'96 Celica GT Four - ST205 - Awake for 2023

Yeah when I did a bike fuel tank it took about 25L of thinners to melt the foam out
Worked well then

Hi Elk, thank you for the kind words What manifolds are you making up? What material are you using?

And thank you for the best wishes, she is back in for treatment this week, still smiling like a trooper. Occasional cracks show with a few tears, but she always perks back up

Ok, so not sure where we got to, but this is where we are now...

After a number of chemo rounds, scans and changes to the treatment, we were informed that the chemo had not touched it. They wanted to operate asap and do what they could.

She was under for seven hours, they took everything they could without cutting parts of her vertebrae off. The tumor was in her chest cavity, growing off her spine, over the diaphragm and pushing her heart and lungs out the way.
She woke up and was breathing for her self, so no need to the ICU bed that was organised and waiting. We were expecting a two plus week stay in hospital, but as usual she amazed us. Off the morphine after 18 hours, chest drain out after 24, all the lines out by 36 and the final arterial line out at 48 hours. Then we were sent home!!!

The agonising wait to hear about the biopsy results took around 10 days. What they found was astonishing.
The tumor was found to have differentiated, something none of us thought possible. It had gone benign!

Now we are not out of the woods yet, as there may be malignant material left around her spine that they could not remove, but we know that the chemo does not work on her, so we are praying that this is not the case. There are some specialist scans coming up that will give us a better idea on what else is in there.

Fingers crossed.

She was diagnosed just as I was about to send the car to the fabricators and then the paint shop. Unavoidable but still not great.
I could not look at the car for a while as it was just another level of stress that I could not comprehend. But as time went on both my wife and I needed coping mechanisms, as what was the unthinkable became the normal a bit more brain power could be applied elsewhere. I went out to the garage and had a little play, I think I cleaned some rust off a subframe? Either way it was a little step, that started to snowball further and further. Between supporting my wife when staying in hospital with Rubes (over 50% of the time!) I was working a full 9 hour day every day, visiting them, looking after our dogs and the house.
There was still a little time to get out there and tinker.

I cancelled the chassis work and decided to take it on myself, and the painter just postponed everything for me, stored the parts he had started and just asked me to let him know when I was ready to kick off again. And that is where we are, the shell is ready to go to paint! The spec is reduced slightly due to time and tools available, but I have my pedal box, harnesses and proper mounts, seats moved back over 300mm and all associated plates and strengthening required.

Also things have moved on in the engine dept, I have an Altezza black top sitting in the garage awaiting some love, pistons and a turbo

On Friday morning, it took 11 minutes to get the shell out of the garage and onto the back of a beaver tail recovery lorry, this was it's long journey to the other side of the village, around a mile!





Bye bye car!



By this point, I had also taken delivery of a rather special engine, the BEAMS dual VVT-I black top engine. Originally situated in longitudinally in a Toyota Altezza RS200 (Lexus is200 to you and I), this engine was a Japanese market only special. 212hp naturally aspirated with dual variable cams, long duration and high lift, titanium valves and bigger shimless buckets, and the all important strengthened block. This was the final hurrah for the 3S-GE engine.





Much needs sorting out, as the port spacing and sizes are totally different to the 3S-GTE, as can be seen here, the gasket for the 3s-gte over the 3s-ge beams ports -



There are many changes to the cam drive and block, most of them can be overcome by using 3s-gte parts bolted on to the block of the 3s-ge. Initially I thought I would make the drivers side engine mount and keep the BEAMS cam tension arrangement, but looking at it, the 3s-gte parts will make a much neater job -





I also found an ideal spot for a tiny little Daihatsu Charade GTti alternator -



TIDY!



With so much space and nothing to cover in paint, I decided to get the subframe painted up, initially brush painted Zinc 182, then rattle canned with 'Bumper' grey paint and some lacquer. Looks tidy



I could not resist it, popped the bushes in to see how it would look ~







So, over the coming months we will see a painted shell and hopefully some along the route pictures, an engine stripped and then rebuilt with forged rods and pistons, then slowly but surely the car come back together

Thanks chaps

Another import option, should you ever want to cross breed, is the 3S-GTE from a Caldina ST246. Already E-W orientation, and AWD, but they only come in tiptronic auto.

Also, you seem pretty switched on (love your fab work), so can you explain how are you going to mod the Beams to cope with boost? Isn't the compression up around the 11-11.5:1 area? Because in my mind, to get it down to boost friendly compression ratios, you'd have to de-stroke the engine, thus removing some of the parts that made the Beams so tidy.

(I'm an ex Toyota mechanic, so that's the reason I was asking). They're some big bowls on those piston heads. At least with them being made by a known manufacturer, they shouldn't have left too little material between the top of the piston and the area above the wrist pin. Last thing you want is another blow through.

I too am late to this thread, being a new member to RR.

But I was drawn in because it's Japanese, Toyota, forced induction and just epic.
I own a mk1 mr2 supercharger, with a few mods, I'm also a family man with young children.

I myself had a serious health scare at the end of last year/beginning of this year, knowing what this does to your stress levels and just knowing what a total head curse word it all is, for you to not just deal with it but actually push on with work on your car is inspiring.

Glad things are looking better with your young one, hope everything keeps going in the right direction.

Bookmarked,

Chris

Damn, I saw something the other day in that colour and it did just look the mutts.

Had a good day today, it was whizzing it down so garage was calling! I am quite frankly bored of the cleaning / painting routine, still quite a bit to do but it was time for a change.

I started by putting the two pipes back on the rack, pretty pleased with it tbh I made sure that the little brass inserts were in place and all the face nice and clean. Even though these seal on the cup / cone, I decided to pop a little system sealant on the threads.





On to the fun stuff! I have been thinking about how to make my inlet plenum, I would use the standard intake for the BEAMS engine as it is lovely, tidy runners, trumpets, big plenum. The issue? None available second hand, one new one from Hurley but they want £350! So back to the carbon solution, not easy, but it is fun and will leave me with a plenum that is much better than stock.

I have decided to build the trumpets into the plenum rather than put the inside like the last one I did. So how to get the trumpet shape nice and evenly into the foam? After some mulling (weeks worth) I had a light bulb moment, cutting tool! Out comes the steel and marking tools -







A bit of cutting, filing and welding later (being sure to leave a nice sharp edge) we had a tool, ideal for fitting into the drill! This ended up being one of the messiest jobs I have performed in the garage, the foam dust / bits went EVERYWHERE I took a little film of it working too

Practice piece -



(I was bit worried about the large spinning bit of metal, so I put on some protective gear, yes that is protection in my garage!)


MESS!



And taped onto the standard intake adaptor -





Not bad, needs some refinement, the bit that attaches into the chuck needs to be longer and I also measured everything up without taking into account the thickness of the shaft! So the trumpets are a little too large. I will either adapt this one of make another one, that and get some more foam as I have run out

After taking Ruby and the dogs for a rather wet walk, Michelle told me to get back out in the garage for a couple of hours. I decided to get the next bit done, the flange for the intake system. I had a sheet of phenolic plastic, stiff, heat proof and easily cut, it will be ideal to mould the carbon onto later.

I marked it out and then rough cut it -



After cutting and shaping, this is the result -







Lovely!

That was it for today, had some fun and learnt some new things, just need to get the engine in to work out how much space I have for the plenum

J