Hi, my name is Evan and I own a '73 TA22 celica. I live in Tasmania, Australia. I have owned my celica for at least 15 years and it is highly modified.
Engine:
4AGE FWD converted to RWD
Samoto pod filter.
Custom equal length extractors
Suspension:
Front:
T3 weld on coilovers
Eibach 6kg springs
AGX KYB short stroke shocks 4way adjustable
T3 camber plates
Pedders 22mm sway bar
all rubber bushes replaced with urathane bushes
Ke71 Corolla steering rack conversion
Rear:
Pedders Comfort gas shocks
Pedders lowered coils (one coil cut off)
T3 rose jointed (heim) adjustable 4 link arms
T3 rose jointed (heim) adjustable panhard bar.
Gearbox:
Toyota Supra w55 box with bellhousing to suit 4AGE (supplied by Dellow Australia)
Diff:
Toyota hilux Shortened diff with 4.1:1 ratio (supplied by Keysbough Diffs Australia)
(single piece tail shaft)
Brakes:
Front: are slotted DBA rotors from a Proton Gen2, 60 series landcruser 4pot calipers with custom aluminium brakets
Rear: are solid VR Commodore rear discs and calipers (ordered with the diff)
Wheels:
Performance Challenger wheels 14x7, 0 offset all round
Body:
Custom mix yellow 2pak paint
Deleted boot lid lock
Deleted some badges and sill chrome stripes
swapped side repeaters with magna tear drop items and relocated the to behind front wheel arch
swapped front ember indicators with clear ones.
Front chin spoiler
GT grille
Fender mirrors
Flat tail lights
Long hood vents.
Cut out all rust and fabricated with new metal
Interior:
Saas racing reclining bucket seats with original TA22 tops grafted to the top.
New black plush pile carpet
Custom made centre console
Retrimmed to GT spec, Black vinyl with Red detail stitching.
Clarion Head unit
Alpine 6x9 rears and 6.5 splits front
10" Alpine sub woofer
Two amplifers can't remember what they are.
Here is what it looked like when I bought it.
I drove it around like this right through my college years slowly modifing thing when they broke. Some of the thing I did was:
Replaced the suspension rubbers with nolathan bushes
Replaced original springs with Pedders heavy duty lowered springs and shocks
cut out and replaced rusted panels around front and rear screens, both sills, behind both rear wheels, and the bottom of both front guards.
Put second hand performance Challenger wheels on.
The car was starting to lok respectable when this happened....
It doesn't look to bad from this angle but.....
This side it was a right off...
So this started the hunt for another car. After several weeks looking this is what I found.
This car had a straight body but everything bolted to the body was curse word. So i started to strip the two cars down and use the best of the two to make one good one.
While I had the car in peices I decided to fix the rust and give it a lick of paint.
I also tried my hand at fixing my cracked dash, here is the finish product.
This was what it looked like all back together, The paint wasn't great, and the panel gap where off but I had to rush to finish it because the other car curse word it self.
Anyway I drove the car like this for another couple of years until the engine finally packed it in. I had a couple of choices rebuild the 2T single cam with twin carbs or bite the bullet and get something EFI. EFI it was and a 4AGE fwd front cut was sitting in my local wrecker.
I don't have any photo's of the conversion as I lost them when my computer got wiped.
I had to convert the engine to rwd and sort out the wiring and the engine mounts. The convertion was straight forward with little to no hassels.
From this point I have been slowly replacing bits with stronger, better ones.
First to go was the gearbox the old split case cried enough. So I ordered a W55 supra box from Dellow Gearboxes to bolt straight up to my 4AGE.
Then the diff went. So I ordered a diff from keysbough diffs, I got a Hilux 4.1:1 ratio, LSD, shortened, with Commodore VR disc brakes and all the celica bracket, to bolt straight in. I also got the tailshaft made to lenght with the right uni's to bolt it all up.
Then the brakes and steering...
The rotors are DBA slotted ones for a Gen 2 Proton. The 4 pot calipers are off a 60 series Landcruiser. and to bolt them all I have made up a billet bracket made from aluminium
This is my diagram for the machinest to make the bracket.
The rack and pinion steering was next. All parts were sourced from a KE71 corolla. Rack, engine cross member, and steering column. The brackets were cut off the crossmember and welded to the TA22 crossmember. Then the two columns were pulled apart and the corolla bottom was mated to the celica top. The rack was shortened to the right measurements. Then there was about a month of tring to locate the rack so as to stop bump streer. Once the bump steer was stopped everything was welded up and the result was very precise steering.
This is working out the amount to cut off the rack.
When I finish the brakes the pedel was very spongy, so I ordered a Pajero Master cylinder. This will bolt straight on to the original TA22 booster. The rubber that sealed the cylinder to the booster was cut down a bit to fit.
New and Old.
I also made up a bracket to mount up an overflow bottle as the radiator I got which is out of an early sprinter didn't have one.
Now I was back to modifing the body. The first was the clear indicators front, and remove and relocate the side one for tear drop magna ones to behind the front wheel arch.
Then the bonnet vent were found and bought
and then the GT grille, which when I got it it had a lot of surface rust and needed to be restored.
The badge was broken and missing the plate that bolted it to the grille.
The finish product. Polished chrome and badge, repainted in matte black, and made a new plate of the badge.
The chin spoiler was next, and I had to cut the mounting brackets off an old valance and glue them to the fiberglass spoiler in the right spots. Then I reshaped it to fit nice, and painted it. To finish it off some flexable, stick on chrome striping was applied to the top edge.
The next mod is the fender mirrors. I seached the net for months chasing down these shorter solid mounted mirrors, evenually finding them from a guy in Thialand.
the final body mod was the flat tail light conversion, to get them to fit, I cut out a thin peice of metal either side of the light hole in the body. Then used cement putty to glue studs to the back of the center panel so I could bolt it to the body. The last thing is the plug in the tail light need to change to a '73 plug which is bigger than the '72 plug.
This is what the car looks like body wise now...
I am in the process of reupoholster to interior to GT trim specification like this picture....
This is what I have done so far...
Rear Seat
The front bucket seats are getting the original Celica tops put on to them
Drivers Door Trim.
Engine:
4AGE FWD converted to RWD
Samoto pod filter.
Custom equal length extractors
Suspension:
Front:
T3 weld on coilovers
Eibach 6kg springs
AGX KYB short stroke shocks 4way adjustable
T3 camber plates
Pedders 22mm sway bar
all rubber bushes replaced with urathane bushes
Ke71 Corolla steering rack conversion
Rear:
Pedders Comfort gas shocks
Pedders lowered coils (one coil cut off)
T3 rose jointed (heim) adjustable 4 link arms
T3 rose jointed (heim) adjustable panhard bar.
Gearbox:
Toyota Supra w55 box with bellhousing to suit 4AGE (supplied by Dellow Australia)
Diff:
Toyota hilux Shortened diff with 4.1:1 ratio (supplied by Keysbough Diffs Australia)
(single piece tail shaft)
Brakes:
Front: are slotted DBA rotors from a Proton Gen2, 60 series landcruser 4pot calipers with custom aluminium brakets
Rear: are solid VR Commodore rear discs and calipers (ordered with the diff)
Wheels:
Performance Challenger wheels 14x7, 0 offset all round
Body:
Custom mix yellow 2pak paint
Deleted boot lid lock
Deleted some badges and sill chrome stripes
swapped side repeaters with magna tear drop items and relocated the to behind front wheel arch
swapped front ember indicators with clear ones.
Front chin spoiler
GT grille
Fender mirrors
Flat tail lights
Long hood vents.
Cut out all rust and fabricated with new metal
Interior:
Saas racing reclining bucket seats with original TA22 tops grafted to the top.
New black plush pile carpet
Custom made centre console
Retrimmed to GT spec, Black vinyl with Red detail stitching.
Clarion Head unit
Alpine 6x9 rears and 6.5 splits front
10" Alpine sub woofer
Two amplifers can't remember what they are.
Here is what it looked like when I bought it.
I drove it around like this right through my college years slowly modifing thing when they broke. Some of the thing I did was:
Replaced the suspension rubbers with nolathan bushes
Replaced original springs with Pedders heavy duty lowered springs and shocks
cut out and replaced rusted panels around front and rear screens, both sills, behind both rear wheels, and the bottom of both front guards.
Put second hand performance Challenger wheels on.
The car was starting to lok respectable when this happened....
It doesn't look to bad from this angle but.....
This side it was a right off...
So this started the hunt for another car. After several weeks looking this is what I found.
This car had a straight body but everything bolted to the body was curse word. So i started to strip the two cars down and use the best of the two to make one good one.
While I had the car in peices I decided to fix the rust and give it a lick of paint.
I also tried my hand at fixing my cracked dash, here is the finish product.
This was what it looked like all back together, The paint wasn't great, and the panel gap where off but I had to rush to finish it because the other car curse word it self.
Anyway I drove the car like this for another couple of years until the engine finally packed it in. I had a couple of choices rebuild the 2T single cam with twin carbs or bite the bullet and get something EFI. EFI it was and a 4AGE fwd front cut was sitting in my local wrecker.
I don't have any photo's of the conversion as I lost them when my computer got wiped.
I had to convert the engine to rwd and sort out the wiring and the engine mounts. The convertion was straight forward with little to no hassels.
From this point I have been slowly replacing bits with stronger, better ones.
First to go was the gearbox the old split case cried enough. So I ordered a W55 supra box from Dellow Gearboxes to bolt straight up to my 4AGE.
Then the diff went. So I ordered a diff from keysbough diffs, I got a Hilux 4.1:1 ratio, LSD, shortened, with Commodore VR disc brakes and all the celica bracket, to bolt straight in. I also got the tailshaft made to lenght with the right uni's to bolt it all up.
Then the brakes and steering...
The rotors are DBA slotted ones for a Gen 2 Proton. The 4 pot calipers are off a 60 series Landcruiser. and to bolt them all I have made up a billet bracket made from aluminium
This is my diagram for the machinest to make the bracket.
The rack and pinion steering was next. All parts were sourced from a KE71 corolla. Rack, engine cross member, and steering column. The brackets were cut off the crossmember and welded to the TA22 crossmember. Then the two columns were pulled apart and the corolla bottom was mated to the celica top. The rack was shortened to the right measurements. Then there was about a month of tring to locate the rack so as to stop bump streer. Once the bump steer was stopped everything was welded up and the result was very precise steering.
This is working out the amount to cut off the rack.
When I finish the brakes the pedel was very spongy, so I ordered a Pajero Master cylinder. This will bolt straight on to the original TA22 booster. The rubber that sealed the cylinder to the booster was cut down a bit to fit.
New and Old.
I also made up a bracket to mount up an overflow bottle as the radiator I got which is out of an early sprinter didn't have one.
Now I was back to modifing the body. The first was the clear indicators front, and remove and relocate the side one for tear drop magna ones to behind the front wheel arch.
Then the bonnet vent were found and bought
and then the GT grille, which when I got it it had a lot of surface rust and needed to be restored.
The badge was broken and missing the plate that bolted it to the grille.
The finish product. Polished chrome and badge, repainted in matte black, and made a new plate of the badge.
The chin spoiler was next, and I had to cut the mounting brackets off an old valance and glue them to the fiberglass spoiler in the right spots. Then I reshaped it to fit nice, and painted it. To finish it off some flexable, stick on chrome striping was applied to the top edge.
The next mod is the fender mirrors. I seached the net for months chasing down these shorter solid mounted mirrors, evenually finding them from a guy in Thialand.
the final body mod was the flat tail light conversion, to get them to fit, I cut out a thin peice of metal either side of the light hole in the body. Then used cement putty to glue studs to the back of the center panel so I could bolt it to the body. The last thing is the plug in the tail light need to change to a '73 plug which is bigger than the '72 plug.
This is what the car looks like body wise now...
I am in the process of reupoholster to interior to GT trim specification like this picture....
This is what I have done so far...
Rear Seat
The front bucket seats are getting the original Celica tops put on to them
Drivers Door Trim.
Which is far to new for my liking.
