Starting off
A good chunk of petrolheads starting off in the early/mid 2000s will say The Fast and the Furious franchise got them into cars. For me it was the Mischief series.
Real dudes in real cars, getting into shenanigans. I didn't make the kind of money to build a 400+hp E36 like the Mischief guys.
I had a sexy little stock 1982 Toyota Corolla, commonly known to the car community as a TE72.
A good platform to start from.
Pros:
- Light
- Rear wheel drive (the back wheels make the car go)
- A buildable/tunable engie
- Not super common here in the states, having the same thing as everyone else sucks.
Cons:
- 3 Speed automatic gearbox
- 75 horsepower (thats brand new)
- Needed quite a bit of TLC
Pretty much a hencho in Japan go-kart that could go 75mph kind of comfortably
Gurl, its time for a make over
My first car was a soft slightly metallic Toyota Celica. So a Corolla of the same color and slightly bashed up front end would not do. I had a pic of her front end, but have no idea where it went. To sum it up the whole car was that metallic soft blue Toyota loved from the mid 80ies to early 90ies. Except the front fenders and hood were crudely painted white. They showed signs of a front end wreck. Which was pretty much confirmed by her lack of grill and headlight frames.
A few trips to Newark and Oakland pick'n'pulls later. I now had a cleaner driver side doors (the blue ones pictured above were too rusty), a fresher hood, a grill and some blinkers. Think I'm on the 4th hood now.
Time to blend it together.
$30 of primer and $50 of Rustoleum Black and Yellow later.
My buddy still has the AE86 behind Evet, it now has Honda F20C under the hood.
Threw some chalkboard paint on the rear bumper, shake and bake baby!
The flat black was a nice look, but just not right. My neighbor re-sprayed the car for me at the cost of paint and a 30 pack. Super redneck style too, the house next to him was empty so he sprayed it in that front yard. It came out really sweet.
Beauty is only paint deep
Looking sexy wouldn't matter if she wasn't sturdy enough to get around. So I rebuilt the tired old Asin 2bbl carb. Asin makes awesome quality OE/Factory parts, but 30 year old Asin carbs don't take punishment well. A detailed Weber install post is in the forecast.
Had the cylinder head surfaced and replaced all 8 valves.
To keep her going straight I replaced the struts. I went with KYB GR2 models. They're super cheap, for the cost I give them an A+ for the beating I gave them. The first time I did the brakes the master cylinder blew out. The second time I did the brakes a caliper seized. I replaced both. This picture was from the strut replacement. To do the brakes you don't have to pull the whole assembly.
Most of my friends are quick to buy wheels. I usually wait till after struts and lowering (if lowering). My first wheel and tires we 2 old school Enkei 2 piece wheels I got at the junk yard with a friend. Originally they were for a 240sx of his, but we only had the pair and doesn't do the pair look. These went on the rear.
For the fronts I bought a pair of brand new Konig Rewinds (I <3 my fake wheels). Purchased on the cheap from America's Tire where I started working in Jan of 2010. I have long since left Americas Tire, but do strongly recommend them.
Finished wheel and tire specs:
F: 15x7 0 offset with 195/50R15 Falken Zeix 512
R: 15x7 0 offset with 205/50R15 Falken Zeix 512
You can buy anything on eBay
Car Lingo Lesson:
Offset is the measurement of where your wheel meets the hub, measured in millimeters from the center of the hoop. Put simply how far in the wheel the lug nuts are. Positive offset will sink the wheel in to the fender well, negative will pull the wheel out. Most factory wheels are positive offset, some Hondas (my Accord) the factory alloys are +50. Most older rwd Japanese cars look pretty good with 0 so I went with that. Older pictures you can see I had 13 inch wheels with a high offset. Both my cars have 4x114.3 bolt patterns
I have 5 full sets of wheels and tires 3 for the Corolla and 2 are for the Accord.
Dec 3 2010
Evet was looking good and driving good. Life was good. Young and dumb I thought driving home one night with a .13 BAC was a good idea. CHP didn't agree.
I'll close with this. The anti-DUI PSAs and such say a dui costs around $10k, it cost me around $3.75k. The cost of my sanity leaving my house every morning on a skateboard, not in baby for 13 months.... Definitely not worth it.
I got one post before getting into the nitty gritty of the projects from 2017, I started documenting everything early last year.
As always, God Bless