2ZZ powerrrrr..... The Celica journey.

[Mux213]

So after years of living in Australia and having boring cars, I had reasons to downsize and maybe get something a little more fun...

Hachis are prohibitively expensive now... Kinda makes me wish I had parked mine in a garage when I moved overseas but alas.... So getting one again is sadly not a realistic option...

I've owned two AE92s since moving down here and regret selling the second one which was a really fun car to own. Even those are now skyrocketing in price. Then going slightly newer the cars become boring...

It left two options if I wanted to stick with Toyota. One is the 2ZZ powered Corolla Sportivo that was fairly popular over here, but good ones again are expensive and cheap ones are BAD....

The other option is the 2ZZ powered 7th Gen Toyota Celica. I've kinda ignored this car over the years with only the GT4 sparking an interest, but then a mate of mine forwarded me an add for a car that needed a bunch of TLC but may be a good base.





So yeah, I guess I'll be having some fun fixing this up...

[banpei]

Nice to see you back in a fun car!

[Mux213]

(09-13-2022 03:41 PM)banpei Wrote:  Nice to see you back in a fun car!

You have no idea how big the smile on my face is every time I drive this :0

[Mux213]

So this weekend Adam came round with some tools and we put the Celica on some jack stands and gave her a full service.

Got my son involved so he can learn how to look after the car as well





Gearbox is still a little winny but fresh gear oil (and properly filled up gear oil) is doing wonders. Will eventually be swapping out a fresher unit.

Ordered a second hand sunroof replacement, once thats in it's time to pull part of the interior apart and fix the sunroof.

[banpei]

Looks like a whole lot of fun!
I'd wish my son would be equally interested in helping me out. But who knows, maybe soon my daughter will help out her dad instead.

[Mux213]

So I didn't really get to take good pictures but a week or two ago my son and I replaced the sunroof and repainted the roof.

So this is our replacement sunroof. 2nd hand but in a lot better condition than our old one:


I think this was just before we dropped the old sunroof out.


Removing all the trim was easy and straight forward, getting the drain pipes off was a PITA, especially the back ones were stuck. Dropping the roof out was just a matter of unbolting a lot of this.

Getting the new one back in on the other hand was a PITA. Lining it up while lifting this heavy SOB up.....

But we managed:


That is also with the roof repainted, sadly I didn't take photos there. For a rattle can job I'm pretty happy with the end result, slight orange peal and didn't prep one or two spots properly but you really don't see it unless you look up close. We'll tackle the front bumper soon too as it's in bad shape paint wise. That said, the long term plan is to repaint the entire car properly in a year or two. Thinking about going matt black then.

Finally, this was the damage on the old sunroof:

I wonder why it stopped working...

This all said, I'm not out of the woods yet, with the recent rain we noticed the drains aren't working properly. There are a few other things higher on the priority list, the car is parked dry and we're heading into Australias famously sunny summers, but I eventually plan to strip the interior fully and see if I can fix that all properly.

[banpei]

That looks a whole lot better than the old rusty one! That reminds me of the heap of rust that used to be my sunroof on my first AE86!