OMG I must have gone back 23 years and be looking at a Celica in the Toyota dealers showroom thats not a bit of water in the spare tire well its oil from being Crown rust proofed.....I can see where it is eventually going to rust. I think over time bits of dirt and sand get in between the spare tire and metal of the well and it acts like sandpaper to eventually sand away the paint and eventually the primer, luckilly so far its just got a bit of the paint, the primer is intact and theirs no signs of rust behind the passenger side rear wheel well behind the drivers seat, where it looks wet it is once again just oil engine bay it does have some rust but by far the best one I've ever started with
Well since I replaced the engine harness I've had no problems with keeping the engine running. The old engine mounts were getting pretty worn so I found some liquid rubber so I could make some new ones you need to cut out the old steel ring and rubber then I got a flat board and drilled a couple holes for the center pins to sit in a piece of wax paper and a bit of modeling clay to make sure I have a good seal and filled I waited about an hour then I peeled off the wax paper as I wasn't sure it would peal away after fully dry suposed to be orange but I guess I didn't use enough dye as they are translucent, would be pretty neat with a led or two mounted inside. I used a rubber with a hardness of 90. I would be guessing the speed source bushings are probably about a 90. It is pretty hard. I would probably use a 70 hardness rubber for a passenger vehicle. With 90 you definetely feel alot more engine vibration in Dirty Deeds. Once your cruising you don't notice much difference. I noticed the tranny seal on the drivers side was starting to leak so I pulled it out. got a new seal from toyota and found an apropriatly sized socket to drive the new seal in new seal in place axle stuffed back into the tranny hub re attached 41mm socket works good Drivers side window switch was broken on my new GTS so I'm going to make a replacement out of some 1/8 x 3/4 inch aluminum bar the problem is the little plastic bit in the bottom of this picture, It fits inside the part above it and used to have a little knob on the end of it, but that little knob likes to break off making it hard to get your window back up. here you can see the slot that the broken knob slides into here the broken part is partialy inserted I just used a hack saw to cut the rough shape out to do finer work I use a small pair of vice grips to hold it to get the switch appart I like to pry the outside up until I can get a pair of pliers on the pin then I pull the pin out and its easy to remove the toggle button. after a bit of filing and sanding and polishing I have a new button that was actually the third one I made, the first one I made the shaft was a bit to small so it was a bit loose. the second one broke while I was trying to grind the curve into the top but the 3rd one works well It could be wider if I had 1/4" thick bar I would have used it to make the knob a bit wider but for now this will do
nice custom work dave! mass produce those! maybe make the top portion wider so more area for fingers to press on? on two of the ones i've come across with broken ones, i've just broken off the tab under the button, but i got lucky with an intact one on my gts now you can see it on this picture under the top portion of the "auto" buttons, there's a tab stopping the button from doing "auto up". this way i have auto up and down, and you can stop it at any time. i usually open/close my windows this way to preserve my intact original tab
Ya I agree it could have been wider but it does work good and its not hard on the finger and its what I had to work with at the time short of hacking up an old intake manifold to get a hunk of aluminum big enough so I drop by my local metal shop today and got a chunk of aluminum to make a more exact replica. Above the chunk of aluminum you can see the broken switch. Its a tad to big but only cost me $6, they would have charged me $10 to cut the bit I actually need and then probably $0.10 for the aluminum so I got a little extra heres what I'm going to attempt to re make, you can see how flimsy the little plastic switch lever is so I cut out a little block of aluminum I rounded the bottom end and now I'm cutting out some of the excess aluminum and now I've got something pretty close that I can file and sand and now its pretty much finished, as eNtraxGT88 pointed out earlier if you remove this tab on the bottom of the drivers side switch you will gain the auto up function for the drivers side window if you want to make your own relacement make sure you make the stem a bit narrower at the top or the lever won't be able to travel back and forth far enough and now a much stronger button than toyota provided
and this is why i will never doubt dave's handywork ever again. wow. holy shit. you know for mr2's, they have twosrus.com that have things like this for their cars, it's too bad we have a smaller demand for a market, as i'm sure you could sell that little replacement for prob $30 a piece successfully. p.s. where did you find those liquid rubber ingredients from? i've tried to explain what i'm trying to do to several rona/homedepots and all i've had is some shitty window polyurethane that doesn't seem to last that long. so far my current torque mounts are holding up, but for who knows how long.
www.smooth-on.com more specifically Urethane rubber http://www.smooth-on.com/Urethane-Rubber-an/c6/index.html I'd probably try PMC-770 next time and reduce the hardness from 90 to 70. 90 is very solid and the whole car vibrates pretty good while idling. I do mostly highway driving and once the drivetrain is engaged the vibration is greatly reduced so I don't mind the hardness to much but when I make another set it will be with a shore A hardness of 70.
what do you think the equivalent strength of the stock mounts are? is 70 already stronger than the stock mounts? or will i just basically be making a stock replacement.
passenger side tranny seal on my new GTS was starting to drip so out with the old seal and remove the passenger side half shaft and press a new seal into the tranny I also need to make some new gaskets as the hatch struts have lost their power so I ordered a new pair so I'm going to need to make some gaskets to seal the hatch struts to the frame to prevent water leaking into the hatch so I made a sheet of rubber that I can cut into whatever gasket shape I need pretty flexible since its so thin but still very strong It says a rubber tire is shore A 70 I think the biggest problem is that the original front mount allowed 1/4"-1/2" of flex as it was not a solid piece the next time I make a set I'm going to make some strips of wax similar to the sheet of rubber I made above. Probably about 1/4" thich and as wide as the mount is wide. Then I can insert them like the yellow and white lines above before I pour the rubber and melt out the wax after the rubber has set
Got my new hatch struts, not an exact replacement since mine is an 89 and they were listed for an 85-87. Didn't come with the little ball pivot on the ends so I took a couple of a pair of coupe trunk struts. The cylinder and rod are reversed, I only had 1 pre facelift celica a long time ago and I think that strut may have had the cylinder and rod reversed to but thats a long time ago. Anyways the new struts work fine. used a bit of that sheet of rubber I made to make a couple of gaskets to seal the holes and an added bonus is that it holds a couple stainless steel bolts in place since the new struts didn't come with attached bolts. and now a hatch that stays open by itself and a chance for a group shot since I just put my boat in storage for the winter
Dave you got to be nicknamed to Mcguiver or something don't even know if the name is spelled right lol. Amazing I like reading your post's.
ST165-2765- Genius!! How is that urethane compound holding up? I think I might pick some up and make some and make a few molds. D-RoK
Well its been a while since I really had much time to work on Dirty Deeds Sick mother and sick me, both now doing relatively well for the time being. Looking back a year and a half ago (page 22) I started work on some skull mirrors. So I have finally got around to getting some more done on them Drivers side mirror is getting close to completion, passenger side mirror needs some more fiberglass work so I'm useing some building insulation foam to make the basic shape I have coated the drivers side mirror in some high build primer and given it a sanding you'll notice on the forehead its not really smooth but thats just the way a skull is so I'm going to have to add some craters and other imperfections back in around the eyes where I had to reshape them with bondo to give them a more evil look. all nice and comfy in my little work space,you'll notice above the headrest of the chair I have a couple photo's of an IMSA Celica. I'm allways thinking about how I'm going to build 1 I decided to split the garage in 2 so I could have a little 12 x 12 work shop in the back that would be easier to heat. The 2 4x8 sheets of OSB are hinged at the top and middle so they can be opened in the summer (or winter) if need be. built a bunch of shelving with 3/4" thick doors on piano hinges so i could hang tools on them welded up a bracket so I could hang a tv this piece of the backet bolts to the ceiling, I welded a nut and bolt into it so it can rotate so now I got a nice cosy place to work in the winter another project I have to bring back to life is replacing the 4th gen license holder with a 5th gen version other than that I picked up a new welder over the winter and all I can say is wow, the difference between a nice Miller welder and the old piece of crap Canadian Tire welder is unreal. The CT welder will join 2 pieces of metal but its not going to be pretty and its definetely not going to be as strong as a Miller weld so you should definetely spend the extra money and get a good welder Under the welder is a Hobart plasma cutter so that probably means I'm getting ready to start cutting up a Celica so I can do my IMSA Celica, hopefully I'll get that started this summer but I'll be useing a hatchback not a coupe and finally I put in an application to my local college and have been accepted into the Motive Power Technician's co-op course so I can officially get a piece of paper to do something I like doing
Good to have you back Dave, always something completely different for us to read. Looks very cosy now.
Thanks guys its good to have the extra time to play in the garage again. I had made a lens for the left eye a year and a half ago but could not find it so I used an old camry taillight to make a couple new ones It took a few tries as you can see by the failed attempts in the bottom left corner of the pictures. The left eye worked first try but it took 4 attemps to make the right eye. I need to heat the lens up with a heatgun so I can curve it to the contour of the face..if you heat the lens to much it turns opaque, one lens got a concave instead of a convex curve, and one lens cracked when I tried to mold it so it probably allready had a crack in it that I didn't notice