Headaches

Well I haven't really been doing this blogging thing very much lately, but I've been up here for the past four days slaving away at the Supra, and will be doing a bunch more tomorrow. Basically, right now the Supra is sitting in the garage on jackstands with no rear end, and three partial subframes and all sorts of rear end parts on the floor everywhere beside it. But there is some sort of method to my madness, and hopefully everything should be at least put back together tomorrow, if not back on the car. I'll go over a bit of what's been done!

First, when I got here on Sunday I got straight to work on the car. My uncle grabbed a forklift from down the street and we used that to jack up the car and pull it out of the garage where it has been sitting (easier than moving it 3 feet at a time due to the floppy wheel), and I drove it next door into his garage, which has much more space for working. Then I got working on getting everything unbolted, which was mostly successful except for unbolting the exhaust, where I ended up snapping the heads off of two bolts on the back of the cat.
The only other nuts that gave me any sort of trouble where the axle nuts, which were on there really tight (obviously). I ended up actually breaking the end off of a breaker bar (which is pictured below) while trying to loosen it on the car. Everything else came off without a problem and I dropped the rear end out of the car that night and left it for the next day. It was pretty interesting to get to look at the damage to that lower control arm with it off the car and how bad it really was. There's a picture of that below too.

I spent Monday and Tuesday mainly taking parts off of the JZA70 subframe and swapping them over to the cleaner one that we previously put the yellow bushings in. We ran into some problems with this again with the cam shaped bolts that bolt the bigger lower control arm to the subframe. The bolts have cams on either side for alignment of the control arm, but they're in a really bad location for rusting and seizing just because of all the stuff kicking up into that area from the tires.
I'd previously had a problem with that bolt when trying to take it off of the rear end I got from my friends shop, and we ended up having to cut the control arm out of the subframe and drill out the bolt. So I had to order a new control arm and cam bolt from a member of Supramania, which turned out to be a great help and is now on the cleaner subframe.
However, when trying to get the cam bolt off of the JZA70 rear end for the undamaged control arm, I ran into the same problem. So we had to cut that out of the subframe as well, and drilled the bolt out of the control arm and used the previous one. It's difficult to explain without confusing myself, just know that my rear end is now composed of like 5 different cars.

After all that was sorted out we were left with one difficult task, which was getting the axle out of the hub on the JZA70 rear end. The TT-R with the torsen diff has different axles than a normal clutch-type LSD from the rest of the Supras, so I was forced to keep the same axles, but obviously had to change the spindle due to the damage on it. Just so you can see how twisted the spindle was, here is a picture (hint; look where the LCA bolts at the top of the picture there).

The TSRM says that you are supposed to just take a large hammer and slam on the axle to get it out, which we tried, among many other things, but it wouldn't budge. The axle from the MA70 rear end came out just fine (because I'm using the spindle from that rear end), but the JZA70 one would not move at all. After a bunch of hammering we just got upset with it and got out the sledgehammer. After a few pounds on a punch with the sledge hammer it eventually came out. It took a lot longer than expected, but it eventually got done. The wheel-side end of the axle ended up popping off and coming out of the boot, but that's not really the end of the world, we're just going to put it back in tomorrow and get everything ready to go back in the car.
The rear end that I got from the shop didn't have the brake dust shields on it for whatever reason (did it actually have anything useful, though?) so I had to use the back plate, including the parking brake stuff, from the JZA70. So we had to press out the hub and bearing and all that and transfer everything over, which my uncle Rick had done in no time in his amazing garage of endless tools.

So I returned back to my Supra's home with a trunk full of rear end parts tonight (picture below) and tomorrow will be tackling putting them all back together and onto the rear end, and hopefully getting it back into the car. I'm not sure if that will actually all happen tomorrow, but it would certainly be nice.
In the picture is the spindles and such from the MA70 and JZA70, one axle from the MA70 LSD, and the axle from the torsen in two pieces.

Overall it's been going pretty well, and if everything goes to plan I will actually get to reverse my car more than three feet for the first time tomorrow. Maybe even take it for a short drive and get it out of first gear! I'm not too sure about that though, because I'd still like to change all the fluids in the car before I get it on the road, the oil is looking pretty bad... Anyways, I'll stop avoiding this blogging and will make another one with the progress tomorrow. In the meantime, I will leave you with a picture of how the car is sitting right now without it's rear end, and my awesome helper for all of this, Lady! Whenever I take a break from working on the car I go and play soccer with her, she's much better than me!

Well, this blogging thing wasn't working on Thursday so I wasn't able to write anything on here, but I got a bit done. The rear end that I picked up from the shop near here turned out to really not be in the greatest condition. I started going at the surface rust to clean it up, but the rust underneath it was just too bad for my liking. I don't want the rust to spread onto my car, and for something like a subframe I'm just not comfortable having excessive rust on it if I'm going to be making decent power. I probably should have noticed this when picking it up, but you win some you lose some. Here's a picture of that rear end:


So I ended up using the subframe that Nanci and I had picked up in Ohio a while ago because it was much cleaner. The bushings ended up being incredibly easy to get out and in. The whole thing took my uncle and I about 5 minutes. We knocked the stock bushings out (which were still in great condition) with no problem, greased it up a little bit and put the Ronnie K polyurethane bushings in. Here's a picture of it sitting with the new yellows in.


Tomorrow I'll be going back at it. The plan for now is to take the lower control arm and spindle off of that other rear end and clean them up a bit and put them on this subframe, and take the rest of the parts from the rear end on the JZA70, including the torsen differential. I'm going to keep the clutch-type LSD and axles that came with the extra rear end just incase, because torsen is a pretty bad choice for any type of drag or drifting, but torsen is great for circuit, which is most of what I'll be doing with this car.
Anyways, I'll be taking pictures over the next two days of hopefully getting everything done and swapped over. That's all I have for now!

Update

Well it's been about a month and a half since I last updated this, but I have a good reason! I managed to twist my foot around and tear a good number of ligaments in my ankle nearly in half, so I've been off my foot for a few weeks now, and haven't really had an opportunity to get up to the car and work on it, since as soon as I was able to walk again I had to do as much school and work as possible.
I'm currently up with the car right now though, and will be working all through today and tomorrow to get as much done as I can and hopefully have it done by mid-next week.

As of right now, I'm just getting everything ready to go into the car. I've received all my parts in my time off, which is definitely good news. I ended up ordering my polyurethane subframe bushings directly from Ronnie K. in New Zealand so I've had them sitting around for a while and they look great (I don't have much of a good way of taking pictures right now so I can't upload a picture of them, I will try to tomorrow though). Today I just got to work making sure the intercooler is going to fit on properly and figuring out what the problems with the car are.
The first obvious problem was the hydrofan fluid leak, and it looks like it's coming from the soft part of the return line from the hydrofan, there are some really small cuts in it that flow a fair amount of fluid out of them, so I'll have to replace that hose with something to get that stopped. I'm also getting the engine running pretty rough, it doesn't want to hold a constant RPM, so I'm going to be checking for vacuum leaks tomorrow, as well as doing a compression test just out of interest (I haven't done one yet!). Here's a picture of it running in my garage for a little while just to warm it up and figure out where the leaks are. Don't mind the odd white pipe you see down there in the place of the intercooler. That was another doing of the previous owner due to a boost leak from the intercooler...who knows.


Gas also jumped WAY up in price, it's now $1.41 per liter for 87 octane, which is crazy expensive, and the 94 that I put in the Supra is much worse, so that may have a bit of effect on when I get the car onto the road too!

Tomorrow I'll be going at the rear end I picked up with some wire brushes to scrape all that rust off, and painting it up nicely. My uncle and I will be attempting to pry out the 20 year old stock bushings and put in the new poly's as well, and that way everything will be ready to get swapped over. I'll probably be back on Monday or Tuesday (or both!) to actually swap the part over, and if everything goes to plan I'll be able to take it for it's first real drive around the block on Tuesday! I'm beyond excited for that, it'll be nice to drive the car farther than 5 feet!
Here's a picture of it sitting around with the Accord to end this off, hopefully I'll have a bit more frequent updates now, but I'm just coming up on final exams so there won't be too much until after that!

Parts

Well I've finally managed to get all the parts I need to get the JZA70 back together and rolling legally at least. That includes the rear end, intercooler, coolant reservoir, new foglights (DRL's on this car) and a new battery. They aren't all in my hands yet, but they're on the way at least.
On Saturday Nanci and I went by Pur Auto to pick up the rear end from a 89+ turbo Supra they had there which I found to be much easier than just getting parts and reassembling everything around the subframe I picked up a month ago. We used an engine hoist to drop it in the back of a Honda CR-V and drove it an hour and a half up to where the Supra is sitting right now and engine hoisted it back out of the CR-V, so it's tucked away in the corner of the garage now. Here's a picture of it before we dropped it down onto a creeper and pushed it to the side. Clearly it's got a fair deal of surface rust but it'll all be cleaned up before it goes in.

All I'm waiting for now to get that in is my Ronnie K poly subframe bushings, which I'm kind of stuck on right now for where I'm going to get them from because there are two options, but I should have them by this coming weekend with either option.
The other thing I need for it to actually drive is the replacement intercooler, and I'm going to go with the driftmotion hard pipe kit with the big front mount, but for now I just want something to make it move, so I bought just a stock JZA70 intercooler to stick on there for the time being. So once all that stuff is done it will be good to go, besides changing fluid for the differential, doing an oil change, refilling the coolant (noticed I'm somehow missing my coolant reservoir!), and refilling the fan fluid. The fan fluid was a bit of a surprise to me because I'd never heard of that before, but apparently these cars came stock with a hydrofan. The reservoir is empty so I'm assuming it is leaking, which would explain the thick fluid dripping while the car is running. It's a big relief to me that it's ATF from the fan rather than oil from the engine!

On Sunday the 20th we got a bit of work done, I began removing the bumper (which turned out to be not so easy on these cars, there's roughly 4 million bolts holding it in in the hardest-to-get-to places they could find). We did get the fender off though, so I'm going to get back to hunting down another one to put on there so I don't have to drive around with it missing. Getting the fender off was a challenge of it's own as it requires you to push your arm all the way through the fender up to the front by the header panel. Nanci's small arms definitely helped out with finding the bolts because there was no way my arm was getting in there that far!
We got the back jacked way up to swap the rear end in, but I've decided to do the actual swap somewhere else just down the road, so for now to avoid another tow truck, we're going to weld the control arm to the hub and just drag it 5 minutes down the road and swap it there. It's ghetto, I know, but it will get the job done better, especially since the floor of the garage where it is now isn't the most even surface.
Here's a picture where you can see the big crack running down the middle. It's not actually in the way, but it would make it a little more difficult to maneuver the rear end around on the floor jack.


All in all most of it went pretty well. I managed to snap the head off of one bolt holding the front bumper on under the foglight, so that's going to be stuck in there I believe, but since there's four bolts there in total it's not going to make a huge difference anyway. I also just pulled the bolts out of the bumper support to make it a little easier to get the bumper off, and they manged to get a bit mangled too, here's a picture of the left side showing how a bracket should be, and the right side showing off how to be mangled.


So overall it's coming along quite well, and hopefully within the next two weeks it will be good to go, and by May I plan to have it registered and legally driving around on the road! That's all for now, I leave you with a picture of my missing fender (which actually allows my driver door to open!), and you can see the fan fluid reservoir poking out of the engine bay there too.

Home Again

Last night we finally got the JZA70 out of storage and up to it's winter home where I'll be working on it. It went incredibly smoothly and way easier than moving it before, surprisingly. I was originally planning to somehow reverse it onto the flatbed so that I could drive it forward into the garage, but I wasn't able to get a hold of the guy I used last time with the smooth backed flatbed, so I decided to just go forward on a regular flatbed and figure it out when we got there. Luckily, when the tow truck showed it up turned out to have a smooth back anyway, and it had a somewhat bendable end on it which was much better than the previous flatbed.
So we loaded it up, and left the car pretty far back on the flatbed (shown in the picture below, you can also see the connection where the bendable part is) so that it wouldn't have to roll as far coming down. Somehow my passenger side window has stopped working, which is something I dealt with with my previous Supra, but it isn't a huge deal since the car is inside anyway. We did get a little bit of rain on the way up, but because of those window visors the car has, nothing really went in the window.

Getting it off the flatbed was pretty easy. We used the same way as before of getting the rear wheels off then driving the truck out from under the car. We didn't end up using the dollies this time (mostly because I've managed to bend them up pretty badly), the car just rolled down with the wheel sideways and rubbed against the inside of the fender. Normally I wouldn't let it do that, but it only had about 3 feet to go so it wasn't a huge problem. The front lip took a bit of a beating coming down the bed, but the whole bumper could use some work, so what's a bit of paint on the front bumper?

After getting it off the flatbed, I got to drive it into the garage where I'm keeping it, which was nice to actually get to drive my car a bit. I moved it a few feet forward the last time I used a flatbed, but this time I actually got to drive it a little bit farther, which was kind of cool. I can't wait to have everything working and actually have the option of going backwards too! As for now though, it's just sitting in a garage as I wait for more parts. I managed to find an entire rear end from a friend of mine at Pur Auto, so I'm going to be swapping that over instead of just the subframe, so I'm waiting to pick that up next week, and then all I need is the Ronnie K subframe bushing kit and I'll be good to go for that. Tomorrow I hope to get the bumper and fender off to make it easier for when I get the DM intercooler kit, and to get started on removing the rear end.
Here's two pictures of it sitting in it's new home, along with a fake palm tree to make it and myself feel warm when I'm up there working on it!

Headaches

Today I picked up my subframe, which is a relief to finally have it home and ready to go on the car. Yesterday was quite a headache though. I decided to turn the JZA70 around in it's storage shed so that the front end was facing out, so it would be easier to load onto the trailer when it's time to move it. I figured it would be best to do it when there was some snow on the ground so the car could be dragged without damaging the already damaged wheel, but we ended up getting a lot more snow than I'd expected. It took Uttam and I about 5 hours total, so I'll go over it briefly.

We started by pulling it out, we just roped it up to the back of the CR-V and pulled until the wheel folded, then jacked it up again to straighten it until we had the wheel on the snow, then we just dragged the car out much as we did when I picked it up originally. Then we had to turn it around. I tried to drive it around under it's own power, but with the packed down snow the tires would just spin and that would make the bad wheel fold over, so that didn't end up working. So we had to tow it around a corner with the CR-V, and then drag it back towards the shed. Once it was near the shed we had to align it by attaching the rope to the front towhook (something which only came on the JZA70 Supras, never on the left hand drive ones, which is VERY convenient!), and pulling it across sideways. I know this probably isn't the best thing for the car, but we'll be going over it front to back after we move it to make sure everything is okay. Here's a picture of us trying to figure out why the 1JZ was steaming on startup (which has since been figured out) and just admiring it in general, and one of Uttam tying some sort of crazy slipknot to the CR-V's tow hook. You can see where the yellow rope attaches to the JDM tow hook on the front of the Supra. These pictures are just screen caps taken from my GoPro which I stuck inside the container for all of this, so there's a pretty funny video of this all taking place when you speed it up!

Getting it back into the shed was going to be the biggest task. We couldn't reverse it because of the wheel folding, and we couldn't tow it because there was no way of getting the CR-V inside. So we decided to head over to Canadian Tire and get a 2 ton hand pulley thing, which ended up working perfectly. We found hooks inside the shed to attach one end to, and then attached the rope to the other end and cranked the car in. I decided to take the wheels off the dollies I got before and threw them under the wheels to act as little sleds. It ended up working great so that the bad wheel could slide along the ground, and the good wheel could slide as well since the LSD wouldn't allow for only one to be turning. We threw some snow down on the floor so that the bad wheel could slide along and not have to roll, and now the car is nicely sitting facing out. Here's a picture of it on it's way in with the pulley attached, and one with it as it sits now.

As for today, Nanci and I drove down to Port Huron, just on the other side of the border to Michigan to pick up my subframe, which looks to be in great condition. No serious rust on it, just stuff that could be easily sanded down. Next up is a set of Ronnie K bushings for it, then my intercooler kit. Next week is midterms all week, so I won't be touching the car until after that, then it will be the 20th and the car will be getting moved for work to get started! Here's a picture of my subframe sitting at home on my stack of tires, and a picture off the bridge entering Michigan (because we thought it looked cool with all the ice!).

Gutted

We got a some work done today on the donor Supra, and found out some pretty good news about the JZA70. My friend Uttam and I went at the interior today and basically brought the parts Supra to the point the other one is at, which is down to the metal in the back. I've sold off a lot of the interior, and decided to make sure the back half was going to fit into the other car, and it does! That came as quite a relief to me, although it does look really weird. I now have a gray front half of the interior, and a blue rear half. Nothing is bolted in yet so it's not official, but I may have found my Recaro rear seats that I've been looking for, so I won't be putting in the blue seats until I'm sure about that. Here's how the parts car is sitting now.

As for the rest of the interior, I pulled off a few more pieces that I need, as well as found some questionable stuff from the previous owner in there...lets just call it some interesting leaves. I'll be going back tomorrow to take out some more parts, and hopefully bolt in the back half of the interior on the JZA70 to make sure everything actually fits properly, and cleaning up some of the stuff so that it looks presentable.

Another bit of great news I received today is that my horn actually works! I didn't think it did because of the aftermarket wheel and it wouldn't honk when I tried before, but apparently that was just because the battery was dead. I hit the center of my wheel today and heard a faint noise, so I pushed it again and it honks perfectly fine! This is a great relief for me because I don't have to get a new wheel or do any sort of wiring for that for certification. That's all for today, here's a picture of the interior parts sitting in the JZA70, none of them are perfectly in place or screwed in, but this is just to show that they fit for the most part. The only part that doesn't is you can see the speaker cover part on the top sits up high because it doesn't fit over top of the damper adjusting knob on the Tein coilovers, and the carpet is a bit wavy because I don't have the wooden board down there to hold it flat. You'll also notice there is a lid on the center console, which is in terrible condition but I'm pretty pleased to have it there now!

Settled

Well both Supras are now (somewhat) happily sitting at the storage spot. We picked up the parts car the other day and towed it over to it's new sitting spot. It doesn't look too bad, the underside appears to be a little rusty, but it's been far too cold and windy the last couple days to really get under there and check it out. It doesn't help that it's parked in a gigantic puddle in the day, which turns into an ice rink at night.

The body of the car seems decent, the paint isn't in the greatest shape, and the drivers side of the car has had a collision of some sort, there's damage to the front fender and the mirror has been replaced, but it's all the same colour. The passenger side looks good, namely the fender which is what I'm after since mine is kicked in. It's got a bit of rust on the inside, but I can chop that away for now, I just want something that doesn't prevent my door from opening. Here's two pictures of it where it's sitting now.

The interior is probably the best part, which is great for me because that's one of the main reasons I bought the car. It's mint, no tears in any of the seats, just a little bit dirty. A good vacuum and washing up and it will look completely perfect. It's the blue colour, which isn't too bad. I would prefer a gray interior, but those are pretty rare, and anything is better than the 80's burgundy of my last Supra, in my opinion. I'll be removing basically everything behind the front seats, like the back seats, all the panels and carpets and everything, as well as the console lid, and installing them on the JZA70 for my insurance appraisal. After that it can go back to gutted, or maybe just keep some carpet or something to make it a bit more visually appealing. As I've mentioned before, the back seats on a Supra are completely useless anyway because of their size, so I have no problems with not having them back there. Here's some pictures of the interior.

So the parts car has been pretty successful, and I'm going to start parting out the rest of the car soon for anybody else that needs some parts. Of course, while I was there I went over to visit the JZA70 sitting all crooked in her storage spot. Hopefully I get my subframe soon so I can be one step closer to having it rolling. I'm torn between two different subframes currently, but I'll be making a decision and picking it up next week either way, then another two weeks and it'll be up to it's new location to start really getting to work! Here's a picture of the JZA70 and the wheel dollies we used to get it onto and off of the flatbed, the shovel I used to clear a path to get it in, and the tow rope wrapped around the tow hooks we used to straighten it!

Donor

Today I picked up a second Supra to be used as a parts car. It's a 1987 non-turbo automatic MA70 with a blown motor. The previous owner doesn't know what happened to it, other than telling me that he "turned off overdrive and started to rip it, then the engine started knocking". I'm not overly worried since the drivetrain of the car has nothing to do with what I need the car for anyway. The body is in very good condition, so almost all of the body parts I need will be coming from this car, with the exception of the front bumper and the spoiler, because it is the older style. Some visual things changed in 1989 and newer Supras, so this one still has the older style, which I'm not really into, and I'd like to keep my car looking the way it does as much as possible. Here's a picture of the parts car I took before leaving, I'll be going back to pick it up some time this week and take it to storage with the JZA70.

I had a quick look underneath and some stuff appears to be rusty, which isn't great news for me getting my subframe in good condition, but at the very least I can get all my body parts and the whole interior which I need for insurance purposes. The rest of the parts will be sold off in a part out on a few Supra forums, to try and help out other Supra owners frantically looking for parts like I was before I found this.
That's all I have for today, hopefully I can get this Supra over to storage soon to hang out with the other one, then get them both up to where I'm keeping them and start swapping things over. Oh, and this one's name is Beyonce, since it will be spending all it's time with my JZ. :)

Storage

Well today was somewhat successful, it really depends how you look at it I suppose. On the good side, the car is now sitting in storage and out of my garage (so I get a nice warm car in the mornings). But on the bad side, the car sustained a little bit of damage on it's way in, and definitely caused a few headaches getting it there. For the most part everything worked out though, as I'll now explain.

Basically we followed the same plan we came up with yesterday with the flatbed driver, and it worked out perfectly. My friend Tyson came over to lend a hand around 3 and we attempted to roll the car down the driveway on the wheel dollies I put it on last night. It's a very heavy car, so pushing it out of the garage didn't work, go figure the car wouldn't even roll down a hill on it's own. We later realized this was probably because we left the brakes on the wheel dollies, which caused one corner to bend in.
We ended up using the tow hooks to tie the back of the Supra to the CRV and pull it down the driveway, which ended up working until we got to where the driveway met the sidewalk. At that point we decided to pull the dollies out (since they weren't moving anyway) and let the car roll back over the crack. We ended up doing the same thing as on Monday with jacking the car up every few feet and straightening the damaged wheel, letting it down, rolling, and repeating when it bent again. It took probably 10-15 times of doing this before we had it far enough out into the street that I could drive it forwards and straighten it. I can't complain about that though, it was the first time I've actually driven my car under it's own power since I got it, which even though was only moving it forward a few feet, was a pretty good feeling.
Another thing we came across while dragging the car down the driveway was a pretty nasty leak coming from the car. I know that the exhaust has been dripping, which I still have to assume is condensation, but this time it was coming from the engine bay. It turned out to be oil dripping, which had me very worried, but after checking it out it looks like it's a bad fitting or something on the oil line going into the rad. That was quite a relief to say the least.

Once we got the car out on the road, we called John the flatbed guy through CAA to come hook us up on his truck and then sat around for a while waiting, hoping that everything would be good. We packed all our goodies in the cars, like the wheel dollies, floor jack, a bunch of tools, booster cables, 2x4's, a baseball bat to hold the hood up, and a couple other things. Here's a picture of the Supra having a few minutes in the sun before going away for a while.

Once the flatbed arrived we wasted no time getting the car loaded up. It went on forwards as planned, the winch hooked onto the tow points beneath the bumper and pulled the car up without a problem, didn't even scrape the exhaust on the ground which is a first, especially considering how low it hangs. Driving the car forward is no problem for the damaged rear wheel, so everything stayed in line going up the flatbed, but as soon as he connected the hooks to the back tow points and brought it forward on the winch a bit to settle the car down, the wheel slid right out to the side again. In the first picture here I was attempting to steer it straight onto the flatbed so it didn't tumble off the side, and the second is the Supra sitting waiting to be secured.

Once we got to the storage place everything went surprisingly well. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures there, but I'll do my best to explain it.
We put the floor jack on the deck of the flatbed and jacked it up with the winch holding the car from rolling back down and inserted the wheel dollies underneath the rear wheels, then let it down and started letting the car down with the winch. We ended up running into a bit of a problem with the dollies getting to the bottom of the deck and the car would try and roll right out of the dollies, then we realized the brake was not on. Once we put that on everything went smoothly and the truck drove right out from under the car.

Now was my next chance to drive it. We shovelled out infront of my storage spot to make room, then attempted to drive the Supra in. As I've been noticing with this car, nothing is quite as easy as it seems, and that definitely proved true for this. Since there was zero traction with the fairly bald tires and snow and ice beneath, the wheels were spinning a little bit, which caused the bad wheel to fold in. As we were going forward, the rear left wheel was just slipping while the rear right was driving all bent, so the car was basically driving diagonally.
We got the CRV to storage and roped it up to the Supra and pulled it straight on with the door to the storage in hopes of that helping, and it did, because pulling it straightened up the wheel too. I tried driving in while Tyson and my Dad pushed on the back to help me with a bit of traction. It worked great and the front end went in without a problem, but unfortunately as the back end was coming in and hit the lip of the storage container, the rear wheel folded in again, which pushed the car over sideways and it hit the side of the container. That did some pretty bad paint damage to the rear molding and the quarter panel, which I didn't get around to taking a picture of because I was just too frustrated at that point. We weren't able to get the car moved from that position since it couldn't go backwards, so we just jacked it up in place and straightened the wheel, and drove the rest of the way in rubbing the side on the edge of the container.
It was terrible hearing that noise, but on the bright side of things, I got to use my power folding mirrors to help me fit the Supra into the small storage container! It's nice to have them there for something useful.

That's really the only updates I have for now, but it will be in storage until mid-March when it will be moved to it's other location where it will be worked on. I'm also toying with the idea of picking up a second Supra for parts, since finding a part out that will include an entire rear subframe is no easy task! Next part I can be expecting besides that will be my DriftMotion intercooler kit for stock twins, and the turbo timer harness for my HKS Type-0. Updates will be here as I have them!

Unsuccessful

Today we attempted to get the Supra out of my garage and into my new storage space, but didn't really have much luck. The Supra is driven forward into my garage, so to get it out, it needs to be reversed. But when reversing the car, since it's missing the lower control arm, the wheel starts to fold outward. My friend Brian and I decided to pick up some wheel dollies to put under the rear wheels from Canadian Tire for $70, and they ended up working really well (even though it took me a little while to figure out how to put them together properly). They didn't exactly do what I intended for them to do, but they're going to come in really handy tomorrow.

Originally the plan was to roll the car up the flatbed with the dollies, but I hadn't really thought about it, because the flatbeds have ridges on the bed which the wheels of the dollies wouldn't go up. There's also a decent sized lip at the bottom which wouldn't work either.
The initial flatbed driver called in another guy who has a smooth back on the truck, without the ridges, so he came over and basically said "you're fucked", because there was no way it was going to work. Then he thought of a really good idea that we'll be using tomorrow. We are going to use the dollies to roll the car out to the road and get it lined up, then get it down on the ground, and then the flatbed guy is going to come meet us again with the smooth backed truck. We'll drive it on forwards, since the car rolls okay going straight forwards without much problem from the wheel, then reverse it off at the storage place. We're going to jack up the car and put the dollies back under on the flatbed when we get there, then let it roll down until the dollies can't roll anymore, which will be when they get to the bottom of the flatbed since they'll hit the lip, then we're going to have the flatbed drive out and let the car come down in place, then jack it up again to remove the dollies and drive it right into the storage spot. It sounds like a plan that should work well so hopefully it does!

As for tonight, we just wasted our time getting it jacked up and filling my street with flatbeds only to find it wouldn't work. I did get to start the car up and hear it run for a while though, which is something I can't complain about. With it sitting up on dollies the wheel has really pushed itself out, which is a little painful to look at, but hopefully it gets fixed up soon. Here's a picture:

I climbed around under there when I had it up on the jack just to check out the situation with the control arm, and unfortunately it doesn't look so good. The control arm ripped right through everything down there and looks to have bent the subframe a bit. So for now it's back to researching to see if a MA70 (USDM model of the MK3 Supra) has the same subframe as my car, and if it does then I'll try and find one in a part out to swap in. Here's a picture of the control arm and one of where the subframe is bent at the end of the control arm. You can see how badly it's mangled, I can't even comprehend what he must have been doing to cause that!

That's it for now, until I finally get the car moved over into storage tomorrow. I'll be taking all the tools I need to get this swapped, and be making a few very late night visits to storage and spending a while in there working on it. Most storage places prefer you don't work on your car there, so I'll need to be careful with it, but I'm really hoping to find the parts I need and get that fixed in the next little while. Then all that will need done to get it driving is to get that intercooler kit on there and I'll be good to go for spring!

Home

Well now the JZA70 is home and parked in the garage. It wasn't easy, but it's here.
We arrived at the sellers house around 11:45 and sat around waiting for the CAA flatbed to show up for a little while, contemplating how to get the car out of the garage. We tried to reverse it out under it's own power, but missing the rear half of the rear lower control arm, the wheel just started folding outwards, so that was not going to work, as clearly the car couldn't go backwards. As we were trying to figure this out, a regular tow truck showed up, because apparently asking CAA for a flatbed doesn't actually mean you want a flatbed, so we had to send him away and await them to send the proper tow for the car. At this point we realized how complicated it was actually going to be getting the car out, as there was a big trailer in the way of the garage, so the flatbed wouldn't be able to back right up to it.
Eventually we figured out a way to get it out, which involved reversing it to the point that the wheel was poking out, jacking it and straightening it, then reversing again, and doing so until the car was enough on the snow that we could attach a chain to the rear tow points and slide it sideways past the trailer. In this time the CAA flatbed showed up, and the ridiculously rude driver decided he didn't wait to wait, nor did he want to tow it, because "CAA doesn't pay him to wait". So we basically told him to forget about it.
The seller called a friend with a tow truck who towed me back to Brampton for a more than reasonable price, which worked out great for me. It's a little nervewracking watching your Supra be towed all the way down highway 400 bouncing around on a flatbed. Here's a picture of it sitting at a place it will become quite familiar with once it's running.

Now the car is at home in my garage and I'm just making up a list of everything I'll need to get fixed on it just to get it back to being a Supra again. The main things right now are just to get it running, which would be that LCA and getting an intercooler on there. For the intercooler I'm probably going to go aftermarket to DriftMotion and get some upgraded piping while I'm at it.
As far as the LCA and body parts, I've found a black '87 Supra for sale on Kijiji for $600, that I am really thinking about picking up. This would cover me for throwing in some back seats if I want them, all of my body parts (although they will be the wrong colour), and the suspension stuff that I need. There would be a bit of interior stuff for me, but not much due to the Recaro interior and the right hand drive. Here are two pictures of the interior, the first is the dash and the second is the stock Recaro drivers seat.

That's it for right now. Hopefully I will get this suspension issue sorted out soon and get the car rolling. I'm dying to take it for a drive even if it's just once quickly around the block just to feel how it drives.
I'll leave this off with a couple pictures of it from today.

Sitting in the garage as we found it this morning


Sitting in the snow awaiting the flatbed to bring it home


Sitting in my garage beside the snowy CR-V

The Car

So I've just picked up a JZA70, and have decided to keep track of my progress with a blog. JZA70 is the chassis code for a Japanese MK3 Toyota Supra. I guess I'll start with some general information about the Supra.
MK3 (Mark 3) Supras were made from 1986 until 1992, then after that they switched to the MK4 Supras, which is the version most people will recognize as the one in the fast and furious movie. The ones sold in our half of the world, North America, are MA70's, and came with the 7M motors. My previous Supra was one of these, they're great cars, just unreliable (as you can expect from a 20 year old sports car). My current Supra is a JZA70, which comes with the 1JZ-GTE, a twin turbo 2.5 liter engine. These were only sold in Japan, although it's pretty popular to swap this motor into the MA70 chassis, so you can have it in left hand drive.

So onto the story. On Friday morning I was sitting in my Aircraft Systems Maintenance class, and decided to search Kijiji for "Supra" on my iPhone, as I tend to do a couple times a day just to see what's out there. This time I happened to come across an ad titled "1992 Toyota Supra 1JZ 280 HP Stock". This sparked my interest, hoping that it would be an original JZA70 Supra. Much to my pleasure when I opened it, it was. Mileage read 141,000, and the price was more than reasonable for what it was. Looked down to see the usual "car runs mint with no rust", but you never really know what you can believe in these ads on Kijiji. It also said that it needed the lower control arm and hub replaced, which would be the reason for the low price.
So I responded to the ad through Kijiji, asking if it would be sold with safety and e-test, and if the car was registered in Canada. I received a reply back explaining that it would not, and that it was indeed Canadian registered, but it still has it's Japanese VIN. I replied to that asking some regular questions about things like the differential, what the lower control arm issues were, timing belt and some other generic stuff. I didn't get a proper reply back so I just sent my phone number, and was soon called back by the seller, and we arranged that I would come and check out the car on Monday.
Later in the day a friend (Sina) and I were at the junkyard pulling some parts for his 5th gen Accord, and I decided I'd try and see if we could get up to see the Supra the same day. That ended up working out, so we drove for about an hour and a half up to Barrie in terrible blowing snow and high winds, and checked the car out for half an hour or so. I made my decision on the way back home that I would like to buy it, and went back up the next day with my friend Sue to check it out in the daylight, and drop off a deposit, and we agreed I would show up on Monday with a flatbed to bring the car back home. All worked well, and it is Sunday now, and I have everything prepared to bring it home tomorrow, I'm just hoping for some decent weather so I can get some pictures of my new Supra on a flatbed making it's way down Highway 400!

Anyways, my car is a 1992 (last model year for the MK3 Supra) Twin Turbo R Supra. The "R" spec Supra is built a little differently, with stuff like a Torsen type differential with more braces, a full Recaro interior, better suspension and more. It's the lightest of the MK3 Supras, it is also quite rare, as I've heard only 500 were produced. It's also a hardtop model, which means it doesn't have the removable (targa) roof which was nice in my previous Supra, but not having it reduces weight, and Supras are known for being very heavy to begin with. It's also got an R154, the same 5 speed manual transmission as was in my previous Supra.

Now onto specifics. The one I've purchased isn't in the greatest condition. Currently it doesn't drive, because it has a broken rear lower control arm and hub, and no intercooler. The control arm was due to the previous owner towing it improperly, which kind of sucks, but it's the reason I got the car at such a good price. The stock intercooler on the car was causing a boost leak, so the previous owner removed it and just stuck a pipe in there, which gives me a great opportunity/excuse to upgrade to a nicer aftermarket intercooler. As for modifications, it's got a 3" turbo-back exhaust, aftermarket blowoff valve, and an intake. I'm not sure on specific brands of these, as I haven't actually picked up the car yet, but I'll be tearing into it to figure this out tomorrow. It also has Tein SS coilovers, a very high end suspension setup, which I'm very happy about, as they appear to be in pristine condition.
The car definitely needs some body work. It's got a kicked in fender, dented roof from shipping, and lots of paint imperfections. I can swap better condition body parts onto it from some other donor Supras I've found on Kijiji, but it will more than likely need a paintjob at some point in it's life. It's going to be stored until spring time so I have all kinds of time to get it together. Here's the picture from the ad on Kijiji, you can't see much, but you can see the damaged driver side fender and chipped paint on the front bumper.

The interior of this car is another story. The Twin Turbo R models came with a full Recaro interior. Recaro is a company that makes high end racing seats, and the seats in the Supra are no exception. They're very nice...when they're actually in the car. This car has no interior beyond the front seats. It has a full dashboard and everything (which, being Japanese, is right hand drive), and the front seats are there. They aren't in very good condition, especially the passenger side (remember that means the left side for this car), but that's something that can be fixed up down the road. They are still safe, which is all that is important to me for the time being.
As for the back of the car, there are no rear seats or anything. It's just metal behind the front seats all the way to the back of the car, as these Supras don't have a seperate trunk, since they are a hatch. This is something I'm going to have to make a decision on. I could go with finding an entire Recaro rear interior, which would be very difficult, or just go for a standard Supra rear. Or my other option is just finding some carpet and going right from the back to the front with it, which would look nice in my opinion, and be the cheapest option, but I still haven't decided so it will stay as metal for now. I have no solid reason to put seats back there, since rear seats in a Supra are next to useless when you see the leg room.
Now for the important part...what's under the hood. The 1JZ-GTE motor in the car sounds incredible. When Sina and I went to check the car out on Friday night, as soon as the key was turned, it fired right up with no issues, and had a very smooth idle. We let it warm up a bit (which took a little while, being so cold and the motor being cooled well) and then gave it a rev. We revved it up to 4000 and the sound of the turbos spooling and blowing off was an amazing sound. Sina rowed it through the gears and checked that each one engaged properly as well as he could, considering that with the broken lower control arm and insane snowstorm we couldn't take it out for a test drive. As far as we could tell from this and checking it over, everything seemed to be solid.
Differentials are a problem on the Supras, and I had a big failure of mine on my previous Supra, but this Twin Turbo R model has a Torsen type differential, which some would argue is a bit stronger, but some say it's weaker. I'm not very well versed on how it works yet so I can't argue either way, but it is supposedly given stronger braces to help support it better, which helps out the integrity of the diff on the R models. Once I get the control arm done, I'll be taking the car out for a spin to really check everything over in a drive. But the motor as far as we could tell seemed very strong and well cared for, which was what really made it all worth it for me. The 1JZ is a very well made motor. There's a picture of it below, also from the Kijiji ad.

Well tomorrow I'm off to Springwater with a CAA flatbed to pick up the Supra and bring it home. Once it gets here it will sit in my garage for a couple days until I find a suitable storage facility for it for about a month. After the month I'll be taking it up to store it somewhere that I have set up and can work on it, I'd just rather not say where on the internet, because you never know.
First thing that will be addressed is the lower control arm and hub issue, then likely getting the intercooler in there. Then it's all body work from there, and come spring time, when all the salt is gone from the road, this JZA70 will be ready for action!