Ken

I haven't got much work done in the last couple of weeks. I have been too busy with work and house stuff. I did get shocks and a new clutch slave cylinder. Now I just have to get them installed. Next up will be a new master cylinder. The front struts are okay, but I will most likely cut some coils out of the springs. Right now, the stock ride height is almost truck-like. Eventually, the cut springs will be replaced with actual lowering springs. I have been keeping my eye out for a cheap MK1 MR2 or an early 80s corolla to steal suspension parts from. I did get the carb linkage all sorted out and fit the intake on to make sure the linkage would work and not bind. I will need a new manual choke cable as the old one is rusted solid. That is not that hard to find, luckily. So here is the update for now.

Okay, worked all day saturday on the roofing project. Went to a going away party for a co-worker that night. I got home really late 1 AM. About 3 AM, I hear... drip, drip, drip... Yup, roof had a leak. Got a bucket and went and for the leak. Got the bucket under it just as the floodgates opened. Unfortunately, it was raining cats and dogs outside and the plastic had blown off part of the roof. Needless to say I did not get much sleep on saturday night. That in course wiped me out for sunday. I did get the yard mowed and a couple of other things done, but I could not get up the energy and drive to go work on the car. Maybe later this week.

The Landcruiser is one of the last straight sixes. The stump pulling engines. Unforunately, the previous owner ran it after the water pump went. He didn't seize the engine, but he cause a bit of damage to all the front accessories. As far as location, I am smack dab in the center of the country in the wonderful state of Oklahoma. I did get some more work done on the cars kind of. The accelerator linkage needed a few pieces that were not in the box. I searched high and low, went to all the autoparts stores around me, salvage yards, I even tried some local mechanics, no luck. Finally, I went to a VW repair place right down the street from me. They suggest a shop to go check. I walked in and showed the guy at the counter and he immediately knew what I needed. Five minutes later I walked out of the shop with the part. The intake manifold and carb are ready for installation. I hope to get it on sunday night. I though I might hook up some sort of gravity feed gas source and try to start the sucker sunday night. If I do, there will definitely be a video made of the start.

I can justify that kind of money for a real car, the wife would have a problem if she knew I spent that much for a model.... Of course, she would have to know first Gonna have to start saving the pennies!!!!

Looks like this might be 'the' 250 to own. Between Fujimi and Hasagawa(sp???) this just about rounds it out. Now if we can just get them to do a 275!!!

The cars right now are stored over at a friend's commercial property about 20 mins or so from my house. Nick, if you are serious, start with craigslist and then go from there. I will keep my eye out for more, if for nothing else than parts for mine. I am sure that my car's previous owner would sell you one of the starlets. He told me the landcruiser was for sale for 1000$... it needs about 1500$ worth of work though. He sold the 58 ford a couple of weeks ago. I got all the other photogs at work keeping their eye out for celicas.

Okay, here are some pics from this evening. I stopped by real quick to grab one of the seats to play with. Here she is with the 'new' front sheetmetal hung. I need to do some fitting work, but at least she looks like a car again. Here are the floorboards minus carpet, I still have to try and get that factory undercoat off. Don't worry the 'rust' colored stuff in the second pic is actually dirt and insulation.

Even with ten days off I did not get much done to the cars. I did get half my house re-roofed. That is a story in itself... I never knew a roof could support soooo many shingles The final day of my vacation the wife let me go play with the cars. I got the old intake off and started fitting the new intake and sidedraft. I have a couple more pieces to fabricate, but it will go on without really much hassle. I ripped out the carpet in the front and got a good look at the floorboards. Everything looks great there as well. I got some junkyard seats from a wrecked 91 celica and started to fit them. It will take a lot of fabrication, but they will work as well. Basically, I need to figure out how to fit the seat rails from the stock seats to the 91 celica seats. Otherwise they sit way too high. None the less, I did climb in and test them out... complete with sound effects and everything. Next on the list is new shocks and struts along with brake rebuilds. The gas tank looks pretty good, but I may still have it cleaned at a radiator shop just to be safe. The radiator itself looks to be in decent shape. When I removed the intake manifold, the car puked nice bright green fluid every where. I already know that the engine turns over fine. A month or so ago, we hooked jumper cables up to it and turned her over a couple of times. All the dash lights came on as well. I will need a new intake gasket when I get to that point. Still haven't found better bumpers, but I haven't really looked either.

I don't go there really. It was posted on another forum I visit www.japanesenostalgiccar.com... or it may have be www.1stgencelica.com either way it is way outa sight!!!

Classic Japanese. There are plenty of kits to chose from. Some are a bit harder to find than others. I got my celica, in 1:1, 1/25th and 1/20th. I would love to see a 'donked' 510

One of the best cars I ever owned was a 73 Dodge Dart with a 318 2 barrel. I beat the snot out of that car and it continued to run. I later sold it and the only thing the next owners replaced was the carb. My 69 dart with a 273 was just as good. My grandmothers both had Dodge/Plymouth products and they ran like tops. One was a 70 Duster 340 and the other one was a Fury 3 four door with a 440 and torqueflite. I just thing that newer cars aren't built as well. My company car, a 2004 tahoe has had numerous problems. The biggest is the dash cluster going. We have had to replace the dash clusters in every Tahoe the company has bought. I think we are up to 25 dashes. GM will not do snot to help out. The Blazer I had before the Tahoe was just as bad. I had less than 3000 miles on it, it was only two months old and all the bolts on the water pump pulley gave way... at 2AM!!!! in the bad part of town.

I think this guy is just as crazy as you are... of course I mean crazy in a really, really cool way!! http://www.scale4x4rc.org/forums/showthread.php?t=21715 Sorry in advance if this has been posted before

The japanese market celicas came with bumpers just like you describe. In the celica community, they are called "Smiley" bumpers. Unfortunately, they cost quite a bit to import. Decent ones go for over 500$ Really good ones go for twice that I am gonna look for a 71-74 celica in a junkyard as those have the 'smiley' bumpers and they will fit mine with a bit of modification. I am hoping I can find a pair for a hundred bucks or so.

Yeah, I know about just dashes, rebuild will cost about 500$ so it will wait a bit. The white one has a dash cap right now, so that will have to do. Here are some pics of the carb and intake. I keep pulling it out of the box to stare at it and make vroom, vroom noises Reroofing in the house right now, so the car will have to wait

The landcruiser is for sale for 1000$, but it needs about 1500$ worth of work on it. No real updates as of yet. I pulled most of the front body panels off of the brown one to check for repairs. The driver's side fender was fine. The passenger's fender will need some rust repair on the bottom. I may just do what I can and look for a fender without all the rust. Bought a taillight to replace the one broken one... it was broken on both cars. Bought some fender vents, because all eight of mine were bad. I have bids in on hood to fender bumpers and stops, also bidding on some window regulator bushings. Bought a weber carb off of Ebay for 50.00$ Talking to the previous owner today and I tell him about the weber I bought(downdraft) and he says.... "Would you rather have a sidedraft? I have a sidedraft with linkage and manifold that I bought and never installed. They are still in the boxes up in the loft. I would be willing to sell them to you..." After picking my jaw off the floor, I asked how much would they run me... 200$ SOLD!!!! Then he pulls me aside and digs through one of his tool chests. He pulls out a TRD camshaft spec sheet. "I got this up there too if you are interested." "Yes, I am interested, but not right now" He says no worry, it is not going anywhere. I will have some pics eventually of the parts in primer. I will definitely post pics of the NOS weber carb and intake when I get them. Oh yeah, I did score this off of the Bay as well. Probably paid too much, but it was an impluse buy... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...y0%3D%26fvi%3D1 I have vacation from wednesday of this week to the monday after July 4th. Most of it will be spent re-roofing my house. Whatever I have left will be spent with the celica. Hopefully, I will get the gas tank re-installed and at least start her.

I don't think that you could do a 'Dice and Slice' number on this car. If I remember correctly, one of the remarkable things about this car is that the 'cloth' is Kevlar fabric. I may be mistaken though.

It is a 280Z, not a ZX!! I imagine that he would want a fair price for it. I looked at two 280Zs before I found this deal. Neither car ran, but both were all there. Price was just like this one, 500$ I have no idea if they are still for sale. Who knows, when I get done with my parts car, I imagine that it would make a great starting point for a project car. I spent a little time on saturday with the cars. Except for the lower rear quarters, the brown car is very solid. Almost a shame to use it for parts... of course the lack of a title makes up for that Transport is arranged for this week. Then I can tear out the interiors and decide what to do first... Oh yeah, they are not civics or corollas... they are Starlets, three to be exact! There are two blue ones way in the back of the pic. There is also a black 57 Ford, looks like a moonshiner's car. He has another 57 Ford stored inside as well.

The dash pads are the only part of the interior that will need some help. Most of the other bits will just need some clean up. Nice thing about having the extra car is I have two of each to chose from Rick, I have been frequenting the classic-celica.com board lately and it is amazing how many of these there are up in the Portland/Seattle area. I know I don't see them really at all around here.

Mal, that is a brand new office building that they are building, but some of the houses in that neighborhood make it look small!!! Yes, the dash pads are cracked, but one only has a couple of cracks. The other one is wasted!!

So is all the color on it in the decals? If so, I wish you luck! Looks like you got a great start.

The plan right now is to get one up and running. modification will come later. There is a celica rotting away across the street from me. It has the 22R motor. I will have an extra 20R motor to mash it with if I can get the owner to let go of it. The 22R block with the 20R head is the way to go with these without doing a major engine swap. The wheels are already turning in my head.

Well, this is gonna make Brian jealous, but I thought I would share anyway. I just bought myself a new project... Actually, two projects. Definitely not minty. I have been trying to replace my first car for about 5 years now. I have been searching high and low. About 2 months ago one of the guys here at work tells me about these two. I tried to call the shop they sit behind and get no response. He stops by last week and gets the 'I am going to restore it some day' reply. I figured that would be the reply. Surprisingly, he gets a call this morning. The owner says that he has too many projects already and would like to sell the celica. Unfortunately, it is a package deal. Both cars and all the parts he has collected. When my friend finds out the price he calls me immediately.... Get this... 500.00$ for both cars and a truckload of parts. I take possession on monday. My friend will let me store them at his shop. I have checked the cars out and the floorboards are good. The white car has a title, the brown car does not. That is okay as I plan to use the same plan the gentleman I bought them from had. The brown car will be a donor for the white car. I did a quick check and most of the parts missing on the white car are solid on the brown car. The dash pads are the only questionable item. Here are some more pics... I have to say, that I am giddy as a school girl. I can not wait to start on this one. Oh yeah, he also offered me a 20R motor with 25,000 miles on it for 250.00$

Actually, the Nazi symbols are outlawed in Germany for sure and maybe most of Europe. The model companies do not show the swastika on the boxes so that they do not have to print different copies of the art work and the box tops. The swastikas are usually included on the decal sheets, but they are cut apart in pieces. That way they get around the law, since it is not an actual swastika on the decal sheet. The model is then left with the decision to either piece together the swastika or leave them off. The model companies can offer an authentic replica and not offend anyone's feelings. Most aftermarket decal sheets offer complete swastikas for those too lazy to piece the kit ones together. Yes, the swastika was around before the Nazis. Many early people used the symbol to represent hope and eternity. It was the Nazis that corrupted it into something bad.

I would drill through a caribou's head right now to get at the oil in ANWR. Seals? They will stay away from my rig off the coast of Cali or I will shoot them Don't even get me started on global warming... wait, the earth is cooling now, so it is global climate change... or the lie that is ethanol... One thing that I have learned during my stay in journalism is that money talks way better than the actual truth

Hey James, how did you achieve that finish on the exhaust manifolds? It looks super realistic!!! Great job on the rest of the details.