Kelvinators "boring car" - 1998 Corolla Liftback Project
Discussion
Well, no one can ever say my taste in cars is anything but diverse. After selling the Mini, it was time to get something a bit different.
So here it is, a New Zealand built (In the Thames Plant), 1998 Toyota Corolla Liftback in the NZ only colour of Firefly Metallic.
The pinnacle of style, power, comfort and... well, no, its none of those things. What is it, is cheap, reliable, hardwearing and easily modifiable.
Built on the E11 platform, much like the much more desirable AE111 Levin/Trueno/Sprinter/Carib, but a far more practical 5 door liftback.
There are plenty of other, "better looking" Corollas out there, why didn't I get one of those instead of the "Marmite" looks of the bugeye? Well, because I grew up watching these,
The Corolla WRC. Sure, they were 3 door, widebody hatchbacks, but look at the iconic bugeye front. I've always had a soft spot for that look, even if others don't particularly like it.
So what about my car? Well, it's a top spec 1.8 GLX, meaning it has all the fruit available at the time, such as 4 electric windows (Woah), an alarm (omg), a cd player (flash), air conditioning (cool), a rear spoiler (sporty), and 14" alloys (racy). Of course, there are other options like ABS, electric mirrors, variable intermittent wipers, cup holder, and a towbar, but the main attraction to this particular car (other than price)? The big block 1.8L 7A-FE engine.
In these cars in NZ there were two options of engine. The far more common 1.6L 4A-FE, and the 1.8L 7A-FE. Both make about the same HP, somewhere about 110-115hp on paper, but the 7A makes more torque, about 20NM more, but at about 2000rpm lower, making it a stump-pulling torque beast.
Driving a 4A and 7A back to back was the reason for me hunting down a 7A powered car because the difference in low down torque is very noticeable. It feels more punchy and eager, whilst the 4A was a bit more rev happy due to its shorter stroke. Interestingly, to get the longer stroke in the 7A, the block is 15.4mm taller than the 4A.
Unfortunately, good 7A powered cars are a bit limited in their availability, which meant either paying a high price for one, getting one that was neglected and stank of cat wee, or going very cheap and getting one that has some dodgy paint and an automatic transmission. No points for guessing which I chose.
It was cheap, but its also filthy, the clearcoat on the bonnet is almost completely gone, the seats are all worn out, and there are various other issues here and there. It's not perfect, but for what I paid for it, I wouldn't expect it to be.
Of course, it wouldn't be my car if it didn't have some funny quirks... How's this for a quality passengers mirror? I won't lie, it actually kinda works
The plans are to give it a really good service, to keep the engine as happy as possible, since its what I bought the car for, and convert it to manual.
Various other improvements will happen along the way, such as poly bushes, bigger front brakes, rear disk brakes, bigger swaybars, 15" wheels and sticky tires, and maybe coilovers eventually. All of this is for the purpose of having a fun car to thrash around the streets, but also have the ability to drive the two hours to the track, thrash it relentlessly and then drive home.
Not to forget that since it has a towbar and its a liftback, it can be used to haul all the things I don't want to put into the Honda, like runs to the dump, or scrap metal. A true workhorse.
This won't be a short term project as I'll be doing it on a very tight budget, so time will be spent hunting down the best prices on things instead of just making it rain.
We can all partially blame my friend with a 2ZZ-GE powered AE101 wagon for planting the Corolla seed in my brain. It just makes sense though, since I couldn't drive the Mini hard for fear of breaking it, but a Corolla will go forever no matter how you treat it, parts are so cheap and available, and its all just Toyota Lego with bits being swapped from different models to improve it with minimal cost.
So that's it. Follow me on this "boring car" journey; or don't, it's up to you.
So here it is, a New Zealand built (In the Thames Plant), 1998 Toyota Corolla Liftback in the NZ only colour of Firefly Metallic.
The pinnacle of style, power, comfort and... well, no, its none of those things. What is it, is cheap, reliable, hardwearing and easily modifiable.
Built on the E11 platform, much like the much more desirable AE111 Levin/Trueno/Sprinter/Carib, but a far more practical 5 door liftback.
There are plenty of other, "better looking" Corollas out there, why didn't I get one of those instead of the "Marmite" looks of the bugeye? Well, because I grew up watching these,
The Corolla WRC. Sure, they were 3 door, widebody hatchbacks, but look at the iconic bugeye front. I've always had a soft spot for that look, even if others don't particularly like it.
So what about my car? Well, it's a top spec 1.8 GLX, meaning it has all the fruit available at the time, such as 4 electric windows (Woah), an alarm (omg), a cd player (flash), air conditioning (cool), a rear spoiler (sporty), and 14" alloys (racy). Of course, there are other options like ABS, electric mirrors, variable intermittent wipers, cup holder, and a towbar, but the main attraction to this particular car (other than price)? The big block 1.8L 7A-FE engine.
In these cars in NZ there were two options of engine. The far more common 1.6L 4A-FE, and the 1.8L 7A-FE. Both make about the same HP, somewhere about 110-115hp on paper, but the 7A makes more torque, about 20NM more, but at about 2000rpm lower, making it a stump-pulling torque beast.
Driving a 4A and 7A back to back was the reason for me hunting down a 7A powered car because the difference in low down torque is very noticeable. It feels more punchy and eager, whilst the 4A was a bit more rev happy due to its shorter stroke. Interestingly, to get the longer stroke in the 7A, the block is 15.4mm taller than the 4A.
Unfortunately, good 7A powered cars are a bit limited in their availability, which meant either paying a high price for one, getting one that was neglected and stank of cat wee, or going very cheap and getting one that has some dodgy paint and an automatic transmission. No points for guessing which I chose.
It was cheap, but its also filthy, the clearcoat on the bonnet is almost completely gone, the seats are all worn out, and there are various other issues here and there. It's not perfect, but for what I paid for it, I wouldn't expect it to be.
Of course, it wouldn't be my car if it didn't have some funny quirks... How's this for a quality passengers mirror? I won't lie, it actually kinda works
The plans are to give it a really good service, to keep the engine as happy as possible, since its what I bought the car for, and convert it to manual.
Various other improvements will happen along the way, such as poly bushes, bigger front brakes, rear disk brakes, bigger swaybars, 15" wheels and sticky tires, and maybe coilovers eventually. All of this is for the purpose of having a fun car to thrash around the streets, but also have the ability to drive the two hours to the track, thrash it relentlessly and then drive home.
Not to forget that since it has a towbar and its a liftback, it can be used to haul all the things I don't want to put into the Honda, like runs to the dump, or scrap metal. A true workhorse.
This won't be a short term project as I'll be doing it on a very tight budget, so time will be spent hunting down the best prices on things instead of just making it rain.
We can all partially blame my friend with a 2ZZ-GE powered AE101 wagon for planting the Corolla seed in my brain. It just makes sense though, since I couldn't drive the Mini hard for fear of breaking it, but a Corolla will go forever no matter how you treat it, parts are so cheap and available, and its all just Toyota Lego with bits being swapped from different models to improve it with minimal cost.
So that's it. Follow me on this "boring car" journey; or don't, it's up to you.
Edited by KelvinatorNZ on Friday 21st May 11:03
I didn't leave it long before I got stuck into playing with this thing. I needed to first check what sort of baseline for maintenance we had.
The engine bay was filthy, and the battery had been dead (I had to jump-start it when we got there to look at it), but that's all I knew. Battery went on charge overnight and seems to be behaving its self, but will monitor it closely and replace it if need be.
You can see there had been some "coolant" explosion at some point. Lots of muddy brown, rusty water staining near the battery and coolant overflow tank. No doubt the whole system needs a damn good flush.
Thankfully the coolant is currently green, and although the thermostat is stuffed and takes ages to warm up and cools down again when driving, it doesn't overheat when sitting, and the fan cycles as it should. The radiator looks quite new, but that could've been replaced when it had its front end bump (more on that later).
The first thing to check was the air filter. Dirty, but useable for now.
The rocker cover gasket has given up, there is oil everywhere. It's also possible the distributor O-Ring has failed too, but it's hard to tell with so much oil everywhere
I found the brake fluid was black, and was on the MIN mark when I got the car, to the point that the warning light kept coming on and off during the test drive. I topped this up for now, but will flush the whole system when I upgrade the brakes.
There is a bit of confusion with the spark plugs on these. It looks like the early cars used a different model and heat range spark plug, to the later cars, but the one consistent is that the gap should be 0.8mm.
These plugs were... Old. Maybe the wrong heat range too. I will be replacing these with BKR6E.
A 1.25mm gap, on the high side of the central electrode, which is worn away on an angle
The same story applies for the distributor cap and rotor. Both seriously worn out. There is a huge amount of buildup on the cap terminals.
The oil, although jet black, was 3/4 full, which considering the oil leaks, is good. This will get changed anyway, just so I know what's what.
This is where it started to get a bit weird. After checking everything, and reassembling, the car was hard to start and idled very low and rough. I started to do my usual checks of the throttlebody and found a few things. First, the throttle stop has been wound right out so wasn't touching the throttle pivot, leading to the throttle over closing and jamming, causing a sticky throttle.
Secondly, I found the TPS was loose and a goose. There is a gap between it and the throttlebody
Removing the TPS showed that the metal tab that should stop the TPS winding back too far had been bent and no longer served its purpose. It should stop at that diagonal line at about 4 o'clock.
I bent the tab back and reset it
Using feeler gauges and a multimeter I reset the throttle stop and TPS adjustments. Long story short, use 0.7mm of feeler gauge between the throttle stop, and adjust the TPS so that on the two lower pins you are just on the edge of going from having resistance to being open circuit. This should more or less set the idle switch.
It turned out to still idle rubbish after that, so I pulled the throttlebody off, removed the idle valve and cleaned the whole lot. The idle valve was stuck, so freeing that up should be good.
It idled better after all that, but the idle speed was still all over the place. Sometimes low, sometimes really high. A split vacuum hose to the FPR was found and replaced, with no change. I did find that the base ignition advance was set to 15deg, when it should be 10deg. Changing this back slowed the idle enough to bring it into a reasonable speed. Replacing the thermostat should help too, so parts are on the way.
In the mean time the idle is a little random, but when I took the car out earlier it behaved perfectly. A little high when cold (started OK but crept up), but as the temperature went up the idle went down as it should until it settled at about 600rpm in gear. That's how it should be.
I do wonder if someone had been messing with the throttlebody to try and fix the idle issue, and just didn't do a good job of it. No surprise there.
Service parts will be here in a couple of days, so I'll spill some more oil and coolant on the ground, and see how we go after that.
The engine bay was filthy, and the battery had been dead (I had to jump-start it when we got there to look at it), but that's all I knew. Battery went on charge overnight and seems to be behaving its self, but will monitor it closely and replace it if need be.
You can see there had been some "coolant" explosion at some point. Lots of muddy brown, rusty water staining near the battery and coolant overflow tank. No doubt the whole system needs a damn good flush.
Thankfully the coolant is currently green, and although the thermostat is stuffed and takes ages to warm up and cools down again when driving, it doesn't overheat when sitting, and the fan cycles as it should. The radiator looks quite new, but that could've been replaced when it had its front end bump (more on that later).
The first thing to check was the air filter. Dirty, but useable for now.
The rocker cover gasket has given up, there is oil everywhere. It's also possible the distributor O-Ring has failed too, but it's hard to tell with so much oil everywhere
I found the brake fluid was black, and was on the MIN mark when I got the car, to the point that the warning light kept coming on and off during the test drive. I topped this up for now, but will flush the whole system when I upgrade the brakes.
There is a bit of confusion with the spark plugs on these. It looks like the early cars used a different model and heat range spark plug, to the later cars, but the one consistent is that the gap should be 0.8mm.
These plugs were... Old. Maybe the wrong heat range too. I will be replacing these with BKR6E.
A 1.25mm gap, on the high side of the central electrode, which is worn away on an angle
The same story applies for the distributor cap and rotor. Both seriously worn out. There is a huge amount of buildup on the cap terminals.
The oil, although jet black, was 3/4 full, which considering the oil leaks, is good. This will get changed anyway, just so I know what's what.
This is where it started to get a bit weird. After checking everything, and reassembling, the car was hard to start and idled very low and rough. I started to do my usual checks of the throttlebody and found a few things. First, the throttle stop has been wound right out so wasn't touching the throttle pivot, leading to the throttle over closing and jamming, causing a sticky throttle.
Secondly, I found the TPS was loose and a goose. There is a gap between it and the throttlebody
Removing the TPS showed that the metal tab that should stop the TPS winding back too far had been bent and no longer served its purpose. It should stop at that diagonal line at about 4 o'clock.
I bent the tab back and reset it
Using feeler gauges and a multimeter I reset the throttle stop and TPS adjustments. Long story short, use 0.7mm of feeler gauge between the throttle stop, and adjust the TPS so that on the two lower pins you are just on the edge of going from having resistance to being open circuit. This should more or less set the idle switch.
It turned out to still idle rubbish after that, so I pulled the throttlebody off, removed the idle valve and cleaned the whole lot. The idle valve was stuck, so freeing that up should be good.
It idled better after all that, but the idle speed was still all over the place. Sometimes low, sometimes really high. A split vacuum hose to the FPR was found and replaced, with no change. I did find that the base ignition advance was set to 15deg, when it should be 10deg. Changing this back slowed the idle enough to bring it into a reasonable speed. Replacing the thermostat should help too, so parts are on the way.
In the mean time the idle is a little random, but when I took the car out earlier it behaved perfectly. A little high when cold (started OK but crept up), but as the temperature went up the idle went down as it should until it settled at about 600rpm in gear. That's how it should be.
I do wonder if someone had been messing with the throttlebody to try and fix the idle issue, and just didn't do a good job of it. No surprise there.
Service parts will be here in a couple of days, so I'll spill some more oil and coolant on the ground, and see how we go after that.
Edited by KelvinatorNZ on Friday 21st May 11:06
One of the first things that annoyed me was that the car has had a small bump in the LH front corner. Nothing major, but it had pushed the grille, grille panel and headlight out of alignment with the bonnet.
It bugged, me, so I set to work fixing it.
Stupidly I didn't get a good photo of the alignment beforehand, but you can kinda see it here
So, to fix it, I made it worse
And using a combination of hammers, pliers and other bendy bashy things, I ended up with something that looked like this
It's not perfect, not much is on a 22 year old car with 260+k on the clock, but it's far better than it was. The panel almost aligns with the bonnet now, and since the headlight is bolted to that grille panel, the headlight is now pointing straight
Speaking of headlights, whoever decided they should be secured to the car with these bloody things is an arse and should be flogged mercilessly.
What they should look like this is
But of course, the metal bolt rusts into the metal insert, causing the thin sheet metal that the clip attaches to, to slice into the only thing stopping it spinning, and suddenly you have a free-spinning bolt you cannot undo. What an arse.
I ended up using a 14mm Irwin bolt grip to bite into the plastic piece and hold it so I could undo the bolt. I replaced then with a washer and standard nut instead.
Getting there. The car doesn't look like a derp now, so that's a big win in my books.
It bugged, me, so I set to work fixing it.
Stupidly I didn't get a good photo of the alignment beforehand, but you can kinda see it here
So, to fix it, I made it worse
And using a combination of hammers, pliers and other bendy bashy things, I ended up with something that looked like this
It's not perfect, not much is on a 22 year old car with 260+k on the clock, but it's far better than it was. The panel almost aligns with the bonnet now, and since the headlight is bolted to that grille panel, the headlight is now pointing straight
Speaking of headlights, whoever decided they should be secured to the car with these bloody things is an arse and should be flogged mercilessly.
What they should look like this is
But of course, the metal bolt rusts into the metal insert, causing the thin sheet metal that the clip attaches to, to slice into the only thing stopping it spinning, and suddenly you have a free-spinning bolt you cannot undo. What an arse.
I ended up using a 14mm Irwin bolt grip to bite into the plastic piece and hold it so I could undo the bolt. I replaced then with a washer and standard nut instead.
Getting there. The car doesn't look like a derp now, so that's a big win in my books.
Edited by KelvinatorNZ on Friday 21st May 11:07
Thanks for the power and torque curves.
I was considering a green one, 1.4 or 1.6 manual, with mismatched door mirrors, the replacement being black plastic not colour coded, with a dealer in South London, Kent way. It was up for £990, as a tool to get from A to B it would've met my requirements, but I need to be strict with myself and get a £30 per year road tax car as my next shed. A teenage Toyota may cost nothing in repairs and servicing over 4 years but paying the purchase price again over that period on road tax irks me.
I was considering a green one, 1.4 or 1.6 manual, with mismatched door mirrors, the replacement being black plastic not colour coded, with a dealer in South London, Kent way. It was up for £990, as a tool to get from A to B it would've met my requirements, but I need to be strict with myself and get a £30 per year road tax car as my next shed. A teenage Toyota may cost nothing in repairs and servicing over 4 years but paying the purchase price again over that period on road tax irks me.
KelvinatorNZ said:
Of course, it wouldn't be my car if it didn't have some funny quirks... How's this for a quality passengers mirror? I won't lie, it actually kinda works
Good lord!!!!!
Alarm bells would be ringing in my head on the basis if that's the std of bodges what else are you going to find!!!!
Before we can get into doing fun things with this car, I needed to undo some neglect and deferred maintenance.
My inspection the other day showed that there were a few issues, mainly just from either not being maintained for ages or having the bare minimum to scrape along (typical Toyota life, it will put up with it and keep going).
Using my connections in the automotive trade I picked up a big box of parts this morning and set to work.
The first and most important thing I needed to sort was the thermostat. The car ran cold, took ages to warm up and when it did the temp would drop when moving. I'm sure this was causing some of the idle issues too. No good.
The thermostat lives up under the distributor. I tried to drain the radiator via the drain plug, but it was taking too long so I kicked the drain tray further under and just slowly slipped the radiator hose off and drained that way. Got most of it in the tray, which is unusual for me.
Just looking at the neck of that housing doesn't bode well. A bit crusty.
Excuse the blurry pic, the housing is tucked away in the darkness, but this is the thermostat housing and the two nuts you need to remove. I doused them in CRC first and had no issues undoing them. Undoing the wiring off the distributor and pushing it aside helps, as does removing the top of the airbox.
Eww, this is the old thermostat. The gasket shouldn't be chewed up like that.
This might be the reason it ran cold; daylight
The thermostat was jammed open, so even when stone cold like it was, it would let coolant flow on by.
This poor gasket. What has someone done to you?
The new genuine replacement thermostat and gasket looked much better. Nice and sealed closed.
Before refitting the housing I took it over to the overly-enthusiastic parts washer and gave it a good scrub. It was covered in old oil outside, and scale on the inside. A wire brush made the neck and mating surface a bit less crusty.
The new thermostat was fitted with the new gasket, making sure the jiggle-pin is located at the top. The nuts got a good lubing to make sure they are easy to bust off in the future.
Since I was in the area I also took the time to swap the distributor cap and rotor. I used a genuine cap and aftermarket rotor, just due to cost. These are the old ones.
Nice shiny new
Next on the hitlist was the spark plugs. The old ones were very worn out, with huge gaps (1.3mm). I'm also unconvinced they were the correct heat range (5).
A set of cheap, but reliable NGK BKR6E gapped to 0.8mm as per the spec went in. The leads look original but are in good visual condition so they will stay for now.
Before the final part, the oil change, I had to run the car up to temp to get the oil hot. This required topping up the coolant I drained and bleeding the system. This was done with the radiator cap off, heater on hot, and squeezing the hoses to burp air until the thermostat opens and the bottom hose gets hot.
Once it was bled I popped the cap back on the radiator, jacked the car up and drained the oil. The oil was jet black, but it had enough to keep it happy and I wasn't panning for gold. The filter is a pain on these, being tucked up under the exhaust manifold (which is hot), and right next to the alternator and AC pump. I managed to crack it with a three claw tool, a short extension and a ratchet.
With the oil drained, filter replaced and 3.9L of Penrites finest 10W40 semi-synthetic oil in the sump it was time to fire the car up to fill the filter and check for leaks. All was well, and the engine was noticeably quieter already.
The last thing to do was to give the engine a quick clean and degrease. It will get a proper clean later on after I replace the rocker cover gasket, but I ran out of time to do that today.
One does not do all this work and not just take the car for a "road test", that would be silly. So off I went, making sure to check that WOT and redline both work as expected, which yes, they do. The rolly polly suspension isn't ideal for the twisty back road I road test on, but it's still fun to just fang around in. I'm looking forward to driving it in manual form.
The engine is running and driving better than ever, with a nice stable and controlled idle, a smooth progressive rev to redline, and a good stable temp on the gauge. I'm tempted to wind the timing back up to 15 degrees for more power.
A great win overall. I thanked the car for being good by treating it to some LED bulbs in the interior and replacing a blown reversing light bulb.
Hopefully, if the weather plays nice I'll be able to hit Pick A Part tomorrow and start grabbing bits to replace the broken things on this car, and also start hoarding manual conversion parts.
My inspection the other day showed that there were a few issues, mainly just from either not being maintained for ages or having the bare minimum to scrape along (typical Toyota life, it will put up with it and keep going).
Using my connections in the automotive trade I picked up a big box of parts this morning and set to work.
The first and most important thing I needed to sort was the thermostat. The car ran cold, took ages to warm up and when it did the temp would drop when moving. I'm sure this was causing some of the idle issues too. No good.
The thermostat lives up under the distributor. I tried to drain the radiator via the drain plug, but it was taking too long so I kicked the drain tray further under and just slowly slipped the radiator hose off and drained that way. Got most of it in the tray, which is unusual for me.
Just looking at the neck of that housing doesn't bode well. A bit crusty.
Excuse the blurry pic, the housing is tucked away in the darkness, but this is the thermostat housing and the two nuts you need to remove. I doused them in CRC first and had no issues undoing them. Undoing the wiring off the distributor and pushing it aside helps, as does removing the top of the airbox.
Eww, this is the old thermostat. The gasket shouldn't be chewed up like that.
This might be the reason it ran cold; daylight
The thermostat was jammed open, so even when stone cold like it was, it would let coolant flow on by.
This poor gasket. What has someone done to you?
The new genuine replacement thermostat and gasket looked much better. Nice and sealed closed.
Before refitting the housing I took it over to the overly-enthusiastic parts washer and gave it a good scrub. It was covered in old oil outside, and scale on the inside. A wire brush made the neck and mating surface a bit less crusty.
The new thermostat was fitted with the new gasket, making sure the jiggle-pin is located at the top. The nuts got a good lubing to make sure they are easy to bust off in the future.
Since I was in the area I also took the time to swap the distributor cap and rotor. I used a genuine cap and aftermarket rotor, just due to cost. These are the old ones.
Nice shiny new
Next on the hitlist was the spark plugs. The old ones were very worn out, with huge gaps (1.3mm). I'm also unconvinced they were the correct heat range (5).
A set of cheap, but reliable NGK BKR6E gapped to 0.8mm as per the spec went in. The leads look original but are in good visual condition so they will stay for now.
Before the final part, the oil change, I had to run the car up to temp to get the oil hot. This required topping up the coolant I drained and bleeding the system. This was done with the radiator cap off, heater on hot, and squeezing the hoses to burp air until the thermostat opens and the bottom hose gets hot.
Once it was bled I popped the cap back on the radiator, jacked the car up and drained the oil. The oil was jet black, but it had enough to keep it happy and I wasn't panning for gold. The filter is a pain on these, being tucked up under the exhaust manifold (which is hot), and right next to the alternator and AC pump. I managed to crack it with a three claw tool, a short extension and a ratchet.
With the oil drained, filter replaced and 3.9L of Penrites finest 10W40 semi-synthetic oil in the sump it was time to fire the car up to fill the filter and check for leaks. All was well, and the engine was noticeably quieter already.
The last thing to do was to give the engine a quick clean and degrease. It will get a proper clean later on after I replace the rocker cover gasket, but I ran out of time to do that today.
One does not do all this work and not just take the car for a "road test", that would be silly. So off I went, making sure to check that WOT and redline both work as expected, which yes, they do. The rolly polly suspension isn't ideal for the twisty back road I road test on, but it's still fun to just fang around in. I'm looking forward to driving it in manual form.
The engine is running and driving better than ever, with a nice stable and controlled idle, a smooth progressive rev to redline, and a good stable temp on the gauge. I'm tempted to wind the timing back up to 15 degrees for more power.
A great win overall. I thanked the car for being good by treating it to some LED bulbs in the interior and replacing a blown reversing light bulb.
Hopefully, if the weather plays nice I'll be able to hit Pick A Part tomorrow and start grabbing bits to replace the broken things on this car, and also start hoarding manual conversion parts.
Edited by KelvinatorNZ on Friday 21st May 11:08
It stopped raining. This was a good thing, as it meant I could finally get to Pick A Part and grab some bits for the Corolla.
The plan was for me and a fellow Corolla friend to head there and pillage an E110 wagon of its sweet sweet manual bits to use on my car, but whilst there I knew they had a liftback like mine and I wanted to see what state the interior was in. If it was good, I wanted it.
It turned out to be a cracker of a day, only really let down by the fact I'm an idiot and didn't use any sun protection so got slammed by sunburn.
The liftback was good. Someone had attacked some bits on the dash already, but the seats were good. That's what I wanted. Mine were filthy, torn and generally worn out.
Being a Japanese built car, unlike mine which is NZ built and full of "local content", it had some slight differences, such as different seats with more padding and better bolsters. The fabric appears more hard-wearing too.
In a jiffy, we had the seats out
These were bulky, so after a trek to find a trolly I loaded them into the car before heading back in. I really like the tumbling seat base in the Corolla which gives a nice flat load floor with the seats down. Lots of space
Then we spent the next couple of hours tearing into the wagon to relinquish it of its manual parts, since some bits are E110 specific. No photos because some of it was s
tty, hot and hard work. Nothing like working in the foot wells of a car that has a thick layer of animal fur hiding the carpet
Once home I unloaded the car, and set to work on a couple of things. One of them was to replace the stupid bodged passengers mirror glass with a replacement from the liftback.
This is what the tape was hiding
Removal of the glass is easy, just pull outwards from the bottom of the glass to unhook the two bottom clips, and the. push it upwards to disengage the two hooks at the top.
Unfortunately, this is one of the localised content I mentioned above. The mirror is different, which means the mirror glass is different. Who knew?
They look very similar, but the spacing of the clips is different and cannot be interchanged. Stupid.
I was a bit annoyed at this fact, so deciding I had nothing to lose, I peeled all the broken bits out of the backing of the NZ mirror, and hacked the backing off the glass of the Japan mirror to create something of a hybrid with the Japanese glass in the NZ mirror backing.
It's not perfect, and the glass appears to be curved which I don't like, but it works in the meantime. I might have to try and track down the proper NZ glass. Hopefully Pick A Part gets an NZ built one in soon.
Pulling the Corolla out of the garage I got to have a look at the seats I picked up.
Originally I didn't think they looked that dirty, but looking at the photos now I can see where they hide the filth. The good thing is that they are all in good condition with minimal wear and no rips.
Using my Bissell Little Green I started the task of cleaning the seats. There was no point going to the effort of replacing the seats if I was just going to throw in 20+ years of someone else's butt sweat.
This was the first seat I tried. The RH bolster has been cleaned. Some filth in there for sure.
I thought this was bad at the time... little did I know...
...that I was going to come across this. The whole back of the seat base, and a couple of areas on the bottom of the seat backs, was full of this brown liquid. It took a lot of passes for it to stop coming out dark brown.
I left the rear seats to dry overnight, and the next morning set about fitting them to gain some space back in the garage (its easier to store the seats I don't care about than to try not to get the new seats dirty again). I vacuumed everything from the front seats back, and fit them. I had to swap one of the buckles as the Japanese center seatbelt is different to the NZ one and wouldn't fit the buckle. I'm glad we grabbed that. It does mean I have one black buckle now, but oh well. When I find myself at PAP again, if it's still there, I might grab the matching grey buckle. I have gained a (useless) center headrest now though.
Bit of a difference from the old ones
The fronts were a bigger job to clean. They were dirty from use and bulky to work on.
The passengers side came up well
The drivers seat was dirtier. Here's a 50:50
There is still some marking and staining on the seat, but considering its age I'm happy. It smells fresh now, which is a result.
The method I used on all the seats was to saturate the fabric with the solution (a mix of water and Bissell Spot & Odour remover) in the Little Green, and vigorously scrub with a medium stiffness brush. Once scrubbed I would spray the fabric again, and then work on extracting the liquid. I worked on a small section at a time, and used both push and pull, in multiple directions, with varying pressure, to extract as much as possible. I'm not a pro, but it works. I love the Little Green, it's such a handy tool. Its almost like I have talked about it before.
Anyway, enough about awesome machines. Before I fit the seats I thought I should check the belts work with the Japanese buckles on the seats, sure enough, no. I had to swap them from the old seats too.
To swap the buckle over I had to remove the old seat. That revealed this
FILTH.
A vacuum, more Little Green work, and I had a half decent carpet that didn't smell anymore
And here is the new passengers seat next to the original drivers seat. This clearly shows the difference in bolsters and padding. They make the NZ made seats look quite low cost in comparison.
The drivers side wasn't much better.
This tool is brilliant for this sort of work though. Its a powered brush head that runs on the suction from the shop vac. Works really well. I got this from Supercheap with a pack of other attachments which I have misplaced
A vacuum got this carpet a lot better, but there was a lot of staining in various places
I spent quite a bit of time with the Little Green on this side, just getting rid of as many stains as I could. It came up really well
The side of the console got a clean with Valet-Pro APC, and the new seat was fitted
Much better than this
I'm very happy with how the interior is coming together. I still need to clean a bunch more things, especially around the well used cup holders, but it's getting there.
After fitting the interior, since the carpet was still wet and the car will be in the garage overnight, I had a chance to fix a couple of other small things too.
Like the missing positive terminal cover
And I tensioned the alternator belt correctly as this was far too loose and squealed on a cold start or when at full lock. I haven't driven the car since but it was silent when I started it before.
I could turn the belt completely over. A properly tensioned belt should turn about 90 degrees and no more when twisted. The tension is adjusted by a threaded adjuster under the alternator, and backing off the pivot and locking bolts.
One last little teaser I will leave is the spare rocker cover I picked up, all stripped, cleaned and masked, ready for paint.
The plan was for me and a fellow Corolla friend to head there and pillage an E110 wagon of its sweet sweet manual bits to use on my car, but whilst there I knew they had a liftback like mine and I wanted to see what state the interior was in. If it was good, I wanted it.
It turned out to be a cracker of a day, only really let down by the fact I'm an idiot and didn't use any sun protection so got slammed by sunburn.
The liftback was good. Someone had attacked some bits on the dash already, but the seats were good. That's what I wanted. Mine were filthy, torn and generally worn out.
Being a Japanese built car, unlike mine which is NZ built and full of "local content", it had some slight differences, such as different seats with more padding and better bolsters. The fabric appears more hard-wearing too.
In a jiffy, we had the seats out
These were bulky, so after a trek to find a trolly I loaded them into the car before heading back in. I really like the tumbling seat base in the Corolla which gives a nice flat load floor with the seats down. Lots of space
Then we spent the next couple of hours tearing into the wagon to relinquish it of its manual parts, since some bits are E110 specific. No photos because some of it was s
tty, hot and hard work. Nothing like working in the foot wells of a car that has a thick layer of animal fur hiding the carpetOnce home I unloaded the car, and set to work on a couple of things. One of them was to replace the stupid bodged passengers mirror glass with a replacement from the liftback.
This is what the tape was hiding
Removal of the glass is easy, just pull outwards from the bottom of the glass to unhook the two bottom clips, and the. push it upwards to disengage the two hooks at the top.
Unfortunately, this is one of the localised content I mentioned above. The mirror is different, which means the mirror glass is different. Who knew?
They look very similar, but the spacing of the clips is different and cannot be interchanged. Stupid.
I was a bit annoyed at this fact, so deciding I had nothing to lose, I peeled all the broken bits out of the backing of the NZ mirror, and hacked the backing off the glass of the Japan mirror to create something of a hybrid with the Japanese glass in the NZ mirror backing.
It's not perfect, and the glass appears to be curved which I don't like, but it works in the meantime. I might have to try and track down the proper NZ glass. Hopefully Pick A Part gets an NZ built one in soon.
Pulling the Corolla out of the garage I got to have a look at the seats I picked up.
Originally I didn't think they looked that dirty, but looking at the photos now I can see where they hide the filth. The good thing is that they are all in good condition with minimal wear and no rips.
Using my Bissell Little Green I started the task of cleaning the seats. There was no point going to the effort of replacing the seats if I was just going to throw in 20+ years of someone else's butt sweat.
This was the first seat I tried. The RH bolster has been cleaned. Some filth in there for sure.
I thought this was bad at the time... little did I know...
...that I was going to come across this. The whole back of the seat base, and a couple of areas on the bottom of the seat backs, was full of this brown liquid. It took a lot of passes for it to stop coming out dark brown.
I left the rear seats to dry overnight, and the next morning set about fitting them to gain some space back in the garage (its easier to store the seats I don't care about than to try not to get the new seats dirty again). I vacuumed everything from the front seats back, and fit them. I had to swap one of the buckles as the Japanese center seatbelt is different to the NZ one and wouldn't fit the buckle. I'm glad we grabbed that. It does mean I have one black buckle now, but oh well. When I find myself at PAP again, if it's still there, I might grab the matching grey buckle. I have gained a (useless) center headrest now though.
Bit of a difference from the old ones
The fronts were a bigger job to clean. They were dirty from use and bulky to work on.
The passengers side came up well
The drivers seat was dirtier. Here's a 50:50
There is still some marking and staining on the seat, but considering its age I'm happy. It smells fresh now, which is a result.
The method I used on all the seats was to saturate the fabric with the solution (a mix of water and Bissell Spot & Odour remover) in the Little Green, and vigorously scrub with a medium stiffness brush. Once scrubbed I would spray the fabric again, and then work on extracting the liquid. I worked on a small section at a time, and used both push and pull, in multiple directions, with varying pressure, to extract as much as possible. I'm not a pro, but it works. I love the Little Green, it's such a handy tool. Its almost like I have talked about it before.
Anyway, enough about awesome machines. Before I fit the seats I thought I should check the belts work with the Japanese buckles on the seats, sure enough, no. I had to swap them from the old seats too.
To swap the buckle over I had to remove the old seat. That revealed this
FILTH.
A vacuum, more Little Green work, and I had a half decent carpet that didn't smell anymore
And here is the new passengers seat next to the original drivers seat. This clearly shows the difference in bolsters and padding. They make the NZ made seats look quite low cost in comparison.
The drivers side wasn't much better.
This tool is brilliant for this sort of work though. Its a powered brush head that runs on the suction from the shop vac. Works really well. I got this from Supercheap with a pack of other attachments which I have misplaced
A vacuum got this carpet a lot better, but there was a lot of staining in various places
I spent quite a bit of time with the Little Green on this side, just getting rid of as many stains as I could. It came up really well
The side of the console got a clean with Valet-Pro APC, and the new seat was fitted
Much better than this
I'm very happy with how the interior is coming together. I still need to clean a bunch more things, especially around the well used cup holders, but it's getting there.
After fitting the interior, since the carpet was still wet and the car will be in the garage overnight, I had a chance to fix a couple of other small things too.
Like the missing positive terminal cover
And I tensioned the alternator belt correctly as this was far too loose and squealed on a cold start or when at full lock. I haven't driven the car since but it was silent when I started it before.
I could turn the belt completely over. A properly tensioned belt should turn about 90 degrees and no more when twisted. The tension is adjusted by a threaded adjuster under the alternator, and backing off the pivot and locking bolts.
One last little teaser I will leave is the spare rocker cover I picked up, all stripped, cleaned and masked, ready for paint.
Edited by KelvinatorNZ on Friday 21st May 11:10
paradigital said:
Love a Kelvinator thread, always a great read.
Agree, I'd never have thought a Toyota Corolla could be so interesting 
- for Mr K, I've had some success with a steam cleaner combined with a wet & dry vac, really helps with heavy soiling on light colours - worth considering?I do have a steam cleaner, but I'm not at the point of trying to make the car perfect, so the spot cleaner does a pretty good job as it is. If my daily needed it I would combine the steam cleaner with hot water in the spot cleaner for the ultimate combo.
A cleaner interior makes all the difference. My wife actually wants to go in the car now that the seats and carpet arent disgusting, which means I get to drive it more.
Speaking of driving it, it has been quite interesting. Even in its current autotragic with wibbly wobbly suspension form, I enjoy thrashing around in it. I learnt to drive in a Corolla and have driven a few in my life, so its a very familiar feeling and setting. The 7AFE has ample punch, if a bit lacking in top end, which makes it great for point and shoot driving. Its simplicity is where it wins. I look forward to trying it in manual with better suspension form.
A cleaner interior makes all the difference. My wife actually wants to go in the car now that the seats and carpet arent disgusting, which means I get to drive it more.
Speaking of driving it, it has been quite interesting. Even in its current autotragic with wibbly wobbly suspension form, I enjoy thrashing around in it. I learnt to drive in a Corolla and have driven a few in my life, so its a very familiar feeling and setting. The 7AFE has ample punch, if a bit lacking in top end, which makes it great for point and shoot driving. Its simplicity is where it wins. I look forward to trying it in manual with better suspension form.
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