carbonboy

Rightio...now that the sound deadener was gone it was time to start playing with some serious chemicals :dance: Here's a tip though: if your car does not require going back to bare metal, don't do it! You're merely vastly increasing the amount of work required :blush: I'm the pedantic type, anything that was 20+ years old had to go. That meant any spray putty, body filler, paint, primer etc that was present was about to meet a methanol bath following by a pounding with various grades/shapes/sizes of wire wheels on both grinder & power drill. My attempts to contain the dust from grinding...epic fail LOL Rear end all naked Chugging through the roof section And down the C pillar... Front end stage 1 Guards...(took some time out to knock up a pair of panel stands for myself, fold up when I don't need 'em too) More guards New upgraded grinding booth as Blue Thing finally dragged out of the shed, was fixed up & made to run. Then some idiot gave it a RWC & rego so it could be my new daily hack! Considering I'd just spent 5 months riding a pushbike (registered Twin Cam needed new fuel pump, new rear tyres plus more to get RWC, was a 1st year apprentice at this stage so $$$ were bloody hard to come by. The old Blue Thing was cheaper to fix) 45min (was 60min but nailed it down as I got fitter) to work @ 7am 5 days a week (through a Melbourne winter I might add!) this was extremely welcome, I had thighs of steel but having a heater for those cold mornings is bliss! Vicroads, Vicroads, Vicroads... Things may seem a little muddled time frame wise at about this point... I was going through a few tough patches (well about 8 months worth) where I basically didnt touch the car, didnt think about it & came within a hair of just getting rid of it all when (with help from people close to me) I finally managed to work my way through the issues that had been bothering me & got back into it. This time I'd lost however was going to come back & bite me in the ass with a vengence... :(

Having been present during a few of Tates eating sessions (& been owned myself)...my moneys on him :) With a sight-unseen Evan G not far behind of course :P

Hopefully we'll still be alive when that happens :laff:

Very nice work :y: Is it odd that I'm male & kinda really like that colour? Oh, are the front seats AE80/AE82 items? They just look kinda familiar....

Besides the general impression of going backwards technology-wise: http://www.toysport.com/Technical%20Information/4ag_tech_notes.htm http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Garage/8422/4age/htm?20087

Looking really good man, DIY door trims are the go :y: Love the improvisation re: Kmart towels etc!

If only I could do the work as fast as I type in this thread :no2: The car itself isnt finished yet so it will slow down a bit once I've caught up to current progress. Speaking of which, I'd better get my bum moving to it & keep on sanding/shaping bog!

Here's where the story has some more bad news :( After the 2010 GOR cruise it had come to my attention that despite the replacement doors/guard being installed things still didnt line up quite right & no matter what I did the drivers door still rubbed on the edge of the guard whenever I opened the door. Upon closer inspection/comparison with parts car I found the door frame/A pillar was rather twisted/distorted, residual damage from the incompetent moron in the Mirage :o Not being a professional panel beater/repairer I saw that this was a problem that I was highly unlikely to rectify successfully. At this point I remember sitting down & having a long think about it all (plus a few beers, well QUITE a few beers). :guiness: Things are slightly fuzzy at this point but this is something like how the thought process went: *Looks at Sudi* Hmmm, quite a bit of rust in all the usual spots plus the panel/chassis damage... *Looks at Parts* This car must've been garaged, bugger all rust & things are pretty darn straight... *Looks at Sudi* Mechanicals are all new/less than 20,000kms old... *Looks at Parts* It could do with a new paint job... *Sanity kicks in briefly* I don't have a vast array of painting experience, mostly high-build 2pack primers but man have I done ALOT of sanding & prep-work for painting... *Ego kicks sanity's arse* You can do it man, see what you're capable of & save paying someone to do it for you! :blinks: :excl: :blinks: So the plan was born, strip Parts of every nut, bolt, clip & pin, get rid of rust, respray, install mechanicals & basically have a brand new AE82. Closest thing to a new car I'll have owned :laff: A 4AGTE/4AGZE upgrade was contemplated but having just started the first year of a apprenticeship at this stage it was a dream that'd have to wait. Yes this is a 3yr old girl helping us yank out the windshield, we start 'em on Rollas young around here :P (especially when the father's trying to get her to be a new Ford Mustang fan *shudder*) Victory with removing the wiring loom!! Apparently its no longer my project but my dogs kennel... If you don't like sound deadener as much as I don't, dry ice is the bomb!! There's a thread either here on RC or on Toymods on how to do this so I need say nothing aside from it works & kicks scraping/chemicals into the dirt! Just a few hours work & 12kgs of sound deadener goes into the bin... I figured I'd need/like a way to be able to move the chassis around at any given point so I knocked up a buggy for it to sit on. For about $200 inc beers after construction it has been well worth it, gives me enough height to be able to crawl underneath too.

If you've got yourself ahold of a wiring loom to go with the 4AGE engine it makes slotting it in that much easier. The main ecu is the only computer in the system so it'd just be the EFI specific sensors you'd need to install(pocketable items from local wreckers :wink: ). If you were me (or I was you) I'd be going with the doable-in-a-limited-timeframe option & manualise/bigger carb the 3TC. Get the joy you can from it & if the urge is still there slam in the 4AGE. Oh, for the love of all that is Toyota, PLEASE don't put carbs on a 4AGE!!! :sob:

Is it me seeing things or is that an adjustable camber kit I can spot in the front strut towers?

Yay for progress!!! :dance: :dance: :dance: Engine bay looks clean as, is shiny, is good :yes: Keep up the good work man!

After watching that video I think I made a mess in my pants... :blush: :blush: :blush:

I love playing this game, especially when they cut me off to get ahead then get screwed over by a car wanting to turn right & I pass right by them. I'm not proud to say this but I have.....years ago on my P's I decided to drive home after (quite) a few drinks & did the old "I'll take the back roads home, she'll be right" routine. Turning off the tarmac road onto the gravel back road I noticed a set of headlights following me & fork me if it wasnt a divvy van! WTH, at 3am? Drove along for a few kms thinking that I was going to be pulled over at any second, scared as hell & shaking like a leaf so I dunno how I managed to drive semi-smoothly. Got to the intersection where the road became tarmac again, I turned left, they turned right. I got lucky, that was enough to hit home to me what a complete knob I was doing what I was doing. Just my 2 cents. Have also done my fair share of stupid driving, I try to pick my moments but seeing as what I'm driving atm is a complete poo-bucket I'm waiting to hit the track once the project car's finished. GT5 on PS3 isnt enough to get the urge out of your system!! Oh, isnt it spelt Mark Skaife?

At this stage of the story I'm up to about 12 months ago, a bit more to go to catch the thread up to date. I figured if I was going to start a thread on my ride, I'd best start at the beginning & that would be...2008...I think...when I bought the Twin Cam. Sorry if its a bit of an epic bore, at least I'm not copying my notes straight from the diary I've kept :P While I was still lucky enough to have been working with carbon fibre I had also knocked up a mould for the hatch spoiler (no photos atm). The plug for & the actual front bumper lip to replace the cut-down Cressida plastic item. Mould for bonnet Laminate layup, good fun on a warm evening as I was mixing the epoxy resin in buckets so had to seal the tops & store them in the fridge between layers to stop the stuff exotherming on me. Making a tool that was capable of the high temperature cure cycles of pre-preg material was financially painful so I went with a wet-layup method using a vacuum pump to ensure as void-free a laminate as possible. The normal skeleton thats under the bonnet panel was incorporated into the laminate design, not sure how it would go pedestrian crash safety-wise but I don't drive on the footpath so not relevant :wink: A bit sticky coming out of the tool but that was prob due to me not preparing the small repairs I'd had to do on the tool properly. Test fitment on car, came out nicely! Original bonnet weighs 14.5kgs....this little baby tips the scales at 4.5kgs so after final fitout & paint a touch over 5kgs is the target.

No probs, if it could be modified to fit a hatch & you decide one day you don't want it anymore let me know. :cool:

It does, if you check out one of the photos you can see the hole underneath the fusebox where it normally comes out. I yanked all the standard duct/resonator (?) boxes out when I swapped to the pod filter from the standard airbox after RWC, there's alot of bends & twists in that setup! By the by if you can't find the top half of an AE82 airbox & need one, just grab one from an SV21 Camry & gut the AFM (if equipped), they fit perfectly!! :y: The problem I had running the pipe through there was that I was working with what I could acquire for free & the duct I had didnt fit either through the hole nor underneath the fusebox :( However air intake temps were lower again than when I had the aluminium sheet setup, some nights getting cooler than ambient temperatures by about 2 degrees. This was probably helped by the fact this one had a lid & much more sealed off from hot engine bay air. Oh Sadie...the cleaning lady...... :dippie: :owned: I do like John Farnham but not quite that much :D .The plates have expired so a new name is in the works. This happened after I killed 2 fuel pumps in as many months (first one died so I swapped to the one from the parts car I'd bought, lucky IT worked & I got a few months out of it). Being towed home by a commodore...oh the shame!! :blush: :notimp: :blush:

I had a car with a dents everywhere on the passenger side & the drivers side had the doors from Blue Thing on it. So one afternoon I was wandering around one of the local wreckers looking for replacements plus the drivers guard, (had been quoted $300 for the two doors plus $80 for the guard) when I came across a straight paneled AE82 TC hatch (in white) with no engine, gearbox or front suspension. I wandered back to the office (after a quick call to VicRoads with the chassis number :wink: ) & enquired as to how much they wanted for the whole thing...$220 inc GetStuffedTax as scrap value :wootjump: Done & done! Got it home for less than $350 inc trailer hire, fuel for mates car & a 6 pack of beer at the end of it all. Making room in the shed was fun... So the stripping of bits to fix Sudi began... I managed to get everything swapped over & the car looking neat enough for RollaClubs 2010 GOR Cruise. It was the first that I had been on & I had an absolute ball, fantastic to be around people who don't look at you strangely when you mention you like Corollas :2thumbs: If you look carefully you can see the rear bumper damage in this shot. Note the 4WD behind our cars in this shot... they had been following us for quite a while but sorry Mr Po Po, nothing to see here!! :fuzz:

Man, the stuff I see people pull off in traffic out this way nearly makes me scream some days :bash: To be honest I've never been a fan of kids.... :lolcry: (bad joke?) Nah I have a thing of trying to make a name from the registration plates, they were SDI so Sudi rolled off the tongue nicely. No I never looked it up :no2: Another shot of engine bay coming up! (dodgy phone item) Again the modification bug was biting & to be honest I was a little bit over my shoddy work with the aluminium airbox arrangement. So having been employed where access to carbon fibre was available I started measuring/drawing & eventually knocking up a male plug in the shape I wanted my airbox. About a weeks worth of after-hours work was all that was required to get it all prepared, laid-up, fitted, asssembled & painted. Fitting stage seen here with K&N filter, was last one of its part number at Repco, was $50 instead of $120 & as luck would have it, it was suitable for my application. Score! All fitted, painted & stickered! A mirror I'd also done as a side-project Besides the damage to the drivers side, all was going well...until one rainy morning when I was in a bit too much of a hurry to get to work :( I came around this bend a bit quick, the rear end found a small dip/bounce in the road, unloaded & slid out sideways on me. Alas my rapid on-off-on-throttle/full turn of lock efforts to save it were in vain & I felt the lovely crunch of my car against the steel barrier. That cracked the passenger tail light, dented the rear bumper right on the corner & put a nice dent in the passenger quarter panel :bash: >| :bash: No photos of the car itself as it was due to operator error so shame prevents me. It was a much more sedate drive the rest of the way to work, I almost felt ill :yak: It wasnt so much that it had hit home quite hard that clearly my confidence had far outweighed my ability/judgement. I was struggling alot financially at this point in time as work where I was employed was getting a bit on the quiet/non-existant side so all I was seeing was a problem I couldnt afford to fix.

But wait, there's more..... Had been having a play around with an air temperature sensor mounted inside the intake pipe about 50mm before the throttle body & noticed that my intake temps were usually above the ambient air temperature, sometimes WELL above. It seemded that having a non-enclosed air filter wasnt such a great idea & all I was doing was sucking in hot air from under the bonnet :bash: So I pulled out the tin snips & some 0.5mm aluminium sheet & got stuck in to boxing the pod filter off from the rest of the engine bay. A few pop rivets & a length of industrial dust collector hose acting as a pickup behind the lower bumper grille later I was recording much lower intake air temps, cannot say I felt anything in regard to a performance increase but the peace of mind of the reduced chance of detonation was nice to have. Crude but effective. The next thing on the list of things to change was the exhaust manifold. From the measurements I had taken from a set from Genie (that came with the spares for the car) was that they were pretty much a copy of the factory item except being steel tube instead of cast iron meant that they were a great deal lighter, always a good thing in my book! Installing them did require a bit of cut n shut to get them to line up to my existing system using a primary pipe from an unknown vehicle. This was because the flange on these headers was effectively rotated 45 degrees (RWD item maybe?) from what the orientation of the standard items flange was. There was a noticable difference in exhaust note after it was all fitted but that may have just been because I replaced every exhaust gasket while I was there & sealed any leaks I (more than likely) had beforehand. :doh:

This car is neat as! I easpecially like the front strut brace that goes around the air cleaner element as I've seen a few where clearance has been a problem :-( Keep up the good work & keep hounding the missus to let you do stuff!

Happy days! I couldnt help but notice earlier you mentioned a half cage....any spares laying around?

Hot pink is the go! Depends on your tastes I guess. As for wheels I just threw a set of 14" CS-X rims onto mine, they were painted black with the lip left silver & helped the look for not much cash. I have never had a stock parcel shelf so I can't speak for their structural integrity but if in doubt the stronger item is a good idea. MDF + jigsaw = Fun!! 12-16mm should do nicely.

Awesome ride, I was lucky enough to be in the passenger seat on Tates wedding day & it felt like a potent little rocket! Glad to see someone flying the flag for FWD hatches on a racetrack! :party: Congrats on your results too, I'd love to see the faces of the people walking back to their much-more-dollars-spent cars thinking "I just got beaten by a what?!?!"

Understatement of the year! :lolcry: :lolcry: :lolcry: Cheers dude! :wave: Keep puttering along enjoying the car & it starts going a bit pear shaped...well squished pear shaped. I managed to rear end a Honda Odyssey (fortunately an earlier model so the parts were cheaper) which stopped when I thought it was going to go. I learned how to spray paint in a real hurry as I bought them a new rear bar & sprayed it in a metallic green with purple pearl & clear coat. Had never done this before & probably had more confidence in my abilities that they deserved but had no runs & after I fitted it to their car the owner was happy enough with it. On Sudi tho I had to replace the passenger headlight, park light, grille, bumper & bumper indicator but as no insurance co. involved it was lucky they were nice & I had spares! The next incident involved my car, a partially open door & a mitsubishi mirage who decided driving in the gutter was a better option than the tarmac provided. Hit my door which dragged along the side of their car until it hit my front guard & wrecked that too. I wont go into details as it got all legal/messy, its all settled now but I'm still peeved about it all. Here's some shots finally though: So having grabbed a few bits from Blue Thing to make the car drivable again I was out at a house inspection (which later that day turned out I didnt need be at after all) & when I returned I found Sudi not exactly as I had parked her, more than likely without the now smashed in quarter panel/rear drivers door & definitely no note from the offending twit who can't drive! Car WAS parallel to the kerb

Once Sudi (no meaning, just liked the sound of it as its name) passed RWC it became the daily & Blue Thing was banished to the backyard, to possibly be used for spares. Having just laid out a large amount of cash, time & effort I followed the engine run-in schedule to the letter, to complete the amount of kms before the final step I drove her to my sisters place in Adelaide for Christmas...via the Great Ocean Road. Sitting on the same rpm on the highway for long time not cool, either for the engine or my hearing as the drone from the muffler made me resort to using earplugs on the way home. Also may have upset my sister a little as I basically arrived & started an oil/filter/spark plug change in her driveway as soon as the engine cooled. *Note* Pretend to be interested in family members photo albumns! This trip was backed up in the following February (as there had been no issues with new engine thankfully) by a trip to Calder Park Dragway, as I was curious to see what these little things could do. Turns out when you remove the interior to shed a little weight & fiddle with tyre pressures/launch rpm you can dust off a VN Calais with a V8 & auto trans quite nicely! That timeslips a keeper! :cool: Drag racing is not what I have in mind but was good fun to do & let me know exactly how fast my car was. Faster than I expected an NA, 4 cylinder FWD to be at any rate! Over time the bug for modifying/improving bit harder & harder (plus driving it around stock was not as exciting as it was when I first moved on from Blue Thing) so eventually it was shopping time. New KYB shocks were ordered for all 4 corners, with new dust boots and every single suspension bush was also replaced with polyurethane items. That alone was an epic session over Fri/Sat & part of Sunday morning ( :y: dfunkt for assistance :y: ) fitting it all along with the lowered springs that came with the car. Had a wheel alignment booked for the Sunday morning & rolled in only 15mins late! :happy: However enroute to a RC Arthurs Seat Cruise straight afterI heard a nasty noise coming from my rear passenger wheel...upon inspection I discovered that the knobs at KMart T&A in Sunshine hadnt torqued up my wheel nuts AT ALL & I was able to fit my finger between the inside of the rim & the brake disc hub :sob: Having been exploring the new handling traits of the car on the way there I felt a little bit sick at the thought of the wheel coming off a few mins earlier...Yes the KMart store manager did get torn a new one the next day, I got another alignment done for free (wheel nuts torqued correctly this time) & my money back, but never going there again. Had been looking around for rear strut braces but not really having much luck & being lucky enough to have at the time a job working with carbon fibre I took it upon myself to make one out of the stuff. Again, sorry no photos from this point in time. After a bit of mucking around I did manage to get a prototype installed into my car. It did make the car feel that little bit stiffer in the rear when cornering & from seat of the pants feeling gave some extra confidence in the cars stability. Sadly my "road testing" may have gotten a bit enthusiastic as I hadnt factored in the amount of body flex into my design & quite simply broke the bugger. A version 2 was designed & base components built but sadly is still sitting around awaiting assembly. Have changed careers sadly so access to things for me aint what it used to be :(