rider

I found this lying around my old files while doing a bit of cloud housekeeping. Once upon a time, you could get Supra parts, now more a historical record. 940072369_suprapartsallmicro.pdf

These are old wheels now but were popular in Celica World. You'd probably get a fair bit of interest on a Celica forum. Prices for sets have ranged from US$500 (at auction) to US$3,000 offered for sale so as for their worth, it's think up a number between $500 and $3,000. One torn sticker does hurt the value as you cannot get hold of those and having ones made up may well not survive the first car wash.

There are a few recycling companies now selling certified EV batteries for repurpose use in domestic and commercial power storage applications. You can buy certified, 80%+ charge capacity, 80Kwh Tesla batteries for £10k. Well under half the price of new battery storage. I know from our production output that we are wasting, not using or storing, up to 40Kw a day of available energy on start to end sunny Summer days and extra battery capacity could have us sail through several consecutive cloudy days without any need to resort to a generator or mains top up. My setup is single OEM plug an play, I suspect wiring up a mix and match of inverters to batteries could bring you into some kind of BMS mine field to navigate.

The trackers were not expensive, US$2,800 DDP for the pair. They came with some spare parts too which was an unexpected bonus; a motor and two spare controllers. The batteries are the big ticket item at over £6k but still, the entire build came in just shy of £17k which I've been told by friends who used to install solar equipment is a bargain final cost. I did put in a lot of hours though doing the shed build and stud work for all the electrics as well as time spent actually assembling the trackers and ducting or just running a lot of cabling underground. The inverter is not tied to the mains as you then need to register the installation with the local electricity network provider (National Grid) who would then have an implied right of access to perform an on site inspection. I'm fortunate to have the space and all the digging and lifting equipment required to do the job without recourse to paid help or equipment hire. That was important throughout April and May as there were only a few days that were dry enough on the ground to be able to move heavy equipment in and out of the site area. The site is not overlooked from the road or any neighbouring properties so it's placed to be as inconspicuous as possible to minimise the risk of theft of hardware and also possible complaints from anyone in or passing through the area. So, no one would get to appreciate it if it was decorated.

Most people will probably be oblivious to 2019 legislation that detailed rolling blackouts to protect the National Grid output at times of stress, introduced as the country is nearing 100% capacity. Different areas to have their power cut on different days. This legislation was topped off in 2023 with 'in event of an emergency' legislation detailing up to 7 day blackouts on domestic property and 'certain' industries. Aside from rising utility costs we have seen increasing number of power cuts, from a few seconds (I have lost a very expensive printer to a rapid sequence of on/off spikes) to blackouts lasting for several hours so, I went full on engineering project and did a DIY solar build on 2 pretty large two axis trackers. It is operating off grid but I have retained options for house backup supply from the mains or our generator ready for those dark Winter days. The build started with painting the metalwork in March and ended this month with an electrician brought in to do the final fix on the inverter and house feed cable. On a nominal 8Kw the system has peaked power delivery at 6.8Kwh in the sunshine and still delivers around 1Kwh on rain soaked days. There is a 20Kw battery store which on sunny days is recharged by 10am and on cloudy days has managed to be fully charged by the days end. This is at peak Summer where sunshine hours are 5 times those in the deep Winter months. A year ago I knew nothing about Solar so anyone clued up can reasonably expect to be capable of putting together their own DIY setup. We now have our own off grid power and our own bore hole water both backed up by mains electricity and mains water at the moment. If anyone considers their own entirely DIY installs, it was intense but overall quite satisfying seeing the end result and output.

Last I corresponded by email and phone conversations with CW, which was pre-Covid, he told me he was getting too old for this shit and winding down to retirement so it'd be useful to hear if he is still going.

I recall being sorely tempted to buy a complete rear hatch in 2018 for £100. How a few years makes a difference. From the picture it looks like some of the element wires are compromised, as though its probably had a tinted film at some time whose removal has damaged the heating element. Or, is that just the angle of the picture creating that visual?

The last claim I had was when I had Admiral insurance and they were impeccable in getting things sorted with a repair and courtesy car. I also had an agreed value policy with Admiral and the only reason I moved on is they have/had a ceiling value on their policy that was below a TT6 valuation I was seeking at the time. I'd go with a front line good reputation insurer like Admiral, Saga, Hiscox etc. ahead of a Markerstudy broker offering where you could end up in a whole World of pain when it comes time to claim.

These were incredibly hard to get hold of in 2009. So, if anyone wants one they should be relieved to have one available even at a hefty price. Decent quality second hand ones have listed for £100 (Euro120) in the recent past.

The cooling fins disintegrate to powder on older OEM intercoolers which does reduce performance, as I found out when I replaced a 15 year old intercooler with a new one bought from Whifbitz. So it is probably best going for a new, updated and uprated intercooler that fits the OE mounts.

I have one of those sat on an old column with barrel and key.

Try Autoglass. Their website says yes but that might be a lie.

The bottom lip on a stock bumper isn't flexible. I ran over a badger in my Supra 15 years ago and it rolled several times the full length under the car. I noticed a few days later there was a small dome in the bottom lip so I had the bumper replaced. If a 60mph badger impact hardly deformed the lower lip I wouldn't be sure you have an OEM bumper fitted. When I took the car to a Ford dealer for a new insurance bumper fit the damage assessor said a Focus was written off a week earlier following a badger hit. I said but this is a Toyota. He didn't look to happy about that.

SGS is the place to go to. There was a set of forum struts doing the rounds but they have probably disappeared into someone's bin or shelf by now. It's better to have access to a second set for a couple of reasons. The setup was people would get passed someone else's replaced weak struts to send off to SGS for a refit (they recycle the fittings with around a 10 day turn around) with new gas struts. The benefit of this were clear. First up you wouldn't have a strutless tailgate awaiting a new set coming back. Second up its far easier to change one strut at a time than deal with a very heavy tailgate totally unassisted. Third up it was nice having a forum set available. If you do need to remove both struts be aware if you are unfortunate and end up breaking the rear screen its a limited supply heritage only option now at heritage only pricing. Might be worth putting a call out for the forum set that someone will have unless they just binned their removed struts having had the evolving forum set refurbished.

One reported issue puts me off the car, every review says you cannot drive with the windows down unless you like a good buffeting. The German ZF 8 speed boxes are good, I have one in my range Rover, but they are known to fall apart if not maintained with fresh oil every 50k or so miles. Some OEM's have 50k miles service intervals, others 60k miles or 6 years on the boxes. Some have them as a sealed for life unit. That life will likely be around 80k miles.

I have a pneumatic 9l oil extractor that gets used a lot on my wide variety of motorised cars and plant. Clean and easy. On the Supra, it managed a PAS oil fluid flush in about 30 seconds sucking on the return line. Though its main use for me is on engine oil extraction from plant with awkward drain plug location or cars with specific vacuum drain tubes. I also have a car with no drain plug on the differential so it gets used on that. For under £30 for a manual pump with 9l capacity reservoir, that's a keen price for a product with decent Amazon buyer reviews. My oil extractor is one on my regular go to garage tools. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0CDFY1CC4/ref=pe_9466511_957079191

That suggests to me that the problem lies not within the mirror itself but with its screen mount. If you have someone push the mirror mount against the screen when you drive then you will see if that stops the vibration.

That isn't normal, see if it continues if you dip the mirror. If that stops it then just raise the mirror manually to give you the non dipped view in the dipped setting.

You can gloss up acrylic paint by adding a medium to it, effectively a varnish, to then spray as one coat. With an acrylic paint once it has dried out it is near impossible to reactivate so doesn't lift with polish. So it seems the OP could be polishing off cellulose paint which wouldn't be a factory applied paint choice in the 1990's but may well have still been a body shop choice in the 1990's especially with old school sprayers who grew up with cellulose.

To think I threw away an aerial because the antenna wasn't lifting when the motor was churning away. I didn't know then that you could get a replacement part for the antenna so that aerial got thrown. I do hold that part as a spare on my garage shelf now. It looks like your blast cabinet has external air. I've been thinking about buying a cabinet for years but the cfm on my narrow 1/4 air line wouldn't be enough to operate it effectively. What size bead or grit are you using and at what cfm air through what size air line? I have a 16cfm compressor but it struggles to drive air tools so it probably only delivers 10cfm through the narrow bore tubing. Which is fine for pumping tyres or paint spraying but I'd suspect is a bit weak for bead blasting.

The car paint isn't cellulose. We know that for two reasons, thinners don't reactivate the paint and there is a clear coat which is something you never see on top of a gloss oil based cellulose paint. The 90's were before the era of water based paints so its probably safe to assume the original paint would be acrylic with a clear coat lacquer finish.

I have a self refurbished leather 3 spoke wheel with horn boss that I haven't got around to fitting onto my own car yet (which has the cheaper composite wheel variant original) so I could let it go for £1,200 collected or arrange your own courier. That is about half the new price before they were discontinued. There is a cheaper option available on eBay presently for £1,031 and that includes delivery. If you phoned them up and took it direct, rather than via eBay, you could probably get 10% off. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256407033710

They seem to take a while to shift but I've seen the j spec bonnets tend to move at around £400 to £500 but they do get advertised for more. I haven't seen a UK spec listed in recent times, I'd guess add a hundred for the scoop, maybe more seeing they are only available as fibreglass repro's these days. It's all a best guess seeing it all depends who and how many people are in the market. In the good old days those bonnets were £100 all day long but Supra inflation has had its way.

If it were me I'd take a punt on the Denso units of the same era having the same casing, plug connector and internals with the only discernible difference being the mounting bracket location, number of and shape. The Supra module has three mount locations so the Celica and the 90-92 model year Land Cruiser has a similar casing to the Supra under model number (land Cruiser 85980–60020) but both do use different shaped mounting brackets. My theory depends on whether Toyota supplied the mounts along with the module which would give a convenient explanation why the same module could then have several car model specific part numbers. I never tested this theory with actual purchases so it just remains a theory at this time.

The link below is to a USA based value tracker for the Supra, or indeed any model retailed in the USA giving a 5 year history on bids and sales for the car model. It isn't split into specifics on manual or auto or turbo or NA but it does show the average trend and individual information on each data point. Prices in the USA have softened a fair amount during 2023 as they did here in the UK. The price breakdown does drill down into mileage impact on pricing which is a useful guide to the depreciation curve. There is nothing comparable for the UK market but it does seem similar price trends so is a useful reference point for those watching which way the market is moving. I always felt 2023 would be peak Supra so it could be a gentle drift down from here as the cars age gracefully with precious few spare parts available to maintain them in a Toyota guise. https://www.classic.com/m/toyota/supra/4th-gen?chart=sales