TA22 Toyota Celica - the a hedge find...

TA22 Toyota Celica - the a hedge find...

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SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Wednesday 13th January 2016
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Another not so exciting update.. well it is for me. Have managed to acquire another much needed panel for the car.....

















a rust free bootlid...






Getting there slowly clap

DuncanM

6,109 posts

278 months

Wednesday 13th January 2016
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Oh man! I so love these cars!

It's actually one of my lottery win cars smile


SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Wednesday 13th January 2016
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If only you still had them wink

HairyMaclary

3,649 posts

194 months

Thursday 14th January 2016
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Love the shot above with the wings rotten to st and the shiny new rocker cover!

Bookmarked. Good luck!

Rod200SX

8,086 posts

175 months

Thursday 14th January 2016
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Might be worth getting in touch with Huxley Motorsport, he drifts a similarly aged Celica. could be useful for finding parts etc.

Brilliant looking things, these.

SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Friday 15th January 2016
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Thanks for the tip, will look them up.

SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Wednesday 20th January 2016
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Right as I had a free eve, the wife was working and it's too cold to play in the garage (car showed -3 on the way there), why not bring the garage into the warm... well at least parts of it. So following the arrival of the new bootlid on Monday I thought I'd make a start on getting it swapped, namely getting the old lock into its new home... a nice quick job that keeps momentum - simples!. Turns out I was a little bit wrong!

So a quick trip to the garage, whipped the bolts out of the hinges, shoved the lid in the car and took it home... where it was revealed in all its glory! Now I should add that I've never really paid much attention to it other than noting that it contained quite a bit of filler and was a little scabby around the edges



Turning it over for a proper look at the underside revealed much the same along with the usual liberal coating of waxoyl (getting covered in this stuff when working on this car is starting to become its trademark!)



but wait... what's that?



yup... copious amounts of expanding foam... oh b*&@#r!

it is literally everywhere... eek



I wonder what's under the filler?



Should've guessed really!



carefully unravelling the offending item I found a some form of competition or offer application deadline



Anyone got a Delorean handy so I can go back to the early 80's and give someone a slap. This has now sown some serious seeds of doubt as to what else is hiding in the previous repairs carried out on the car.... namely those sills frown

Annnnyway... back to the original 'simple' task - anyone have any ideas on how to remove the lock on a bootlid that looks like this? ears



Fastdruid

8,623 posts

151 months

Wednesday 20th January 2016
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Seeing as it's scrap and you have a "new" one the only way is angle grinder out that section and scrape the foam away.

Expanding foam is nasty in that there is very little that will remove it once set and you're left with mechanical removal.

samj2014

552 posts

111 months

Wednesday 20th January 2016
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Fastdruid said:
Seeing as it's scrap and you have a "new" one the only way is angle grinder out that section and scrape the foam away.

Expanding foam is nasty in that there is very little that will remove it once set and you're left with mechanical removal.
This. Cut it to bits!

SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Wednesday 27th January 2016
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Not quite to bits smile but I bit the bullet... the tab wouldn't budge no matter how much force I put on it.. so out came the grinder - that's a lot of foam!



Free at last!


SuperVM

1,098 posts

160 months

Wednesday 27th January 2016
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Someone had done the expanding foam bodge to a Pulsar GTI-R I bought years ago. The sills were completely rotten, so they filled them with expanding foam, smoothed it and then sealed over them. It's only when I poked them with a screwdriver I realised what they had done. Thankfully, I'd only paid £1500 and the engine and gearbox were good and I managed to get them into a shell in great condition for another £1500. I was actually pretty pleased in the end, as I had a completely rust free example for a total expenditure of £3k.

battered

4,088 posts

146 months

Wednesday 27th January 2016
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Expanding foam in sills is an obvious no-no but in an opening panel like a bootlid then it's perfectly acceptable, given that if it were done in 1986 then the car was 13 yrs old and had minimal value at the time.

I once bodged some non structural bits of inner arches with cardboard and P45, it lasted 3 years outdoors before it fell apart. By that time the rest of it was close to death so nobody much cared.

SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Thursday 2nd June 2016
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Seeing as I've been a little lax at updating this, time for a mammoth update on the Celica as have been spending far too much time on the other projects, one of which has required a lot more grey matter than intended! Exhibit A:



I should add it's mostly thanks to other peoples bodges - seemingly an all too familiar tale when it comes to my projects! MGB's are like onions... they have layers...


So after that I decided I'd cheer myself up with some simple stripping of the front of the Celica ready for repairs... yeah right!

Some seriously rusty bolts put up a bit of a fight but we got there eventually


Alas on closer inspection more bodgery was apparent...


yup, filler behind the headlights!

Despite plenty going on with life in general I tried to snatch the odd moment now and again to quickly pop to the garage. Even if it didn't achieve much in the overall scheme of things, it at least meant there was some kind of momentum which is important for motivation rather than be daunted by the task at hand.

So carried on fighting with more of the rusty nuts and bolts holding the front panel together


which resulted in this


and this


Managed to get hold of some of these (a vast improvement on the MMAs IMO despite their rarity) Any guesses? (spoiler below!)


and where possible I took parts off and carried on cleaning them in the kitchen at home... (while SWMBO was out!)


I also managed to get the car starting on first turn of the key meaning I could run it up to temperature and start to test a few other things. Consequently all of the gauges are now working... however there is a coolant leak from this pipe near the thermostat:


It's also got a bit of a kink in it so probably best being replaced altogether.

During May it finally happened! I managed to move the Celica to somewhere where I could get cracking with the bodywork and mechanicals I've been stockpiling. The eagle-eyed amongst you may also spot the purchase I made last month - a set of genuine Watanabes party



While it was on the trailer I took the opportunity to get underneath and take a couple of shots:




Asides the sills it wasn't as bad as I first feared, but there's still a bit of metalwork required.

Finally last weekend I managed to get the car up on ramps and set to work getting things undone ready for the clutch change... and that's where the fun started...



Now I know from the pictures I was given with the car that the engine and gearbox had been out previously... waaaaaaay back in the 80's. What wasn't clear was the absolute pigs ear that was made of the gearbox cross member and the supposedly 'captive' 4 bolts holding it in... for a start there were only 2... one of which just span and span... and the other... well that just snapped... B%$*er!

Asides that small issue, the rest of the bolts around the bell housing and prop seemed to all come out relatively easily, albeit with a bit of persuasion and some serious dexterity required! After which we soon had the gearbox dropped... and as suspected the issue was soon apparent - a spring plate with no spring!:



The clutch had also definitely seen better days:



A small consolation was that the flywheel looked in pretty good shape - bonus!

So the new clutch matches, pressure plate looks in much better shape, next thing to check is the clutch release bearing... it doesn't fit... !?!?! (cue much frustration at this point!) we checked and double checked... nope it's 2mm too small. The old one is crunchy at best so didn't really want to re use it... decision made - car won't be going back together just yet then.

Sooooo all that brings us pretty much up to date. The next jobs are to reinstate some captive bolts for the gearbox cross member, work out a way of getting the release bearing to fit (or source another), clean the gearbox and de-gunk things where possible and while everything is out of the way, clean and paint the underside of the tunnel. Every cloud and all that...

The saga continues... nuts

Poisson96

2,098 posts

130 months

Thursday 2nd June 2016
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If we could do what we wanted to previous owners, I think we'd all have murder to our names at one stage hehe

SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Friday 3rd June 2016
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Definitely! This one has a lot to answer for and I don't think I've found the worst yet. In fairness I guess back then it was the done thing. rolleyes

HughG

3,538 posts

240 months

Friday 3rd June 2016
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Did you get some new sills Sam?

SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Friday 3rd June 2016
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Yup new outer sills ordered, I'm dreading going near the current ones so will build up some courage for a bit. hehe

SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Friday 1st July 2016
quotequote all
Well not a massive update on actual car progress, due to weddings and other family events but a long update on some progress (and slight madness) nonetheless over the last week...

First things first, I managed to get the clutch release bearing sorted and so that is now as it should be and ready to be refitted. The original plan was to then refit the clutch, gearbox etc and simply make the car drive-able and MOT ready, starting with the decidedly crusty inner wings. So a bit of metalwork, bit of welding and it would be good to go... yeah right!

Things soon went off on a bit of a tangent when I got a message via the celica club forum along the lines of "I have a spare shell with all the bits you need, is it of interest?". I must confess my initial reaction was that it was too far from me (Kent to Glasgow) and so just not feasible with current diary commitments... I was soon convinced by a mate that I would be mad to not think seriously about it given it had what I needed. Sooooo (you can see what's coming), a plan was soon hatched to fetch it over as minimal time frame as possible and a date was set...

The day of reckoning came last Friday morning and after an early visit from the roofers (another story!), I headed, albeit slightly later than intended, over to Horsham to pick up the transporter from http://www.transporterhire.co.uk who couldn't have been more helpful.

However before I could merrily head northbound, just to complicate things even more, I had to head south to get an A35 shell for one of our other projects that I'd agreed to pick up for SWMBO before the Celica shell - in for a penny and all that...

Now I must confess, what I was expecting and what I saw when I went to collect the transporter were two very different things... nice comfortable transit for some serious mileage... er no... in short the van was a bit grim to say the least, it was definitely showing the full extent of it's 233,000 miles on the clock inside and out. If I'm honest I was doubtful of reaching Southampton let alone Scotland at that point, particularly in any form of comfort. The seat padding was definitely 'used' (read non-existent for passenger seat!) and the steering wheel had shed its outer skin a long, long time ago to the extent you got black hands whenever you grabbed it... Still it was too late now so the paperwork was done and I hit the road.

The beast in question...



Thanks to the world seemingly going utterly mad in the wake of the Brexit outcome, the motorways were a state and so I decided to head cross-country, seemingly a good decision as with minimal holdups I was at my destination in a couple of hours. Lugged the first shell on (joys of getting a transporter with a winch!), a fill up of diesel and a quick bite saw me heading back for the fist unload... although not before the M25 had it's say on my return - definitely should've stuck to A-roads!



But I made it eventually - 165 miles and nearly 6.5 hours later.



So after unloading the first shell and safely storing that away it was home for a quick shower and bite before meeting my copilot ready for the trip north. The plan we'd concocted was to leave at c10.30pm to avoid the worst of the Friday night traffic, that would allow us time to park up just shy of our final destination for a quick kip and breakfast. We could then finish the last leg at a more sociable hour and still be on time for an early-ish start back home.

Now on the whole the great thing about travelling at night is the lack of traffic (asides lorries), there is however one scourge - the night workman and their penchant for road cones... a familiar sight was soon becoming regular every few miles along with the mandatory 50 mph limit despite not seeing a single workman for many miles.



As we drove on it soon became apparent that dawn was not far away and we'd be back in daylight sooner than we thought - 3am to be precise... ahh the joys of summer!



What we eventually got was a stunning sunrise as we drove through the lake district - the one where the mist is laying in the valleys and the hills rising like islands - must admit despite the lack of sleep I was feeling pretty good at this point and in awe of what a stunning country we live in. We might just do this - Game on.



We crossed the Scottish border at 5am, knowing we weren't too far away from a bit of brekkie and a short kip... all the motivation we needed at this stage. We eventually parked up at 6.30 and got a brief kip in before it was time for a quick bite and the last leg of about 30m mins to finish.

After being greeted by David and called a couple of mad men by his wife! we loaded the shell and then had a brief tour of his toys - just wow! It was particularly good to see a project I've followed on Retro Rides for a while (http://retrorides.proboards.com/thread/149868/1980-m535i-black-toyota-celica), will make a stunning car when finished. My personal favourite though was his TA22 longnose GT (http://retrorides.proboards.com/thread/171227/74-celica-ta22gt) - looked just as impressive in the flesh... if mine ends up half as good looking I'll be a happy boy.

So at 10am with the shell loaded it was time to point the boneshaker south and head on home... with one quick essential stop first...



The journey back, despite being during the day, was pretty uneventful. A bit more traffic so took a little bit longer, but as we were that little bit more jaded and the important bit had been done, we just took our time, not without a good dousing from the Scottish weather as a reminder of where we'd been.



At just after 6.30pm we arrived at the final destination and unloaded... job done!



Well almost... I must confess that after the best part of 20 hours on the road not including the trip to Southampton and back, I did resort to consuming a can of redbull just to get me over the finish line and get the truck returned. Finally returning home at 9.30pm a very tired, yet very happy boy - mission complete! Honestly couldn't believe we'd done it and the van had performed effortlessly.

So in summary, two mates, nearly 1,300 miles, numerous coffees, 2 fill stops, and a battered old bus that didn't die and instead delivered... mostly backache come to think of it!

Sunday... alas no real chance of a lie in so out came the angle grinder and the salvaging began biggrin



What a weekend! Some great memories made and something to look back on for a while. Would I do it again? absolutely... but perhaps in something a bit nicer inside and with cruise control...

To try and keep momentum (and clear things away before the in-laws get back from hols!) I've been working on the shell every eve this week starting at the front and working backwards - gotta love Deblock oil!



Once the aluminium sheeting was removed from the rear bulkhead I also discovered that as well as being used as an ex-race car it was also once a nursery...



Carried on working backwards and discovered that it's pretty rough underneath, nevertheless, the shell has been fully stripped of all ancillaries ready for the fun bit of devising the best way to save panels as best as I can...





Any suggestions/tips on the approach to panel saving welcome...

Shadow R1

3,798 posts

175 months

Friday 1st July 2016
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You sir are mad, but hats off to you. smile


SPT28

Original Poster:

425 posts

205 months

Thursday 7th July 2016
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Most definitely... I've been told that a few times of late wink

So just to update from last weekend following the previous weeks stripping efforts during the evenings, it was time for some careful slicing and dicing to preserve as many panels and parts as possible.

First off was inner wings and strut towers



Then the bulk head which my other half took great pleasure in using as a seat while she buzzed the front steering and subframe apart. Car was starting to look a bit sad at this point



Rear wings...



Finally separation of the boot floor and rear arches



Which meant by the end of the day my trailer looked decidedly full of parts ready for storage - good stuff!



I should point out it won't be towed like this - this was just for parking up purposes so the place didn't look like a scrapyard and I wouldn't get in trouble with the in laws! wink

This weekend should see the start of the metal work on the car that's still in one piece! party