'96 Celica GT Four - ST205 - Awake for 2023

[Blown_Imp]

The atacama is flipping chilly you bellend! Hahaha

[Blown_Imp]

Busy week, back to work, prepping for house viewings and trying to get some Celica work done. Feeling pretty drilled to be honest

Either way, here is the progress.

Tubes re-made in steel for the diff yoke, these were ally and pretty poorly made. The new ones are ace, the standard of work that the Machine shop is capable of still astounds me, all on a manual machine too


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The drilled holes were not even concentric on the ally ones



My anti roll bar bushes arrived today too, I have been hunting for some ST205 specific ones with larger bore as my ARB's are 22 and 20mm. I came to a dead end for the front, but did find some universal ones. For the same price as ST205 specific ones (stock dia), these some with zinc plate and passivated brackets, nice

Holes re-tapped to clean out the paint



Front in



Rear in



Also in the batch of parcels, was my V-Band clamps for the exhaust. Very pleased with the quality of them too, £13 each!

I cut off he scabby old flanges, the bolts had to be cut out too, sad to see mild steel flanges on such an otherwise good quality exhaust.



The ends were linished square, de-burred, de-scaled, rubbed with emery, de-greased. It's all in the prep with TIG



ZAP



The other flange was also done to match, then clamped up to see how they looked





In hindsight, I will clamp the two flanged together for welding, the two halves has distorted slightly in the heat. Nothing drastic, just need a little persuasion to go together now that's all

I have also received more polyurethane and some pistons for the calipers, so hopefully we will see some subframe action tomorrow (time dependent) and calipers being finished

J

[Rich]

Those V band dooberies look lovely good stuff!

[Blown_Imp]

Thanks Rich :-)

I have been itching to use vbands somewhere for ages, you kind of need to fabricate them in though!

[Blown_Imp]

Little bit more today, between a house viewing, walking the dogs, visits from friends (mostly playing with children ) etc.

I have started to build up the rear subframe, plenty to do here with some parts that I have missed when painting and some nuts / bolts that really need to be renewed.
The diff yoke needed some extra support, so I have utilised the aluminium washers under the bushes to make sure there is full contact. As they arrived, about 20% was unsupported.



The holes for the subframe studs had their threads cleaned, being M14 also meant that I got to use the big tap handle for the first time



Then the subframe was loosely bolted in place, I need to get two more of the cups that secure the main subframe bushes and then give them all a clean / coat of paint.
The exhaust was also put into place, just so that I can see how it will look So this is where we are at the end of the day -









And a shot of the rear, that silencer is just how I like it can't wait to see it with the bumper on!



So this week I need to weld a new flex into the mid part of the exhaust system, clean the rest of it up and fit it too. The diff needs fitting and can be closely followed by the prop. I will also look at fitting the suspension arms and possibly struts / hubs depending on how I get on

J

[lewis]

This is going to be a stunning car when it's done.

[Blown_Imp]

Thanks Lewis It won't be perfect but it will be pretty bloody good!

[brunotheuno]

Been reading the updates for a while now. An incredible journey through some tough times. This car will be incredible when it's finished. Can. Not. Wait.

[TerraRoot]

Jan 10, 2016 19:40:37 GMT Blown_Imp said:

won't be perfect

nuts to that man, looking perfect from where i'm sitting.

[benjy_b]

Stunning work!

I apologise if I've missed it, but are you using any underbody protection on the car? I love the look of a body coloured underside.

[Blown_Imp]

The paint is over the original Toyota stonechip, a highly rubbery substance that is so well adhered that I did not want to try and remove it!
I will give the paint a coat of clear drying wax, probably Dinitrol HP or something like that?

And thank you for the kind words again, always nice to be gee'ed on by others We have had some curse word times, hopefully this year will be a lot better!

J

[Blown_Imp]

Evening chaps

Managed to get a little bit done today, yesterday was a bit of a write off because of people viewing the house and me having a hangover. I have now officially finished my JLR contract and will be starting with Ricardo next week, so Friday was the leaving do, therefore a hangover was pretty inevitable!

I have been thinking about how to get the Celica through the emissions test in the MOT. I did not want to have a bolt in section under the car as it is a pain to get to and means there are more joins to leak, I also want the cat easily removable for track days etc, strictly off road use of course.
I have a couple of cat lying around the garage and remembered the one from a Yamaha R1 was under the bench. A quick measure up revealed that the cat 'brick' was about 65mm OD -



hmmmmm, just about right......



bob on



It will be held in with a through and through bolt at the base of the tail pipe, easily pulled out with the stainless loop I have attached to the little bit of casing left on
The only difficulty will be getting it 'lit off', although I think that a little bit of launch control should get the core sufficiently warm enough to induce a catalytic reaction

The whole aim of this scramble to build the car, is to get it on it's wheels ready to be trailed to the sunny south. The car is going to have a pretty extreme fitment, mainly to fill the arches properly without having to resort to big spacers and odd offset. However in doing so I need to ensure that they will fit, before I have even bought the wheels and tyres!
The fitment aim is 17x9.25 front and rear et36 (as close to stock as possible) and a 235/45 tyre. So I made up a little template of some tyres I had waiting to go on the Mazda -



This was carefully measured up and screwed to a piece of wood, 344mm from the centreline and a hole drilled at -50mm for the wheel stud.

I popped it on the front and jacked up the hub until the car was off the axle stand



Then the wing went on, how much clearance is there?





Lovely! Clearance to the damper is fine, and the wheel will be close but not too close to the arch

The rear hub was built up with new bolts, and I struggled with the handbrake shoes for over an hour, wow they are hard work! All in now though, with a new disc too.



I bolted it all on and then did the same again



At the rear, not quite enough clearance. It will need either a 5 or 10mm spacer :/



Finally a parting shot of the car, with the front wing, love it





Tomorrow is trampolining and lunch out all being well, then maybe some more garage time

J

[Rich]

Be interested to see how you get on with the tailpipe cat. Inspired idea that's for sure. If it works well I'll be copying that no doubt on a friends 300ZX as he has no cats currently and needs them for the MOT..

[Blown_Imp]

Works for wrc cars ;-)

speed.academy/how-catalytic-converters-work/

The only issue I can see is that mine is a 100cpsi, but it should be fine, the bikes emissions were much lower than the limit for the celica :-)

[Rich]

Jan 17, 2016 20:40:04 GMT Blown_Imp said:

Works for wrc cars ;-)

speed.academy/how-catalytic-converters-work/

The only issue I can see is that mine is a 100cpsi, but it should be fine, the bikes emissions were much lower than the limit for the celica :-)

Cheers for the link, pretty good reading!

[alex]

Regards to the emissions - is it an import? If so there is a handy loophole, if you should wish.

[Rich]

Jan 18, 2016 0:18:36 GMT alex said:

Regards to the emissions - is it an import? If so there is a handy loophole, if you should wish.

It's been pretty much closed down. Hence why a friend of mine now needs to fit cats to his 300ZX..

[Blown_Imp]

Evening chaps,

This will be the last post for a while, as of monday I will be working away five days a week, leaving Michelle and the kids up north sorting out house viewings etc. It will mean that weekends will be very precious and so, I am not sure how the Celica will fit in to the puzzle.

So up to this point......

After having someone give a rather unfavorable review of the machine shop where I sent the block, I decided to have a half panic / half curious measure up of the work completed.
First of all the CAM report on the pistons suggests a 0.0035" clearance, or 3.5 thou.



So the feeler gauges out, I selected one using Grandpa's mitutoyo mic



I have already heavily oiled the bored to prevent flash corrosion, so no lubrication was needed for the next step. The feeler gauge was slipped in between the bore and piston skirt, then slid around and up and down the bore, checking for clearance.
I checked with both a 3 thou and 4 thou gauge too, one cock in a sock and the other to tight to fit.





Overall, fantastic! The fit is even and the honing lovely, even to the recommended angles

Whilst we were in the mood for measuring, the crank was brought out for a going over.

I needed both the 2 and 3" mics for this one



Each of the journals, both mains and big ends measured up at the top of the book specs for new I measured at three places to check for ovality too, no sign Can't complain at that! I just need to plastigauge them to check clearances before building this lot up





With the new caliper pistons having arrived, I moved into my pristine hydraulics workshop to finish building the calipers up



All done



I have put the steering rack in place too, but realised that with the new column position the UJ at the rack was going to bind. The only solution was to put an extra UJ in the shaft to reduce the working angles. So this is the idea -



With an extra UJ in the system more support was required to keep the shaft straight. After a bit of hunting around I found the old drop column that I built for the supercharged imp, this is nylon 66 bushes in a stainless housing and enough thick wall stainless tube to build up the Celica column



After a bit of jigger pokery, this is where we stand. I need to sort out the support mounting on the chassis, but that won't take long. The main thing is that it now works smoothly



I have been doing more chassis tinkering too, both sides of the rear suspension are now in with the hubs built up (including the hand brake mechs!) .
The boot lid is now fully furnished, loom in, seal on, aligned, struts in, and boot lock in and working The first properly shutting aperture!



So that is it for now, we will see how things go over the coming months. Fingers crossed life is kind and we manage to get some more Celica time

J

[leigh]

Well done James and good luck with your new venture. I'll be glad to see you get everything settled again as a lot of the time this is the only thread I log in to read. I love the way the car has been progressing and, as usual, your attention to detail is key to it all

[evanta22]

Nice work buddy,

Love the colour,

I did a similar thing to work out my wheel offsets a tyre clearances on my flared 73'TA22. I had to do some mods to the firewall to get clearance to get full lock on the steering.