Project Rust Destroyer (56K W*A*R*N*I*N*G)

Well here's my baby. 1988 Toyota Celica All-Trac # 2765 manufactured Oct 1987. It's celebrating its 20th birthday this month.


Here it is with it's buddy my 1985 Celica Supra.


Here it is when I first got it home and I had to lift a spare engine out of the rear hatch.


2 of my 3 best friends. Left is anti seize compound (goes on every nut and bolt I install) and PB Blaster to get those pesky nuts and bolts off in the first place.


My 3rd best friend. Silicone Dielectric compound put on all electrical connections like batery terminals big cable to starter/altenator (anywhere where an electrical conection is bolted....)


This is the stuff that is hopefully going to prevent future rust. I have heard alot of good things about it so I'll give it a try.


My goal is to restore my Trac to better than new condition. Alot of parts on your car are not protected from rust very well so having a media blasting cabinet is a real big plus.


When I bought the Trac it was 700KM away down in Rye's stomping grounds so I had it sent to the local Toyota dealers to get a bit of work done on it so I could take a train down and drive it back. $9530.97 later it was ready for me.




Toyota quality service sucks. What a waste of money. Bolts missing, wiring harness not properly installed just left laying on top of the tranny, a new brake line that would rub on the steering knuckle and break within a year......just really poor service, obviously the mechanic that worked on it didn't give a F**K.


So the first thing to do is to get it safety checked and that means a few holes in the floor will have to be fixed and a new windshield will have to be installed.











I had a new windshield coming on Monday so on Friday I thought I better remove the old windshield and give the frame a good clean up. The frame looked perfect until I got the moldings off and then I discovered several areas of rust and holes as circled. Crap nows it time to spend all weekend fixing rust so I can have the new windshield installed on Monday.














All fixed up and ready for the new windshield.


Then there's the pesky sunroof that is famous for disintigrating into nothingness.








Finally time for it to go for its safety check, it failed on a small hole in each rear wheel well that Toyota had failed to inform me off.


It went back for a second safety check just as pictured here but with the plastic rocker molding covering this huge hole and passed!!!!!!!!!!! What a joke..................




Now that I can legally drive the car I can start to do the little extras that will eventually restore it like starting with the drivers side rocker panel. For the rocker panels I'll use 14 guage sheet metal and cut out all old rust back to good body metal.














Luckilly the plastic hides all my crappy body work. I can do pretty decent body work but I don't really see a need when it all gets hidden anyways.


Next job to tackle was to replace the drivers side rear hub bearing


So I may as well clean up all the parts at the same time






Good as new and ready for another 20 years.


And along the way so far a few mods have been made. In the picture above #1 is a real drink holder #2 starter toggle switch #3 accessory 12V toggle switch #4 heads up display #5 a couple of rockford fosgate 10" subs and a 25 year old kenwood amp.


Another view of the heads up display and the drink holders


Trunk mounted battery box. Still have the front battery also so I may just use this one for my stereo.


A handy item to have


I'm quite good at leather work so I made a new shifter boot




Another view of the drink holders, by rotating the base of the holder it expands/ contracts to fit various sized drinks


A little extra help for all the idiots out there that don't know how to drive. Some aftermarket turn signals I got at canadian tire.


My first attempt at air brushing


Adding a bit of color to the engine bay


More color


So thats pretty much where the car is at now. Pictured above is some of the parts I have ready to install. All I have to do is find time to take it off the road long enough to do the work.

- drivers side half shaft
- 2 front struts & top mounts(not pictured)
- 2 rear calipers
- clutch brake and acelerator pedal mechanisms
- altenator brackets
- a couple of pipes for the engine and another bracket
- a lsd differential
- a degutted cat
- engine mount

So the fun never ends.

 

Well I almost allways do my own work but considering they wanted $2000 just to tow it to my place I thought I'd send it to the one place I thought I could trust to do the job right. :roll:

I would have been REALLY PISSED but I am self employed which allows me to write off vehicle expenses based on how much millage is put on the vehicle for personal vs business use and about 95% of my travelling is for business so 95% of $9530.97 or $9054.42 was a straight write off against my income last year.

I've also owned 4th gen GTS's for the past 10 years so when an All-Trac became available I might of went a tad overboard in the spending department :lol: but in the year since then I have only seen 1 other 4th gen Trac for sale in Ontario and that was about a month ago in Toronto and they wanted about $6500.00 for it although it did look in pretty good shape. So given the chances of finding one up here I pretty much didn't really care what the cost was.

 

Well CrazyAchmed's right most of the stuff Toyota put on I wanted new like brake lines, pads, rotors, calipers, altenator, clutch .... and anywhere I could I took GTS parts and shipped them down so really I only got screwed on the engine and the ridiculous prices Toyota wants for new parts.

I can go down to Montreal anytime and pick up a ST185 JDM engine/tranny/wiring harness/ECU/all sensors for $1100 and the same deal for a ST205 is about $2000. So its a good thing its a business write off.

 

Well Rick I seem to remember seeing that your out on the west coast so hopefully you just have some blistering paint and a bit of surface rust and hopefully no holes.

If you only have surface rust then some sanding disks and a wire wheel will probably work well and then I would put a coat of POR-15 on it unless you know of a better product. Of course it really depends on how long you realistically plan on keeping the car so you may wish to use a less permanent product.

If you have some tiny holes you may want to sand/wire wheel them as best as possible and then use POR-15 & RestoGrip Body Filler

Of course if you have holes then nothing beats cutting out the rust back to bare metal and then welding in a new piece, but that really depends on how comfortable you are cutting holes in your car and welding. The sheet metal around the windshield frame is pretty thick probably 16-18 guage and if you look in the pics to see where I made cuts along the top of the windshield frame I always tried to leave the curve from the roof to the windshield frame as this is a bend in the metal and will strengthen the roof and help prevent heat warpage.

I have no real welding training. I learned Oxy/Acc 30 years ago in high school and a little bit of Arc welding in college so I was planning on going with Oxy/Acc until I read in my welding book that modern cars use high strength steel and gas welding will make the metal brittle so you have to use MIG or if your real lucky TIG. So the floor of this car was my first attemp with a MIG and the windshield frame was my second.

Now of course I am a bit crazy, and its only sheet metal so if you fuck up to bad just cut it out and now you have a bigger hole to fix. I also believe you don't know what you can do until you try but all in all it turned out pretty well and if your going to restore a 20 year old car it's a skill that can save you alot of money. Hopefully I can do half as good a job on my rear fenders when I get around to fixing them.

If your going the MIG route I do recommend spending the extra to get a unit that will use gas. Some units can only use the flux core wire and it will work but its messy, welds need to be cleaned if you want to make a second pass and in my opinion does not do as good a job as a gas equiped MIG welder.






Before you weld run your hand along the roof to make sure the metal is not to high, it may have warped a bit from the cut of wheel heat. Its allway better to have the metal to low, you can always fill it but if its to high you'll have to grind it down or beat it down with a hammer and thats easier done before it's welded up.


Spots to tack weld, this will help prevent warpage. Once tack welded you may then fill in the space between tacks.
















Once the trim is put back on this will not be seen so body filler is really not necessary.






So I hope your windshield frame doesn't look as bad as mine when you get your glass out. Best of luck with the repair.

 

That was on top of the $2000 I paid for the car and the total of $11,500 just got it home. A conservative guess would add $2000 for tools... sheet metal bender, hydraulic press, sand blasting cabinet and probably $3000 in parts/materials I have put on the car or used to restore parts of it.

But I kind of owed it to the 3 GTS's I have burried. Everything you see in the following pictures except the original stone walls and roof was transported home in a 4th gen GTS hatchback(fast pickup truck ) either on the roof for 3'x5' windows and some plywood or in the hatch/remove the passenger seat to get 14' long 2x4's in. They all blasted down the trans canada highway 110kph :lol: for their hour long journey to my place. I'm surprised the front wheels of the car actually stayed on the ground some trips. So for the price difference between what I could get locally and what I bought in Ottawa I might have saved $9500.

But I guess the most important reason is I just love 4th gen celica's, at least GTS's & All-Tracs. I like the more agressive lines. 5th gens are getting to rounded/curvy which in my humble opinion kind of feminizes the car. Besides what other toyota product has a pedigree like the Celica.

When Toyota can come to North America and win the IMSA GTO Series Manufacturers Championship well that just pretty much sums it up for Toyota.....they build rock solid cars for the most part.....they dominate in most racing categories they enter into



So I think a first gen Trac is worth just about anything to save, and I think that one of these days more people will realize that. Whether or not they become a collectors item I don't know but if any Toyota except the 67-69 Toyota 2000GT ever becomes one it should be a first gen Trac.






Thats alot of trips in a celica to bring all that stuff home......

 

Sorry that was an old pic



I wish I could but I'm pretty much limited by property lines. Just to the left of my garage, the next property over used to be a gas station / garage 20 years ago. Still has 3 or 4 service bay entrances and room inside for maybe 10 cars so I'm hoping one of these days it will be up for sale.

 

Yep got one of them to.



I don't complain to much cause I did get my Trac.

 

Nope don't need one I got a celica :shock: I live out in the boonies where everyone has a pickup truck so I thought I'd be different.

I do have a 92 Camry station wagon now though so it will probably get the new hauling assignments.