Haven’t had as much time as I’d like to work on the cars lately but I’ve got a little bit done. October 2017, I replaced the fuel tank on the white car. December 2018, I walk into the garage one day and smell gas. Of course the new fuel tank is leaking.
Had to run the car pretty low on gas, sand the tank down, and put some Quicksteel on it. People of the internets say it works decently well but I suspect I’ll be replacing the fuel tank again soon. I spent part of my day today putting new battery terminals in the car (the ones I bought when I did my battery relocation didn’t tighten down on the Optima tight enough but oddly they were great on the Interstate battery I had before) and hooking up a backup camera. The backup camera really isn’t necessary but it didn’t cost me anything and the wife likes it. Ran into one small issue but otherwise a pretty easy install and it works great.
In GT-Four related news, I spent part of last weekend putting the stock downpipe back on so the car will pass emissions to get it registered. Turns out as of January 1st, Colorado requires a new form for RHD cars to go through emissions so now I get to jump through those hoops just to get the paperwork. I replaced the bulbs in the gauge cluster and key ring light with white LED’s since I’ve never been a fan of the stock green, and replaced the license plate bulbs as well. That’s when I found out that someone has done the independent fog light mod on this car. Not something I’ve ever been interested in doing myself but it’s nice to see that it’s done.
I also spent a little time tidying up some small things, nothing really worth mentioning, but I did disable the T-VSV so the car will run full boost in first gear. But I also turned the boost down when I was cleaning things up, so I honestly don’t even know what the boost is set at right now. No sense in even trying to dial it in with the stock downpipe on. We’ve decided that the Greddy boost gauge in the car has to go too. No sense in looking at a boost gauge that reads in BAR and trying to do the conversion in your head while doing a WOT pull, so we picked up a new Prosport Evo boost gauge. It’s 52mm where the Greddy gauge is 60 mm, so a new gauge pod is in order too. We haven’t ordered one yet but we’ll be getting a wideband soon so we ordered a cheap A-pillar pod for now and we’re eventually going to switch to one of the nicer dash mounted pods.
The Greddy gauge and Greddy pod:
The new Prosport gauge and pod with a sad, empty hole in it that needs a wideband:
Not the nicest boost gauge ever but it reads in PSI and does the job. Took one of the wheels off to test the Superstrut with a pry bar and snapped a picture of the wheel specs while I had it off. Needs scrubbed pretty bad...
17x8 as far as I can tell, which is what I had guessed they were. +35 offset with what looked like 20mm spacers but I didn’t take the time to measure them. Thanks to Alex, I keep looking at Gram Light 57CR’s... gotta do a lot of other things first though. Good news is that the front brake pads still have some life left in them and the Superstrut passed the pry bar test with no play at all.
We took the twins to a Cars and Coffee this morning. Didn’t bother taking great pictures but here’s what I got.
After owning the car for a couple of weeks, I’ve found a few things. First and foremost, when you turn, this car
turns. It changes direction much better than our FWD car. The tradeoff seems to be suspension composure. The GT4 isn’t rough or overly stiff but the suspension is easily upset over bumps compared to a Macpherson equipped Celica. A Macpherson strut Celica can hit a bump or several back to back and keep going, where the Superstrut tends to get upset over moderate or multiple bumps. It rides just as smooth if not smoother than our white car on Sportlines so I doubt if it’s bad struts or springs, just more like the reason why the rally cars switched back to Macpherson. Other differences are minor but after owning USDM Celicas, it’s just unusual to see the differences. No dimmer for the gauge cluster, the lights don’t automatically shut off after you shut the car off and open the door, windows won’t still roll up after shutting the key off, the driver window is auto up in addition to auto down, no electric lock switch on the passenger door, and who knows what else I haven’t found yet.