6G Celicas Forums

This was the post that hooked me forever on 6gc.net also! Invaluable help and advice. Mine worked on and off because I kept using super cheap drill bits and the top was mis-adjusted to cause more than normal resistance so they kept breaking. Now my top is in perfect adjustment and I made some legit pins by cutting up a hardened steel 3/32 inch punch into 2 pins. Being able to put the top up and down at a stoplight is so BadA.

Sadly though, I just got everything in working order to sell the car. It's been such a fun season of my life but it just doesn't fit the double stroller and car seats like I want it to so it's time for a new adventure. Definitely need to post up some pics of the finished product as I get ready to say goodbye...

I'm pretty active on ecomodder and definitely one of those freaks who drives around with plastic all over my car to get better MPG. But I agree the celiac is too pretty to do that to. I have a GT convertible that I keep covered and take out once a week for fun. My daily driver is a geo metro that looks like a spaceship but gets around 50mpg. It's weird to say but it's actually as much fun of a car in a totally different way. With the Celica all my mods are for style or performance, with the geo, all the mods cost next to nothing and they are only for function and economy. At any rate here are some things that might be interesting for this discussion.

The three mods I would recommend most for saving gas without sacrificing image are:
1) Grill Block or partial Grill Block. The front bumper openings are designed for the worst case scenario (towing uphill in the desert) but under less stressful situations you don't need nearly that much air going into your engine bay. Think of pushing an open cup through water, that's what your bumper mouth is doing to the air. You can block a good portion of the grill and it forces air around the car with much less drag. Best way to do it is is install some instrumentation to monitor your coolant temp (a scanguage II would work) then block some of the grill with cardboard. Keep driving normally and blocking more of the grill until you see the temp rising then back off a bit. This mod also functions to help your car get warmed up quicker and it is most efficient once warmed up. Once you find the right amount to block you can make something pretty like a colored plastic block with home depot mesh across the whole bumper gap to hid your partial block.
2) the belly pan. Our cars are smooth and pretty on the top and sides but under the car is all kinds of stuff for air to get snagged on. For the geo I just bought a 4x8 sheet of coreplast, trimmed it to shape and mounted it under the car. This can be very effective. The other way to get the same effect is install a front lip that extends as low as your lowest hanging suspension, spare tires, whatever hangs down.
As far as dimpling this... Air behaves weirdly and in many cases the air under the car gets pressurized because the bumper pushes a good portion of the air down and the rest goes over the car. when incoming air hits the pressurized air a lot of it swerves left or right toward the wheelwells. It's weird I've seen it in wind tunnel smoke tests. That makes me think that the dimples may not be as effective on a belly pan.
3) the BIGGEST change you can make is driving habits. The Scanguage is awesome, it plugs into the OBDII port and gives you instant readings for mpg rate as well as avg mpg for the trip. It's like a video game trying to set a high score and you can adjust your driving to get the most significant gains.

There's other things of course, the geo has a kill switch so I coast with the engine off a lot but our celicas would lose power steering and possibly brakes so that might not be a good idea. Pulse and glide is a counterintuitive driving method that can save you a ton of gas. It works like this:
Say you get 22 mpg going a steady 55
You could drive for 55 miles and get 22 mpg
now say you drive that same 55 miles constantly flooring it to 60 then putting it in neutral and coasting down to 50
Assume it takes the same amount of time to coast down as it does to accelerate (I'm sure our fast cars would actually coast longer than the acceleration, but for easy math lets say it's equal)
Now say you get only 10mpg when you're pedal to the metal, BUT coasting in neutral your car is at idle and probably gets 50mpg.
So in 55 miles you would spend 27.5 miles getting 10mpg and 27.5 miles getting 50MPG
Average those together and you get 30MPG
And because your average speed between 50 and 60 is 55 it takes you the same amount of time.
You win 8mpg!

The real numbers might be different but the concept actually works, its so weird but try it, you might be surprised.

btw what on earth is making you drive 1000 mi / week?

heat gun or oven will work. I didn't do LEDs but i did remove the orange reflector and chrome the inside to make mine look more like aftermarket lights. My advice is be super patient and don't use anything too small to pry them apart. I started using a flatheaded screwdriver and it cause the lip I was lifting to chip in a few places. After that I slowed down, heated it some more and used a wide putty knife to pry with since it could disperse the pressure on the plastic.

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My paint is in horrible, horrible condition, seriously. No sarcasm; it's bad! ... And, if by fire you mean a 5sfe, then yes!
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Ok haha, must have just been some good pictures. I love black paint but it is the best and the worst. When it looks good, nothing beats it but, every bit of dirt shows and keeping it looking nice as our cars age is proving difficult. I'd definitely like to do some new paint soon.

DUDE I can barely believe you recognized that! I actually live there on one of the boats, do you live close by?

In this video my baby is a double agent who blows up a geo metro.
The Metro is parked next to my Celica. I actually wanted to blow up the celica but the shot was prevented by the way cars were parked on the street. Still cool to see a celica in any video. Hope you like it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyndAi78hQw

Thanks! I wish my black paint was in as good a shape as yours appears in your profile pics. Speaking of is that a fire in your engine bay?

Thanks bro. I have featured the celica in some other videos but never thought to put them up here. I'll have to dig around and find them...

If you're like me and love seeing other celicas on the site I think you'll enjoy this video I put together. It was just a family fun day - we took the celica from south San Diego to north San Diego for some beach time and delicious food in Cardiff. The video is definitely Celica heavy, hope you enjoy
Convertible Family Road Trip

PM'ed

just another similar option. You can fit a TOM's lip to the pre facelift bumper. It's obviously designed for the facelift but it still looks awesome. You can see mine in my profile...

Thanks for the info, I'll have to try the dealer route I guess

Still have a set of sun visors for a black interior? I broke the mirror on the passenger side one and mine are pretty faded. Also I need the courtesy light cover from the passenger interior door (the little red lens that lights up when the doors are open)

I can't wait to see this on the vert! Thanks so much for putting all this effort in to give us a few more options! It is looking so awesome thus far!

Dude I LOVE that! I like that hood scoop too! It doesn't look glassed in but it blends really well. Can we add that to the identify this list? I agree with everyone so far, that lip kit is smooth!

The bumpers are the same at the bottom. I have a TOM's lip from the facelift bumper on a pre-facelift car. The lip fits great it simply outlines the fog light grill holes that aren't there. You can see what I'm talking about here along with some other pics of my car: here

I'm not sure about the zlip but you're right about the bumpers being similar.

ok LOL now I see it. It looks like that 2hr2min from work. Even if I fly right out of there I doubt I could be there before 4 and it could be as late as 5PM - do you think it will still be going on or will it just be a 4 hour commute to see a couple peeps who are tired and finished ? How long do you think it will last, I may have to hit the next one...

Awesome, so someone commented on my profile with an event invite. I'm so in but I fit the "not really into forums" description. I feel like I've been reading for days (9 forum pages) and so far I've only found out the meet is August 2nd . I'd really like to go.
I can usually scoot out of work at 2:30 or 3:00 on Sundays and I'm way down in south San Diego. What is the finalized time and address where we are meeting, and who should I text for updates if I have to be late? you can text me@ 619.410.7858 (just start it "celica meet" so I know what you're talking about.

Thanks guys, I hope I can make it and take some pics, this sounds really fun

It came this morning! Since it is my day off I had time to paint and install it. Just from the test fit I could tell it was not going to need any modification to fit the 95 bumper. Good info for any other prefacelift bumper guys to know, the Tom's lip bolts right up and fits great. I'll roll with it until I find a facelift bumper. Thanks again goferris for a great transaction!

fair enough. I was thinking I would put it on if the modification is minor and get a 96+ bumper later but maybe I won't. The only problem is after this I'll be out of $. Anyone have a black 96+ bumper they want to give me :-)? I'd also be willing to trade my perfectly fine 95 bumper :-)

yeah I got it, thanks, just waiting for packaging and payment is ready to send. I also just got some JDM sideskirts so basically my whole outside will be renovated woot! Does anyone know how hard it is to fit this to the 95 bumper?

ok I sent you an email to your gmail account. I'm in. Lemme know how you wanna work it and I can paypal whatever address. This thing really is cool and I'll give it a good home

Awesome! Thanks for the pic and tips, that's some super helpful info. I have the red LED gauge cluster lights so mine may look a lot like the red illusion that showed up in your pic. They arrived today and look great! I was wondering about those corner triangles since they don't wire in. I'm glad you said that about the cruise control not being there it will save me the step of being annoyed and then having to open up the cluster a second time.

The instructions mentioned not using the dimmer so I was wondering where to go, the orange wire it is, thanks!

[quote name='GriffGirl' date='Dec 12, 2008 - 3:47 PM' post='738597']
I have those ones from Procarparts, I really like them. Don't bother trying to match up the little outer triangle thingies though, I was able to do it but it covered up the cruise control light which really bugged me, so I took them both out. Since they're all black anyway, you don't really notice the difference.

When you wire them, wire them to your ACC (probably orange) wire off the back of your stereo; I guess they're problematic if you wire them to your dimmer switch. They have their own dimmer on them, so there's really no need to wire them to your stock one anyway.

Edit: Here's a pic I took a while back of them in my car. The color is fairly accurate in terms of the red being true, but the blue is bluer and brighter than depicted here. And for whatever reason the odometer looks like it has red light, but it doesn't. w/e

Thanks Chode, those gauges are the sickness! I really like the dragon emblem and having a custom font is awesome too. Those would look great with the dragon emblems I'm sporting. Eh, it's cool though, I don't have the $ for speedhut anyway and I think I'll be happy with these.

[quote name='chode' post='738517' date='Dec 12, 2008 - 10:57 AM']speedhut is expensive but it worth it

ok so the procarparts peeps got back to me and said it does wire into the cluster so I ordered a set. $39 sounds cheap but they ship kinda ridiculous and add CA tax so it ended up over $50. I'll post some pics once they arrive and are in in case others are interested.