica (interior was originally tan too).
I'd say it is much cleaner and doesn't get as "dirty," but there's an appeal to tan interior too though lol.

[cheela]

lol, nah, it isn't too bad once you've done it enough. I probably stripped this in an hour or so given that it was raining and cold and i took my time.basically just seats, door sill panels, center console, visors, mirror, carpet, and headliner.

tan interiors make it look a bit brighter and looks a bit nicer but is hard to keep clean and my carpets are 20+ years old so it's not one shade of tan anymore. I'm gonna try my hand at dyeing it vs spraying it. I haven't heard too much good things about spraying carpet as it tends to stiffen up the fibers. we'll see how the dye goes when i do it.

[njccmd2002]

a track car does not need carpet

[bloodMoney]

^this.

[cheela]

dammit. i thought I would finally have a daily driver... lol

[njccmd2002]

a track car can be used daily..

[bloodMoney]

Yup. Just ask Racecarp.

[cheela]

so a few weeks ago, I decided to throw my extra set of JDM tails onto the freelica.
the stock one on the pass. side was hit and cracked and I didn't want more moisture and snow getting into it as it's sitting outside.
started taking it off and as soon as I took off the bolts, it literally fell apart in my hands. was held on by sheer willpower only.





after installing the JDM tails, I noticed how misaligned everything is on that side. will have to get the good ol sledge hammer out in the summer and mold it back into shape but the de-ambered JDM tails look really good on a black celi.







This post has been edited by cheela: Dec 11, 2017 - 1:29 PM

[richee3]

will have to get the good ol sledge hammer out

My favorite tool!

[cheela]

will have to get the good ol sledge hammer out

My favorite tool!

wait?... there's more than one tool?? I've been using this for everything, tightening lug nuts, jacking up cars, wiring stereos, etc.

[richee3]

Truthfully a torch is my favorite tool, but an array of sledgehammers comes in a close second.

[bloodMoney]

I still prefer that ratchet of yours that I bent...

[cheela]

LOL, is that from another one of those Chris Hulk Smash incidents?

[Box]

"Just need a bigger hammer" is more than a saying, it's a way of life.