1989 Toyota Supra MK3 7MGE

...and here's some pics from when I got it home and in my new at the time unit.







I'll post up some more recent pics soon, and some of the restoration work (although I took very few pics!)

Hope it's of interest to someone anyway, even though it's not very old.

If you ever needs bits for this i know a guy who breaks them and has a stockpile of parts including w58 and r154 boxes. He also has a genuine ex touring car but now has a big block v8 in it.

So as mentioned there was some rust, particularly the outer arches. Well when I got to looking at it, it turned out the inner arches, pockets and strut towers were also full of holes. Both strut towers had a hole big enough to get your hand in to it.

Now, the car came with a reasonably fresh MOT and suffice to say I have my suspicions that the MOT may not have been entirely above board. Either that or dangerous incompetence. A 4" hole within 2" of the suspension mounting holes should never have passed in a million years.

Long story short, it was time to buy a welder and get stuck in.

On the rear outer arches, both had had some filler slapped over the rust. The nearside wasn't too bad, but the offside was toast. Outer arches are no longer available, and existing cars all rust here so you can't get used ones either. I ended up taking a new (MK4?) Fiesta arch and cutting to suit. I've only done the offside at the moment, which turned out OK for an amateur with no previous experience. The nearside one will need doing probably in the next couple of years, but is OK for now. I tidied up the bodges, and sprayed it over.

Before (O/S):



After (O/S): 



After (N/S):



With the rust dealt with, I fixed all the other niggles, like boot leaks, new boot carpet, converted the spare to space-saver to free up boot room, fixed radio, fixed blower, full service inc. diff and trans flushes, cam and aux belts, new brakes all round, new tyres all round, replaced exhaust rear section, fixed all the blown interior an dash lights, and a whole host of other stuff to bring it up to daily-able standard.

After that I got on with using it, here's a pic from last summer in a field by Goodwood while up at Players Classic (brother's FTO beside). There's still a few bits to do this spring, which I'll document as I go, but overall it's a very reliable piece of cheap curse word.

Oh yes, more of this please.

Should never have let my JZA70 go....

Like these. Bookmarked.

Nice, that looks awfully familiar, wonder if I've seen it on the FB group. If you're on Facebook, it's worth joining the MK3 group, there's always a few for sale or breaking, from standard to insane. Couple for sale at the moment actually: www.facebook.com/groups/1770168119894812/?fref=nf

Just a small update this weekend - travelled 45 mins up the road to collect four original "sawblade" Supra alloys from a lovely chap who'd recently parted with his Supra. Hpoefully I'll get cracking on restoring these soon - overall they are good nick with good tyres, but the paint is flaking a lot. Managed to get them all in the back too and still got two kids in for the school run

Yup, Martin is one of our resident experts in the forum and FB. I've had lots of great advice from the forum on fixing the common niggles with these cars.

Small job on the Supra today - prop centre bearing. When I first got the car the original one was shot, and with a lot of other jobs to do at the same time I opted for the absolute cheapest fix - a knockoff bearing from a Transit off eBay. I think it was something ridiculous like £5 from China. It did the job but the drivetrain was never that tight so it's time I did the job right - it's true that if you do a job cheap you'll do it twice!

Here's the old Transit one - you can see how off-centre the bearing is:



...and compared with the shiny new one, it's a lot skinnier




All fitted and ready to go back on the car:



And now it's sitting pretty until home time:



While I had the car in the garage I thought I'd put the original wheels up against the car to mull over how they look:




The Toyota sawblades are 16" vs the 18" BBS RG-R, but the tyre profiles are correct so they match in diameter. I kind of like the sawblades now that I've seen them next to the car, I'm tempted to refurb them in a gunmetal grey (similar to how they have been sprayed but a bit darker) to match the side trims rather than the original silver - thoughts?

yes to standard alloys !

my friend had a white C reg (citation needed) 24v auto n/a for a little while, same blue velour. the levels of equipment, technology, comfort, refinement and performance were actually quite astonishing for this era (compared to what the UK were producing). seats are reeeealy comfortable, it sounds really obvious to say it but at that point i had only experience uk spec AE86 GT, ST185 celica and series 2 MR2, they all had this same "feel" to them. bit bland inside but well built, felt robust and ergonomically excellent.