at least for oldskool toyota guys. they have potential and are still crazy cheap.
more te72 progress pics
the short stroke sw20/camaro shocks are installed, the front strut casings have been shortened 45mm to gain back some travel.
TE72 progress
it’s slow going but there is progress.
but not where I want it to be yet, as seen below.
New project of my own, a te72 corolla
Just picked up a nice 1980 toyota corolla 4dr sedan te72 w/ the 1.8L 3tc motor. It’s slow… honestly a 32 year old pushrod motor hooked to a 3spd auto.
this build will be slow and on budget, no high dollar anything, not a drift car, just an old corolla getting lower, wider, and a bit faster.
it’s “rust free”, rocker, fenders, quarters, front/rear valences, hood, floors, frame, and truck lid are rust free, but the doors have rotted from sitting and the spare tire well is somewhat rotten from a dumb carpet placed under the spare.
the car has recently had a lot of work done to it:
every single part of the brakes is new
new front wheel bearings
new head gasket, plugs, wires, cap/rotor, fuel filter, rad hoses…..
blah blah blah… just a bunch basic maintenance of stuff I don’t need to do now
it needs doors, a manual swap, and wheels (something between 13×7-14×8, 15′s sometimes look to big on these… not sure).
I’ll be building coilovers the old way, with sw20 rear shocks up front, with threaded sleeves (~400lb/in) and cut the casing down 50mm and get some rca’s and camero rear shocks in the back w/ cut down ae86 rear coils. simple but quite effective.
I have more pics, but you get the point, there’s not much to see but it is clean and straight.
progress done today:
-fixed the passenger door that wouldn’t unlock.
-vacuumed about 3 lbs of pine needles out of it.
urgent requirements: (aside from being lower and wider)
-new starter so i don’t have to hit it with a wrench while turning the key. 
Finally a proper car
So I got a 1987 2-tone grey corolla gts (ae86)!!! I’am very happy to finally, after a year or so of relatively uninteresting cars, to have something so buildable and with RWD! That and it’s my 4th corolla GTS. it has a few silly things I don’t like, the garden trim front lip, some cheap driving lights and ebay an exhaust tip, those will be gone soon enough.
There are a lot of upsides to this car, it’s an ’87 with the 7rib block, it’s a coupe, there are NO rust holes, it has the cool 2-tone grey paint, it came with a cusco lsd, and a set of 13×8 rota wheels with advan a032r race rubber (still street legal DOT tires) with tons of grip. the car also has the power steering and the EGR system removed…. both are things I would have done myself anyway.
I went with my friend Geoff to Vancouver island, who drove me to the ferry terminal and came with me as a walk on passenger to go get the car, I was on a tight time line… I caught the 5pm ferry to the island which arrived at 6:40pm and I needed to get on the 7pm ferry back. needless to say i was in a rush, we got off on the car platform because it’s always a faster way to get off, and we ran up to the passenger drop off area parking lot to meet the guy selling it. so i gave the car quick look over, paid the dude, signed the paper work, and hopped in the car to try and make it the 1-2kms back to the U-turn route so I could get to the toll booth and try to catch the boat… at this point with 60 seconds driving experience in this car I pushed the Advan track rubber about as far as I could on the on/off ramps provided, it was enough for Geoff to brace himself thoroughly….it was 6:54 when I pulled up to the toll booth and I basically drove straight onto the boat with maybe 3-4 cars behind by the time we set sail. I got the car home “safely” by 9pm.
There were/are a few down sides to this car aside from the lip, lights, and tip…..one was the aftermarket sunroof (installed nicely though) and as I found once I started driving the car was that the guy was a smoker…a heavy one…crap
another thing I found when I went to insure it was that it had a V.I. on it, that’s a vehicle inspection, which means that a cop pulled him over, deemed the car unsafe for whatever reason. this sucks because I couldn’t get the car insured to drive at all till it was inspected by a mechanic…. I use to be one, and after looking over the car I expected they’d fine a few issues, these “issues” would have to be fixed before I could drive the car legally…. so i drove it to a shop to get inspected…… 1/2 way across town with 7 year old Sask plates. to my surprise the car passed!
back to the smoker thing…. I spent an entire day cleaning the car…. and this was only the interior and I haven’t shampooed anything. this was just the “dry” cleaning, vacuuming and taking garbage out and getting the carpet clean. the shampoo will come later. but the coolest part of the day was finding one of the oooold Dori-Kaze club stickers (which I have been a member since 2000-2001ish) under the rear seat, it was all dirty and wrinkled but the sticker part was still good…
so the first mod was the DK sticker.
more to come
a real 86
This ae86 (85-87 corolla gts, RWD…. but you should really know this by now) is just what an 86 should be. simple oldschool wheels and a do it yourself approach to the whole car. No crazy offset no dumb fibreglass panels loosely fitting and hanging off…. you get the point it’s not a high dollar build and it’s meant to be driven. it use to be that “high dollar” and ae86 would never be in the same sentence, things have changed much to my dismay…oh well.
I dig this car alot
Much thanks to roadsterdrift for this material!
Nice lowered scooter too
the toyota starlet has never had a recall
just a random bit of info I came cross on the interblogs. kinda cool that a car soo old has never had a recall
really cool pic
I was uber sick last week… hence no post, I’ll get to some new stuff soon but here this to tide you over
the x6 cressida’s
the x6 cressida(81-84) is certainly less popular then the later models. but the last 2 years of it (83-84) go the same 156hp 5mge as the supra, the same independent rear suspension as the supra, and also had 4 wheels disc breaks. the car also weighted 200-300lbs less then the 85-88 cressida and I think that the x6 cressi’s have a more classic look to them.
these wheels are 15×8 -30 and is from booyaka of the japanese nostalgic car foum
sorry for the poor quality of the next photo’s but it’s hard to find good pics of these few cars that have been built on this side on the pacific.
These cars look decent even with the north american park bench bumpers, to me at least.
not a fan of the external oil cooler but it’s a good shot of the wheel fitment.
specs are 12k front coilovers(short stroke conversion , 10k rear springs AGX shocks
15×8-32 front, 15×8.5-32 rear
this car is from toji004 on the japanese nostalgic car forum
A reoccurring intrest?
Here’s an RA65 celica from Australia running 15×8 front and 15×10 rear superlight’s
nice clean car with good fitment… nice
A couple of more classic looking starlets
I really do prefer the original color and bodies.
The wheels are ATS Kleeblatt’s, not sure on the size but I like them
such neat little cars, many of these do end up with 4age swaps nearly doubling the oem horsepower…fun
starlet fun
If you don’t know what the toyota starlet is… don’t worry about it, you’ll probably never see one, it was only sold in north america for 3 years ’81-’84. the starlet had a K series motor (small and quite gutless) but it was rwd and there was potential for the determind….. at the very least the car was a happy little piece of toyota racing history.
this one of course belongs here with the completely dropped stance, flares, and the ssr mkII’s
Das Germans are back…again
I love the old metal. Which will sound familar but also very odd to old school hod rodders because I’m mostly referring to the foreign cars of the early 80′s.
VW Derby, it’s coupey/sedany version of the mk1 polo
An mk1 sirocco on porsche phone dials
the old Merc’s are really coming into their own these days
I love this stuff
the rusty corolla crap box sedan
yeah this is the one of the crap boxes from motorfix crew in Japan, all the work they put into the car was a nice motor, suspension, and wheels…. but the rest was just left for fun.
the black top 20 valve toyota 4age motor, had 170hp factory from toyota, I’m sure it’s more now.
rusty corolla sedan to rusty corolla wagon
I love this mentality that anything can be saved…. for fun, and hey.. why not?
AE7X/TE7X corolla’s
so i know I’ve been neglecting the blog since the holidays, but life’s been busy. One the bright side of things I have been looking for a cheap project car, something I can really sink my …almost used another lame cliche, I want something i can be more creative with.
One car that really interests me is theE70 series corolla’s, they had the same suspension as the well known AE86 chassis corolla’s, but they had a simple body design and they were all carbureted (in north america at least). so all the nice suspension bits from the newer ae86 corolla’s fit and most the driveline stuff fits as well, and your bolt-in engine options are quite good, basically any T or A series motor is a fit.
I could go on for a while about all the sidedraft carb setup’s with different engine choices I’d like to try, as well as all the smaller wide (14×8, 13×8) wheels i’d want, all the suspension mods I’d build, and all the different body styles i’d want to try these changes on. Just for you information these corolla’s were available in 7 yes 7 different shapes.
so for once i’m gonna get off the forums and craigslist and get back to showing you some cars.
the 2 door wagon
the 2+2 liftback
the 4dr wagon
the 4dr sedan
the liftback
a nice sidedraft carb’d 4age
some pics courtesy of the chronicles, and Racer86 blogs
life’s all about variety.
Many people, including myself at times, just focus on one type of car or one make and they fixate themselves on that narrow range of cars. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, some of the best builds come from those guys, but life is all about variety.
I can never seem to be able to keep myself to just one car or one make or style, I see awesomeness in nearly every genera. And as you can kinda tell, if you’ve been keeping up with my cars, I’ve had a lot of cars and I change cars a lot. I have recently sold my ’92 civic si hb because for the last few years I’ve been struggling with trying to have one car that can do everything and sharing that car with my wife means that I (willingly) compromise on how I build that car, and because of that compromise my builds are never expressive enough to entertain me or to be a real creative outlet.
Because of this I have bought a newer Honda CR-V, great car I might add, I really enjoy driving it to work and running errands, but it by no means fills that creative void.
I don’t build cars to please other people, I build them to have fun. I love the build, once it’s done I sell it, I’ll drive it around for a few months or weeks but once it’s done (or reached the limitations of being a daily usage car) or I ‘m tired of it I’ll sell it. My favorite builds are junkyard builds, like the old way we build corolla’s by mismatching parts of other cars that work like, supra wheels, any random electric fan that’ll fit, camaro rear shocks, mr2 rear shocks in the front,…etc etc
For me building cars needs to be a creative outlet that’s not for profit or some kind of gain in status, and never never serious…. it’s gotta be fun!!!!!
But now that the daily car is had…… I can focus on projects… not sure what but it will be rwd, and most of the mods will be fabricated by myself and with some help from friends, no more buying a build on ebay and merely assembling it…. I wanna just get back to putting my blood and sweat into it.
Enjoy and celebrate the differences
Build what you got your way and who cares about the rest.
