My Mods, Updated 8-9, gas door write up Options

[QuintinGT]

Thanks a bunch for the great compliments!

I have had a couple requests for some detailed info on how I did the gas door relocation, and this is all It is, just Info, I wouldnt jump into something like this with only this to go off of, lots of fabrication experience needed, or just lots of faith in yourself The nice thing is with the stuff I got out of my parts car I was able to fab almost everthing from what I already had. All the gas piping was made from the two filler necks I had available. The whole mod cost me about $40 in scrap metal. Of course thats not counting paint and my time.

To give you an idea I have about 400 hours into my car in July alone. Ya I need a girlfriend

Anyway here is my attempt at a write-up.




Well first I needed to find a place for the filler so I looked to my only example.
I used a piece of 3in pipe and cut a hole for it, then cut the pipe to match the
contures for the hole.



Then I mounted my custom made box hinge, so it would fit behind the license
plate frame. Important Note: The pivot of the hinge has to be within 3/4in from
the outside of the plate frame. This is so the tail light will be able to swing out
and away from the body of the car.


Next I cut out a space for the arm of the hinge so that it would fit behind the tail
light when the light was set in place. Then I tacked the hinge arm into the body,
once it was solid I cut out around the tail light mounting holes. Now I had I giant
hole but the pay off was that the hinge now had the proper mounting for the tail
light, and I didnt have to do any ajustment.



Here is the 3in pipe again, only now with the system I came up with to mount the
filler the half circle at the bottom is a drain.

There are 4 holes with nuts welded to the back, and here is a better view of the
drain.

This is the Filler itself, I cut the vent pipe off and moved the hole back then tapped
it for a fitting that will go in later. I cut the whole thing short then added the right
bend. Next I added a collar with 4 bolt holes in it that mate up with the 3in pipe
piece.






I dont have as many pictures as I would like, But I fabed a backing plate to go behind the
hinge. honestly this took the most time. But I finally got the metal work done and
then added bodyfiller to make it smooth.

Then Primer, Lots and lots of primer, too much actually I had to sand some off
after paint to make everything fit right again.
As you can see I gusseted the hinge and added a small box to mount the stock
gas door release in.






Heres a look from the inside, not real pretty but, thats ok, no one sees it,

Heres the Patch to the old filler hole in the wheel well.

This is where the gas goes back into the wheel well, this is pipe from the
original filler neck, the third one is for the drain.

sorry this is not straight. but you get the idea.




this is were the wiring goes for the light


In a while I will fiberglass this in so you can't see it, but here's how it is now.


I hope that Answers the questions you had.

This post has been edited by QuintinGT: Aug 9, 2007 - 2:05 AM

[Dragondog]

i wanna do this to my celica any advice?

[njccmd2002]

i wanna do this to my celica any advice?

i think he was selling his car

[QuintinGT]

I did Sell it, but as far as advice goes, I hope you have experience with fabrication, because everything I did, was completely from scratch. So if you have good problem solving skills, go for it I think these pics could get you going in the right direction.

[njccmd2002]

I did Sell it, but as far as advice goes, I hope you have experience with fabrication, because everything I did, was completely from scratch. So if you have good problem solving skills, go for it I think these pics could get you going in the right direction.

do you own a celi any more?

[QuintinGT]

no i have a VW passat right now....

[96bluevert]

I think if it's not already, this thread should be stickied

[CelicaST_CALI]

WTF is this quetin, u did all that work then sold????wow ur wierd...lol jp did u tell the guy u sold to to join this site??

[njccmd2002]

wonder how he did the wiper.

[QuintinGT]

Back from the dead to finally answer your question njccmd2002






Here is the only specific photo I could find of my custom wiper linkage, I think you can get the idea. You can see I drilled several holes to find the right geometry, you will have to figure out the right length of the arm because beyond this picture I have no idea. The wiper is attached about 180° from the moment arm pictured, and the wiper is at its resting position on the passenger side of the car in this picture. As you can see I remounted the original wiper motor linkage under the moment arm at just under 180° if 0° were the blue arrow. Therefore when the wiper motor does its 360 degree rotation (pulling the linkage away in the photo) the Red arrow pointing down will travel up to the second red arrow and back. It ended up being 150°-160° I think.

A couple things you should know before attempting this:
1. If you screw up your car, It is not my fault, modify at your own risk.
2. this does look cool but there are a couple downsides to it:

a. Since the swing of the linkage (red arrow to red arrow) needs to be as close to 180 degrees as possible, it is possible for the linkage to hyper-extend and if the wiper is push too far down onto the cowl. I decided to solve the possibility of this happening by added a spring to provide a force in the direction of the second blue arrow. This extra force made sure that the linkage would always pull the arm around to the left in the picture rather the around to the right and jam it into the firewall, which did happen.

b. Since I added a spring at that location and shortened the moment arm, the wiper has mechanical advantage on the motor (it is possible to back drive them) so at high freeway speeds (75+ for mine) the wind would start to push the wiper up the window 4°-6° this was kind of annoying, but just flipping the wiper on once would put it back where it was supposed to be.

c. Lastly the shorter moment arm means a lot more work for your motor to move the wiper. I didn't have my car for very long after this mod (a year and a half) but I would expect you would have to replace the motor eventually. Not a big deal (40$ at a junk yard) but still.

If I did it over again I would probably try using a hardware linkage made of some heim joints and bent all-thread to increase adjust-ability so I could dial it better and remove the need for the spring, it was a band-aid fix. Anyway hope this helps

- Michael Quintin