Decided to join the 1MZ crew. 112k miles, with harness for $200. BAWSS. I pick it up tomorrow.

Nice score.

^ I'll say, drunkie. That's the best deal on a presumably intact engine I've read about.

Yeah, now comes the fun part of harness work. Hopefully my boy comes through for me (he does a lot of the wiretucks/standalone stuff around here) so I don't have to send my harness out.

My pick and pull junkyard had just taken the car in, and they owed me a favor after they took my $200 and never pulled the 3SGE.with 61k they should have, and accidentally scrapped it. If I pulled it, it would have been $150, so for $50 I'll let them pull it.

Today I found out that the right side tail light holder is screwed, and I have to go find a new one in the junk yards this weekend. I also replaced the fuel ignition relay in the Honda CRX I am trying to sell to see if it would start. I also put a freshly charged battery in and when I went to turn the key... nothing. Now the lights wont even come on. I have to check the main fuse to make sure I didnt blow that. UGH!

You did. The main relay has a habit of doing that. It's not prohibitively expensive.

Whatever you say Swiss cakes.

Could be something from BWD or Intermotor. SMP (Mother company to BWD and Intermotor) makes all the OEM Toyota and VW electronic ignition parts. (Well, most of them anyway)

I've seen things come out of their boxes with those stamps on it. Any intelligent parts guy will actually look up a warranty.

Today I realized I now have 4 blue squares under my belt here at 6gc.. And my post that gave the fourth one was me stating my celica rolled 110k

Just finished changing my oil.

Still waiting on my sealed solder splice connectors to finish working on my HID wiring.

Getting my tires rotated a bit later on today.

To TRD front strut brace, or not to TRD front strut brace... that is the question...

It is cheap, but has a few paint chips where there is now surface rust (no biggy) but it would need painting which would make it less TRD

Loser, I've had five squares for ever now. Then again I average over 6 posts a day, so it really didn't take long.


If it's cheap enough then why not? If you're worried about the "TRD-ness" just touch up the bad spots.

Today I water sanded, polished and waxed my roof. It's a like a mirror now.

3 point makes a huge difference. Just saying.

Found a guy selling his Celica on Craigslist for $1900.... I wish I had waited to buy it, but I am super happy with the celica I bought!

Here is the link if anyone is interested...
http://houston.craigslist.org/cto/3992797094.html

*edit*... BOX - I know... it's red. it automatically sucks.

The real offence are the garish wheels.


Wait a minute, you bought yours 9 years ago.... That's a long time to wait.

Rust is a fairly common issue on them. I say grab it. A flat black paint job with a subtle TRD logo would look great.

So you change your own oil, but don't rotate tires yourself?

If you don't want it i'll take it. TRD 3 points are hard to find aren't they? That should be reason enough to snatch it up and give it some TLC.


It's soooo easy! Even easier if you have an impact gun with an 75-80lb torque stick and impact sockets. Unless the shop rotates your tires for free, i suppose i could see that.

Almost forgot, Today I took another goody up to De-pere to my body man for a paint job. And started looking for possible donor cars for my swap.

Maybe he doesn't have a concrete driveway.

Ding ding ding!



The place where I had the tires mounted and balanced provides lifetime rotation and balancing for the life of the tires. I could rotate them myself easily BUT I can't balance them so it's just easier (and free except for the gas involved in driving - which I love so that's not a cost to me!) to take the car to the shop and have it done.

Thanks, Ferdi.

And Box, I don't have a concrete driveway...just a large parking lot full of other vehicles so I'm limited in what I can do. The joys of apartment life...

Don't feel too bad. I have a gravel driveway and have to go to my uncle's to do anything that involves me under the car/lifting it.

Hey Brian, I ended up not needing adapters. Apparently DDM sends you them hooked up with the plug for what bulb you choose, instead of just H1 plugs like most places.





I didn't get my tires ordered till yesterday, the guy I ordered them from has been outta town and just finally had a chance to drive down to the shop and take a look so those won't be put on (along with my springs) till I get back from IL.

Also I fixed my car yesterday (after the H.I.D.s were put in ). Somehow it ended up being the dizzy (I went back and they claimed my old dizzy for warrenty no issue). Now it runs like a beauty.

^Which colour are those? My brother is wanting HID's for his car, but more on the white-ish side. I was looking at DDM tuning for him, I was thinking around 4500K would work.

Glad to hear you got the car problems sorted.

Looks great! Did you ask for the 9006 HID kit? I'm actually waiting for the last bits of my wiring stuff before I install my HIDS.

Glad the dizzy got replaced and all is well, too!

DDM's bulb selection kind of sucks. My 4,500K bulbs are closer to other manufacturer's 6,000K. Apart from that, I have no complaints.

Going off of how experience of how DDM sells (as it seems differ greatly from bulb brand to brand) :

4.5K (what Brian has) - I think their pure white, but well have to wait until Brian gets his hooked up.
5K (this is what I have) - Seems to be a middle ground between hyper white and pure white
6K (what my bud has) - Hyper white

They Hyper whites look awesome. They start having the "washout" effect like the blueish bulbs do, but their extremely bright.

I haven't had much time with mine because my car was running off just the alt last night coming home (dirty terminals) and I haven't had them on today. Hitting the brakes would shut my lights and radio off. And when I got home I actually stalled the car out by tapping the brakes. I'm about to go to Cookout though so I'll let you know when I get back

Also thanks.



Thanks, and nope just the 9005. I might get the high beams later down the road, but I don't use them much. Idk if its just our car or the way my housing is aimed but our low beams shine extremely far. And the high beams...I can see the light reflecting off it 100yards down the road in broad day light...

That's what I was afraid of. He was dead set on getting 6K for awhile, then I talked him to no higher than 5K. He's doing a projector mod, still don't need some cop deciding to pull him over, instead of the dick with purple HID's, and getting a ticket he can't afford. Guess I'll try to talk him into the 4,500K.

Properly aimed my headlights with Sylvania Silver-Stars have quite a distance to them, high beams especially. With the highs on I feel totally comfortable with what I can see ahead of me, as I would feel during daytime driving. I've thought about doing HIR bulbs since they have the same filament placement as 9005/9006 and the base is near identical, but $20 a bulb plus shipping is kind of steep.

I had Silverstars and hated them compared to a set of GE Nighthawks. Both were a 9005 bulb modified to work with a 9006 plug. I keep meaning to invest in a set of HIR's for my high beams. The brightness of HID headlights but they'll work in a halogen housing? Yes please.

I've heard good things about the GE Nighthawks. May look into them as it's about time I replaced mine, low beams especially. I think HIR lows and highs would be quite epic, I'm surprised more people don't go that route.

I had the $55 Silverstar bulbs They were bright, especially when I first got them. Only issue I had was the huge power draw they had. They'd dim all the time from my subs.

Also I just realized something..our low beams are 9006 and I got 9005 for my lows...whoops. Oh well.

Also this is what my lights look like-






I never really did look into HIRs but I saw they consume a lotta power (55w low / 65w high) and I really just got HIDs to remedy my diming whist having bright lights. I live out in BFE so I don't have to worry about blinding people, I just gotta be able to look for deer cause they love to cross the roads here.

Being it's aftermarket HID I don't see what difference it'd make anyhow, so I wouldn't worry about it. The cheapest Sylvania bulbs were 55W/65W as well, at least with HIRs they're about twice as bright. Also like 4x as much. Looking around Amazon now at the moment, really need low beams... I've noticed something peculiar about my car though, at least I've only noticed it on the Celica, but having the lights on raises the idle by 150 or so.

Eco-Vision are 47W/59W, but 25% brighter and save fuel. Or so they say.

Hmmm, GE Nighthawks or Philips VisionPlus... Highest grade bulbs without any kind of tint on them. Even the Nighthawk Platinum and Philips XtremeVision have a small blue ring at the top... I have the SilverStars at the moment, definitely need unfiltered light with using my yellow lenses. Will have to see what I have for high beams, I don't think they're SilverStars though.

found these online.... ewies

Replacing my crappy eBay brand HID kit with a 5000k Phillips HID bulb and some local brand ballasts...

Bought them on Friday, hoping these wont flash and flicker or have a broken metal piece like the eBay kit...

Yeah... but stiffening up the front means more understeer doesn't it? I'm not very fond of understeer I have been thinking about a Whiteline rear sway bar, but my friends have been trying to turn me off the idea and have been telling me not to mess with my chassis because its the best they've ever driven



Yeah, that might be a plan I told the guy I was taking it this morning, so just waiting on his bank details.



Yeah, I suppose they are.... I see them fairly often though, just not always cheap And too late, I already bought it

The strut brace reduces chassis flex and ties the two suspension towers together so they work closer in harmony, or so I've been told. Generally when it comes to FWD you want the suspension itself to be softer in the front, and stiffer in the rear. You can also run higher tire pressure up front versus the rear to help. Of course the real solution to under-steer is to buy a right wheel drive car.

Hmm... Michelin says lower pressure up front, and higher out back versus the opposite that Tire Rack said...

The handling improvement negates the extra tendency for understeer. I can feel the improved solidity in the way the steering wheel behaves over bumps and responds to quick input; in a car with this much weight over the front wheels, it helps massively. Combined with the rear strut bar, the car lends itself slightly more to understeer at first, but now also oversteers when approaching 10/10, which mine never did from factory.

Don't listen to your friends.

Sounds good - I shall look forward to its arrival then

I don't want to do the rear strut brace though - as much as it would help with handling it would defeat one of the main reasons I started looking at Celicas which was the massive versatile storage space that the liftback design offered, including being able to just chuck my mountain bike straight in. I had thought about doing one of VincentDoggy's boot braces though (the one that goes on the floor at the back, over the spare tyre).

Rear swaybar still undecided (financially, not handling)... I really need to make a call of whether I will be Beams swapping or moving to st205 or 86 in the next 2 years, so I can decided how much money to waste on it

You definitely want a ST205.

What's the millage on the 3s-gte, anyone knows?

On the ST185 it was 19/24 new, so I imagine the ST205 would be around that.

Matt gets pretty good mpg in his 4th gen.

Also dat teamwork in the electrical thread. haha.

Sadly today will be the last day driving my car for a week. I'm flying up to IL to go see a bud for a lil bit. He wants me to take his M-Series 330i and see if I can top his max of 145...I said no thanks, not my car.

I was going to ask if it had the selector to go from AWD to FWD, but I think that was only on '86 models which we didn't get. I'm with you on that, I hate driving people's cars within legal limits much less like a crazy person....

4th gen 3s* Hes got a ST swapped Matt is easternpro.

And yea he was like dude youre the only person I'd ever let do it. I was like I'll do a 3rd gear pull all day, but I'm not gonna have a rod blow through the block and have that on my conscious when he LOVES that car. hahaha.

Ah ok. Speaking of the ST165 I'd love to have one, that or the ST185 but it seems they're impossible to find. Maybe he's just wanting an excuse to get a M3.

Nah Jareds dumped so much money into that BMW, hes never gonna get rid of it. Especially since it was totaled and in the hole something like 15k in parts and labor

From (it was a lot worse then it looks) -



To -



It wasn't value that totaled it, I think it had minor frame damage, plus the airbags deploying. Hes still got another good couple thousand bucks to completely fix it as the oil pan leaks, it burns a tiny bit of oil, a CEL code is on that can only be reset by BMW, and the AB light is on which can also only be reset by BMW.

And to keep it Celica related, I just washed mine. So shiny.

That's M3 money.

I checked the bulbs on mine. Silverstars on low beams, and plain Sylvanias on the high beams. Now to find low beam replacements. What's funny is during the day you can barely see the Silverstars being on, but you can see the plain Sylvanias fine. I can't imagine how great it'll be with non-tinted bulbs.