Topic: Project CORAL! - Off to a new start.....

[seat safety switch]

I keep meaning to go to the Red Deer swap meet every year but never do. Toyota stuff would surprise me, I keep meaning to go to look for 60s Mopar stuff and maybe a moped/minibike or something.

Maybe I should go this year.

[Jukka]

Well, have forgot to update this thread, but I've managed to get a bunch of work done to Coral in the last couple weeks.

We JB welded the carb, no more leaks, fired it up, ran great...for 5 minutes then shut off again. We initially thought the issue was with the carb, but after checking, it was an issue with spark. Something in the distributor would just drop off after about 5 minutes of running. I had 3 options. 1. buy a replacement distributor for $500, 2. Buy an MSD ignition box any bypass the module in the distributor and hope it works, or 3. buy every component for inside the distriubtor and rebuild it for $100. I went with option 3. Ended up rebuilding the distributor yesterday, car fires up first bump, runs like a champ and for more than 5 minutes now! It's close to being a driver, but still needs some more work.

I also got around to installing my JDM flatnose headlights.




Also tackled the interior a bit. Put the carpet in, dyed the cubby, dyed the hand brake cover, dyed the kick pods, dyed the rear hatch interior 1/4s, dyed the door seals, dyed steering column cover, installed the Pioneer speakers up front and my old Rockford 6.5" in the rear, new headunit, rewired the entire sound system, installed an Autogauge tach, Grant steering wheel, and made a block off plate for the old headunit location up on the dash.

Before:


*not the best picture of the rear panels from before, but only one I have*

After:






Also did a couple of other little things like did a brake fluid flush (because the fluid in there looked like dirty motor oil), installed a new muffler (one on there had a couple holes in it), installed my Optima battery from the Subaru, removed the aftermarket broken cruise control unit, cleaned up the wiring under the dash and replaced my front turn signal lenses too. Car should be coming home on Friday, so body work will start then.

[seat safety switch]

Looks like some good progress.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

Looks so good with the dark carpet. Loving the headlights and the new steering wheel as well. I love this project.

[Jukka]

Looks so good with the dark carpet. Loving the headlights and the new steering wheel as well. I love this project.

Thanks man! One of the next projects is going to be re-wrapping the door's in black vinyl, billet window cranks, and I'm thinking I'm going to do some nylon door pulls. The factory arm rest/door pulls are completely uckfayed.

I also forgot to mention that I also ordered up some parts to start overhauling the suspension. The suspension right now is so soft that I can stand beside the car, not bracing my self, and probably swing the body 5-6" in each direction. All the rubber bushings on the bottom side of the car are pretty much gone because they are so rotten. I have already ordered up new poly swaybar endlinks, leaf spring eyelet bushings front and rear and leaf spring hanger bushings too. I'm debating if I want to order up things like the torsion rod and lower control arm bushings, or if I just want to buy a set of T3 adjustable ones.

Some more pictures from the build up/forgot to post earlier..

Door mirror block off plates I made up for when I install the fender mirrors

The ittshay old brake fluid


The new muffler...still need to figure out what I want to do with a tip. Going to wait till I get the rear bumper off before deciding.


My buddy from back in Toronto sent me this thing too..

Cool as itshay old school 80's Toyota Service Jacket. He's had it sitting in his basement for 20+ years and thought I would like it.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

I love that jacket. I'd kill for a honda equivalent.

[RedBimmer93]

Obscured tip is the way to go

[Asstuna]

Obscured tip is the way to go

itshay, did somebody mention a tip?

Nothing like hiding the exhaust exit so it recirculates inside your car.

Like this.

[jellynuts]

Obscured tip is the way to go

You and your tips man.

[darthekai]

Like this.

Nah a wagon this old has the safety feature of a drafty cabin.

[Jukka]

Finally got Coral home last week! My buddy was kind enough to tow it down from the old job.

Parked next to the wife's stupid Kia.

I had to do a quick clean before I could bring it in the garage. Once I got it in the garage, it made me realize how freaking small this thing is. This is the roof line of the stock ride height Corolla compared to the lowered subaru's on stock 16" wheels and tires.


I also picked up a MIG welder this week so I can start working on the body work soon. Just need to get the remainder of the Subaru out of the garage.

Also I may be picking up another set of wheels tonight. This time matching!

[Jukka]

Bought more shoes..

Picked them up off a guy who I've bought some stuff before from. We both had no idea what they were, but they are 2 piece, 15x6.5 +20. Got them for a good deal, spent a bunch of time on the interwebs looking around to figure out what they are and after hours of searching, consulting some friends who know 80's wheels really well and sheer luck, I finally identified them.

They are Super Star Racing NORE Super-Fins. and yes, Super Star Racing, not Speed Star Racing (SSR). They are actually a big wheel company, but now mostly sell their stuff under the Leon Hardiritt brand. They will look pretty good when they are finished too, just need to somehow track down some center caps.

I'm thinking I may go polished lips and gunmetal centers for when I re-finish them.

Also grabbed some other supplies to start working on the car. I picked up some sheet metal, a couple of welding magnets, a new welding helmet, and body hammers and dollies. I also had 5 boxes of stuff come in from Rock Auto over the last couple days. I'll be posting more about that when I get home and make sure everything is there.

[seat safety switch]

Those are pretty cool. Do they really need a re-finish or just a polish?

[Jukka]

Yea they need a refinish. 2 of the wheels are pretty mint on the lips, 1 wheel has 2 or 3 little sections of curb rash and the last wheel is rashed probably 1/3rd of the way around and has a small bend in the rear lip. That and the paint on the faces is pretty bad and the hardware is all oxidized too. Outside of the curb rash, the lips will probably just need a good solid cleaning and a buffing to bring them back up to a good shine.

[Jukka]

More parts!



Picked up new balljoint, wheel cylinders, ignition cylinder and keys (so I don't have to fight with the ignition for 5 minutes to find the sweet spot and start it), Energy Suspension Poly front lower control arm bushings, brake and clutch pedal pads, exhaust hanger doughnuts. Also not pictured, but $200 worth of rear leaf spring eyelet bushings for front and rear, and shackle bushings. Now I just need to order replacement shocks for the rear, new strut cartidges for the front, my buddy has a set of TechnoToyTuning Roll Center adjusters, and a set of TRD lowering springs for the front he's going to sell me. I'm also going to get my rear leafs flipped and resprung when they come out to finish up the suspension. Only other bits I need for the suspension is front strut-rod bushings, swaybar mount bushings, steering rack bushings, and possibly some pillow ball topmounts for the struts.

Luckily I have nothing on the books this weekend, so I'm gonna spend some time in there getting the body work sorted out.

[Jukka]

Spent a bit of time working on the car this past weekend, but as per usual life gets in the way, so no where near as much as I was hoping for. Didn't do much except clean the rear seat covers. I found they are held in place by a rope seal that's shoved into a channel on the metal on the bottom and back side of the seat housing. I peeled them off and found the foam is near mint, but the covers were disgusting.

Just a reminder of how gross they were:



I decided to throw them into the laundry on the heavy duty cycle, a tide pod and 2 scoops of oxyclean.
Bottom Cushion after cleaning all reassembled

Back cushion while it was still air drying


Sooooo minty. I was thinking of just throwing them back in the car, but the light brown would contrast really really heavily with the rest of the blacked out interior, so they are getting treated to a few coats of fabric dye just like the front seats were. No pictures yet, but with the nice warm weather this week, I'll hopefully get them back in and start working on the door cards.

[Jukka]

Holy itshay! I actually had time to work on Coral..lol I got a few hours this past week to work on the car and decided I would tackle one of the last items I need to for the interior. The door cards in this thing were super 80's, the passenger side door pull was broken in about 3 pieces, the rear passenger side was missing completely, and it just looked like hell. I decided I wanted to do something that would be simple and look decent, but give it that custom look.

I refinished the door cards in a black vinyl. I didn't put any foam in behind the vinyl like the factory had. I'm still not 100% if I like the look being able to see the staples and clips through the vinyl, so I may redo them and add in a thin layer of foam. We'll see when they get installed in the car.

For the door pulls, I had 2 options. Option 1: Look all over the internet in different countries where these cars were popular (Australia, NZ, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc) and see if I can track a set of used OEM ones down and pay however much for them.
Option 2: Build cool racecar-ish nylon door pulls.

Option 2 is much eaiser and cheaper. I bought some nylon webbing, cut it down to length with a 1" overlap on the bottom side, bought an eyelet gun, popped the holes out, popped the eyelets in, and got my mother-in-law to do a nice reinforced stitching on it to sure them up so they won't pull apart when I use them.   

I'm going to punch out the rest of the holes required when I get my window cranks get in next month. I ordered some black brushed aluminium ones. For the hardware for the door pulls, I'm debating between either A. buying some stainless screws and beveled washers to allow the heads to be recessed, or I may see how hard it will be to pop the nylon inserts out of the doors and weld in some 8mm nuts and run some of the left over RallyTech bolt kit I had under the hood of the WRX and paint the anodized blue washers black. We'll see.

[darthekai]

[Asstuna]

Take a 9" grinder to those toenails

[Jukka]

I hit a bit of a jackpot this past weekend. I found out that Pick-n-Pull on 52nd actually had a 82 Corolla in their lot! I had to go check it out and see if I could find some stuff I was looking for.

The car was really really rough. I was hoping to grab the front fenders to use the flares on the rear of my car, but they were pooched. The interior of the car had become a really gross mouse nest, and the rest of the car was just too rough. I did manage to score some good parts off it though:

I scored a complete center console (complete meaning its all there, but it is broken), a black e-brake handle, a set of OEM window cranks in black, a new fuse box cover that is in 1 piece, and...

OEM Toyota branded rubber floor mats from a Cressida, and some black rear wheel well covers. Best part is, they had a 50% off day, so it only cost $38 for all of it!

Going to have to spend some time working on cleaning it all up, repairing and repainting it all to match the rest of the interior.

[seat safety switch]

How were the crowds at 50% off day?

[Jukka]

minimal. When I went at like 11:45, I walked right in, no lines or anything. The big dollies were all being used by people who were pretty much pulling entire vehicles out of the yard, but it wasn't bad.

Going back to my last post, I got a couple minutes to do some work the other night. I did some magic tricks and made 2 pieces back into 1 again.

Center Console where it was broken.

First step was aligning the crack properly and getting it as straight as possible.

Next was heat up my flat blade soldering iron and start moving some plastic around


I did the top first, and then did the bottom.
End result, for now...

Still need to get in there and sand it down and paint the whole console, but the most important thing is that it's back together in 1 piece.

Once the console if finished and painted, I'm going to stitch up a shift boot and handbrake boot to help give the interior a more finished look. I'm also supposed to be picking up a seat rail I left with Lackluster on the weekend, which means I can possibly be mounting the Recaro seat soon.

[seat safety switch]

Looks good. I've done a similar job using zipties as filler rod but it looks like you had enough plastic to work from and the cracks weren't super broad.

[Jukka]

Thanks!

I finished cleaning it up the other day. I honestly could have done a better job, but I was in a time crunch.




Also found some DiNoc when I was cleaning up my garage. Decided to wrap the old fake wood vinyl with some carbon looking stuff instead.


The other day I had some time, so I decided to start cutting some of the rust out of the drivers rear 1/4. Looks like I'm going to need to remake the rear inner fender section. **Don't mind the mis-matched paint, I used the rusted to itshay section of the car to test some different colours.


The good thing is that its really only the sheet metal thats rusted out. The main structural body metal is solid, which is awesome. Still gotta buy some tools to make finishing this thing easier, but I have most of it already. Now just need some time...

[Jukka]

Had some time the other night to work in the garage. Did some work on the Subaru, pulled the exhaust off, started working on the downpipe and rear suspension, but got bored/frusterated, so I decided to take some time with Coral and decided to strip the dash pad out. The dash pad was cracked in about 4 spots and the vinyl was chipping away on the passenger side top and a big chunk of vinyl ripped off when I pulled the ugly phone holder off the dash when I first got it.

I was expecting the job was going to be a massive pain in the assay like it is on any modern dash, but it was actually super simple. It was about 10 screws holding the cluster trim in place, 4 holding the gauges in place, remove the speedo cable from the cluster, 3 screws to remove the glovebox then 4 10mm nuts holding it in place. The whole process took maybe 20 minutes to remove it.
And here it is in it's beat to hell glory....



Now the million dollar question, what to do with it? I'm going to call around and see if I can get someone to reupholster it like the AE71 dash


OR, do I go the DIY route and flock it?


I've found a bunch of DIY dash repairs where guys have flocked them and they look good. It's also relatively cheap (less than $100)