Hey everyone,
First off, let me say this wont really be a build but more of a general topic about the car, it's just a daily driver for me and since im still studying im not planning to blow big bucks on it yet.
Now let's get to the car itself; The might beast with its enormous 1 liter 4 banger. Supposed to have 55 horses from factory but some might have become old and tired. It has some battle scars and slight dents aswell, but no gaping wounds or real rust damage either. However it appears it had damage on the right hand side in the past, as this side seems to have been resprayed, and now discolouring a bit pink
The car itself costed me 850 euro's, and its pretty good on gas aswell despite having only 4 gears. Best i've done is 1 liter on 17km, but usually getting around 1 on 13 with highway kilometres. Should be about 40 miles per us gallon and 31 miles per us gallon according to google.
The engine would sometimes fall on its face at low rpm while driving. The more i drove it the worse it got, but i couldn't find anything. It seemed to already have new spark plug wires, new distributor cap and new spark plugs.
The waterpump was also having some issues, it would make a slight whining sound you could hear when starting the engine and turning it off. Turned out to be a bad bearing, and it had some starting leaks.
Engine does use some oil aswell, but nothing that really worries me yet.
After ordering parts, including new filters and spark plugs i found this when replacing everything:
Might just be the problem right there...
Besides regular parts and services i also bought some new floor mats, since they were missing or falling apart.
Plans for the near future are getting some cheap winter or all season tires to get through winter. And probably change the rims and see how these are going to look:
This'll make a fine daily driver and has a decent bit of performance potential too. A friend of mine had a 1.3L model on cut springs and 195-wide tires, it was much quicker than it had any right to be!
Cool. A while back i really was on the hunt for one of these, but here in the US they've almost all pretty much rusted away to nothing it seems. Neat cars though.
I have a soft spot for the EP71. I have no idea why but they're just cheap fun for the most part.
Yeah i've been somewhat looking at swapping in the 1.3. But that probaly wont happen untill i have another car unfortunatly.
Rust is always a thing with these, luckily this one seemed taken care of at some point in its life, and stayed in a barn aswell. But still has some small rust in the wheelwells.
They are cheap fun indeed, you can usually throw them around corners faster then people dare. Light enough to leave a traffic light quick-ish to.
Hi, I love the Starlets. Hopefully, this link works for my build thread on GRM:
Starlet
What I'm saying is welcome aboard, and I look forward to updates.
Hey everyone,
It's been a while but nothing exciting happened. I did find some old vintage toyota hubcovers for cheap which i picked up.
Not sure what car they came from originally, cant find much information about it either. Maybe someone here knows? They are completely from metal with some spring like clamps which grab on to the inside of the rim.
Last weekend i decided it was also time time to put on some more winter friendly tires, and being cheap i ordered some all seasons online. Costed about 38 euro's a tire including shipping, an advantage of having tiny wheels. It was a bit of a hustle to actually mount them on the rims since the ''heels'' of the tire were pressed together during store, but luckily after some swearing and tricks they went on.
Now there seems to be an issue with the switch on the handbrake, the one that turns on the handbrake light on the dashboard. It stays on all the time since a few days. Now when the handbrake is off, and the switch is activated, the light does get less bright. Is this just the switch becomming lazy and not closing completely, or can it be a wiring issue?
In reply to MuchDangerous :
Some older cars use that light to let you know the brake fluid is low. I'd check there first.
In reply to barefootskater :
Yes that was it, it was just above minimum so probaly got triggered in corners and on some hills. Thanks!
yeah check the brake level switch...fluid could be low or there is a fault
these cars are cousins to our Tercels over here
Those hub covers look cool.
For bad influences for you- since you're in Europe, you have far greater access than us Yanks to the Toyota 4A-GE, which if you have a 5-speed will be the C-series that they bolt up to. A well built 4A-GE with some proper head work and good aftermarket cams will easily do ~150 HP all day long without any sacrifice to the reliability of the car, and that's not even getting into doing 7A and 20-valve head E36 M3.
Welcome to the Toyota cult.
@malibuguy Yeah i;ve looked at a tercel before buying the starlet. Unfortunatly it rusted to far
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
I've also looked at this, but the twin cam would require some relaction of some stuff, and i'd need a bunch of fabrication + new gearbox and axles aswell.
And for now i need to keep this thing cheap and running, since i need it every weekend to go back and forth to germany.
