1969 SPRINTER

Haha, yes dad certainly is being a legend when it comes to the Sprinter.. borrowing funds, a garage to keep her in, (Despite the mountains of crap we have in there!) spraying her for me, and being a legend in general. He used to own an XA Falcon, at one stage a TC Cortina, and a variety of other cars that we only wish now that we knew back then what we know now: He should have kept them all. He has had a bit of practice with respraying things over the years, and the Sprinter is a sign that he's still got a good knack for it! This photo of my dad's falcon is above my bed :) Occasionally, he will tell me about the cars he had. The falcon, big T-bar auto, 302ci V8. So low that it couldn't straddle a house brick on it's flat side! I've also seen a lot of great photos, some including some not so great hairstyles! ;)

Seemed to go pretty easy mate, we were advised to have a small heater in the garage to take the chill out of the air (as to not effect the paint) and mix the paint using a bit more hardener so that it dries faster. After a short while it was dry. It's been in the garage for over a week now and I am soon putting the doors etc back on as they are now completely dry. :)

Hey mate, yeah we went with 2pack and also used De Beer. Colour came up really nice off the gun. :)

Hello all, about due for an update i reckon!! We got the car back from Havnadip with the rust repaired and body ready to go! Had the boys there really help us out and to them we owe thanks! With the car being beautiful and straight, we were ready for paint! So over the weeks trailing the car's return, we slowly readied her for the first glimpse of that beautiful Helios red. Lots and lots of prepwork. Masking, sanding, etc etc.. lots of time and effort. Both of which are a bit hard to find considering I'm now in Grade 11 as a student!! (Money, too!) One way or another, with the helpof spectrum paints, the boys from Havnadip, our mates from KTM hobart and a handful of others, she now has a glimpse of what is to be! The insides of the doors, boot and bonnet are now red! Next on the plate is putting them back on, then preparing the whole body for the final spray!!! Very exciting progress! and massive props to my dad, who has done a fantastic job spraying the sprinter. Especially considering how long it has been since he last did it!

Rightio, bit of an update to do. The sprinter isn't seeing as much work as I'd like it to be, but regardless, at least it has seen SOME. I was happy to score my new speakers and head unit for Christmas. Not much better than getting car stuff for chrissy ;) Supercheap also credited me the difference when they went on sale, so I was lucky enough to score myself a few basic tools :) Had a good day working on it with my dad; Looking pretty good from here. Much of the bodywork is done, with only a few bits and pieces remaining. A few days later I got a mate of mine into working on it with me, after we'dgone for a motorbike ride. He helped me remove the windscreens... and; We did know that there was a little bit of rust on the front left corner of the windshield, but we didn't know to what extent. Unfortunately, even after our cleaning up, this is a shop job. We can't do it :/ So! Money! Yeah! We've rang the same bloke that helped with my doors, and in a few weeks we'll be able to take the car in to have the rust repaired. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. I looks like from this point I will be borrowing funds off my dad and work my arse off to pay it back ao we can just get the car done. I think we're both keen to get that thing out of the garage.

That's pretty neat, definitely a good option to consider! I'd personally thought about something pretty newish and maybe even coloured? Dunno. I imagine the small details such as this will be a little while off anywho, haha. Bodywork and paint is current priority :/ Yes, dead careful on the bike.. have already had people pull out in front of me and cut me off etc.. This little thing has about as much horsepower as a lawnmower though! (Keeps parents happy) No wheelies for me..

My favourite engine sat in a beautiful ke wagon. What a great combo. Looks absolutely fantastic! Bet she is a blast to drive!

Right! Had a spare moment after work experience today, so I swung around to Craig's bodyworks in Moonah. Hadn't had a chance to look at my driver door hinges at all. So, apparently that'll be next week. Anywho, I've spent the last few hours in the garage tinkering. Sitting nicely in the garage all nice and dry. Bet she misses the street :/ So I've removed my dirty old philips speakers, making way for my new ones coming this christmas >:D they were wired poorly and were pretty old, so a fresh set should do well with upholding to my music addiction. Also removed my seatbelts. They didn't match, and probably would not pass the pits anymore. I'm unsure where to acquire new ones, but a good mate assures me Repco does them?? Underneath where my speakers sat, this would be a great spot for a small light to be. Maybe if I wired in a switch that's activated when the bootlid opens and have it automatically come on when it's up? That would be pretty neat. In other news, I got my motorcycle licence a few weeks back. Did the course on the weekend, got my licence on the monday, caught a bus and rode my bike back from launceston on Tuesday, went for a ride with my mates to the top of Mt. Wellington on Wednesday. :) The freedom is great. Will be even better once I can get around in my sprinter :0 Waiting on those door hinges. Once they're back, dad and I will spray inside the door frames and put them back on. From there, more paint!! Exciting stuff!

Bit more work yesterday with some bog finding it's way onto the roof! A few small dents around the place here and there, with the exception of a small high spot above the left side rear seat? Where some poor bugger has head butted the roof maybe :P Had a couple nasty dents in the rear, just below the bootlid, behind the bumper more or less. A few unorthodox techniques soon sorted them out :) Bit of bog on those too where it was needed and the overall result is quite good! The roof, where you can see each spot. The rear end, where theere was an outwarfs facing dent close to where the camera is, and where the car must've been rear ended and pushed the bumper inward to the car. Outside view some birdbrains!

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Apparently Rollaclub changes ' M-I-N-T ' to 'overrated'? Haha. Sanded behind the grille area yesterday and removed the driver door hinges as they were slogged out. Last thing I need with a new paint job is having the door hit the body where it shouldn't be! Going to try putting in new pins ourselves, but we'll see what happens. May be a shop job. Was tinkering with my spare engine, decided to tear it down and have a look at the barrels and pistons etc. Grabbed my 14mm and had a go at the head bolts, very tight obviously, but got two off. Got to a pretty difficult one and ruined my socket :/ eh, that's fair enough for cheap tools I suppose. Grabbed my dad's instead, being Kinchrome it should be alright... -snap- guess not. We've also made plans to repair my wider set of steelies. (They're the white ones that came with the car.) Sand blast them, and spray them the same colour as the car's body and run them with the centre hubcap and perhaps a chrome edge. behind here is a pretty nice red!

Bit of work today and yesterday taking off some more paint and rubbing back little bits that needed it. Absolutely overrated couple days weather-wise. (being a dork for the camera) Then came lunchtime! When we decided we were in need of a bit of a break from boring old bodywork to have a bit of fun :P

Thanks dude, you're absolutely right. The car will mean so much when it's done!

Car is gorgeous, mate. Come a long way!

Decided that, upon viewing how active the blogs section was, a forum was the appropriate way of doing things? I reckon this forum will be pretty much a "from this point forwards" sort of thing. Current date 26-9-2016. You can find my blog here should you want to have a look: http://www.rollaclub.com/board/blog/84-the-kids-ke15/ But before I start this forum off, I'd like to tell the story of how the car has progressed to the stage it is at now. -From the beginning. From the very beginning, with every detail I'm willing to expose publicly. It's a pretty personal story so don't be surprised if there's sappy bits. (Hope you like reading! :P) Storytime: So, currently being 16 years old, you'd wonder how I'd be in posession of a ke15, if a car at all. Truth is, I got the car at thirteen years of age. How? Well, as much as I don't like to flap my mouth about it, in 2011, i was fortunate enough to recieve a randomly drawn prize at a fishing conpetition.(Back to Pedder 2011) At 11 years old, I had won a small dingey with a merc outboard and some bits and pieces. (Lucky bastard, I know.) So, after about 3 months of "what the hell do I do with this" my dad and I decided that it would be a smart idea to sell it. Good move. Got a fair amount for it, and sat that arpund in the bank until one fateful day in Adam's driveway. My dad and I were dropping off my Honda Z50 minitrail, my first bike, off at my dad's good mate's house as payment for work he'd done to my XR100R. (Yes, I'm a dirt bike kid too) being a thirteen year old, i wasn't paticularly interested in 'adult conversation' and my attention drifted to the red car sitting in the garage. "What is that? That looks cool." The conversation eventually shifted to the car itself. I soon found myself walking circles around it like a wedge-tailed eagle to a rabbit. Sitting in it pushing all the buttons and pressing all the pedals, pretending to run it through the gears etc. (I was thirteen, who could blame me?) I loved the thing. Adam fired it up for us. Sounded damn good to my ears. At one stage adam needed to go inside for something, and as me and my dad were looking into the tiny engine bay, he poked me and held up four fingers; mouthed the words "four grand". I was dead keen. What's more, so was dad. He was letting me buy it! (Ha!) Subtly easing into the idea of actually buying it, we asked what he'd expect as a reasonable offer to be. "Oh.. I don't really know to be honest." "How does four grand sound?" I said. ... Lots of waiting, lots of indecision. :) Long story short, the car became properly mine in the June of 2013. (Took it home on a quad bike trailer!) I was very excited. So excited, that I decided to drive it up and down our 100m driveway. A lot. (This was probably not the greatest thing for the car, but hey, it taught me hill starts and better clutch control.) Aside from doing basic things like oil changes and radiator flushes, installing ariels and radios, not a lot of work was done to the car itself for quite some time. I spent a lot of my time at school of course, working at Braaap motorcycles (yes, yes, gross isn't it?), the Royal Hobart Show, and now Woolworths. Slowly gaining funds for her. Emphasis on slow. Given that I was REALLY into dirtbikes too, I'd spent a lot of money on those. It was mid 2015, when I made a REALLY poor decision to trade my newly rebuilt CRF230F for a KX250 2 stroke. (A kx250 that probably hadn't been rebuilt in years. Or even had an air filter/oil change) Stupid kid I was. Long story short, this is a corolla thread after all, I lost about $4,500. At the same time my job at Braaap went down the gurgler. Was a pretty tough time for me at that stage. It was at that same time I started experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. Things became really rough and many a time I had considered selling the car because I pressured myself into completing it, etc. But, somehow amidst the cluster-ʞ©$ɟ of pretty much eveything going wrong, i managed to do at least one thing right and KEEP THE SPRINTER. My first car, hopefully my last, too. Moved the car to my mum's and made a bit of an effort at starting work. Took a lot of the chrome off, badges etc. Truth be told, I probably spent more time driving the thing around the house than I did actually working on it. Depression is a hard thing to cope with, and the Sprinter has always been a good outlet. (Got the sads? Thrash the sprinter about.) Took her for a spin down the road a couple times, too. We finally bit the bullet and handed the car over to a panelbeaters to have the front stonetray and panels etc straightened out. $1500 later and the front end was pretty overrated. Once home; More or less just more driving and tinkering with small things... Took it back to dad's just a few months ago now. Since then, we've started some serious work. The car is now on the right track and looking as though it could be resprayed early next year, potentially even this year. Once the bodywork is done, the car will rapidly progress. It'll go back together. Fast. I can't wait to see it on the roads. And while I'm still having trouble with my mental illness, one thing's for sure. I don't want those keys belonging to ANYONE else. (July, 2013.)

Righto, fair bit of catching up to do in this blog! Been a fair bit happening since last update. The car has been moved to my dad's place, where we have much better tools and a more appropriate workspace. Despite the abundance of STUFF laying around the garage, we've managed to fit the car in. It's a good thing it's only a small car! -dad's also a carpenter, so you can imagine the amount of gear that's in the garage, haha. Since the car has been moved; Removal of remaining chrome trim, quarter windows, door panels, badges, windscreen wipers, etc. Pretty much everything that needs to be taken off to spray, has been taken off. Yet to remove windscreens. Purchased new rubbers from ebay for doors, windows, boot and windscreens. Paint stripping of roof and right hand rear side. Sanding down a large portion of the car, next up is inside the door frames of the shell, and inside of the doors themselves. It probably wasn't mentioned earlier in the blog, but both of the doors had seen better days where the latch is fitted. Driver side door had cracks, passenger side had nasty botched welds. Both doors were repaired recently and are ready to be sanded and sprayed. Nothing in the way of engine work yet. Still on boring old bodywork :/ Plan to repair my widened steelies that I got with the car originally, but will be waiting on funds, so potentially after the car has been registered and roadworthy etc. Starting to get the ball rolling after a good three years and almost four months of.... not. I get my P's march 7, 2017. We are hoping to have the car registered by then, Fingers crossed. Wish us luck!

ah man, that's so sad about the guys with CMEFRY and your nephew mate.. rip to them. And I just read the whole thread up until now! It's come such a long way man, and looks unbelievable! I LOVE those black wheels too, so widee :D I need a set! Love the engine work you did too, it looks gorgeous and by the look and sounds of things she FANGS IT!! Especially with NOS! Some incredible work done to her, hope everything goes well with her from this point onwards! Your engine bay is #goals Well done mate p.s. sell me the black wheels hahaha

Got the sprinter taken away to be panelbeated just this Wednesday. Getting the driver side door actually repaired instead of replaced! Much happier with that, rather than chucking a new one on. Keeps a slight bit more originality. (Not that I'm going for that with this build :P) So, for the door, the front two guards, and the stonetray, is all sitting at $1500. We'll also be getting a quote on getting the rest of the exterior straightened out, and in primer. So if all goes well and I get a quote within budget, I'll be bringing it home covered in grey primer, or even better with a full spray job! -- We're gonna go with red again, I imagine I'll just ring CO-OP TOYOTA to get the original colour of the red for the respray. Have a desire to do an engine conversion, 4age, 4agze, 3tgte, 3tc or maybe even a rotary??? 12A, 13B, main goal being power. I don't know about a rotary, as I don't want to be constantly doing rebuilds etc, but you can pack a lot of power into a small engine with a rotary, and the Sprinter is dead tiny, so it'll probably end up being the most FAST motor, but it miiiight be overdoing it. As of yet, no serious plans, but pondering around what motor to chuck in it (ONE DAY). For now though, leaving the little 4K in her and focusing on getting it ROADWORTHY AND REGISTERED. That's the main goal as of now. Eventually, when I'm older and have the funds I'll want to do the engine conversion. But, maybe that's a stupid teenager phase that I'll grow out of. But, whether it is or not, you can't deny that a 300+ horsepower car that weighs next to nothing is a cool concept. Especially with those good looks of a KE15. Still need to track down some mags, but the panelbeating will set my funds back a fair way I imagine, so that can wait. dead keen to get this beauty going! Yet again, having trouble posting pics.

:happy: I just found the absolute goal for my car. To one day have it look like yours, but at the beginning of the thread. Absolutely love the look of that car, crazy nice! great work!

:y:Mate, sporty corty is looking mighty fine Ca't wait to see how this comes up! doing great so far!

Looking great mate,^^^^^ was really hoping this was an old unused thread so i could skip ahead and see the finished car! ;) Gonna look really good when she's done. will you be painting it the same colour as the rocker cover and sump?- will look interesting if the car is green and spider web silver, bUuuuuuuuUUt..... I would make a suggestion of painting the car black, and having the web the green colour you chose. seeing as the engine bay is already black, and I reckon the whole car would look alot tougher, and especially with those wheels.

Hiyas. a couple weeks ago we got me sprinter on a traya and we took it out to brighton, (my mum's house) so me and y step dad can start work. I can't UPLOAD PICTURES FOR SOME REASON!!! :POSTPICS!: . i guess so... ha ha Far out... Oh well, hopefully it will work another time.... What I've done so far: Took out the radio in it. After much struggling... took out the rear upholstery, and seats. Fitted a new radio, again wth many struggling... and the chrome trim is comig off. only trim left to do is badges, lights and bumpers. then well start panelbeating and sand her down ready for a spray

yes, (sorry for the (very) late reply mate!) I always have troble uploading them because they're too big. Ill see what I can do.

:wtf:Well, upon closer inspection of my motor... after thinking for a whole year it was original, it turns out the motor in my sprinter is actually a 4K and so is the spare one. the spare car (my dad's) has a 3K I it. So, that explains my dodgy extractors. Whoever has done this probably knew what they were doing, because it all looks (and mine drives)pretty good. funny though, my master key fits dad's boot nd fuel cap... so my theory is that a bloke has had both of these cars just plainly to mess about with.... dads was rego'd until 1996 and mine until '97 dunnowhattothinkofthis