rider

Usually, a bad earth

I did PM Dan for the clock if its still available.

It'd be interesting to hear from those who go on the club stand every year, like Ian or Jake whether interest is growing or not in these cars compared to a few years ago. There were plenty of potential punters hitting the MkIV stand 5 years ago looking to buy a Supra asking for tips or to buy one off the stand. Is the interest level the same, or more or less than in previous years. Its good to get feedback on the drawing power of the cars especially in a multi-car environment with a lot of desirable metal around at venues like the Classic Car Show.

I had that when I had a dynamo car going from engine idle to higher rpm. I'd recon that your battery is underpowered for what you are running at the time which could be because you have a too low Kw/hr battery to cope in the typical Winter higher draw season or your alternator is failing. The alternator is easy to check, you should be pumping out 13.6V across the battery terminals at tick over. Anything less then your alternator is struggling. Anything more is fine, it could be slightly over 14V and be normal.

You could have a low ratio differential. I changed one of my cars from a 3 stock to 3.55 street differential and that added 20% to the speedometer. I just need to get around to changing the driven gear some time on the old car I did the differential change on.

I purchased a set of 17" OEM wheels probably 4 years ago and have finally got around to working on them. They came with tyres on so they were removed and disposed of at the local recycling centre. I plan to repair any curb dings with metal epoxy and then paint and lacquer the wheels and centre caps. I have home restored alloy wheels before so I'll be using the same procedure for these wheels. First up sanding with air tools and sheets. I'll apply primer plasters to metal bared from the sanding process and also mark up the rim of the wheel where repairs are required. The rim repairs can go from a simple, just more sanding to the more major curvature restoration with crushed or grazed lip infill and contouring. Identifying the period proper paint isn't easy as an extensive net trawl testifies. There is the US Supra forum that has a quote that Dupli Color mystic silver or something similar as a good match but we don't tend to have Dupli Color paints over here in the UK. Off to a professional auto paint shop I went, to see what the options were as I don't have any original colour wheels to just scan and copy. The paint shop (they just sell paints rather than apply paints) said they have a database of all the colours applied to cars that is accessed by entering the cars VIN colour; 040 in my instance. From this they arrived at a paint code of BSB 104 Silver - Toyota Standard. I'll find out once its sprayed how it looks. I mark up each wheel after the sanding stage is all but complete with areas requiring a primer plaster before painting or on the rim, the areas needing a bit of ding attention. I'll add in progress pictures as the stages progress that will hopefully be of some use for anyone else considering undertaking their own wheel refurb. I could get the wheels done professionally for probably £150 more than my materials costs but it a hobby so I'm sure that I'll get lots of fun doing it and hopefully enjoy the end result knowing that I did those wheels. I'll be using spray cans for the primer and 2k lacquer with the silver being laid down from a 1.2mm spray gun. Taking my time on this seeing its been so cold out. First wheel primed ready for a final wet sand before painting, which I will do a day or two before applying the silver paint. The lip had five areas with scrapes with one being scraped and splayed (flattened) by an impact. With the splayed metal the choices are to grind back to the correct curvature or to tap it back into rough shape and fill. I used my body work hammers to tap the lip contour back into shape and then filled the scarring with metal epoxy filler. Before the filler had a chance to set I cut off the excess from, the edges of the lip using a scalpel; leaving it proud on top. Once the filler had set it was flat sanded using a block and dry and wet paper. Final stage was three dustings of primer. One wheel prepped, three to go. The worst of the five rim scars had the lip splayed as well as scored. The splayed lip was hammered back into shape to retain the metal, rather than grinding the contour back onto the lip. Metal epoxy filler applied and the sides trimmed using a scalpel blade. After wet and dry sanding After 3 coats of primer, just needs a fine grit wet sand before painting.

Badges are supposed to be worn with pride. I'm working towards my fire lighting one.

The paint prep outfit said they could get the associated colour codes from the main paint code, 040 in my case. They said that their database lists all colours used in combination with the base colour code which in the Supra case is pretty much down to just the alloy wheels. Like you, I found it impossible to land a colour code on the wheels from a web crawl so the BSB 104 might be a little nugget if it looks 'correct' on the wheels.

Question for you on the alloys as I have a 17" set I'm going to set about refurbishing, probably tomorrow and I found it difficult to track down the correct silver. I went to a professional paint shop, they don't paint they just make up and sell paint primarily to the trade and came away with Toyota BSB 104 Silver. Does that sound familiar or were your wheels painted using a non-specific silver? I may end up doing a refurb thread on my set of OEM wheel. I'll be using a solvent based paint with industrial thinner (50:50) via a spray gun and then a spray can of top end 2k lacquer to finish off. Before then I have a lot of sanding down to do and fair number of curb rashes to fix.

I purchased new Bilstein set from Toyota as part of my suspension renewal. So you could start off by asking Toyota. You would likely find the cheapest option is to buy a set oil coilovers and sell the OEM springs you have to offset the cost as they are discontinued and therefore have some value.

Worth every penny and why I don't bother writing up insurance value guides any longer. The cars have attained invaluable status for pristine examples which drips down into the many more less than pristine examples.

When you go onto your profile the header url has your membership number and name.

There are usually one or two for sale on fleabay. The MR2 and other Toyota models of the 90's era shared the same fuel cap.

Imagine if there was a owners club that could use its members wealth of knowledge and contacts to fashion and fabricate and do whatever to get reproduction parts that could then be stored somewhere and sold via a club shop. Back to reality, there are a few companies offering bespoke services for flat and curved laminated and tempered glass screens. It all comes down to having a sample to scan and overcoming any minimum production run quantities which clearly will always need a trader or a owners club to overcome. Companies like these guys, others are located in the mids and Lancashire from a quick scout around.

You phone up Mike brewer and ask him where he went to get his rear screen made for a Marcos to replace a Perspex one with an as original glass screen. There are companies out there that can work off a scanned original and prepare curved laminated or toughened glass, just a case of tracking them down. Can the do tinted glass screen though, who knows.

I was told, by toyota, that the rear screens were discontinued many years ago. However, there are some companies that still list screens but whether those are the ones you order and then get refunded at some time later only ordering will tell. You are looking at £1k if it is still available. Be a bonus if you could get that replaced for a £50 insurance excess though I thought insurance only covered the front screen. You don't see the hatch advertised these days, that is probably why the one global seller is pinging it less the glass on eBay at £1k.

There is one of eBay for £1k. Forget that there is no glass.

I'm waiting for hydrogen. Its already a viable alternative in Germany with 20 times the number of filling stations as here in the UK. Hydrogen is much more plentiful on this Earth than rare metals used in batteries that are called rare for a reason.

A good chassis tune company will set up the car to your desired handling and steering characteristics. Its of course easier to do if you have adjustable parts which don't come on a standard car; like adjustable springs, and multi-hole sway bars. A good company will talk you through what you are hoping to achieve and even tell you the consequences of a desired setup - like it'd be no good in the wet or on cambered public roads etc. That is why everything is a compromise unless a car has a specific home environment, like say a dedicated track car. That is also where having adjustable parts helps over stock parts as they could advise you two turns for this use and one hole back for that use so you can set the car to a specific but different environments. As for places being too far away, there are always hotels and B&B's. I stayed in a fantastic B&B the night before my car went to Center Gravity. A room in a country mansion overlooking the even bigger country estate house and a massive duck pond that was the size of a small house and top breakfast all for £55. Its worth finding a good place that will work with you to develop your ideal setup than heading somewhere because it happens to be close to home. The Center Gravity company I used does mainly Porsche cars and they get gushing reviews on Porsche club forums and on the likes of Google from owners. The company owner has a bit of a soft spot for Mk4 Supras though. Even the son of the B&B owners, who is a scooby fan himself, spent half an hour fawning over my car revealing his JDM views that its so much better than all those pretentious Porches that they have visit their establishment on the way to Center Gravity. Choose wisely, pay over a few Hundred for the privilege and if you get the right place you'll be under the car with them while they set up the car and they will be educating you by explaining what each change they make as they make it will do to the cars handling. I haven't had some much fun spending 4 hours underneath my car watching others do the work whilst educating me along the way. There are places that want the owners involved and fully engaged, its called passion for what they do.

Another useful file has come up in my archive gathered over the years that people could find useful in fitting or changing out seat coverings. supra leather seat installation-info.pdf

I found excellent professional help with a chassis tune setup after my car underwent a complete new suspension, arms and bushing overhaul. I used Center Gravity in Warwickshire to set my new parts and they spent a lot of hours setting up the handling to my preferred driving style which I requested due to my age and wisdom as planted grandad tourer with slightly heavier steering. The difference was very noticeable in a good and positive drive way over the in the right region settings for the new parts. As well as all the tracking and steering geometry setting they will check that the ride height is true and shim if required to give the perfect weight distribution front to rear and cross axle which would be a key determinant in any under power side stepping. It wasn't cheap but they spent a long time on the car fettling and fine tuning then road testing my grandad setup.

The way I figure things regarding the stock look is a simple if the part has a big visual impact then its going to impact on the car price, that would be wheels - steering and road, bumper style, dash panels painted or not painted. The more in your face the parts are then the bigger the price impact, so I'd add value on dash panel condition over say an active spoiler. So, in this scenario I'd say the road wheel price will be firmer than say the spoiler price even though they are both in the same ball park.

Painful. Like a goose waiting for the some gold to hatch. I would figure active spoilers are well North of £1k now.

What happened to the gear knob? Fortunately you can still get those from Toyota for around £120. A lot of questions will probably be defined by what you actually want to do with the car, modify it, leave it as it is or bring it back to stock. So many choices though parts for the bring back to stock are getting harder to locate as time passes - and a lot more expensive. Enjoy it when it arrives, many on here have been having fun in Mk3 and Mk4 Supras for decades.

They came, went, came again in May and went again. You just need to keep an eye open for if they ever come again. Those holding spares, like me, will keep hold of them or be asking good money. Toyota were knocking out the Denso condenser for £750 in 1997 when Denso were selling them via distributors for £50, So Toyota were probably buying them in for £25. Last seen, in May, these distributors were generally asking over £200 so expect to pay well up from that if they ever reappear. People, well usually me, tend to put the call out if they turn up. https://www.mkivsupra.net/topic/247661-ac-condenser-denso-4770589-88460-14310/?tab=comments#comment-3538905