rentaspace's ST246 N-Edition Caldina Options

[rentaspace]

Well as everyone should know by now, on May 12/3 I sold my Celica and I purchased a 2002 ST246 N-Edition Caldina in Japan.
Anyway, the car got to the compliance workshop last Tuesday and is in the final phases of the import process.
A few shots of the car at the docks in Japan:




At the moment the car is waiting for our Government to make the Compliance Plate (A bit of metal that indicates the car is legally imported). Which may take 1-3 weeks... While that waits I am getting a few things fixed up so she should be sweet for delivery and roadworthy!


Album with all the photos:
Pics

This post has been edited by rentaspace: Jul 24, 2017 - 3:14 PM

[rentaspace]

So it has been a while since a proper update. I've had quite a bit going on in my personal life lately which has included moving out for the first time and dealing with all the associated stresses that entails lol. I have only just gotten my internet connection up and working so I can now post an in depth update.
But, I haven't forgotten about the Caldina.
Anyway, here is a picture of the Blitz Exhaust on a small incline lol:


Now this next one details my whole experience with getting my Super Circuit Dump Pipe on.
About a week a go, a mate and I decided to tackle the dump pipe and figured that we'd have it done in about 2 hours tops. Boy were we wrong.....
Everything started off smoothly, got the Intercooler off and found the leakage around my Rocker cover is slightly worse than expected and oil is sitting on top of the plugs, so gotta replace the rocker cover gasket ASAP.
Replaced the plugs and the old ones were white (as expected from a lean running motor).
Next was the heat-shield, and the world of pain started... The bolts were so tight that no amount of WD40, Inox or any other rust penetration was budging them. We almost rounded one attempted heat, cold, sprays, breaker bars and nothing no dice.
After 6 hours of trying to remove the shield we retreated and put the car back together. (I don't have a drill at this point). The only one bolt that budged was the lower bolt, which we though was going to be the hardest... lol
After that days struggles we started discussing what we could do. A few days later and his Volvo was off the road after a control arm snapped and the front windscreen cracked from nowhere (not a good week).


Since he was stuck at his house for the day I said why don't we get the maintenance done on my car and I headed over. At his house we had a a lot better tools and space available (The garage shown above is a common area for the two townhouses and it fits 3 cars snugly, or two with room to work. Behind is his actual garage which fits another two cars). As we were setting up I said, you know what lets try this dump pipe again, I'm sure the extra tools will get them off. After trying more sprays and stuff the bolt still wouldn't budge so we got the drill out and went through both of the bolts. One was actually fused to the Heat-shield. We breathed a premature sigh of relief.
Next was the bolts around the Manifold itself, they all came off by hand with a small spray of Inox (surprisingly).
After these came off, we came across the next challenge. Stuck just as much as the Heat shield bolts but with about 1/2 the room to work with. These are the bolts on the left side, there are another two on the right side which are under the turbo itself and even harder to reach. We used more Innox, more WD40 and more hot cold and we couldn't get them off. We tried to get the from above and below and still no luck. At this point we were a 4 hours in and determined to get the pipe on. My mate wasn't letting me leave until it came off, so we focused attention onto the bottom bolts holding the bottom of the stock dump to the rest of the exhaust system, and surprise, surprise they wouldn't budge. Luckily, the dump pipe I purchased also came with the bolts needed already attached so We whipped out the angle grinder and cut the bastards off:


AT this point we retired for some food, we had begun at around 10am and it was now 4pm in the arvo. We had to get the bolts off. My mates dad got home from work (Army) and he started assisting us. He got his largest breaker bar out and got under the car, he had his whole body-weight on the bar, doing literal pull ups and pulling the motor down and all but one bolt broke. The final bolt resulted in a further hour of sprays, mallets, breaker bars and finally it broke. It was the loudest bolt break I have ever heard. After they were all off, we still couldnt move the dump pipe. We removed the oil return line and finally the pipe came out.


Putting it all back together was easy, none of the messed up bolts needed to be put back, so they all got binned.


This post has been edited by rentaspace: Jul 24, 2017 - 3:24 PM