A long long time ago (februari 2005) i bought a little old starlet ep81 NA. with just 150.000km on the clock
Purpose of the car was a pure and simple commuter from home to work.
and this is what she looked like (booooring)
in case you find a certain part of my project car interesting there are links that will take you to my photo albums on picasa.
more pics from when i bought the old gal
slowly i found out that there were little things i could mod on the car. changed the grill, rims, spoilers, dash etc. etc.
more pics of the first mods
then i wanted to redo the interior. i had never attempted something like this so i had no knowlage whatsoever of sowing and crap like that. the result was that it took me ages to complete but the result was quite good
and yes, made by 2 blokes who discoverd the power of a sowing machine for the first time
more pics of the interior
the old bouncy suspention rly needed to be updated and so the modding began to improve handling
brakes and shocks
a few more things were added: swaybars front and rear, struts front and rear, adj. panhard, cusco camberplates etc. it was around that time i found out about the ep82 GT Turbo models! they were never sold as left hand drive so i had never come across one yet. so i decided i had to start getting all the parts to build myself a left hand drive GTT
Found and bought a GTT bodykit in the UK
GTT body webalbum
it was around that time that the old 2e-e powerplant started to make unhealthy noises and as i still had a spare engine from a car i stripped i decided to swap the engine
few more pics
tinkered a bit with a psp as car audio with a 5.1 logitech speaker set. took it out quite soon after though
more pics of the audio setup
got hold of a knackered set of rims, refurbished them in white
rims pics
in the meantime we had moved to a new house with a decent garden with the possibility of building a garage. this is the
result:
more pics of the
workshop
finally got hold of a 4efte engine wich were quite rare in the netherlands (i believe i was the 4th starlet in the netherlands to house a 4efte engine at the time)
more pics of the stock 4efte engine
having the turbo in was a great step forwards for my project! had heaps of fun driving it after being used to just 75bhp. Also tried to get the engine swap legal and after some fretting i managed to get the paperwork done
the first approved turbo starlet in the netherlands felt good to have it all done right. no worries from the police or insurance not long after the modding began again. moved the air filter to the front bumper, WEPR manifold and downpipe, HKS actuator, FCD, SAFCII and a few other minor things made it possible to drive at 1 bar boost wich netted me 177bhp back in 2010klik a pull on ct9a @ 1 bar boost
klik dyno run JAF 2010, 177bhp
had some fun doing a short time attack circuit at the dutch toyo challenge. lots of mr2's, supra's, celica's etc. and a little old starlet that took home the 2nd prize
few pics of the toyo challenge
couple of vids:
klik 2nd place Toyo Challenge 2010
klik my wife running her time attack for the very first time ever
drove in the auto-X event on the japanese auto festival in the netherlands.
the car did great! came home with the 1st price of the modified class
klik 1st place Auto-X JAF 2010
my wife's run
klik my wife's best time on auto-X JAF 2010
finally bought a full toms replica kit
more TOM's kit pics
as the car had a lower stance it was difficult to fit a jack under the car. to save time during repairs etc. i made a few ramps
pics van de bokken
with the added power of the turbo came a few small problems. the brakes needed to be updated and the top mount intercooler got too hot. so decided to swap it out and go FMIC
more pics of the update
started to notice the lack of engine information in the car so decided to make a custom center console with gauges in it
boost, smallband air/fuel, exhaust temp
water temp, oil temp, oil press.
how to make a console
little winter project on my dash. those are xmas led lights
i love to use things for what they weren't intended for
cost me a grand total of 5 euro's to build, talk about major investments
xmas dashbord pics
and then disaster struck. due to a driver error (going around the roundabout a few times and flooring it straight after) the engine suffored oil starvation and made some seriously unhealthy noises didn't take me long to realise what had occured and i decided to check the damage and refurbish the engine
confirmed my suspicions....
lot's and lots of
stripping and preparing for rebuild pics
1 piston showed a slight crack, bent 1 rod, bearings were gone, turbo had seized... yikes..
decided to take her off the road for a while and completely redo the engine and other repairs
to do list:
rebuild engine
respray engine bay
respray interior
wire tuck
battery relocating
rollcage
redo the engine loom
bought another spare bottom end
bought a set of rods and pistons from a glanza
gasket kit for the engine
replaced some sensors
etc. etc.
as the whole thing was inside out anyways we decided to flow the head
flowing the head
stripping out the interior, placing the rollcage, replaced the seats and seatbelts
resulting in:
a few more pics
and rebuilt the engine:
stripped down bare and repainted... everything...
assembled:
back in the car:
lot's of pics of the assembly
a few glamour shots
my tailgate was starting the rust quite badly and i was lucky a friend of mine found a clean rustfree tailgate for me
repairing the TTE midspoiler. made of gummy like material and is very easely dammaged
aaaand disaster struck again!
long story "short" in the winter my oil catch can lines were frozen solid, pressure built up in the engine, blew out the turbo seals, filled the turbo intake and exhaust side with oil. resulting in smoke... looooots of smoke
something about pics and 1000 words:
took off the air filter, splut, 0.2 liters of oil came out of the turbo
took the turbo off
exhaust side, soaked with oil
intake side, soaked aswell
time to dismantle the turbo and figure out the damage
hurray... more oil..
cold side fan
dismanteling cold side
turns out the seals were still intact. was just the pressure inside the block that pushed oil passed the seal.
no shaft play, no damage whatsoever.
gave it all a good ultrasonic clean
checked everything for play
rebuilt
time to look at the exhaust
oh dear...
iew...
removing oil ^^ the eco way
found out i had a crack in the manifold and wastegate, rewelded them
giving the exhaust a decent buff
and we power on till something else fails
a while later...
i decided to take my hood off for a good spring cleaning
all cleaned:
and coulden't resist taking a spraycan to it
and disaster struck yet again! was only a matter of time...
found the limit of a glanza rod
was flooring her, 1.1 bar boost, 7200rpm. snap went the rod, tore a hole in the block and sump.it was a violent death with lots of unhealthy noises, smoke and flying carparts. the only way a engine should go out if you ask me
so, here we are again, in the workshop, prepping for surgery to find out what can be salvaged
a familliar sight:
bottom of the rod facing up... well that doesn;t require a lot of detective work to find out what caused the engine to die
new ventilation holes in the back of the engine
as a friend of me quoted:
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely
in an attractive and well preserved body,
But rather to skid in sideways,
chocolate in one hand,
beer in the other,
body thoroughly used up,
totally worn out and screaming
"WOO HOO what a ride!"
and that is exactly what she did
post mortum continued:
damage assesment was quite good all things concidered.
only things damaged and in need of replacing were: sump, bottom end, rod, piston.
the engine was running quite well looking at the colors of the pistons, spark plugs etc.
removed the sump and recovered some engine bits
started digging through my piles of parts, still had the bottom end from the last engine failure, was good enough to use. still had a few glanza rods and pistons. found a good match, balanced it to match the others. checked the crank if it hadn't warped. and had just 0.015mm of play so was within the limits and could be reused.
derusted and prepped the spare bottom end
just waiting on some parts (sump, new headgasket)
let the assembly commence! (again...)
my workshop... filled with carparts
and all back together again and running like a dream
from the moment it blew to running again took me 6 days. not bad if i do say so myself
*a few months later*
started to smoke a little when letting go of the throttle, braking on the engine and giving it some gas again.
after some detective work i found this to be the problem
exhast valve seals leaking a wee bit.
yay, another thing to repair
bought a few much needed goodies! lsd gearbox and coilovers
problem was, we didn;t know for sure there was an lsd in the box. so time to take it apart and check the box. also checking the synchro's etc to make sure the box was in good shape
box was filthy and oily as hell! so gave it a good scrub
stripping it down
and yes
we have LSD!
everything in the box was in great shape so put it all back together and fitted it to the car.
the coilovers were bought with the knowlage that the adjusting parts had seized up. figuring i could get things moving again i started to work on them.. boy had i miscalculated the work it took!
quick "tool" that i made so that i could take an air wrench to the bottom of the shock to hammer it loose.
it worked... eventually... took a whole lot longer that i had figured but got all of them moving again.
and finally a few shots of my new hobby
dragracing!my wife making her runs (she still has a faster time than me! no fair! by just 0.05 seconds)
waiting to start the race
go baby go!
best run sofar with my ct9a 1 bar setup on street tires is a 14.4 @ 158km/h
now we wait to see what will fail next
(al is die van mij al 5 jaar geleden naar de sloop gegaan ).
