'88 Tercel, '80 Celica drift car and old scooters

I'm gonna give you a forum 'hi'! Welcome back, looking forward for updates on the fleet!

I'm always open to questions, I like to think I have a balanced outsiders perspective

I loved NZ, btw.

Some older pictures in chronological order:

Slow. Noisy. Thirsty.



This was back in 2020 when I was still fresh off the boat. Great roadtrip car.

(Mostly) abandoned rail infrastructure anyone?






This is a few blocks from my house and it's been immobile for over 15 years now:


Mint S13 anyone?

Bought something a little more interesting and better on gas. The guy was Australian and needed to return home as he'd had a better offer for work at his old job. It's a 2 owner local car with only 148,000kms. Rust free and brand new inside!



Polished up nice


Moved to a new shop space with some friends


Also another friend was selling this, it needs some love but comes with a bunch of extra parts

Tyre sizes are hard to get here for small wheels, best you can do normally is a 185/60/14. But a friend of mine had some old 165/55/14s that he donated to me as long as I did something cool with them

Canada has a rather stymied view of America, as said, because of these early colonial rule.
Do those people exist? Yes. But the same as observed slovenly or obnoxious types appear (think Wayne and Waynetta, or Onslow from Appearances) but not everybody's loud and outspoken (Yorkshire mines Union pib-dweller) nor Oxford prim and proper.

There's a wide spectrum here and in general the masses are pleasant people- and often you get to find that out because they're far more open about life than most people in the UK. Do not confuse loud and obnoxious for speaking the truth.

Is Canada nice? On the whole. The bit in the middle they don't talk about much because they're much more like Americans, only French.

Phil

Do S13 coilovers fit a Tercel? Yes*

I'm a big fan of BC Racing coilovers on all my cars and they are available for a Tercel. But for $1500CAD (875GBP) they're a little spicy for me. Especially when I have a shop full of tools.

I want you all to stop and appreciate how much the UK is the center of trade. You don't like the price of something? A little searching around and you'll find some company making the same thing for 1p profit. The UK has another advantage - population density. Which gives more opportunities for small engineering shops and hobbyists to do custom work with competition to keep prices down.

One of the main financial killers where I live is remoteness. I don't just live in Western Canada, I live on an island in Western Canada. We have access to *some* things in the states, but you'll need to tac on a few hundred dollars every time you want something shipped here. And they're more hot on taxing imports here, we'll get on to that another time.

I noticed at local drift evens that a lot of the cars have pretty wacky engine swaps. M52 swapped into a Cressida, 1JZ swapped into an RX7... But it took me a while to realise a lot of this is necessity. Why pay for rare replacement engines to be shipped in when you have an E36 right here?

Back to the coilovers. I went looking around for something cheaper that might fit. MacPherson strut front and pin to eye on the rear. Same arrangement that's also cheap? S13.

It gets better, measuring shows it's really close. Rear is very close to factory, fronts will need a little cutting and drilling. I decide it's worth the risk.

It gets better, all cheap S13 coilover kits are all on sale now because nobody can build cheap S13 drift cars anymore. Advantage Speedy. I find a kit for $300(175GBP) with free shipping! Score. Maxpeedingrods are OK for cheap coilovers and should be fine for this project.

The spring rates are going to be a slight issue at 8kg/7kg front/rear. Kerb weight of the Tercel is about 850kg. I've found some cheap 4kg Tein springs that should fit but I'm holding off because cheap coilvers are an unknown anyway. We'll have to try and see! The main thing is we're doing the hard work first and springs will be easy icing on the cake.

On to the coilover modifying:
S13 coilovers have a really wide MacPherson strut bracket which leaves lots of room for activities. For this application I hacked off around 20mm and drilled new holes using a masking tape template from the factory strut:



Top mounts fit but needed some new holes drilled for the 3-post layout.



Handy dandy camber plates will help get the camber correct, the factory strut exists in a very tight space and is quite narrow. The coilovers are much more thicc so need a little creativity to get in the hole while still clearing everything.

So that's the fronts. The only thing the rears needed was a quick 5mm hole file for the top mount posts and some kind of solution for the eyelet bushings:



I cut down and pressed in some OEM bushings, I have no idea how long this will last but it's OK for now until I find something better.

So, do S13 coilovers fit a Tercel? Yes, kinda.

I'll report back on ride quality.

They say it's a small world, I have seen pictures of this bridge taken by my work colleague when he vistited his son who moved to Canda.