JoshuaM's '97 Celica ZR, The Final Chapter - Goodbye Options

[Box]

Hmmm, if it were me I'd choose the Chrono.

[kloudkicka]

I pick Chrono, your ride is soo clean, love it

[Tigawoods]

OZ's. and paint em!

[JoshuaM]

Before my big post, I promised you pictures at the end of last year and never delivered!

From my teaser you should have noticed that I met up with Rentaspace (Ryan) from Sydney (we have met several times in real life when I have had to fly to Sydney, but I have always flown). With him and his girlfriend up in Queeensland on holidays it was only right that we met up and took some photos.

The first meet was accidental – I was about to head out for the afternoon and MarbleFlame (Ben) had been to my place a few minutes earlier to pick up my spare PROF JDM ST202 muffler (he is also from interstate, about 5 hours away). Ryan decided to swing past before our meet the next day, and Ben saw him driving past and pulled a U-Turn and followed him back to my house. And there you go, a mini 6GC meet was born!







Ryan’s girlfriend also had the life scared out of her when we noticed that she was standing about a foot in front of a giant (harmless) snake in the neighbours front yard



They next day we went on a Brisbane Celica Club cruise, organised in Ryan’s honour (the perks of running the club ). This is where Ryan swapped out the ST205 hood to a local member (the other white ST204 – this car is where a lot of my parts went to, but has since been sold).













Another day on and we went and did our photo-shoot. I thought we would head out into the industrial side of the city to get some interesting backdrops, but we didn’t end up finding anything suitable (and had some cops tail us for a bit too ), so we just found a random shopping centre.















And finally, a couple of random shots from when we drove out to Dalby to launch a weather balloon into the stratosphere with electronics we designed through the Electrical Engineering Student Society that I help run…. On the day we had 3 4WD light trucks, and a Toyota Landcruiser Prado carrying people around out-back…… therefore I decided that a lowered Celica would be the perfect lead retrieval vehicle! (some skids were had in the gravel )





Big post coming.....

[JoshuaM]

So, I guess I owe you guys a bit of an explanation! Most of you will have seen around the place that I have taken a new direction.

So what happened?

I went crazy all-in with this car…. I had amassed thousands of dollars of parts and I was going for more (on top of buying a whole car in Japan to chop up, I was looking for a set of Evo 9 MR leather bucket seats, C-One CF hood etc on top of the huge selection of parts I had). Really, I needed somebody or some event to snap me out of it, and that came in the form of my friend (who was going to facilitate and probably do most of the engine swap with me) having to move house with no more garage. I had a small window (up until Easter) that we could still make it work, but with basically a blank cheque-book and 6 weeks of searching in Japan no suitable donor cars came through the auctions.

I did not see value in paying a shop to do a BEAMS swap (would be $2k+ labour), so I started to weigh up my options. There was nothing wrong with the current engine, it was still a nice car, but I did want a bit more. With the rare parts I had on order, plus the cost of the swap, plus the cost of painting the Celica when it was done, and the residual value of the car…. I had a lot of money, and a lot of options. I could have waited another ~12 months and continued with the original plan, but I was already getting itchy feet.

So I started selling off the swap parts, and other parts I had around the house or on the way from Japan. I did make sure I did install the spacers for a couple of months so that I could experience the ‘finished package’ and get some photos though (Unfortunately the exhaust was already gone before these pics).











My full exhaust system (hurricane headers, custom 2.25” piping and Sheepdog by PROF JDM muffler) lives on in JFXtreme007’s Celica, along with my coilovers, whiteline sway bar, Cusco 4pt under brace, spacers (he already had the same wheels), hood struts and C-One cooling panel. Tigawoods got my ORC Ogura lightweight JDM flywheel. A cool guy in Sydney (not sure if on 6GC though) got the C-One exhaust I was importing, somebody in Coffs Harbour bought the TRD quickshifter and TRD front strut bar. The person with the white ST204 that bought Ryan’s 205 hood bought my JDM side rain visors, TRD door strikers, Endworks cluster and aluminium door sills. Somebody who is getting a ST205 locally soon bought the Chronos and the JDM floor mats, and the Superturismos went to a random in Adelaide. Oh, and of course RabidTRD got the euro risers.

You can probably guess where this is going….. I was selling the Celica.

I actually bought a new car back in March (hence you will notice my personalised plates have been removed for most of the last photos, except where staged). However, I didn’t actually list the car for sale until late July because I was removing a lot of parts, and waiting until after my mid-year exams to do it. I left most of the cosmetic goodies on the car to enhance the sale; projectors, SSIII front and TRD rear splitters, SSIII grill and crystal indicators. The vinyl roof had to come off though, which was a MASSIVE PITA…. Took a good couple of days.

Here are the photos I used for the ad;

















And some interior shots after I took everything out…. Which I took so late I only sent them to one person, they never made it on the ad Also taken on request late one night, so I didn’t really get to clean it either.

















On Saturday the 29th of August 2015, I met the new owner and signed away my Celica.

Fear not, it is going to an enthusiast though. I sold the car to a young lad from Mackay, who currently owns a different 6th Gen Celica, but he liked the look of mine so he is trading up. He is still on his Learners permit, so this will be a nice car for him to finish learning in and then take on the world when he gets his full licence.

I haven’t yet told him about this thread and 6GC.Net, because I didn’t want to rain on the excitement of a new car purchase by showing off all the parts I had taken off and sold already. I did however have to have an awkward conversation when he sent me an email asking me if my Celica was the one doing skids in the review on Youtube (Richard On Cars Toyota Celica), which was my friend using my car for a few weeks when I was living in California in 2014

I am still in contact with him though, so when the time is right and he is finding his own way with the car I’ll point him in this direction.

So what about me?

Well I started shopping for a Mazda RX8 back in February – more than BEAMS power, leather / luxury interior, 6 speed manual, RWD + LSD, sporty looks but still pretty practical. It was pretty much perfect…… but then I drove a Miata.

It just felt like nothing I had ever experienced before – simple, tiny and AMAZING fun. It was the opposite of pretty much everything I was looking for – it was hideously impractical and it was only a tiny bit more powerful than the 5S (but less torque!)…. But I had to have one.

I did a lot of research into all of the different models available and the NB8B came out a clear winner for me. Entering my final year of university, I needed something that I knew would be reliable. I wanted a clean, fairly low kms car with good paint (NOT SILVER! ). The car was to spend most of its time commuting, so safety in the form of dual airbags and ABS were highly desirable.

So at the start of March I flew to Sydney to buy a late ’00 midnight blue NB8B model with the 6 speed manual. It was a single owner car with 65,200 kms!!!

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The road with the Miata (MX5 here) hasn’t been exactly as smooth as I expected, but I am absolutely loving it and modding it like crazy. I am saving up for a couple of months in Europe at the end of the year now, but I hope to do some racing in it early next year.

Its already got a shorter rear dif, Torsen LSD, shoft shifter and new Tein Flex Z coilovers, plus some cosmetics.









Its been temporarily raised to deal with some body work (not my fault -.-), but this is how it is sitting now;



You can follow more progress on the MX5 in my off topic thread;
http://www.6gc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=95671

I have ABSOLUTELY LOVED these past 3 and a half years with my Celica, and I can say with HUGE confidence that this is due to the amazing encouragement, support and inspiration hosted through 6GC.Net. I have made some amazing friends, met up with 6GC people interstate in Aus and internationally in California. I learned a lot from you all, I hope I have given my fair share in return, but most importantly had an amazing time.

This is likely the end of my Celica journey (maybe a ST205 could happen in a few years, but I'm not making any promises), but I hope to pop back every now and again to keep up to date with everything and let anybody who still cares know what is happening on my end.

[Box]

Gah, took you long enough.

[BonzaiCelica]

Ahh after a few first paragraphs and details about selling off all your parts I knew where it was going. Ah beams is so fun oh well

[JFXtreme007]

Awesome last post! but your celica will be surely missed!

[igpx12]

Bummer seeing you sell off the celica, but all of us probably figured from the parts being sold that it was eventual. Best of luck with the MX5 and hope to see you on here again with an ST205.