Posting for no reason other than just keeping a record of when I did some maintenance. I set the car back on the ground tonight for the first time in about a month. I meant to just take it off the road for a weekend to do some simple maintenance but nothing ever seems to go well with projects that only take a weekend. The idea was to replace both front knuckles and bearings, driver side axle, rebuild all four calipers and replace the 19 year old brake lines with stainless braided lines, new parking brake shoes, and completely flush the brake fluid. Some of the project went smoothly but I ran into an issue with the shop that made my brake lines, followed by parking brake shoes that refused to cooperate. Turned out to be parking brake cables that were just starting to seize up, so that put the project behind another few days. When the cables arrived, they still didn't cooperate with me. While I was waiting for parts, I decided it was time to get rid of at least two of the junk Falken tires I had. Ideally I'd like to get all four but the CFO/wife would only give me enough allowance for two. She acts like we need new rear tires for the Supra as well as four new tires for the 4Runner, while we are simultaneously trying to finish up the last few projects on our house to get it listed for sale so we can move halfway across the country or something. But I digress, no two year bumps worth it without pictures.

Wow, fancy!


Pictures don't do the tires justice. They are BF Goodrich g-Force Comp-2 A/S's. I would have liked to have gotten the regular Comp-2's to start running dedicated summer and winter tires but we have too much going on in other parts of life right now to dedicate the money to two sets of tires per car so I'm sticking with all seasons for now. These are ultra high performance all season tires, a category that I wasn't even aware existed. UHP and all seasons normally don't go together, but these tires are rated pretty well. Almost anything will outperform the Falkens I just replaced.

Well, as much as I hate to say it, age is finally getting the best of this car. We started smelling fuel a couple of months ago but that was around the time we were packing up for a big move halfway across the country. It’s no surprise that the hint of gas eventually turned into a pretty big leak from the tank. Had to buy an aftermarket tank, straps, and filler neck from RockAuto although they are still available from Toyota. However, I replaced the pipes and rubber hoses with OEM parts.

Out with the old:




And in with the new:






The new tank came with crappy silver spray paint that wouldn’t last a week under the car, so I tried a couple of different solutions. Truck bed liner seemed to work best. While the tank was down, I decided to drop the rear sway bar, clean the rust, and give it the POR15 treatment:




Typical of these old cars and ongoing projects, simply replacing the tank always snowballs into bigger jobs. I was going to drop the rear subframe and refinish it, and buy new rear bushings, but I honestly just got tired of the car being on jackstands and costing me $200 for this and $250 for that so I decided this was enough for now. I did take care of all of the rust that I could get to, cleaned up as much of the subframe that I had access to and finished it in POR15, and had to tackle one other project while the tank was down. As much of an improvement as the bushings would be, I have to consider safety before upgrades. Back in 2012, we had one of the steel brake lines going to the rear brakes rust through. I patched a new piece in but I’ve always questioned when the next spot to rust through will be. It happened at home in 2012, but next time could be an emergency situation. No sense in risking our safety or that of others, so I went ahead and replaced both hard lines with brand new OEM lines, and not a minute too soon.





And of course, I found the weakest spot when I was wiggling the passenger side brake line to drop it from the car.




But the new ones make up for the old rusty ones!





Aaaand while installing those this morning, I decided that no amount of money on earth can ever fix the newest problem with this car.




That’s it, guys. Progress thread over. Car’s burned to the ground. It was the only solution. Had a good run but we’ll just collect the Insurance money and import a GT4 later.

that spider was a whole lot of "NOPE"

Key word: was.

You made the right call, I'd have done the same.

Quality work as always, Sir.

Good stuff. Love the plate. Please tell me yours says "ISASUPRA."

I had no choice. My hands were tied.



Thanks! I’ve got my fingers crossed that you finish yours!



No, it’s still “RICHEE3” but that’s not a bad idea for when I switch to Colorado plates!

you can't trust these spiders... they may have already made their way to the supra.... you know what you have to do...

and this wouldn't be the first time you collected insurance money from the celi. lol

awesome update

Laughed my ass off, thanks for that!

Yes, very funny! Haha!

Brake cleaner works GREAT on bugs and spiders. They basically melt.

Fire works great too as you can see.

Should've just given the spider the keys and walked away.

Brigette surprised me with a Wilwood BBK for the Celica for Christmas, and since I didn’t have much else going on I decided to get to work. These came from another member’s car here on the forum, Csober. Most of you know that he sold his Celica to get his Z31 and the guy that bought it immediately started parting it out on Facebook. Kind of irritating to see such a nice car get parted, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want a few parts from it. Since we were in the middle of moving halfway across the country, I decided to be a responsible adult and keep my money. Brigette, on the other hand, didn’t.




Comparison of stock GT brakes vs the Wilwood brakes.






Finally mounted.




My biggest concern with these was clearance. Having seen them on Tao’s car, I knew they were considerably larger than the stock calipers so I was concerned that my wheels may not fit anymore and I may need to get different spacers, but I got lucky and have miles of room.




Initial impression is that they work much better than my stock calipers and Hawk HPS pads. I’ve never liked the Hawk pads, since I don’t warm them up enough to be effective in daily driving. (Still waiting for an “I told you so” from Chris.) These have much better initial bite, but haven’t successfully ripped my face off yet. I’ve done a couple of hard stops from 20 and surprisingly, they didn’t even lock the wheels up. I will bed the pads in later, after the holidays when the highway patrol isn’t out in force. Perhaps these will grab harder as they get warmer as well. I didn’t even warm them up on my quick drive.

The calipers are significantly lighter than stock. I wish I had weighed then before mounting them. I currently have no plans for the rear brakes but I’m leaning towards ST205 brakes.

It was nice of her to buy you a present for her car. I wonder if they have a non drilled rotor available for them.

Looks nice! I'm jelly.

awesome on fuel restoration.

hopefully i dont have to do this. my cars been sitting for 16 months without any fuel additives....

Those wheels are 17" Caldina wheels, right?

Right? Her car, her money, but it’s presented in a way like the parts are for me. There is a blank rotor option available, but I’ll keep the drilled rotors for now. I’ve heard tons of horror stories of drilled rotors cracking but it’s not like I’ll be doing any track days to heat the rotors up, so hopefully we won’t have any issues.



Thanks! Yours will be right there with mine in no time.



What’s had your car down for so long?



Depends on why you’re asking. If you want a set for your car, they are definitely something else from another car and you should get different wheels. For any other reason, they are Caldina/Matrix M Theory wheels, 17x7 +45.

the website lists slotted rotors as a $100 option on their kits. not really all that bad. I'd go slotted over drilled whenever available.

Wondering if they'll clear the tC wheels, but I'm sure they would, but if I decide to go the 5x114 route, i'll end up having to go with their Camry kit.

*edit* they don't make a BBK for that generation camry... demmit...

Puretone has this BBK on his ST184 with tC wheels. I don’t know how the 5th gens compared to the 6th gen in terms of offset and clearance but I don’t believe he has spacers on his car. I have 15 mm spacers, so I’m effectively 17x7 +30. I was concerned that I would need to get 20 mm spacers to clear these brakes but I have plenty of clearance. I think you should have clearance on your current setup, but I think anything less than +35 may have issues.

im glad the rims cleared the bbk. Sometimes I still miss them....

i remember reading the body shop issues you had, it was there for 3 months if i recall.

mines been there for slightly over 6 months. and before then 7 months tearing down the car for paint. anyway this thread isnt for discussion about my celica...

They fit the Celica so well. I was always jealous when you owned them. There was no way I could pass them up. I look for spares from time to time.



Ours was four months at the body shop, which felt like forever. We got lucky that it was so quick since most body shops don’t like full paint jobs. Surely yours is getting close by now if it’s been there for that long.

Indeed. I didn't even need to touch the FUEL PUMP in order to fit this kit.

My kit from Revolution Brake: http://store.revolutionbrake.com/14-0016.html
Wheels are OEM Gen 1 Scion TC
No spacers, neither front nor rear.
Stainless steel braided brake lines front & rear.
I have no front/rear brake bias issues at all, keep in mind a 1992 GT Convertible weight distribution is significantly different from a Liftback/Coupe. Rear rotors are some StopTech-sourced units with EBC pads
As for tyres, I'll have to get back to you guys on that one with the *exact* size specs...I've been separated from my BEAMSica for a while & I lacked the foresight to have written those numbers down correctly.
I have NO real rubbing issues with the tyres. I did do a 3-ish mm fender stretch ages ago using the universally accepted ghetto-tech method. I've had a scrape once or twice, but under extreme conditions...left or right front wheel at full suspension compression, nose-down on an angled descent. Plastic inner wheel-well cover got it's decade worth of grime somewhat cleaned off. A benefit in my book. This is with Eibach springs and a Kayaba/KYB shock absorber setup of my own hacked-up design...the combo gives the same usual 1+ inch or whatever drop in suspension.

The only other "mod" I made to my setup was to replace the wheel studs. They had been there since the car left the factory in 1991 and I felt my girl was due some proper wheel/hub jewelry. ARP longer wheel studs (the knurl is the same as a Mitsubishi EVO8 or something) and Mishimoto aluminium lug nuts. I would not be surprised if this stud/lug combo saves about 1 pound per wheel, which is A Good Thing.

time to tackle Pike's peak again. they look great!

who sells the replacement rotors, are they available?

Of course. The rotor is not made specific to our cars. I believe it’s from a BMW, and been drilled to 5x100. An adapter ring was provided for the hub. There was a part number on the rotor that I didn’t bother to write down, but I intend to next time the wheels are off. I can buy direct replacement rotors from Revolution Brake or find the correct BMW rotor and have it redrilled.

ok then. Sadly i bought a tool to redrill the supra rotors for our cars, its a shame i cannot find a good caliper to use it with....

Specs on those rotors?

i believe they are non turbo...

Looks like the Revolution Brake rotors are 27 mm taller and 2 mm thinner, so these calipers aren’t a match for the Supra rotors. Maybe next weekend I’ll pull a wheel off so I can get a specific part number for my rotors to get specs. Revolution Brake lists the rotors as 323mm x 30mm, without listing any other dimensions. Calipers are 4.5 lbs, and I’d like to weigh my stock calipers for comparison.

if only tigawoods posts real specs on his "supra rotors"

im hopefully getting new rotors made to match the spec of my current ones. Ill have measurements soon

Nice Daniel! I like the looks of them

I'm not going to say that I told you so, but I distinctly remember making an anecdotal comment to a similar effect....

Noberto:

You should look into the LS430 calipers....

wink wink

Does Brigette work in an OR? The tape pictured in some of the previous photos is autoclave safe and it turns when it's heated to let you know when what it's wrapping has been sterilized (at least that's what it looks like).

Thanks! They definitely fill the wheel much better than the stock brakes. They make the tears look nonexistent. The Hawk definitely weren’t much of an upgrade for a carefully street driven car, that’s for sure. Of course, I’ve had plenty of time to swap them out for something else and I still kept them.



Good observation. She’s in banking, but I work with OR’s. Every now and then I’ll take some of the wrapping with me rather than throwing it away. It’s good to have around the garage.

Once again, just posting to keep track of things, not because any real progress was made. The tach adapter has always annoyed me but I’ve gotten so used to it twitching that I barely even notice it anymore. However, I’ve decuded it’s time for the tach adapter to go in the trash and do the 10k ohm resistor. Since there’s a new Redtop going in soon, I’ll have a chance to clean up some wiring. It will be nice to have a factory setup again and get rid of this box and some wiring.

LED's are nice and bright btw. Anything special?

The camera makes them look a little brighter than they really are. I don’t think I could tolerate them if they were as bright in real life as they seem. They are Diode Dynamics LED’s. I’ve tried several other brands that all failed but the Diode Dynamics bulbs have been going for several years with no issues. I sanded the backs of the gauges to get rid of the green tint as well.

agreed. the camera and longer exposure will make it look that much brighter but it isn't. that's how i shot mine. hahaha

but I might have to get some of those from diode dynamic. I'm still going through my cheapo 20 pack I bought from ebay and now I see why they come in 20s. I have to change out at least one every year and it's getting annoying. my tach is flickering right now and will probably give me a seizure while driving. the rest are fine so it's a hit and miss with these.

I tried eBay LED’s, Superbrightled’s, vled’s, the list goes on. They only ever lasted a couple of months to a year. Finally spent the money to try Diode Dynamics back in like 2013 and not a single one has failed yet. I get a slight flicker out of the type 74 in my key ring light on occasion but it’s not bad and doesn’t happen often.

yea, I've tried superbrightleds as well and they did last almost a year i believe.
I put some in the license plate lights on the trix and it's a party back there some nights. I'm sure drivers following me think I'm some idiot ricer who put a strobe light in the back. lol

I will need to get a good number from diode dynamic and do a full replacement all my cars. given the gauges aren't too hard to get to in the 6th gen but when I do my 1st gen I do not want to go back into it and replace ONE bulb. you have to take most the dash apart to get to them. lol

I've surprisingly have had good luck with eBay/Amazon stuff, though I had one set that burnt up within a minute of use as they got the resistor value way off as it was 10% of what it should've been. Of course I got refunded real fast after sending pictures and explaining how they got the resistor value wrong. Those were single LED chip "bulbs" and I ended up replacing them with old school single 12V(kind that look like tic-tacs) and they worked great with no resistors. It's really hit and miss, but if you know what to look for it can help somewhat. For what it's worth my brother ponied up for Sylvania ZEVO bulbs for his tag lights after having everything else he tried flicker, and sometimes burn up in smoldering ash, and they've been going strong for a year or two now. I hear the Philips LED are also good. I think depending on the severity of failure and how long they stay on the more you should spend, of course in a lot of instances halogen works just as good or better still. The only reason I bothered with LED myself was to go all amber lighting so I wouldn't go blind at night turning on a light or get a headache staring at my red instrumentation.

Ya for updates!

Good updates coming so far. I really thought about buying the BBK when it was for sale but couldn't justify the needs for it just yet.

bump?! lol.... do people even bump anymore? is it hip? is it cool?

That's so 2011!

bump