rider

700g + or - 50g.

Indeed. I sometimes think there are car destined for the trader of dealer network and Lexus tends to be one of those brands. People paying decent money for a mid life executive car that costs a lot to maintain will usually elect for a trade purchase over a private sold as seen sale just for the little bit extra security. 95% of Lexus ads for cars under 10 years old are listed through the trade. If push comes to shove WBAC value the car at nearly £17k so there is no need for any kind of fire sale panic pricing even if it gets sold to a trader.

The root of the pricing fiasco is they aren't making them any longer and more people seem to want to buy them than are selling them. For £8k you can buy a 4 year old Focus or a Supra, what sensible boy would want the Focus that'll be worth £5k next year while the Supra will be worth probably £9k.

Having completed the refurb on my front brakes I've decided that I may as well do the same to the rears. I bought in a spare set available to refurb but I'm struggling to find out a definitive on the piston size for the OE rear single pot calipers. Some eBay sellers sell kits for both NA and TT cars, others sell kits only for NA cars. Begs the question, are the jspec NA and TT brakes the same or not? I could just measure the pistons out of the set I have available that were sold to me as full set of genuine jspec TT brake calipers but I'd hate to take the sellers word as one of the front calipers turned out to be non OEM. Armed with the piston dimensions I could confirm the calipers I have are correct for the car ahead of buying in the parts to refurbish them.

These cars are old and have usually been through a few owners by now so you probably don't have a full detailed history of the car which makes for more guesswork than anything. The turbo seals may be leaking but you say there is no exhaust smoke or they may have leaked in the past and the turbos then been repaired or replaced. It is unlikely to be excessive turbo bearing wear as you say the car runs well. If it were me, I'd just wipe away the oil, see if it looks fresh or has been there a while. Then reassemble and check it again in 1,000 miles or so. Then at least you'd know if its something or nothing. I personally wouldn't be too worried at this stage.

I seem to have bucked the trend. The big surprise to many has been the switch to stock. When I projected that stock car pricing would match and exceed single turbo modified cars there was a whole lot of bile drizzled down on that at the time but its a fact today. As for where prices will head there are projections out there but ownership is about more than the investment, its funding the higher insurance premiums a more valuable asset attracts. That is just an added cost until it comes time to sell. There are still a few years left in decent Supra inflation so a £40k car today is unlikely to lose money unless classic car values crash which could happen for so many reasons. So best just buy the cars to enjoy the ownership, especially for latecomers to the Supra Mk IV party. Latecomers may be wary of losing money on their investment of £40k but 20 years ago some of us were buying the cars for that money and some when you consider inflation to just enjoy the drive and to hang with depreciation.

I'd send that back to Whufbitz, to get that bent its not just been tapped. That strength of hit could have cracked or weakened the weld. They aren't cheap so they should be right. When right the Whifbitz SMICs are a good straight bolt on fit so I'd expect the FMIC to be the same..

Seeing the Lexus 300's up to 2002 used the same knuckle as the Supra you'd imagine the 300 series sensors have got to be the same fitment and they do look the same. You can get ES300 front and rear ABS sensors from US$13 which look identical apart from being shorter. It doesn't seem justifiable or reasonable that a bit of extra wire adds $100's to the price.

Although you can still grab the last remaining remnants of front ABS sensors, the rears have been gone for a while now. I was trawling around looking at ABS options, including bespoke ones, and there are still a few rears out their from companies like Standard who retail cheap auto parts, cough. Advertised at over US$600. Crazy world when most sensors retail around £40. I'm fortunate as I have a spare second hand set. Hopefully this will be one item that Toyota bring back if their heritage parts ever get going. It'd be remiss not to support a safety feature service part after all. I'm surprised there are no Chinese knock offs appearing especially when you see the price of these things. One day we might all end up running around without our 7.5A fuses. I know of a few sets being hoarded by owners, seems they aren't yet worth their weight in gold, but soon could be.

The Toyota emblem if OEM should have three mounting pins so the position is the position, the front emblem has two. If the emblem is not an original and just a sticky then the two level holes sit at the end of the horns. For the Supra part it depends if you are adding the non JDM 'turbo' badge. There are a ruck of photos online but the 'p' is about 3cm along from the edge of the outer brake light lens. If you are adding the optional 'turbo' badge then you'll need to move the Supra badge way over to the left. My car still has its OEM optional (from the 1996 options brochure) gold outline Supra badge so you'd have to assume its exactly where it was originally intended to be.

I'm fast approaching 60 and never tootled anywhere in my life. The car has probably been thrashed, ragged and tracked by Mrs Tootle. Has anyone, ever tootled a Supra?

At £7.5k I'd have thought the longer you hold out the less likely thing are to happen.

It'd be well worth sorting out the Code 42 fault and rain leak before advertising if you want top money. The roof sealing rubbers are still available from around £300 in the USA. A lot more than they cost a few years ago but at least they are still available. Here is an archive thread going through the Code 42 fault and potential fixes. Add a bit of repair to the chipped targa and combined you could well add £4k-6k to your sales price over selling as is for much less than that outlay. There are so many cars listed with quite off putting bad bits, such that the ones that come along fault free and commensurate with age marks with a good long ownership history really are the ones that stand out and sell high and sell quickly.

It was the first time I have rebuilt a caliper and I'll probably do the two rear ones then that'll be it for me. Its more a case of another never done that before ticked and one thing I'd not be desperately yearning about repeating in years to come.

Adding to an old thread, having just refurbished a jspec front caliper advice would be don't bother when SRD sell them ready refurbed for £150 with an option of £30 cash back on your old caliper. i bought a full set of calipers off the forum ready for when needed and with one sticking front decided its time to refurb these. I found out only one front caliper supplied was OE and the other a really light weight one that got binned, hence the need to buy one in from SRD to make up a full front set. On the overhaul I used compressed air to pop the pistons seeing the calipers weren't on the car to use the brake pedal to pop them out. Anyway, air was fine. Getting both to pop together proved a pain to achieve and the less mobile piston when it finally went disappeared the full length of the garage when it popped. There are plenty of refurb kit options on eBay and elected for new seals, pistons and slider pins. New M10 banjo bolts and washers and new pad clips. Total cost around £65. Add in £10 for the black caliper paint and a bit of masking tape to cover the holes. Cost about half what a SRD refurbed caliper costs. I pushed kitchen roll into the bores and refit the old dust boots so I could spray paint around the bores without painting the bores. All holes were masked up with tape Waited a couple of days for the paint to dry. The piston oil seal is an easy fit (greased up with Castrol Red Grease) but the dust boot is one big fiddly job. Fortunately seeing I was originally planning on refurbing two calipers I had spare parts as I tore two dust boots on the retaining clip trying to fit the clip. Process I used was fit the dust boot and press down into the bore then fit the retaining clip. It's a tight fit to get that clip down into the groove without screw drivers or whatever you are pushing the spring clip down with slipping and tearing the boot. Then I tried fitting the piston into the top of the boot for ages. Wasn't happening. Off to the workshop to use the vice to free up a hand and still wasn't happening. So I got my 3 foot breaker bar upright in the vice and put the piston on the top of that then pulling the dust boot with fingers it was a case of trying to spread the boot wide enough while moving a fairly heavy caliper over the piston and trying to blindly get that boot over and onto the piston. One hit pretty much straight away, the second took a good while. Then light pressure on the piston using the vice to move the piston down past the oil seal and into the bore. The caliper slider bushes were absent from the set I bought in. I was wondering why the new bushes wouldn't fit until i worked out the cups from the old bushes must still be sitting in the carriage. Off to the workshop again and a small chisel soon dispatched those so the new bushes could now seat into the carriage. New slider pins greased and regreased several times until the crud from the bores was all removed and the silicone grease remained clear. Caliper ready to fit. My advice would be if you need a new caliper, just buy one in. Its a faff unless saving £80 a corner is important to you. Picture is my refurb alongside the SRD one.

I've spent about £9k on new Toyota bits, got a 21 year service history, all MOT certificates and a big box file of whatever and I'd probably still be pitching at no more than £30k. I can see fresh imports with dealer backing can make £35k regularly these days but the market isn't anywhere close to there yet for your private sale, by the way I've got loads of bad bits and very little history Supras.

Probably a tad expensive for what it is but it is unique being, apparently, the only factory purple Supra MkIV. TOYOTA SUPRA RZ TWIN TURBO 2JZ 6 SPEED MANUAL GETRAG V160 JDM 1997 PURPLE Looks like sellers from a few recent ads now believe that the £35k Supra is the new norm. I don't think it is, just yet anyway.

That's a lot for a NA-T

All so true. Its simply aspect of human nature, everyone loves an uptick pat on the back or a that's been useful thumbs up. There are some neat aspects on forums where members can tag a thread as useful and informative. The more users, even lurkers do that, then the higher the thread ranks and its highlighted in the list of forum threads ensuring that more traffic is driven to it. Its a positive for any poster if you can see lots of people have actually found your post useful and informative. Shows a poster they haven't been wasting their time. In this forum the only option or opportunity for that is the occasional elevation to a sticky so all archive threads are treated the same meaning the gems and nuggets are then well hidden. That's a shame as this site holds an enormous wealth of know how and information but you do need to dig deep to find it. It'd be good to actually see an active mod team who are visible, easily contactable and active who can proactively administer the site and ensure proper and civil behaviour of contributors. Forums live on the posting activity and the more encouragement given to the 1% to maximum 9% of any community who actually bother to post the better, so we can try to move the community nearer to the 9% than the 1%. Its when the activity ebbs away that forums die, no lurkers as there is nothing new to read and advertisers head for the exit. Lurkers are essential for any forum to drive revenue and raise wider awareness of the community, With the current level of active members, hovering around 800, there would seems to be quite some scope to raise the engagement level to get nearer to the best in class for any forum management team of 9% engaged.

I've been talking to a lot of radiator retailers and all are reporting a sudden surge in interest in and the sales of Supra radiators. One eBay seller had three left this morning, now sold out.

i talked with Chris Wilson about radiators and he said the early ones had copper cores so the replacements with a thinner aluminium core are as good, maybe better. He also said it is difficult to now get manual rads, all the ones he sees these days are auto rads that can be used on either manual or auto cars. There are companies that list different rads still for manual and auto like Koyorad. Their PA010413 is listed for manual and PA010413 with the transmission cooler PA010414. No discount on not having the oil cooler and Ava actually charge £40 more to not have it so some people, Chris suggested, may want to just use it anyway and plumb in the PAS fluid to circulate at the bottom of the radiator. Top choices seem to be for similar to OEM the Koyorad or Ava options. I found out today the Blue Print one ended production in 2016 which is probably when Denso stopped supplying them and the Blue Print was just a rebrand. The Valeo one is hard to find and quite a bit more expensive. The Nissens budget options gets knocked a bit on looking cheap and a bit tacky.

Scratch the Blue Print

With any classic car its what is on the V5 that dictates the value of a shell. You only have to look at some of the clear title sales in the USA for wrecks of vintage classics that command up to $10k with very little metal actually left. So, if anyone can pick up TT6 shells for a few £'thousands with an accompanying V5 my recommendation would be buy as many as you can afford and can store in any condition. Those babies are going to be worth lots and lots of money, rebuilt or not rebuilt.

Good luck with the sale. I recently sold a set of refurbished (by me - to a pretty good standard) 16's after nearly a year of advertising for £100.

If they are staggered 17's £82