My 1978 TE51 Build

October 7, 20196 yr

Hey all, this is my 1978 TE51 Corolla SR5. I Bought her from a college student in 2012 as a running project. I drove her for a few years and then I parked her about 2 years ago to begin restoring her. She’s was in fair shape, the kid had used her as a shop class project and threw a hilarious paint job on it. Dark blue metallic with baby blue metallic flames from the front to mid Hood and a set of racing stripes on the roof and hatch. She was an ugly old pig and my dad made the joke “that cars so ugly it can’t be a girl” so I called my old Corolla, “Gary” Once I began tearing to down for rebuild I decided she could once again be referred to as a girl again since the sweet flame/stripe job was gone(thank god) I pulled the 2TC and tore it down. Had the block hot tanked and the head slightly milled. It’s running Stainless Valves and Dual Valve springs. The rocker assembly has been balanced by Vicious Machine. It has Arias pistons and Eagle rods. The cam was made but Engle Cams, who was really great to deal with! I was originally going to run four, one barrel Mikuni carbs with a custom runner setup but decided the Sniper EFI System would be a lot more reliable. The exhaust header was made by a local fabricator named George Smith who also made the intake runners that were going to be used for my mikuni setup. I am going to ask him to make me a Le-Mans style oil pan for the car as wel, but that will be much later. The car had to be stripped to bare metal as i didn’t want any rust or bondo to escape my eye, there was also a boatload of bondo in the doors where the kid had attempted to fill the dents. I can honestly say that the passenger door had half a gallon of filler on it. The engine is done and waiting to be installed while I work on the body in my spare time. The trans is out and being gone through by a friend who will then powder coat it gloss black. I’m still undecided on what rear diff I want to go with, not that there’s a ton of options out there but if needs be i can always use a ford 9in with he axles cut down, reliable and easy to find. Some of these pics are a few months old and are not in any kind of order. Once I get the body in primer I’ll get a few pics of it.