With the first Midwest meet behind us, I can now post this up.

WARNING: ***Storytime with Chris***

Two years ago, one of my fellow mods over on Celicatech made the decision that it was time to sell his car to fund the purchase of a more practical DD. It was suggested that I purchase the car, but I was not in a financial position to do so. I passed on the offer and the car was listed on Ebay. The auction ended below the reserve, and he circled back around to give me one more shot at it. Stacy and I took it as a sign and scraped up the cash to buy it. That was April 2017.

Fast forward to April 2019, two years of pushing this large financial commitment out of my head, and this pulls up in front of my house:


That new new by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

That new new by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

That new new by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

That new new by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

The trans had a high RPM grind in 3rd, so the PO put in a new trans as part of the sale. All buttoned up:
Untitled by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

That new new by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

Let me tell you, it's been a long 2 years...

It's so small compared to the 4Runner!
That new new by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

History on the car:
It was imported to Canada in 2009 as a Grade 4 car. It was used as a DD for a few years before the mod bug bit and little things started happening. It was taken off DD in 2011 and has been a fun car ever since.

It's not without it's fair share of warts, mostly cosmetic. It needs a complete respray, but there's no rust anywhere on this thing. I've put 300km on it since Friday, and this car is hands-down the BEST driving Celica I've driven.

I've already put my SSRs to use... What a difference a set of wheels can make.
Untitled by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

Post Meet washdown:
Untitled by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

I'm stoked to see what the future brings!

^^^

AND it's a wrc

Time to reactivate the antilag!!!

lol you guys are funny.

I forgot to mention, there's significant travel in the brake pedal, I'm hoping a set of stainless lines and new fluid will help pedal response. If not, I may have to upgrade to a larger master to help get more pressure to the pads with less effort.

Also, I found out on the way home from the meet that only half of the lights in the cluster work... I guess it's time for an LED upgrade and an endworks bezel.

Everyone be getting GT-Fours now, makes me sad I'm not. Though Bright Iris Pearl was '95-96 only, so couldn't import one I'd want yet anyway. There we go, that'll help me sleep at night.

Looks good though outside of needing a respray like you said, should take it as an opportunity to do some kind of metallic or pearl black to really make it pop. OHH, one of those prism metallic paints would look awesome:


That with some confetti Recaro seats, would be so magical.

With the paint, I’m going to go the same route as we did with my wife’s alltrac: straight PPG black. No additives nothing. Just black.

I’m planning on putting the car through it’s paces on the track, so I’m likely to end up in a bride or something similar.

My guess would be seized up slide pins and/or pads seized up in the brackets if there's not air in the system. Rubber brake hoses alone won't make for long pedal travel just make for a kind of squishy 'pushing on a rubber ball' kind of pedal at the end of the travel. Seized up pins can cause the calipers to hang up and actually flex the brackets to engage pads to rotor which means you're taking up a lot of distance (comparatively speaking to the normal tenth of a MM from pad to rotor) with pedal stroke. I think brakes is one of my ASE certs but you don't need to be a genius with that stuff, it's just basic hydraulics. If it's long travel but stops hard with a firm pedal it's more likely seized up junk, if it's a low pedal with a weak apply it's probably air or a bad master cylinder. Rarely do I see ABS issues with Denso systems, usually it's an issue with a single circuit not applying and a few whacks with a hammer while cycling the system will free the stuck part and it's fine for another decade, don't even know if that car has ABS.

Could also be someone messed with the pedal adjustment rod and nut, I know in my Celica I tightened it up a hair to give me a higher touchier brake pedal with about 1/3 less free travel before engaging retina sucking stoppage. Why someone would back it off, I would only guess they were going the wrong way to fix a problem with something hanging up in the system.

But but, opportunities. </3 Just think how fabulous you could look on the track with some black prism metallic paint. That's fine, leave extravagant paints to me then I guess.

We'll all chip in at the next Midwest meet and like get some truck nuts he can hang off the back.

My st205s always had a less than great pedal feel. I,ve got braided stainless lines, EBC pads and rotors. Bled the system twice now hoping it would solid up. No abs on my car. I mean it stops okay but for the overkill brake system the st205s have I expect a little more.

I had to change the brake master on my st185 and it was an absolute pain because of the rhd. Hope the st205 is more forgiving.

I wouldn't mind replacing my gauge cluster lights for some LEDs that more closely match the greddy gauges in the car. Do you know offhand how many and what type of bulb is called for. I hope my roll cage doesn't get in the way of removing panels to pull the cluster.

Are those seriously still a thing? Why they were a thing to begin with I'll never know, nor why they were made to look as disgusting as possible. Then again I don't understand guys and half the **** they do or think. At least drift charms could be cute and generally weren't crass...

About the paint, as this car is going to see track time, I need a paint that is going to be an easy match. Metallics suck for that. Especially color shifting metallics.

Jordan: There are no brackets on the 205 the calipers are mounted direct to the knuckles. Apparently, pedal feel is an issue according to the other 205 owners that I've talked to about it, so I'll just need to look it over and make a call. This is an ABS equipped car, but I doubt that has anything to do with anything.

Speaking of drift charms....

Rears too?

Yessir.

Nice, fixed calipers and floating pads. There's still a chance it's something binding causing a long pedal travel, a literal ton of force will make all kinds of things flex and move when you're burying the pedal. Hopefully a good inspection will reveal a simple cause and you don't have to go swapping out hydraulic parts, that gets old fast and getting good rebuilt parts is hit or miss. A larger bore master would indeed move more fluid per distance of pedal travel and all other things being the same would create more pressure, but I recall there being some other trade off. Pedal height adjustment should be a couple of 17 or 14mm jam nuts up under there, send Theo with a helmet cam in for an exploratory.

Woah the forum clock is off a bit. It's actually 7:38 AM

Fair enough on paint, metallic you have to do all at once in the hopes it matches and sorta the same with pearl to an extent.

Yes Jordan, the forum clock has been off for quite awhile now and it's only getting worse.

I like it!!

I forgot to post these up....

IMG_1181 by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

IMG_1184 by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

IMG_1188 by bloodMoney2012, on Flickr

.....And right now it's on jack stands in the garage waiting for the new tires to be mounted.

What tires did you go with?

Zestino Tires

Sounds like a brand of pizza rolls.

It does.

Zestino Pizza Rolls!

I'm so getting bamnef from the next meet!

So true!

Probably going to last as long as pizza rolls. One bite & gone.

Ok but seriously, they look like a knock off of the Dunlop Z2/Z3 tread pattern with a little lower tread wear. What's the deal? Just cheap and sticky?

From what I can gather with a few minutes of Googling, they're a Japanese company that outsources and has their tires made in China. Personally I'd stick with Federal for low price range tires, brother just put on 595RS-R on the BMW and they have no problem with 500 horsepower and work surprisingly well in the rain though nothing too torrential has happened yet. The 595RPM on the Genesis were also quite good so far. Yes the Federals are made in Taiwan, but by a Taiwanese company and so far they've surpassed expectations. Will find out long term use on the BMW now that the Genesis is being sold, but being they're the second most extreme street tire behind the 595RS-RR I'll be surprised if he gets 20K with rotating them and yes I finally managed to talk him into a square setup.

Hopefully the Zestino tires are ok, the Chinese are more than capable it's just a matter of what they're being told to make that's always the issue...

Zestinos come highly recommended from from the local tuning shop. They use them on both their grip cars and their drift cars.

As this car is not going to see more than 3000mi/yr, I'm not really concerned about it. I know for a fact that they will be better than the 10 year old Riken Raptors that are on the wheels now.

Plus we need to consider that despite the fact that they outsource to China, they are still a Japanese company with Japanese quality standards.... I don't mind being the guinea pig for this group, knowing the customers that have run these in past years and been happy with them.

Japanese products suck, and that includes automobiles.






You know I kid... ha!

It'll be a worthy experiment.

That doesn't mean anything, Japanese electronics made in China or elsewhere don't hold a candle to Japanese electronics made in Japan. Of course you also have the price discrepancy so they should withhold higher quality for the higher priced equipment, but a company that's making everything in China may not have that but that's up to them. Like I said hopefully they turn out well.

A lot of it comes down to QC, there's plenty of things made in China with strict QC that are great products. These tires could be one, Chris will find out and let us know. In the mean time I'll be bringing some marinara dipping sauce for his Zestino tires.

Indeed, hopefully this is an instance of the outsourcing company specifying a high quality product. It'd be nice to have more inexpensive tires, note not cheap, out there.

Mmmm zesty Zestinos.

Like the difference in quality between Federals that're Taiwanese made by a Taiwanese company are night and day over the Ohtsu which are a subsidiary of Japanese company Falken and are made in Indonesia or China. Yet the FP8000 are supposed to be an exact copy of an older Falken design.

No pics for this update, but the wheels are back on the car.

I've also replaced the cluster bulbs with LEDs since one of the three were out.

Auxito LED

There are hot spots, but at least I can see all my gauges at night.

Finally, I pulled the fuel sender to try and see why my gauge wasn't working. Turns out the entire sender had come off of the bracket and was sitting the in bottom of the tank. After wrestling the sender up with a magnet, I soldered the connections back together and I seem to have a working gauge again.

Although, It appears that the drive to and from Starved Rock for the midwest meet used 3/4 tank of fuel. I certainly hope that's not the case, as it was only a 200 mi. round trip.... Maybe it had something to do with my foot magically getting heavier everytime Luke gets next to me....

Starved Rock is minimum 1/2 tank for me, it was only 1/4 tank when I went in other cars.

That’s similar fuel economy to what we’re getting.

Really? Damn... I thought I was tweaking, that's why I kept asking you about how long it took to come up.

The GT-Four is a performance car, if you wanted economy should've gotten the ST.

Im glad I have that effect; and I dont think either of us will ever change lol

Chris, those LED's are not so suited for small spaces if you're running them at full brightness. Especially with the 'canbus' resistors getting hot on those things. I'd suggest something more like...the Diode Dynamics HP3. It comes in colors, Amber or Green would look nice for a classic Toyota look and feel. They're well diffused to help prevent hot spots.

http://images.diodedynamics.com/mazda/miat...gauge_green.jpg

Isn't the green an overlay on the gauges? So I'd say green, plus the green is kinda cool these days as now it's all blinding LCD displays. I personally like amber though, really easy on the eyes.

The green lights in Toyota's is definitely classic.

Big talk from someone who doesn't even own one...

Plus, I think I'm just used to getting 400 mi/tank with the LS.



This worries me for when we get on track together…. lol

I like the white gauges. I’m planning on getting the Endworks cluster bezel, and some crisp white gauges will look great behind it. Maybe if these burn out, I'll try the diode dynamics. The photo does look pretty uniform.

I used to own a ST and now I own something not economy minded at all, so I think my comment is valid. Hey find me an Iris Pearl GT-Four and I'll sell a kidney to make it happen.

For whatever it's worth the ST185 was rated at 19/24 originally, so as long as you're near that I'd think it's all kosher.

Yup, we’re getting about 250 miles to a tank. Less if Brigette drives it more.

For scientific reasons, I would like to know the outcome of driving near Luke on the highway.

Any chance you remember how many/type of bulbs are in the GT4 Cluster. The lighting guide just says :
"Guage Cluster - 194 (Larger Bulbs) and 74 (Smaller Bulbs)"

Im not sure how accurate that info actually is.

You enjoy it more than the car does. And gas mileage may suffer.