Alaskan Celica Project, My 1994 Celica GT, The story of fixing and enhancing a bad swap Options

[antoine64]

In 2008 I bought a 1994 Celica GT for $300. it was in my neighbor's yard, covered with dust and mold. He said the transmission was dead because it had been stolen. Turns out only the clutch was bad.


I fixed it up and drove it having a reliable and fun car




November 4th 2014: a pizza delivery guy rear-ended me destroying my car.




I bought a replacement Celica off Craigslist sight unseen because it had a rebuilt 3SGTE TURBO.

I had it driven up to Bellingham, WA, inspected my the Toyota Dealer then put on the Alaska Ferry.


When it showed up I inspected it mostly in the dark because it was December and I don't have a garage. What I found was very depressing.

Problems:

-badly mounted oversized intercooler
-no rebar or foam under the damaged front bumper
-plastic milky headlight enclosures with hid bulbs but badly put together with black adhesive
-glued on rear spoiler
-strange chicken wire mesh things under the car
-no muffler
-strange bundles of wire under the dash
-cut wiring harness for the stereo
-cut custom headlight wires
-no fender well plastic
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-












First I tore a few parts off it to sell and to put on my other Celica.

I needed the bumper and fender for my new one so....

Here's the before picture. New Celica is on the right with an oversized intercooler (for sale $20) and a thousand little problems.



This post has been edited by antoine64: May 20, 2015 - 4:58 PM

[enderswift]

You bought a swapped celica?

[antoine64]

My new Celica is also a 1994 blue GT but one of the previous owners put in a 3SGTE. The engine is good as far as I can tell but the rest of the customizing was a bunch of crap. I'm pulling parts off this car and doing a bunch of fixing to get the new one drivable. It's mostly there. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I want all the wiring just so and everything to work and not leak.

[Box]

Yep, nothing like buying into a car where the previous owner was retarded/half-assed everything. It's just the most irritating thing for me, so for the first few months I'm cursing whoever I bought the car from constantly. So I definitely understand the dire urge to make every little aspect perfect.

[antoine64]

I took out the shifter and installed it in my new Celica. It took me 3 hours to remove it, clean and re-install it.

The shifter will come out of the console without taking the sides off but it's a tight fit and I did scratch the console in the process. You move it forward and tip it to the side then get the rear bolt hole out first. Installation is the reverse of this.

held in by 4 bolts

two metal clips hold the cables in the front. I used a screw driver to carefully pry these off. They push on pretty easy by hand though for the install.

[antoine64]

The back part of the center console is really easy to remove. two bolts in the arm rest compartment and two screws in front (I think). it exposes the airbag computer.

[PrimeLuxeZ]

Nice, sucks to hear about the rear end though. At least another celica will get loved correctly. Do you by any chance know the color code for your first gt, its the exact same color as mine, but mine is really faded.

[antoine64]

The paint color code for blue 1994 celicas like mine is 752.

[antoine64]

Next steps: catch this up with my current progress and post more pictures. more to come soon.

This post has been edited by antoine64: May 20, 2015 - 5:30 PM