Meet Tom Celica

Me too Woody. I was driving an '84 when I met my wife. It got stolen in San Francisco. Always wanted another. Now I have it! And yeah, those Rewinds are like they were designed just for this car. They're just perfect. I love them.

JMHO, but NEEDS FLARES! Like so:

I have a set of the factory GTS flares. I was going to use them, but they're kinda heavy. My current plan is some Datsun Z flares.

darkbuddha wrote: JMHO, but NEEDS FLARES! Like so:

WHOOOOOOOOAAAAA What is that behind the Toyota?

What are the plans to make it go faster?

Graefin10 wrote: What are the plans to make it go faster?

Well, I can't do a whole lot in Street Prepared, but I rebuilt the engine- .040 over, balanced, under drive pulleys, 9 lb. flywheel, header, crank scraper- maybe another thing or two that I'm forgetting. I have, but have not yet installed, a larger throttle body and air meter. For round one, that will be it on the "go faster" list. Can't really think of much more to do. Eventually I'll probably do a MS and see if I can find a few more HP. If I go to Nationals and miss the trophies by .01 I'll probably go nuts and get ITBs or something.

So I finally got the strings and jack stands set up tonight after work. Wow, did I ever have a lot of toe out. Got it pointing pretty much straight ahead, but I could only get one side to turn, so the wheel is off center. I'll have to get it up on the lift and see what's going on. I don't think the rack is centered right, so it will all have to be re-done. But the car drives great!

The rear brakes don't seem to do much in the way of, well, braking. It could well be that the fluid is so old and nasty that it compresses like crazy. The stuff I flushed out of the front was insane dirty. Probably quite a lot of air and water in there. Clutch too. I'm going to need a lot of DOT 4 before this is put right. I have new shoes and wheel cylinders, so I guess I'll put them on. But, really, it will probably need rear disks. I imagine AE86 parts would bolt on, but probably hard to find the brackets. I can probably make them. They look pretty simple.

Well, it's a lot of work. But it's coming together. It may not be much of an autocross car yet, but I can drive it and it looks pretty cool. That's a big step in the right direction!

Take care,

Ed

dean1484 wrote:

darkbuddha wrote: JMHO, but NEEDS FLARES! Like so:

WHOOOOOOOOAAAAA What is that behind the Toyota?

My best guess is a '70s Mazda 929 wagon, but something don't look quite right.

It's another Toyota. ~73 Mark II Wagon.

If you need some adjustment in the lower control arms.... I kind of cobbled together parts from a few suppliers to come up with these....

Amount they are adjustable........

In reply to oldeskewltoy:

That is AWESOME but not legal for SP. Actually, I think it might be if I didn't have camber plates. I think it's one or the other. But either way, those are awesome.

Tom got to make a few trips this weekend. Very fun driving it! Three seperate times we got people giving us the thumbs up or waves. Pretty cool! I didn't realize how rare these things have gotten. When I had my old '84, they were everywhere. Geez. Guess that was 15 years ago.

I dropped a set of strut housings off with a friend who's much smarter than I about these things. We looked, scratched our chins and poked around a lot with tape measures. He'll have Tom Celica sitting right in no time.

The undefeated Tom Celica ran it's first event today!!

A friend needed an FSP ride to have enough events to complete a full season. She's a multi-time national champion driver, so I knew the car was in good hands, but I was worried about sending someone out on course in it. But Tom did just fine! There were only two cars in FSP and both on street tires, so Tom was on pretty level ground. She crushed the other car! On all-seasons with almost nothing sorted, the overall finish wasn't great, especially for a driver of her caliber, but that was to be expected. I was just ecstatic to watch the car run and behave itself pretty well. No nightmare handling and nothing broke. What more can you ask for first time out with a car that isn't finished?!

What a super day!

Congrats, Eddie! It's inspiring to see someone build and campaign a car simply because they like it. Please keep posting on the car's progress.

And, what's the offset on those Rewinds? I have an evil vison that 14x7's and sticky DOT 185/60-14's would work really well on the Civic.

You're the second person today to ask me what the offset is, and for the second time I'll say.... I dunno. I know they only come in one offset, so that's what it is! Hang on...

Ah -9

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/14x7-Konig-Rewind-Silver-Wheel-Rim-s-4x114-3-4-114-3-4x4-5-14-7-/160599797566?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item25647e6f3e

You know, good 14s are getting impossible to find. If it had better rubber it would have done better today. Oh well.

It did look super-cool out there. We got a lot of positive comments!

Heading out for it's first ever run.

Bacon took this one.

Oh, I should update some pics. I'm way behind!

New coil-overs made so the front end isn't so bad and hopefully the roll center isn't three feet underground.

Looking the part now...

Some used rubber from my MR2 and a set of Supra wheels and I have race rubber. Too small, sure, but better than street tires.

Numbers came on Saturday.

Winter series event this Saturday! Can't wait to finally autocross this thing!

that car makes me happy. very happy

When i saw the initial pics i was like, " ehh...?" But man, with the wheels and whatnot-- it really looks good. I'd love to see some color but i really like this. I'm partial to Celicas.

EdenPrime wrote: When i saw the initial pics i was like, " ehh...?" But man, with the wheels and whatnot-- it really looks good. I'd love to see some color but i really like this. I'm partial to Celicas.

The initial plan was to paint the Supra wheels orange. I did one and it worked pretty well. Media blasted the four of them, then did self etching primer, regular primer and spray on enamel. It stuck pretty good. But when I got the killer deal on the Rewinds, I figured that was a lot easier than doing the other three. I media blasted most of the orange off the one I had painted, but something jammed in the media blaster and I just wanted to get the race rubber on, so one of them looks kinda bad. Not a big deal. I finish blasting it when the tire is shot, which shouldn't be too long.

15x10 Spinwerks will be ordered soon- as soon as I am confidant on my measurements. They really aren't great looking wheels, but the size, cost and weight make them hard to pass up. Wonder if they could be powder coated.

I'll probably have to trim the fenders to get the 15x10s on, which is legal in SP. I've thought from the get go that some kind of flares may go on at that point. We'll see. I think that would make it look cooler. I will need to do some kind of paint- I'll probably do a Rustoleum job, but spray it rather than roller. Smoke gray isn't a million miles from the color it is now, but I may try mixing Smoke gray and Charcoal gray to come up with something that looks kinda like this.

That was kind of the initial idea. But I don't know. Bacon wants to paint it in the Gulf racing colors, but that's a load more work.

Man, that's cool. I have always liked the old 'box' Celicas. IMHO leave it silver with the Rewinds and 'stache, it looks great that way!

Your Celica is gorgeous . . . I have soft spot for these.

Thanks gang. That's what I like about this place. Aren't a load of people who understand what I like so much about an '84 Celica. Now to try to make it fast enough to hang in FSP.

Now you have me looking at A60 Celicas

What setup did you go with for the coilovers? An AE86 package or some DIY stuff?