(To be) Hellaflush Celica: Hinge and first BeeR. :P

(To be) Hellaflush Celica

Hello all,

My name's Andrew in case you guys have forgotten. lol (I'm just used to starting threads like this with my name OK! :roll )
Anyways, just decided to make a thread for my car now. I originally wanted to wait til I started putting money into my car to make this thread, but a certain someone inspired me to make it now.


History of car: (GO GO LARGE WALL OF TEXT!!! :byodood )
So my dad purchased this car brand new way back in '88 or '89. I don't remember the exact date; I just know that he is the original owner of the car. According to my dad, back then, he just walked up to the dealer and asked them for the best car they had on the lot. Supposedly, dealers pointed to this Celica GTS, and after trading in his 3rd gen Celica ST, my dad got his second (or third, I can't recall how many he's had total) Celica. I'm pretty sure that this car was his first new car though. The Celica became his daily driver, and as you will see/have already seen in my pics of the car, he took pretty good care of it. I remember him taking me to school in that car every day up until between sophomore and junior year of high school. Why until middle of high school? Well, you're about to find out!
Around Summer of '08, Dad had just picked me up from a class I was taking at what is now the university/college I go to. (Hooray for summer programs :roll ) While we were heading back home, the car started to weaken, and before we knew it, white smoked shot out of the hood. My mom, being how mom's usually are (I think), freaked out and thought that the car was on fire and was going to explode. XD. Boy was that scary... Car then was towed to my place, and was left (mostly) neglected in front of my house for a fairly long period of time. (Almost two years).
Last year, my dad got a new daily driver: a '10 Ford Escape Hybrid. Because the Celica was just sitting there, my dad considered (well, actually, I should probably say "planned on" since he almost did it) donating the car to get a tax deduction. (I'm sure you all are aware that our Celica's aren't worth very much nowadays... ). This was a time when I was really into 240sx's (AKA 200sx or 180sx) though (Well, I kinda still am, but you get the point), so I at first, tried selling it on craigslist to get money to buy an S13. (I mean hey, this car only had one owner! Surely I could make some money off of it rather than give it to some people that would most likely care less about this.) Little did I know that this car would become one of the loves of my life...
After doing extra research on the car (like potential mods, i.e. 3sgte swap) to make my ad more interesting, and staring at it a lot (from taking pictures for the craigslist ads), I caught the bug. This car was, and currently still is, the only manual transmission car in the household. I couldn't sell the car that had been in the family since before I was born just so that I could get what I now like to call "The new Civic." (My goodness, 240's are like everywhere nowadays.) And hey, the car's pretty stylish too. Sure there aren't too many aftermarket parts for it, but that's where the creativity comes in. I couldn't just sell this car to someone who most likely wouldn't give it Tender Love and Care! I mean the car was still in good condition (albeit overheating and rust) and was still under the original owner! My newfound love of my ST162 soon lead me to joining this website. (Whether it was before or after I got the keys to the car, I don't remember.) Somewhere during this time, I begged my dad to let me have the car, and soon enough he gave me the keys to it. (I mean no one in my household drives it so there was really no reason not to. lol) And so concludes the story of the history of my first car. The Celica unfortunately still overheats though, so I usually just drive it around my neighborhood for fun. Recently, I started daily driving the car out to the bus stop, where the bus would then take me to school, so I guess you could call the car my daily driver.

Gonna try to break my habit of spending hours proofreading every freakin' forum post I make, so pardon me if anything sounds a little off up there. Onward to my plans for the car!

If you guys haven't already noticed, I LOVE being different. (Part of the reason I kept the Celica instead of buying a 240sx like most other teenagers would right?) I've tampered with/modified almost everything I've ever gotten my hands on (From swapping wheels on those little toy cars when I was a kid to swapping housings and installing custom firmwares on cell phones and video game consoles) mostly for the sake of being unique. I'm sure most of you have heard of "Stanced" cars and "Hellaflush" right? Anyways (gosh, I feel like I'm using this word too much...) there are plently of 240sx's and Civics, etc... that have recieved this type of modification, but where's the Celica love? I've only a few "Hellaflush" Celica's so far, including two 7th gens, and a 1st gen. I'd love to be one of the first to modify a car that hasn't gotten as much love in today's pop-car culture. So yeah, that's kind of the background of my plans. Special thanks to cliffmeister (Not sure if he's on here) for also getting into the "stance"/"hellaflush" scene with his '162 coupe (He helped me decide on what wheel specs I should get and has already made a lot of progress on his car), and for everyone here for being nice and informative. (Wouldn't know crud about my car, and probably wouldn't still have it if it weren't for this website! )

Plans:
- 15x7 0 offset (4" backspacing) White Diamond Racing Wheels Stock Series
- 165/50/15 Federal Formoza FD1 Tires (Some tire stretch so that my wheels clear the fenders!)
- Custom made Coilovers (To get that low ride height I always talk about)
- Reseal quarter panel windows to keep rain water out of my car. :aargh
- Fix the overheating issue. (Three options)
1) Fix my 3SGE for now
2) 3SGTE Swap
3) Electric Car Conversion (Have you seen the Gas prices!?)
-I'd only do this if I could get parts for cheap. A Mechanic estimated the cost of a conversion to be
$20K+!!! hnoes

And now for the pictures you've all probably been waiting for. :hehe
I really don't get why people tend to complain about "crappy iPhone pics" 5 megapixels looks great IMO...




Craigslist pictures: (With 8MP Camera...)



Rough photoshop of how I want my car to work. (You guys might remember this from the "Stanced Celica" Thread I made before the forum went :crazy )
Diamond Racing Wheels:

XXR 002's: (Not interested in these anymore since they would have too much poke.)



Thanks everyone! Comments and suggestions will be much appreciated. If you actually read everything I wrote, props and an e-high five to you! :hehe Will try to update often. Washed my car today, but haven't gotten the chance to take pics yet, so those will be coming up soon.

 

Re: (To be) Stanced Celica

lol yep. Darn, wish you sent me that a few weeks ago.
Already had someone fix my starter and power steering for 200bucks...

 

Re: (To be) Stanced Celica

lol thanks guys.
Actually, I just remembered that I ended up paying a total of 300-400 bucks for the power steering and starter. Not too sure why I thought it was 200... (My memory's been a little weird lately...)

@eNtraxGT88
It never snows here, but it does get pretty cold sometimes. Our perspective of cold is probably different than yours though. XD

@cliffmeister3
Hmmmm, I wonder where I got those numbers from. :tongue:
lol I'm not too worried about scraping at the moment. I usually don't drive up driveways and my commute to the bus stop doesn't have any speed bumps.
I thought we were both looking at the same coilovers... The ones I'm planning to get are on eBay, in which the seller is from Australia. Just search st162 coilovers and you should find it. Total cost for coilovers will probably be around 1200 bucks since I also wanted dual springs, camber adjustment, and damper adjustment.
Oh, about your local shop selling the wheels; Do you think you could get an estimate from them on how much they charge for the ones I want? Can they mount stretched tires there too? Hope I'm not asking too much...
Thanks.

@PhantomJDM
Viet FTW!!!

Can't wait til I make some type of progress. It's been almost a year since I got the car and the modding bug. The only thing holding me back right now is parental permission... :cuss Everyone I've talked to including the mechanics that fixed my have suggested that I get rid of the Celica and buy some other car, so I can't exactly say my parents are supportive of me spending several thousand dollars on it. And before anyone says, "screw them, go buy it without them knowing", just know that I still live at home and see them every day... Any suggestions as to how I could convince them to let me get the parts I want? (I mean, I am paying with my own money...)

And a random question, but anyone know how much it would cost to get a 3rd gen 3sge in my car, or where to find one?

Thanks y'all!

 

Re: (To be) Stanced Celica

Thanks for the tip. 39 is definitely NOT old. Lol
I don't mean to be rude, but I said it was a 240sx/200sx/180sx that I wanted. Maybe you got confused with when I said I thought it was like a civic.

Not that I don't like Honda's; I just would never buy one (or at least one of the popular older models) because those things get stolen way too often, and are common targets for the police.

I actually don't see anything crazy about the thought of focusing on practicality over aesthetics. In fact, I think that that thought is a lot more reasonable than my desires to stance my car. I still want to stance my car though; it's just one of those things that I really want to do even though it is not practical in any way whatsoever.

My car already has a GE (It is a GTS after all) so I'd only go for a 3rd gen 3sge (having a hard time finding these ), BEAMS, or 3SGTE if I did buy a new engine. The last two are out of my budget though so I am considerig a gen3 GE right now if I can find one for cheap enough.

As for the Ford, it was because of cash for clunkers. We traded our old dodge grand caravan for it... I miss that Van. RIP.

I've been giving my car a lot of love lately. Washed the car yesterday. Will post pics later when I get home. Leaking fix is definitely on my list of priorities. Rust is kid of a big problem though so I'm gonna need some help with that. Rust spot pics will be uploaded eventually.

 

Re: (To be) Stanced Celica

Thanks guys.

Which wheels are you looking at?
I'm not sure if you want to get your car low or not, but if you do, you're probably gonna have a lot more options than me for wheels. My GTS is a 5x100, and there are very few wheels that are <=16" and have that bolt pattern. On the other hand, there are plenty of 4 lug wheels that are small and have relatively low offset since that's what a lot of the 240 and Honda guys have.

If you don't need to get super low, just get a 5 lug conversion (5x114.3 is probably best) and you'll have a ton of options. Although, if you want to get something really wide, you'll probably need fender flares...

Have you seen that blacked out 4th gen on wide, white mesh wheels?

 

Re: (To be) Stanced Celica

thanks for the link!
I remember looking at those rims a while back (along with XXr 002's, which are also 8 inches wide for the big lip ones and cost the same) I kinda like how they look, but I don't really want to cut up my fenders for the fender flares. That's why I'm looking at widened steelies. The wheels I'm looking at are only 60 bucks each, and I can get them in 15x7, 0 offset which fits almost perfectly on the Celica. (Or at least that's what I would think based off of cliffmeister's car)

As for the engine, would you guys recommend getting a gen3 3sge just to get it running reliably? It shouldn't cost more than a grand for labor should it?

 

Re: (To be) Stanced Celica

My car already has a gen 1 3sge, so I guess I'll just fix it for now.
I don't think I have a blown head-gasket though because I don't have any white smoke coming out of my exhaust...

Just found out that my whole passenger side got soaked by the rain... Grrrr....
Windshield and quarter panel window resealing?

Oh, anyone know if it's OK if I rip the padding thing under the hood off? Mine's kinda torn up... (Supposedly, mice lived in there for a period of time...)


New pics of my car:




Will try to take more tomorrow. 8MP Camera was being stubborn, and wouldn't let me transfer some of my pics, so I only got my iPhone pics for now.

I also just stopped by Home Depot today to pick up a little something.
Let the Ricing begin! :lol2