1973 Celica ST (considering subframe connectors)

[MRS Joe]

Here is a link to a restored Celica in the same green as mine would have been: https://www.flickr.com/photos/119886413@N05/14074640750/

I like. I agree on the oe "St" stripes.

Making a car look all original is awesome, but pumping a little extra life (into its heart) couldn't hurt right.....

[Jim Eh.]

I'm not stating my age but back then I took a brand new one from a "Toy" dealer on Regent. Huh, imagine that, letting a teenager "test" drive a brand new car .... alone! Ah, those were the days.

[white_cross]

 

Here is a link to a restored Celica in the same green as mine would have been: https://www.flickr.com/photos/119886413@N05/14074640750/

I like. I agree on the oe "St" stripes.

Making a car look all original is awesome, but pumping a little extra life (into its heart) couldn't hurt right.....

 

 

Sort of a sleeper type deal. I kind of feel like a heart transplant or hopping up the original would be a good idea. I am thinking though using the original motor for now is probably going to be the end result and then going with something different later as more cash comes available for a decent swap. 

I'm not stating my age but back then I took a brand new one from a "Toy" dealer on Regent. Huh, imagine that, letting a teenager "test" drive a brand new car .... alone! Ah, those were the days.

 

Thats a cool story. What color was the one you tested? 

[Jim Eh.]

Colour fades with age.

[white_cross]

Well car comes home tomorrow. The guy from work that delivers our Mercedes cabs to work  is going to pick up my car with his big trailer. I also ordered a repair manual yesterday and it is in at canadian tire. So gearing up to get going on this project.

[white_cross]

Today the Celica came home. One of the guys from work who picks up our chassis that we build our motor homes on to brought home the car for me for free. He used his big trailer :shock:. 

 

Getting the car loaded up on the trailer quite overkill but totally worth the picture:

 

And off we go:

 

So I have my pair of dream cars. an American Mustang and a "Japanese" Mustang:

 

So my Mach 1 is out side for now and the Celica gets its spot for the time being:

 

Just have the fender propped up so I can open the drivers door. It was binding on the fender. 

[white_cross]

Some stuff from today and yesterday.

 

Most of the parts removed by the last owner were in the trunk in boxes:

 

So I emptied everything out:

 

I sorted through the parts from the trunk and organized them here are some of the parts:

 

I wanted to see how well the vinyl would clean up so I practiced on the door panel:

Before:

 

After:

 

Pulled out a good portion of the interior today and yesterday so I can have a good look at the floor:

 

 

Pile of dirty flooring stuff:

 

Pressure washed the flooring stuff (rug, Trunk Mat, and what seems to be oem rubber toyota mats):

 

How the car sits now:

love this last shot.

[Need my Focusin]

Great project you got yourself.

[white_cross]

Great project you got yourself.

Thank you.

[MRS Joe]

Looks like some fiberglass was laid down. Biggest project will be the rockers I guess?

Nice to at least have all the parts to a complete car.

The floor mats and such usually rot away or are missing. The door cards cleaned up real nice.

[white_cross]

Looks like some fiberglass was laid down. Biggest project will be the rockers I guess?

Nice to at least have all the parts to a complete car.

The floor mats and such usually rot away or are missing. The door cards cleaned up real nice.

There was some fiber glass laid by the guy I bought the car from, He did that to keep the mice out. I am going to jack the car up and put it on stands tonight to have a good look at it. From what I can see is the front floor boards need to be repaired and the rockers, the spare tire well are the worst of it. A couple of small holes here and there. It actually looks quite solid from what I can tell with a quick look. Should keep me busy. I am looking forward to it. I have been on the 1st gen forum and am in contact with someone who has some decent floor pans I will need to see pictures before I have him ship them out to me. The rockers I can get from Wolf steel in Quebec they are supposed to be nice thick quality steel too. The interior was what blew me away when I saw the condition of it, Really dirty but should clean up nicely. Having the complete car is such a plus for me with all parts for this car being hard to find.

[white_cross]

Been working on the car on and off when I get a chance to get out to the garage. I am making sure I balance family and car projects. I have been working on re connecting everything in the engine compartment. The engine was removed and the engine bay was repainted by the previous owner. Then He just set the engine in the compartment but did not hook everything up. It has been like building a puzzle resasembling everything from a couple of boxes full of random parts. The hardest part is figuring out where all the wires go. I am not familiar with the Celica yet but am learning. My goal is to get this thing running before I pull the engine. The previous owner said this car ran beautifully when he got it 10 years ago. It just has not run in ten years. The engine is loose too So I have faith it will fire up. I poured a bit of oil down each cylnder and put a breaker bar on the crank pulley and gave it 2 full revolutions and it turned over really easily!

I spent some time organizing all the parts from the trunk of the car:


I now am down to this many parts (I think I am still missing that rectangle thing that sits on top of the coil, battery cable and battery tray). I am not sure where all of these remaining parts go yet: 


This is as far as I have been able to figure out the coil set up:


The other thing that I don't get is where this hose that comes from the bottom of this vacuum canister is supposed to plug in to:


I put the car up on jack stands so I can look over the floor an there is rust which I expected but pretty solid for a Manitoba car that is 43 years old:



I removed the hood so I could mock up the front end. The hood had to come off because the damage would interfere with the grille. I am going to look for a GT Celica grille to clean up the look of the front end:

[white_cross]

So I found some pictures. I thought these pictures were long lost to accidentally deleting my whole photo album last year. The pictures are really small because the larger files no longer exist. The pictures are from 10 years back.

 

So here is a picture of my first car after my dad and I did the restoration. Mostly my dad working and me learning from him. It is a 1986 200sx a sweet car for sure. It had everything I wanted in a first car. Pop up lights, piles of 1980's styling, removable sunroof, rear wheel drive and a 5 speed std. I really wonder how this car would have done on an autocross course.

So the reason I include this car in my Celica build thread is because with out this car I would not have found out about 1st gen celicas. My dad and I were going to various wreckers in the city looking for parts for my 200sx. At this one wrecker there was a pair of Celicas. When I saw them I had no idea what they were but loved how they looked and knew that this would be the type of car I would own someday. This started a 10 year local search for one of these cars.

[white_cross]

So here are some pictures of the pair of Celicas that got me hooked. Not mutch left but the blue one was very solid in terms of rust and a Manitoba car. I also love the artistic photo opportunities that the patina of the blue car gave me. It is also an older car than mine looking at the serial number. I plan on going back to see if these still exist some time this summer: Enjoy the photos.

[white_cross]

So I found a really sweet build where this guy in Alberta put a 1uz in a car like mine and turbocharged it. I am pretty impressed: here are a couple of videos of it:

This thing sounds wicked!

[MRS Joe]

Last week in winkler a gs400 which was a great donor car sold for $250

[white_cross]

Where did it sell from? Winkler is my home town.  The price seems really low too. $250 for an engine seems like a good deal especially considering I can part out the car and get money back maybe even make some money. Which vehicles did Toyota offer the 1uz in so I can keep a look out for a good deal?

[white_cross]

Spent some more time on the car the past while. First off the seats are quite solid and only need some small vinyl repairs. The problem was they were so gross I did not want to sit on them here they are:

 

So I rented a rug doctor from the local COOP grocery store and used it to clean the cloth section of the seats as well as the head liner they came out pretty nice:

 

Then I cleaned the vinyl with mr clean and it came out pretty good. So next step for these is to repair the damaged sections of vinyl and then re dye the vinyl with some black SEM the seats should look like brand new when I am done with them:

[white_cross]

 

The door cards are pretty nice too only one rip on the driver side back which will need a repair done to it.

Dirty set:

 

Scrubbed down with mr clean. The darker spots on the vinyl are still wet from washing. I will also dye these black with SEM. My dad used the SEM on his 1970 Nova restoration to dye some gold vinyl seats to black. That was about 12 years ago and it is still holding on strong and looking as good as new:

 

Next I removed the fenders and pulled the glass and all the guts out of the driver door and then removed the door so I can start rust repair on it:

 

Found this inside the door when I was removing the window. This has been a Manitoba car for over 30 years. I did a phone number look up hoping to find a previous owner to get some cool stories and this number no longer exists in Manitoba:

 

The rust on the door:

 

The car sits like this now:

[white_cross]

I have been doing a bunch of stuff on the car lately, just disassembly stuff though. So there have not been many picture opportunities worth posting. Just mostly making videos of how stuff was removed so I can remember how it all goes back together. 

 

I pulled the front and rear glass out, so I could get the headliner out. I managed to get the back window out with out braking it. The front was damaged all ready so I was less care full and I broke it. The metal behind the weather strip to hold in the glass was not rusted out so that is a big plus for me! 

 

rear glass:

 

Windows out:

 

The headliner was then removed. I was sure there would be a mouse nest up there looking at the yellowish stain above the drivers head. I was pleasantly surprised when I found it free of any thing related to rodents! So I have no Idea what the crusty stain is in the headliner and I think I would rather not like to know. My theory has to do with drinking and driving and puking (gross). What ever the stain is the rug doctor would not remove it.

 

I also took some time today to do something that was more of an experiment and not a permanent solution. I was curious what the 13 inch Keystone Mags (that came with the car when I bought it) would look like with the black inserts painted back on. So I gave it a shot.

 

The starting point:

 

I used some Duplicolor wrinkle paint on the inserts and it came out pretty nice. I also polished what was left of the chrome. So If I decide to use these at some point there is lots of wheel left to work with. There is a local shop that will refinish old rims. These might end up going to that shop. These are not my first choice but are a cool rare/vintage set of keystone classic rims. So they would be something cool to hang onto and use for when I am feeling nostalgic:

[MRS Joe]

http://toptierimports.com/index.php?topic=10956.0

P slots for $50.

I like the retro wheels, and awesome on the windshield/cowl not being rotten (common issue)

[white_cross]

http://toptierimports.com/index.php?topic=10956.0

P slots for $50.

I like the retro wheels, and awesome on the windshield/cowl not being rotten (common issue)

Thanks for the wheel link.  Thanks for the complements on the wheels. I was expecting some sort of rust on the window aria but I think what saved them was the endless amount of black goop stuffed in between the rubber and steel.

[white_cross]

So this weekend I have been spending some more time on the car. Yesterday I stripped the trunk out: wiring, gas tank, and lights. So now now from the dash board back the car is almost a bare shell. What is left is rear axle, rear roll up windows and mechanisms. The goal is to get this car stripped down to the shell and get the floor blasted to clean steel and see what is left then start welding patches. I got an idea from a guy I used to work with. He restored his 1967 Chevelle and he built his own rotissarie using a pair of engine stands. So that is the plan for me too. Should be a cheap way of doing it. I had no idea how light the car was as a shell. The car is on 4 jack stands, I got under the rear of it yesterday and pushed up on the rear frame rail with one hand and was able to quite easily lift it off of the rear pair of jack stands. :shock:. So any amount of power in this car is going to make it quick! 

 

Before:

 

After:

 

Tank is out:

 

It sounded like sand and gas in the tank. I got an ice cream pail full of 10 plus year old gas that I drained from the tank. what to do with it?

 

Burn it with fire! Trust me this is totally an important step in any car restoration :2thumbs: 

[Jim Eh.]

Surprised it even burnt.  

[white_cross]

I just came across this while researching engine swaps for these cars: http://1stgencelica.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17982. The guy builds cross members and transmission mounts for engine swapped 1st gen Celicas. So When I finally decide on an engine This should make things a lot easier.

[MRS Joe]

I just came across this while researching engine swaps for these cars: http://1stgencelica.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17982. The guy builds cross members and transmission mounts for engine swapped 1st gen Celicas. So When I finally decide on an engine This should make things a lot easier.

Need to be registered to view link.

[white_cross]

 

I just came across this while researching engine swaps for these cars: http://1stgencelica.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17982. The guy builds cross members and transmission mounts for engine swapped 1st gen Celicas. So When I finally decide on an engine This should make things a lot easier.

Need to be registered to view link.

 

 

Sorry I forgot about that, here is a quick write up from one of his posts:

 

This is a custom Cross member "Cradle" setup I have created and build in house. It allows many engine swap options thats just not possible with the stock forward swept cross members the 71-75 Celicas have. Also Carinas. I have a couple of different Jigs setup and if local I can setup any engine almost in your car for extra. 2/3RZ and 18r I have. I have one offed a 1UZ and a 1/2JZ and a one off 3STGTE others have taken a bare Cradle and custom there own engine mounts.

These use several mounting locations including the stock steering box and idler arm locations plus 2 locations per side spread out to stabilize the cradle so a simple road hazard does not bend your cross member. This method allows for a stronger setup and stabilizes the lower control arms and the steering rack plus gives you a higher ground clearance to avoid those small road hazards. I also have a front mount bar to allow even more support for those high HP swaps like the LSX engine swap a buddy is using one of these for.

The Rack conversion uses a 83-84 manual Rack and the steering column needs to have the lower section changed out to a lower U-jointed shaft. I can help with this as well. I will need your column mailed to me and I will mail it back to you completed for 200.00 and I will supply the needed parts.

I also make a tranny cross member that's cleaner than stock and will allow more room for exhaust to get over rather than under the stock cross members. It will also fit the later model trannys with out hanging off the last bolts or require something funky. These sell for 200.00 shipped.

Cradle cross member goes for 700.00 plus shipping with the Jigs I have and up from these if I have to custom something for you. Shipping sucks just to warn you.

I can do a blank cradle with no engine mounts for 650.00.

I also make a Rack conversion bracket that requires no cutting or welding. Its a base of the Cradle or the Cradle is an extension of this actually. These mount to the steering and idler mounting locations and the lower control arm mounts. These wont interfere with the oil pan but you will need to modify or remove the lower block to the tranny supports and the exhaust down pipe as well. The steering shaft will conflict with the exhaust. The steering column will need the same modifications that's the Cradle requires. These sell for 300.00 shipped.

 

 

[white_cross]

So over my holidays I got in contact with Wolf steel. They make sheet metal replacement panels for unique and hard to find cars. There are very little replacement parts out there for my Celica, but these guys are willing to work with me and get a new floor pan made up. They will take my rusted out driver side floor and fabricate for me a new floor panel from the old one.  

[white_cross]

Today I went to Moonlight a local body shop here in Winkler. I am getting a part painted on the FJ and I know the owners of the shop through my dad. So I asked them if there was a way to look at samples for 1970's Toyota colors. I want to paint my car a factory Toyota celica color just not the Green that is on it. There were a few variations of the blues that came on the celica that I was interested in but had no idea what they are called or their paint code. Well I was in luck they still have an RM paint sample book from the 1970's. In the book was all the color samples for all Toyota's from 1970-1972. This is pretty sweet since the Toyota celica guys are trying to put together a database for the 1st gen celicas. Plus I got something solid to look at and base my decision  for color choice on.

[white_cross]

Just ordered a pair of rocker panels: http://www.alfaparts.net

 

I called wolf steel and ordered these up today after work. Very impressed with them so far. Was nice to have some one who is down to earth and easy to talk to. Very friendly too. Spent a bit of time talking about our project cars with the owner while ordering these.