Oh, What? A Feeling! - 1990 Celica GT-S

As you may well know by the fact that I post on these forums, I am not a well man. I am a cheap man, I am a man who has very poor taste in exotic Japanese economy cars, and I am also pretty lazy.

But, you should never start a sentence with 'but,' so I won't.

Years ago, in a place forgotten to most men, I met a man who you know as McTinkerson. He came highly recommended to me by a series of other unwell men as a dude who knew a lot about epitrochoids. All I knew is that you put Preparation H on them.

Eventually we became amigos and then, as is our wont in life, enablers. He helped me pick up garbage cars from his city, and I helped him hoard garbage parts from mine.

When it came time for him to get married, we needed a bad idea for a bachelor party. Not just any bad idea: a really bad idea. Involving cars. Because why not?

Therein was the genesis of the Trans Mountain to Tide Water Rally 2016, which we will be embarking upon very soonishly.

A thousand dollar car. With aesthetics and safety not counted in the budget. But what would I build with my partner?

The answer came to me in a dream. It was a dream I had when I was a kid, and fell victim to the local form of fever in the suburban neighbourhood I grew up in. That fever was Toyota Madness, and many are still afflicted with it even today.

I was obsessed with the ST162 Celica. Its supple non-curves. Its luscious interior. Its workaday stereo. Its tiny, tiny wheels. Its flippy headlights. I had to have one, but life got in the way and so I never got my Celica. Now, with the rally, I at last had my chance.

One thousand of our Canadian dollars (approximate US street value: $37.62) bought this car from a successful young professional who had gotten it a decade before for her Sweet 16.

It shifted alright, ran rough, didn't like to turn, stop, or go over bumps. This poor baby had been sitting for nearly two years and was frozen to the ground in a mud puddle when we broke it free and bought it in the dark. When enthusiastically cornering a wodge of pine needles fell out and hit the car behind us.

So what was wrong with it? A build thread that I created on a local forum had the original list:

• Power antenna broken off
• Drivers' side brake light does not function, nor the running lights. Not so sure the passenger side running light is working OK. Third brake light is staggeringly bright.
• High-end System 10 stereo's CD player does not function, appears to have lost radio code since last fire (bad battery connection or vampire drain suspected). Lower (yes, there are two) LCD appears to have started leaking in the corners.
• Previous owner says it occasionally just doesn't start on its own and needs a jump, supporting previous conclusion of bad battery, bad connection, bad alt or vampire drain.
• Passenger side door only latches if you give it a real punt
• Windshield is beyond pooched. Possibly original Toyota windshield based on badging, advanced stage of pitting/chipping
• Drivers' side window likes going down, doesn't like going back up
• Misc. missing trim, buttons
• Hatch struts collapsed, snow brush provided for safe use of copious hatch area. For purposes of rally accounting, snow brush is valued at $20 FMV (it is very nice).
• Covered in organic detritus
• Fog light button was stuck on when purchased, fog lights non-functional
• Front clunk seems like swaybars
• One spot of damp on the valve cover gasket
• Struts are generously described as "present"
• Something's leaking coolant but not real fast
• Idealistically pulls to the left but doesn't take much effort to turn catastrophically right, like newly-elected socialist governments
• Gear throw is a mile long, feels like swimming in congealed porridge when you start really going to town on it
• Steering wheel, gear knob have terminal stage 'hand lotion wear'
• Power adjustable bolster/lumbar support is only available for the drivers' side seat which will make the passenger jealous during long drives
• Some rust
• Left rear wheel makes ungodly grinding noise when rolled, does not burn rust off of rotor when enthusiastically LFB'd for miles at highway speeds. Also that wheel is missing its centre cap. COINCIDENCE???
• Centre console is filthy, as are the front seats
• Spoiler too small
• Lacks hood scoop

So really nothing. The car's fine. Fine!

It wasn't fine.

The next morning, when the hangover wore off and I rolled over to see what I had just ended up in bed with (I am really bad at parking), I bothered to investigate the engine bay. Let me tell you, if you want a cold shower in the morning, try finding a 200,000-kilometer-old timing belt sticker covered in valve cover grease on your firewall.

Also, the interior looked like this.

Luckily the you-pull-it junkyard actually had Celicas in the correct colour and trim. This would never happen again.

One wash later and:

I had already ordered RockAuto parts based on test-drive diagnosis as well:

OK maybe we didn't make the worst mistake of our lives. It's just filthy and neglected.

Remember how I told you in the first post that I went and got parts for Tinkerbell all the time? Well, his FB RX-7 took 13 inch tires, and tires are expensive when you're cheap.

Luckily he had located a fascinating gentleman who had two brand-new, never-mounted, 13 inch tires for sale at his place, at half price. My partner and I immediately went down there.

Did I mention his place was a single-wide? I don't know how I missed that.

The seller of the tires harangued us for about a half-hour about how he believes that he got lead poisoning from breaking up a wooden pallet in front of his home. Still, he seemed nice, although sometimes people who own Jettas don't do so for ironic reasons if you get my drift.

Tires acquired, we returned back to my home base, where I stored them on the roof of my Civic. Even to this day, months later, you can still see the outline of where the tire shine contaminated my Civic's clearcoat.

More parts arrived as we drove the Celica to actual places, such as the aforementioned trailer park. Good thing we had safety exemptions and RockAuto had warehouse clearouts on a ton of Toyota parts (those endlinks were $2.30 apiece!)

As a condition of getting insurance in our province, cars older than 12 years should have an "insurance inspection" done. Let me list from memory what an insurance inspection entails: horn works, lights work, seems generally safe, brakes work. We failed.

My partner had picked a random mechanic from next to his office to perform the insurance inspection, and this gentleman was so committed to his job he told us that the struts had failed so hard that the shock oil emitted from the front struts had contaminated the brake lines and destroyed them and so he couldn't let us leave unless we remembered that there is no such thing as a public-safety hold in Alberta.

While the shocks were bad (and we replaced them with fresh KYBs for "safety"), the real budget buster came when we realized the sketchy mechanic didn't know the difference between shock oil and axle grease. Yup, time to replace non-interchange front axles in a low-production FWD car!

To cheer ourselves up in the meantime, we painted the wiper arms and replaced the hatch struts.

In times like these, I often found myself looking to the sidewall of the Chinese no-season tires that came with the car for guidance.

A great philosopher once said, to go fast, you must listen, you must push your tires down a playground slide, and you must set your tires on fire. I think his name was Sun Tzu.

While doing the front struts, we found out that the spring isolators were NLA from Toyota and nobody made an aftermarket one. Luckily, an 87 Camry Wagon part fit, thanks to my brutal abuse of parts catalogues and mild to moderate profanity dispensation.

Then we tried out electrolytic rust removal on our front springs.

At last, I had relaxed enough to pull the passenger side CV and install the new one. The best part of the Toyota community is that people who have Toyotas are not de jure "Car People." So that means when they write a how-to it makes little or no sense. Various crackpot opinions referred to parts of the car we didn't have, or mentioned how critical it was to remove circlips we couldn't find. In the end we got it in using a series of techniques that I have been told got me banned from Toyota City for life.

Since I am a genius and since it didn't count against the budget, I decided we should replace the perfectly fine Toyota-OEM driver side axle because it was weeping a bit past the circlip. Here's where we really blew our out-of-pocket budget.

Step 1 of removing a Toyota driver-side axle: just yank on it like everyone says to do

Step 2: realize everyone else in the entire world who works on their own car does so in California or something because you just tore your axle in half with your bare hands.

Step 3: Try to install this APWI axle for four days straight while breaking down crying multiple times.

Step 4: Buy an axle from the local parts store for an integer multiple of the APWI axle, fart it in first time.

Step 5: Look up and notice that professionals have constructed a new garage from scratch in the same time it took you to install a driver side axle in an FWD Toyota. Move the Toyota to that garage, then immediately begin dismantling it for a timing belt job which should surely be easier than this axle.

For a 200,000 kilometer old timing belt, this one was a lot less broken than I expected it to be. Thankfully it's non-interference, but I'd rather not change this on the side of the highway while angry hicks throw light beer at me from their RVs.

As such, the Celica ingested a Gates timing belt kit where only two out of the three supplied belts were wrong. I am convinced this is a new high water mark for Gates and wrote them a congratulatory note tied to a brick.

Coolant looks, uh, interesting. Try not to think about it.

Why are all the timing cover bolts bent? Because they're Grade 4. Thanks Toyota!

Don't have any bolts on hand to finish a timing belt job? Screw it, let's rice this baby.

GET OUT OF MY DREAMS:

AND INTO MY CAR:

Eventually I headed back home and got some replacement bolts from my junkyard pocketing adventures. If the guys from the Pick N Pull radio ads come looking for me, I was never here okay?

It ran again! But during the celebratory Seafoaming we found that the PCV hose was cracked and also that it had tremendous blowby, so intense that you could hover a baseball cap over the oil filler neck for several seconds at idle.

I continue to ignore this warning sign to this very day, but replacing the PCV hose both returned to us the holy gift of TVIS and also made the cruise control work. It's almost like vacuum is important or something? Maybe that British guy on the TV knows more than he lets on.

Also, the car overheats a lot, but only when I drive it. My partner drives it just as hard, if not harder, no overheat. We cannot determine why.

Overheating? Engine blow-by? Major reliability concerns? Time for more rice.

Let's remove the 26 year old zinc dealership badge:

One day historians will be super mad at me that this ended up in the trash instead of in some kind of museum so they can write a thesis on what the ancient Toyota dealerships of Canada meant to 21st century socioeconomic development.

To celebrate, I took the Celica to a mechanic that I knew. He passed the insurance inspection with flying colours, complimenting me on how tight the front end was and how it was superior to many of the new cars he sees on his hoist.

The other mechanic in the shop had this to say: "it's very blue."

So: safety, almost-reliability, it's a Toyota.. but what was next for a truly ostentatious debutante ball?

Style.

We found the cheapest detailer we could that had been working for more than a year without getting shut down by the RCMP and went directly to him.

He did a good job even in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm that turned into a tornado alert.

Goodbye, grot:

Hello, nurse:

This brings us to the present day. Tomorrow we will engage in a last minute thrash hoping to secure the following:

Livery

We are undecided on an exact livery but have some good concepts. Since we didn't plan far enough ahead for vinyl, we will freehand it with plastidip like a pair of extremely socially-conscious graffiti artists.

Electronics

Since I'm a millennial, I am constantly accused by my elders of needing constantly delivered electronic micro-reinforcements in order to make it through my day.

As such, I will be installing cutting-edge electronics such as a CB radio and a PA system that constantly blares grocery store muzak. This will require me to learn how to wire things without burning down the car, which you may remember from my now-highly-embarrassing thread where I was largely confused about the existence of relays and electricity.

Also we'll probably fart in some cheapo Chinese mini-lightbars.

The enormous drivers' side System 10 door speaker is blown so the car's factory stereo won't sound as good as Eddie Murphy told the Japanese it did. What's more, all the System 10 cars at the yard also had blown speakers. Once we get back I'll probably have to fabricate an adapter bracket if we can find a speaker that's shallow enough to fit in the tiny speaker box.

Helping the Other Teams

The other guys are driving RX7s so I think we might have to go fetch them from the highway after they run out of two-stroke oil refill bottles.

Write more, please.

Great read! Thread hearted.

Very entertaining!

I thoroughly enjoy your writing style. :)

Just wanted to let this thread know that I am starting to post my recollections of the trip in the adventure thread.

If you like my writing, there is a lot more of me complaining about things in there.

I loved the looks of these Celicas when they came out, too. I remember one blowing by my family on a twisty mountain road, and going, "Wow, gimme." I was sitting backward in a sh!t-brown Taurus wagon.

Very cool build. I love seeing the interior all clean. For some reason, it looks so much better than modern interiors.

There's one of these in my SCCA chapter that runs H/Street and is fairly competitive. It's name is Tom Celica and it does this a lot.

Nice save!

Wow! Tom, I had no idea.

This thread is hilarious. Keep it up!