6G Celicas Forums

you dont know what water spots are? do you use distilled and deionized water in a clean room or something?

i give a rats ass. cars are status symbols and a reflection of you.

also not feeling the fake side scoops.

just buy moog

if you have hard water there isnt much you can do to get rid of spots but theres a way to lessen them. just wash your car from the roof down and one section at a time. rinsing and drying all the way. this usually takes care of spots for me...

sorry guys i havent been on the site for a while. Area says they can do it for $60 (cost of tubing not included) so thats actually pretty good. the thing is, I'm in the market for a wrx so all interest in the celica has evaporated.

i think this'll be an interesting topic. sorry for the explosion of text. i was on a roll.

Whenever I’m asked to describe what a ricer is or isn’t, I’m at a loss for words. So I decided to write an explanation to organize all of my notions. I don’t mean to offend anyone, I just want to focus a rather wide definition.
Stage 1: uber ricer
This kind of person has watched the fast and furious too many times and is content to mimic the look of performance as opposed to actually educating themselves and logically selecting quality parts. More often than not these people purchase aesthetic mods to advertise a lifestyle they aspire to be a part of. A few examples of common mods
Body kit that wasn’t designed with the bernouli principle in mind
Altezza tail lamps in any way shape or form (x2 for cheapo ebay ones)
Spacers to make your wheels look wide. hey Lets sacrifice safety and bearing longevity for that high performance look!
Obnoxious spoilers that more often than not result in a negative drag coefficient vs down force ratio
Cheapo plastic fender hood vents. As if real fender vents were any good anyway…
Lambo doors. No just no. tacky cheesy, wannabe fast and furious
Cut springs and Monroe shocks. Because you know its as good as tein

stage 2: misguided enthusiast
This person has a good grasp the various individual systems in a sport compact and tends to avoid the flashy and obnoxious tendencies of a stage 1 ricer. The stage two understands how each system operates, how it can be improved and how it can fail. Unfortunately these people often ruin the balance of a car in their ignorance . For example, they know that braking systems convert kinetic energy into heat energy. They also know that stock components can get heat soaked really quickly. Thus they purchase the largest rotors they can get their hands on. The idea is that the extra mass and surface area will both absorb and radiate excess heat more effectively. Despite the logic, application is vital. Fitting a 120 hp civic with 14 inch rotors is not only overkill, but also works against the owner since reciprocating mass ( the worst kind ) has been increased substantially thus decreasing usable torque. Likewise, purchasing lowering springs while maintaining stock shocks is an oxymoron in of itself.
Common traits of a stage 2 intermediate include:
Drilled AND slotted rotors or just simply drilled. Drilled rotors were once the staple of racing back when asbestos based brakes created a gas barrier between the rotor and pad. Modern compounds can suffice with regular vented rotors. In fact drilled rotors are more prone to warping so they aren’t used anymore other than as an aesthetic option
An easy to spot A giant intercooler that does more harm than good. The idea is that the bigger the intercooler, the more boost you can run. Wrong. An intercooler is there for reliability. It lowers charge temps to prevent detonation and offer a margin of safety in case boost creeps or spikes out of control. Stages two’s misinterpret this margin of safety as an opportunity to turn up boost and run at the limit all over again. They then purchase an even larger intercooler thinking it will allow them more boost when in reality the larger core causes a pressure drop that negatively offsets any temperature benefits.
These are only two of the millions of ways that stage twos mismatch or all around ruin the balance of their sport compact
Stage 3 gods of machine
This final person has reached mechanical nirvana. They understand all the nuances of internal combustion and likewise understand how each system is dependant and directly affected by every other. These people cannot be characterized as high power speed racers since even a humble miata owner can be an absolute auto x terror. This person has brakes that are perfectly matched for their application, their intercooler is optimized for maximum reliability, and their suspension is neither too stiff nor too lax. Unlike the previous two categories, its often hard to spot gods of machine.
Feel free to add suggestions and or revisions

I work at advance and let me tell you something about spacers. they are THE WORST thing you could do to your suspension next to cutting springs.

1. spacers put alot more stress on the bearing. usually the wider the spacer, the faster the bearing will wear out since there is a force multiplication with distance from the bearing. It doesnt matter if you have a tapered bearing or one thats pressed into a hub. They WILL go out. I cant think of a tangible number that accurately represents the amount of people buying all four bearing from me. sometimes at $125 a pop is it really worth it to pay $500 to space your ride?

2. They put more strain on ball joints. just as before, the additional distance increases the load. I've had people walk in with balljoints that completely seperated after hitting a nasty bump. they say "I dont know what happened!" I say: "do you have a spacer" they say "yea its awesome" I say "yea... yea it is. thats $35 for a new ball joint + I have to order" they say: "f you im going to zone" i say "bye have a good day" *half an hour later* they say "zone is more expensive"

my two cents. I cant wait for people to say they had spacers for years without a problem. ill call it as i see it and every day i sell a few sets of bearings.

ok im going to area 1 to see what they can do for me. ill keep you guys informed

*pukes* dont get lambo doors... they're played out... just like spinners and such. at least in chicago anyway. around here it would just look tacky and ricerish. (not calling you ricer or anything so please don't get offended) honestly i would invest in a turbo or swap or some kind of performance upgrade if i were you.
but hey, if its still cool around your area and you reaaaaly want to, then go nuts.

I obviously dont have any recommendations on a bolt on kit. remember though. ebay is your friend

oh yea you have an amazing interior by the way, im sure everyone here would murder for one just like yours.

just shipping and price of the tubing+the actual bending

while staring at my engine bay an idea struck me. why not take the oversize accord tubing to area 1 and have them use it as a template for 2.5 inch mandrel bent pieces. no more reducer! no more cheap tubing! happy face. I figure once i get the tubing back ill transfer over all of my AEM stuff, buy a bypass valve, and powdercoat the tubing gunmetal. oh baby. i can see it now.

question is, after i get the tubing back and make it work real nice, would anyone else be interested in a set? to my knowledge this would be the first (or atleast one of the few) quality cai's out there....

sweet. im gonna experiment. compressor horns are extreme but awesome. willing to try anything

hypothetical scenario:

your cruising on the highway in your freshly swapped beast of gt4 conversion. suspension is right. the interior is perfect. and the engine is just what you always dreamed about. along comes a punk civic and starts to mess with you. naturally you ran circles around him and went about your cruise. minutes later that same civic swings by to spite you. it veers in front and slams on the brakes. first instinct is clutch, brake, swerve, then horn. everything is good till the horn part. all of a sudden your badass gt4 releases the puniest squeak of rage that any car has ever emitted. the civic ricers off, laughing the whole way and you are left staring at the center of your steering wheel going wtf?... such is the truth of our stock horns. i've already experimented with some aftermarket horns but i cant find a good combination. someone told me that you have to get one high and one low for it to sound good. others say its bad to mix.

does anyone have a working combination that they recommend? buying this stuff isnt an issue since working at advance lets me swap out as many as i like. perfect example would be:

d low tone together with a b hightone or something like that. so far ive tried a d low tone with a stock horn as well as two d low tones together.

id appreciate some input

thank you sir graphite it is.

sad face i didnt want to use a reducer. i did read the stickies. all of them. but i guess i forgot

i looked around the forums and found out that i can use a '93 accord intake kit for my celica. well i went ahead and bought one but the piping is 3 inches in diameter. wtf? dont all accords have the same throttle body? or do some have three inch tb? if thats the case, how are all of you using 3 inch tubing on our 2.5 inch tb's?

thanks for the responses everyone. a few members pointed me in the direction of some good deals so now i have the controls and clock on the way for 50 bucks shipped

thanks again. i keep getting reminded what an awesome community this is

think its something that needs a little lube in the motor?

yup its heat proof. its made to stand up to tail light bulbs. those get hot! not to mention the adhesive is weather resistant and such. so far its been going great for me.

so we've had rain around here lately and now my power antenna decided to become really noisy. on the way up it sounds fine but it makes a strange noise when it retracts. kind of like wrawh wrawh wrawh wrawh. thats about as close as i could imagine to type it. havent looked at the motor yet but i figured id try to see if this is a common problem with a common fix before ripping things apart.

i would appreciate any input

heres a link to what the tape looks like

http://www.buyhardwaresupplies.com/?t=5&am...temNumber=81332

no blue unfortunately unless you can import it from some country that allows blue tail lights . i think the only other color is amber, which i think would look interesting if done right. someone should try it

thats right forget gels, tabs, or spray paint. all you need for a red interior is the tail lens repair tape at your local advance/zone/murrays. I just wrapped all my bulbs in the stuff and placed it behind the climate control buttons. its pigmented enough to maintain color but translucent enough to allow alot of light through. the result is a deep oem looking red. it even works on tiny 74 bulbs. its perfect because its original purpose had it exposed to the elements and extreme 3157 heat. so anything our dinky 194 bulbs can dish out wont even phase it. its been two weeks and not a thing has gone wrong. check it out. for 3 buck a roll you cant go wrong. I dont recommed it for dash clocks though... you need multiple layers to cancel out the green and by then the numbers look blurry. heres a shot of my interior (climate controls are a work in progress since i originally had them painted) but the good looking buttons have the tape behind em. observe



im sorry its not a very good photo but at least you get the idea of the brightness. its a deeper red in real life.

ok i'm getting the clock off of ebay thank you for finding it for me, did'nt notice it when i looked yesterday.

so how about those climate controls???

the title pretty much sums it up.

i need to get a new dash clock because mine is broken and i need new ac controls because mine are ruined