Restoration Part 3!, All fixed. For now... Options

[enderswift]

another day another update. I never realized how tedious it is to put together a halfway decent progress thread, with the picture taking, editing, uploading, organizing, and writing. It really puts into perspective just how dedicated some of the members on here really are. but i digress...

After calling a bunch of junk yards and searching craigslist I finally gave up on finding a local celica to use as a parts car. There are a billion 5th gens roaming the streets but 6g's are few and far in between. So I turned to ebay for my passenger high beam for $86 shipped and got my radiator tie bar trim from autopartswarehouse.com for ~$31 shipped. Both parts should be in by the end of this week, just in time for me to pick up my celi.

My last paycheck was this past Friday and I was originally planning to use it to buy a couple final parts before I considered the celi complete. Among them were a set of rear rotors, parking brake shoes, a drum hardware kit, denso spark plug wires, fuel filter, and, after 3 years of owning the car, a key fob ^.^ Then the accident happened and i figured the check would go towards fixing everything.Lucky for me everything worked out in my favor so the original plans are on track! wooo!

Anyway, after running around and buying all of those parts I decided to make to most of my day off and prepare the celi for my body guy:



Obviously the first thing I had to do was get the car in the air and take the wheels off before I could take the front end apart. I figured this was good opportunity to show off my overspray removal efforts, since my body guy got quite a bit of paint onto the suspension and wheel well splash guards. I still have some work to do but its really really tedious. This time im going to make a point of stressing that I want as little overspray as possible, especially since the engine bay is involved. I'll even offer to mask things off.



With the car in the air I unbolted the bumper and took off the surprising amount of clips and hardware attached to it. Now I could see the true extent of the damage and it really isn't that bad. Only the upper part of the support was bent and it looks easy enough to pull out. Like I mentioned before the condenser almost took the radiator with it but I couldn't get a decent picture



Here's a shot showing how the condenser got damaged. I'm not sure if that vertical bar is absolutely necessary for the structural integrity of the radiator support, but i guess the toyota engineers wouldn't put it there for no reason.



as before I took the time to bag and label bolts and parts to ease reassembly. I tried to put myself in the body guys' shoes to figure out what would get in the way and what was needed to help in aligning the support properly. This guy is doing me a favor since his labor costs are way below what he usually charges so I want to make it easy on him... not to mention he had a triple bi-pass a few months ago!



These are the rotors I mentioned earlier. Nothing special but I figured I'd post a picture anyway. I know I love lots of pictures in progress threads




Finally this is my car as its site right now. The bumper is basically just hanging off of the fenders with a few zip ties holding it in place at the upper support. The point is to be able to drive the car over to the shop while still being super easy to take apart. Celi should go in for work tomorrow and I'll post paint progress pictures this time! (i think)

oh yea, no one knows anything about the AC question i asked earlier???

[enderswift]

alright its been a few days and its time for an update of sorts. Well this isn't much of an update to be honest. My body guy has been busy with a few other cars and told me he wouldn't take my car until tomorrow But he did take my hood to apply the sealer and do all the preparations for paint. That way the turn around time will be much quicker when he does finally get to my car. In the mean time i spent the week installing some of the tune-up parts i mentioned before.

I am aware that some of you are probably looking at this thread with this expression on your face : since none of this is particularly interesting. Theres no doubt that the majority of you know what rotors and spark plug wires look like! I'm really just making this thread as keepsake for myself, if someone gets something out of my experiences then all the better. In the future when I finally graduate I'll have the cash to make the most epic progress thread of all time. In fact I'm gonna make a point making it as detailed as physically possible haha. Till then I'll have to get by with my humble restoration and reading other about other peoples swaps. Here are some pictures of some things that went on this week:


New denso wires, parking shoes, hardware kit, and fuel filter. My hatred for drum brakes was only reinforced with the experience of putting these on


Here is the finished product. Dont those rims look bad up close? I really wish I had the cash to buy some 17inch enkei rs5's since I sprang for the falkens, but the tires alone were ~$500 and my summer job just couldn't cut it. I cant help but feel the same way about the taillights and headlights, if your gonna replace em then you might as well get the jdm tails and a set of front projectors... but I just couldn't justify the costs


And here is the replacement highbeam that really should be a jdm clear piece!


After 3 years of owning the celi I FINALLY have a remote. Programming took ~5 seconds. I cant believe the dealer wanted $90 for a 5 second program. The way they rip people off is mind boggling. If you do the math that works out to $64,800/hour


Heres another shot of how my celi currently sits. I have a car cover over it most of the time but it got ripped off in last nights storm and my whole engine bay got rained on

This post has been edited by enderswift: Aug 14, 2010 - 9:39 PM

[cheela]

looking good!

[Driver]

Car is looking good. BTW, I just noticed you're in Chicago as well. What's up neighbor! Haha

[zfjohnson07]

thats great!

[richee3]

MOAR!!!!

Keep up the good work, Luke You keep this car clean. It couldn't have a better home.

[mgnt232]

great job keeping the car up to par keep on keeping her clean and givin her love

[OOBE]

You're alright, man. Keep up the great work.

[enderswift]

thanks guys, I get my car back today!

Not a moment too soon cuz cruising the kawi to school blows in stop and go traffic

I'll post updates soon!

[enderswift]

thanks guys, I get my car back today!

Not a moment too soon cuz cruising the kawi to school blows in stop and go traffic

I'll post updates soon!

^ HA!

I THOUGHT I was gonna get my car back. But it got pushed back to the next day, then the next, then another day. . . I was getting annoyed when today I finally got the call to come pick my car up. Whew, I can only handle riding a motorcycle in downtown Chicago for so long!

So off I went to pick up the celi with cash in hand. I was expecting another fantastic body restoration but it was not to be. As soon as I arrived the guy says he needs more paint to respray the bumper. I looked at him wondering "wtf? you've had the car for two weeks! Which is a week longer than during the first round of repairs, and the damage was much worse then! This new damage shoulda been cake... ". Confused, I walked up to my car and sure enough something went wrong. The hood was one shade of red, the bumper another, and the fenders yet another.

He said that the primer was giving him trouble but I dont know what to think. I knew he's been overloaded with cars and I could tell that this was a rushed job. There were defined lines on the hood where two separate coats were contrasting, as if the final coat was incompletely applied.

I was livid. Not only did I go out of my way to collect all of the necessary parts, buy the proper paints, TAKE THE CAR APART,accommodate his schedule, but I also gave him an extra week of time. With every other job he just gets the car and thats it. HE has to do all of the preparations. But I went ahead and did everything. And for what? However getting angry wasn't in my best interest so I held back my temper and we started to talk about what to do. We agreed that the car needed a respray and that tomorrow I would go to the paint supply store to get another pint of 3l2. After that I took the car home to change out the AC condenser and put the headlight back onto my freshly straightened out front end. Well, at least I thought it was straightened out when I tried to attach some parts, there were gaps all over the place. I didn't just spend a whole summers worth of paychecks and effort on this car just to ultimately end up with a jacked up front end

photos are worth more than anything I could ever type onto here so observe:



This picture does a good job of showing whats wrong with the paint. You can clearly see that all three panels are a different color, with the hood being the worst of the three. When I removed the bumper there were two runs in highly visible areas. Also, my bumper originally had a bunch of cracked paint that I think is called spider webbing? I was happy that it was gonna get fixed up with everything else. well... Instead of sanding the webbing down, he just painted over it.



heres the "pulled out" radiator support. This is what really pissed me off, I told the guy that I had a new support in the mail but he insisted that the original one could be pulled out no problem. By "no problem" I thought he meant that it would looks pretty close to factory... Seriously how can you look at this and say "I did a good job"? If this isn't evidence of a rushed job then I don't know what is. Welding in my spare support would have avoided this problem entirely.

Unfortunately I don't have any other decent photos but believe me when I say that the rest looked bad too. In fact after I installed the new condenser I had to pry various sections as hard as I could just to be able to bolt them together. It was at this point that I decided that I'm going to fix this radiator support on my own.



Heres an example of the gaps I mentioned earlier. The original damage from earlier this summer was fixed AMAZINGLY well and I was really impressed with this guy. Not to mention hes a family friend so I cant be too angry. Stuff happens and I guess he got too much on his plate at once. Now that I think about it I think his son mentioned something about him scrambling to fix a bmw that got hit while he was on his way to the paint booth with it. Still, this could have been handled a bit better. I would have given him more time.




After installing the condenser I pulled out my spare support and proceeded to prep it for paint with a cleaning and scuffing. The plan is to spray on a nice protective layer of flat black rustoleum before drilling out the old support and bolting this one on. Im not gonna mess with trying to weld the new one in since its only 2 spot welds on each side and I'm more than sure that some stainless steel bolts will do a good job of keeping things together.



This is a mid painting shot (sorry about the snow, there was still alot of paint in the air). After the silver rustoleum paint, I added 2 layers of flat back rust-tough enamel. I used this same combination on my friends cheapo ebay intake and it hasn't rusted a single bit after 3 salt infested winters. So I'm confident this will hold up.



Heres a mid assembly photo I took while removing the old AC condenser. Our very own mkernz is supplying me with the radiator support trim that will hopefully arrive soon and confirm whether or not the front end is nicely pulled out. C'mon dood you find a shipping box yet? I need to drive the celi!

Alright, well tomorrow is gonna suck. I have to rent out an ac vacuum pump and a set of guages to properly refill my ac. Then I have to drill out the old radiator support and bolt in the freshly painted one. After that I have to put some odds and ends back onto the car before going to the paint shop for more paint.

This post has been edited by enderswift: Aug 28, 2010 - 11:09 PM

[Keiri]

Keep at it dude.

It sucks that he rushed the repair and kinda tried to push it off as finished.

But the car will look stellar once everything's fixed...3L2 always does.

[richee3]

You're keeping an extremely level head about this, Luke. It'll all work out in the end. Hopefully the guy doesn't charge you for any more labor.

[cheela]

wish i would've done the same thing as you when I got mine fixed.

[ChfNix]

Wow!!

Sometimes this thread makes me Sometimes it makes me

Hang in there!! It will get better one day!!

[enderswift]

wish i would've done the same thing as you when I got mine fixed.

what do you mean? you wish you could redo?

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I know that eventually I'll get everything done the way its supposed to be. I mean, statistically it HAS to go my way eventually haha.

Quick update:

I decided to hold off on mounting the new radiator support until I get the car back from the respray. I figure theres no point to offend the man (especially when he has my car). That said, I stopped by his place today to drop off the paint and we ended up talking about the car and what would happen in the coming days. I made sure to emphasize the fact that I've dumped virtually all of my summer earnings into the car so he knows that I wont be happy with something that looks 'alright' to any passerby. I want the car to look as if it was never in an accident. From there we arranged to have me bring the car back on Monday afternoon and started talking about my AC system. Originally I was gonna go over to autozone and rent a vacuum pump along with pressure gauges to refill the AC on my own (and to make a how-to for 6g). However, he offered to let me use his snap on pump and guages. I wasn't about the turn down a chance to use quality tools over potentially crappy autozone stuff so I refilled the AC right then and there. Everything went smoothly and The new condenser works great :thumbsup. For those of you who might need to refill their air conditioning in the future, be sure to get 24 oz of 134a. The system is rated at 1.44 lbs, which at 16oz/lb works out to 22oz. So two 12oz cans are enough.

anyway. When I get my car back later this week, I'll go ahead and mount the radiator support and update you guys with some awesome pictures. stay tuned!

This post has been edited by enderswift: Aug 28, 2010 - 11:36 PM

[SpadeBF]

great thread man i lvoe threads like this, very interesting

motivates me to put every pay check towards my car

[enderswift]

whoa, finally. I cant believe it. Its here. its finally painted! No more knocking around campus like a tool in full motorcycle gear

Honestly I was expecting the worst while walking over. Mainly because a few days earlier I stopped by and saw this:


Oh yes, a garage special So much for renting out a professional booth...


Thats why I couldn't help but cringe when my car first came into view. With todays cloudy skies and poor lighting the new finish looked really flat. I thought I was in for another round of headaches


Luckily things got MUCH better as I took a few steps closer. The finish instantly gleamed up and the orange peel of last week was no where to be seen. The runs of paint on the bumper were gone and the infuriating painted-over spider-webbing was no more! In short this paint is up to par and I'm happy to finally have a car again. I paid the guy for his effort and quickly got the car home.



First I want to show off my hood look! clear coat on the underside, bonus! (Ignore all of the white dust, Its just dried up polishing compound that I still have to clean off)


I don't know what happened to my earlier photos. I had a few of the support getting drilled out. . . Oh well, maybe they'll turn up later.

This photo shows what the car looked like just after removing the ruined radiator support. It was a real pain getting the drill to stay centered on the spot welds, even after making marks with a punch and hammer. I ended up drilling the holes a fraction of a nanometer off center and had to get creative with my screwdrivers to finally remove the support.


This, of course, is the support after its been removed. Strangely it doesn't look all that damaged outside of the car. But it is.


With the old support out of the car I went ahead and did a mock up with the new one. It was held on by nothing but a few bolts and the highbeam tabs yet still allowed me to find a few spots on the frame that needed a slight tweaking. All together I think I spent an hour and a half adjusting the front end of the car before everything started to line up perfectly.


Heres the result of all my effort. I'm really happy with how I managed to align everything.


Another photo showcasing my radiator support.


And another. Its amazing how the smallest shift to the left or right in a key spot can majorly throw off the alignment of the whole front end. But I won



I painted some more bits of the front end flat black (including my hand) to keep them from contrasting against the black AC condenser through the bumper openings.


At this point I ran to Ace hardware and picked up some stainless steel nuts and bolts to permanently attach the support to the celi. I know some of you will think that bolting the support on is a hack job but the fact of the matter is that I dont know how to weld yet. So until I take a welding course sometime next summer these bolts are gonna have to do. I just wish I painted the ends to keep them from rusting. .


After the support was completely bolted in the car was ready to finally start coming back together! (In this photo the support looks like its tilted too high on the drivers side but thats only the way the picture came out, my driveway has a slight slant and I can assure you that the support is dead on


I went after the bumper and reattached all of the clips/trim/foam to get it ready to mount

Unfortunately the work light I was using made it impossible to get any decent photos so this is where I gave up on taking pictures. I figured you've all seen a stock celica before so there was no point fighting with the work light and flash settings. Right now I'd say the celi as about 70% complete. Tomorrow I have to go to the dealer and pick up a few clips for the washer hoses, a new piezo chirper, and a few other odds and ends.

Hopefully I'll get my new tie bar trim from Mkernz soon and officially call the celi complete. in the next update I'll post some pictures of the celi after its been put completely put together and washed. I'll also show you guys the automated Sigg 552 assault turret I'm mounting onto the roof. Still have to figure out how to keep it running w/o draining the battery and if my statefarm sticker will look best on the barrel or on the stock... hmmm

Seriously if i get hit again I'm buying a beetle.

This post has been edited by enderswift: Sep 4, 2010 - 9:22 AM

[NOVAKx17]

wow man, looking good! its amazing the attitude you keep throughout all this!
I can't wait to see what you do with your car once you can stop throwing all this
money into repairs!!

[presure2]

good work man!
the bolts are fine IMO, the only thing is that you wont have a backing to weld to when you actually want to weld it in.
the cheapo harbor frieght spot weld cutters work great for the price, i'd check them out for future use.

[enderswift]