Formerly Abandoned: the resurrection of a 97 GT Options

[YourOldPalElmer]

Hello everyone! Hope you are all doing well. This thread is gonna follow my journey rebuilding a 6th gen that’s been sitting for right around 12 years. So here’s the story. I found the car in January of 2020 on Craigslist. I had been looking for some type of older front wheel drive that I could turn into a stock class autocross toy, and sure enough, this Celica dropped into my lap! It was being sold by a towing company that had a contract with a nearby police department. The car had been impounded in late 2008 and while the owner did show interest in getting his car back he never produced the required documents to pick the car up. He stopped trying around 2012, and the car sat. And sat. And sat. And then I come in. Head down to look at the car, and while there is certainly a leak from somewhere, and some algae of some sort growing in the carpet, the car is surprisingly solid. Not a speck of rust anywhere you’d expect with it being a PA car. So, for 500 bucks, I bring it and an abandoned vehicle title home.







First order of business was getting the interior cleaned up. The best way I could figure to do this was to pull everything out. The carpet and headliner were the worst, with the carpet being glued to the driver seat rails by rust and the headliner cardboard backing having completely warped.



After that, I pulled all of the exterior off to assess some damage to the front suspension. I am going to repaint the car at some point so I figured that just pulling the pieces off now wouldn’t be a bad option. After doing that I removed the brakes and calipers, which I am currently cleaning to paint and rebuild. I have new pads and rotors to go on all around. I pulled the radiator, and am also currently in the process of flushing out the engine side of the cooling system so I can do the timing belt, tensioner, and water pump. I also picked up a set of 16x7 SSR’s that I’m getting refinished 😎. This is sort of a mass information unload from the past few months. Hope you’re all doing well.