Well most of my usual old car forums have completely died out so I thought I'd join here and post up my build. Buckle up because this is a long one. I'm currently more then midway through the build just waiting on some of the big parts to get done that have been delayed because of Covid.
Little backstory on the car. It's a 1976 Toyota Celica ST. I bought it in May of 2015 for $3800, which is an absolute steal these days. Drove 5 hours out to eastern Washington to pick it up from the 2nd owner. Was told it was clean body with little rust (boy would I find out that isn't true at all). The suspension was toast, interior was crappy and held together with hopes and dreams, but at least it ran and drove. The 5 hour drive back was full of butt puckering moments. The steering box was very loose and anytime a semi drove by me I would get pushed almost out of my lane. The tires were absolute trash, I drove through a squall over a ski pass, that was terrifying. To top it off the top speed was somewhere around 80mph, mind you that's at redline. Speed limit is 70mph so everyone goes at least 10 over that. Traffic was flying by me the whole time.
Once I got it home I immediately started buying parts for it. Bought fender flares and new rubbers for all the seals that were available.
The Celica joined the houses other old school rides.
I drove it around in the primer gray paint for a while until I got the bug to do the bodywork. I had about 2 months until I started school again and had to completely strip the car, do the bodywork, and repaint it. I probably spent around 300-400 hours over those 2 months doing the work. Little did I know that would pail in comparison to the current build.
Obviously from the pictures I found a lot of hidden rust. The guy I bought it from had done a very shoddy job covering it up with body filler. I had recorded something like 56 areas that needed rust repair (turned out I still missed a few). For all of them I cut out the rust and replaced it with new metal. Some areas like the front windscreen lip, trunk lip, and fender bottom I had to make entirely new panels because they were completely gone.
Eventually I managed to get to the point where I could prep for paint. I convinced some of my friends to help sand so it went pretty smoothly. I bought a wedding tent on ebay to turn into a makeshift spray booth. It worked out pretty well until we had a freak summer windstorm that almost flipped the tent over. The windstorm happened after I had laid the primer so I was able to safely move everything into the garage to finish spraying.
Everything went smoothly after that until I got to the clearcoat. I could not get the clear coat to lay flat no matter what I did. This was my first time painting a car so I figured I'd lay it heavy then wet sand later (didn't really work out), but at least it was all one color. The color is a Porsche grey/black, code L7A1.
Sometime during one of my drives home from school, I almost hit something in the road on the freeway because I couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of the car. The headlights were absolute trash. I could have seen better had I stuck a couple of flashlights in the grill. I had experience modding headlights from my E36 so I thought I'd give the Celica a try.
Made new headlight frames, modded some aftermarket headlights to accept a bi-xenon projector assembly then cut up the front of the car to accept the new headlights.
This will forever be the first thing I do in any car I get that doesn't already have them. Being able to clearly see at night is so nice.
Did a few more things like make a cover for the rear valence, since the US cars had huge ugly bumpers that covered the area, they never came with the sheet metal. Picked up a duckbill spoiler and then drove it around like this for 4 years. Surprisingly only left me stranded once when something happened with the carb. Luckily I wasn't very far from home so we were able to grab some tools and get it started again.
I'll post part 2 soon. That's when the real fun begins and I got to test my mental fortitude with having a constantly empty wallet and every growing list of things to do.
Little backstory on the car. It's a 1976 Toyota Celica ST. I bought it in May of 2015 for $3800, which is an absolute steal these days. Drove 5 hours out to eastern Washington to pick it up from the 2nd owner. Was told it was clean body with little rust (boy would I find out that isn't true at all). The suspension was toast, interior was crappy and held together with hopes and dreams, but at least it ran and drove. The 5 hour drive back was full of butt puckering moments. The steering box was very loose and anytime a semi drove by me I would get pushed almost out of my lane. The tires were absolute trash, I drove through a squall over a ski pass, that was terrifying. To top it off the top speed was somewhere around 80mph, mind you that's at redline. Speed limit is 70mph so everyone goes at least 10 over that. Traffic was flying by me the whole time.
Once I got it home I immediately started buying parts for it. Bought fender flares and new rubbers for all the seals that were available.
The Celica joined the houses other old school rides.
I drove it around in the primer gray paint for a while until I got the bug to do the bodywork. I had about 2 months until I started school again and had to completely strip the car, do the bodywork, and repaint it. I probably spent around 300-400 hours over those 2 months doing the work. Little did I know that would pail in comparison to the current build.
Obviously from the pictures I found a lot of hidden rust. The guy I bought it from had done a very shoddy job covering it up with body filler. I had recorded something like 56 areas that needed rust repair (turned out I still missed a few). For all of them I cut out the rust and replaced it with new metal. Some areas like the front windscreen lip, trunk lip, and fender bottom I had to make entirely new panels because they were completely gone.
Eventually I managed to get to the point where I could prep for paint. I convinced some of my friends to help sand so it went pretty smoothly. I bought a wedding tent on ebay to turn into a makeshift spray booth. It worked out pretty well until we had a freak summer windstorm that almost flipped the tent over. The windstorm happened after I had laid the primer so I was able to safely move everything into the garage to finish spraying.
Everything went smoothly after that until I got to the clearcoat. I could not get the clear coat to lay flat no matter what I did. This was my first time painting a car so I figured I'd lay it heavy then wet sand later (didn't really work out), but at least it was all one color. The color is a Porsche grey/black, code L7A1.
Sometime during one of my drives home from school, I almost hit something in the road on the freeway because I couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of the car. The headlights were absolute trash. I could have seen better had I stuck a couple of flashlights in the grill. I had experience modding headlights from my E36 so I thought I'd give the Celica a try.
Made new headlight frames, modded some aftermarket headlights to accept a bi-xenon projector assembly then cut up the front of the car to accept the new headlights.
This will forever be the first thing I do in any car I get that doesn't already have them. Being able to clearly see at night is so nice.
Did a few more things like make a cover for the rear valence, since the US cars had huge ugly bumpers that covered the area, they never came with the sheet metal. Picked up a duckbill spoiler and then drove it around like this for 4 years. Surprisingly only left me stranded once when something happened with the carb. Luckily I wasn't very far from home so we were able to grab some tools and get it started again.
I'll post part 2 soon. That's when the real fun begins and I got to test my mental fortitude with having a constantly empty wallet and every growing list of things to do.