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.
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!
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!
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!).
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!
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!
