rider

Some serious effort and money going into this car which is always good to see. There will be a lot of people running around in rusty Supra's that are completely unaware of that fact seeing the cars do hide their rust very well. Hopefully you'll love the end result and it'll be a keeper for you. With all those new suspension parts going on you might want to finish off with a geometry tune up which is what I've arranged for my car in May following my own all new suspension set up. Feel free to PM me after mid-May if you want some feedback on how the geometry and handling set up day went.

All the arrangements to complete the underside overhaul are now in place. The front refurb with all new suspension parts has been booked with a local garage to commence on the 1st of May to coincide with its annual MOT and service visit. I've also booked the car into Center Gravity on 14th May to have the geometry set on all the new front and rear components as part of their chassis tune up service. Once completed, there are no ongoing work or parts purchase plans for the Supra other than to refurb and tyre up a set of stock 17 inch wheels that I have sitting in storage at the moment. Feels very much like job almost done, probably because I've decided not to actually do any of the work about to be undertaken myself. I'll post up some pics if I get the opportunity to take any during or afterwards.

i got myself a set of 48157-24010 front strut boots to add to my front parts renewal happening in a couple of months from now via TCB and they were £26.11 + VAT a year ago. I expect they are probably more now. While you are at those you may as well renew the bump stops. Sure to all become discontinued one day in the not too distant future. Springs are discontinued.

My spare KM speedometer came about from when it was converted in 1998 to a MPH gauge so there may well be a few more KM gauges around than you'd think.

Took a while but in the end posted up on the dreaded FB and now sold.

I'd want to keep mine so someone can revert it to original from its mph converted state if they wish to but the part is still listed as available on Amayama for around £300 DDP.

The Supra Mk4 still has a lot of appreciation to run for a few more years to come. The eBay Auto at £22k is pushing the market but we have seen TT6's sell for over £30k pushing along at the top of the market. The one on eBay comes with an assured clean bill of health, it tends to be the ones with a detailed and extensive bad bits list that struggle to peak the market. Not many apparently want to pay £20k or £30k for a really old car with a list of bad bits. Me included, I'd expect everything sorted for top of the market price. There is sometimes expectation that runs away from reality with sellers, but that happens with any car offered for sale. We see lots of lazy sellers of Supras with things like the aircon not working followed on by a comment of probably just needs a re-gas. Well re-gas it for £30 to show it doesn't need a £1k overhaul. With old cars and a premium price attention to detail is just about everything. I'd definitely bin the wheels on that £22k car.

You might want to put this up into the wanted section and also see if the two recent breaking cars have the instruments available. They do come up occasionally on ebay.com from breakers who have stripped a JDM import for parts, sometimes for not bad money around $300 other times for silly money $1,000. If you are just after replacing a broken gauge then it'd be worth listing that as I'm sure lots of people hold the odd gauge rather than the entire cluster; like I happen to have a spare km speedometer somewhere.

The only reason to go for limited over sole trader is to do what it says, to limit any liabilities to the company rather than to you. Though as a private limited company if you do things like take out bank or finance loans then those will always be assigned to you personally as guarantor. So forming a limited company just protects you from non secured creditors that includes the likes of HMRC for any PAYE or VAT or Corporation tax unpaid dues. It also protects you if you are sued successfully through court for any reason. There are disadvantages to going limited rather than sole trader. You'll find that when you talk to accountants. They will charge up to 3 times the amount to prepare the accounts to file with companies house for a limited company than they would for personal sole trader accounts that will be used to determine any tax liabilities. Accountants tend to charge based upon the amount of work you do so if you are the kind of person that turns up with a shopping bag full of invoices and receipts expect to pay over £2k. If you are tidy and use a good accounting software package then I only pay £600 for my limited company accounts which is cheap. As for payroll, your accountant will be happy to do that. Don't go to umbrella companies. Or you could do you own. There are lots of payroll software providers who offer free or very low cost PAYE options for sole traders. We use Brightpay and their software is so easy and customer support thorough you could do it yourself and probably save £300 a year over having the accountant do it for you. If £300 is pocket change to you then just ask the accountant to do it. Foot note: As a foot note you'll have legal requirements for filing and insurance cover and these are more onerous and in the case of insurance the cover is more expensive for limited companies than sole traders. HMRC rather like hitting limited companies with pretty hefty fines which start off hefty and double up on each subsequent occurrence if you miss filing dates. Which is another very good reason to sub contract payroll and tax filing to your accountant particularly if you are the easily distracted or forgetful type who could overlook any report or form filing requirements.

With the side indicator/marker light lenses you'll probably find its cheaper to get them shipped over from the USA than locally from Toyota GB. Few listed on ebay.com just search using the part numbers: 81741-14170 & 81731-14180 Give TCB Parts a call (01579 383879) as well see what kind of price they can do them at. They might have some in stock which would get you the part faster. Just check they are the rears though and not the fronts. I have a pre-facelift so wouldn't know the difference.

Here is a pdf file copy for the record. Injectors.pdf

You can still get the bumper bar from Toyota, not that expensive really - I picked up one for around £130 with discount not that long ago.

Looking at the eBay ad, its strange that such a low mileage and low powered car has had the OE rubber sub frame bushes replaced with solid bushes. Why would anyone think that's a good idea? Best check if the engine and gearbox mounts are solid too.

With all old cars, mileage is just a number unless its backed by every MOT certificate showing sensible mileage increases and a stamped service history (admittedly this is something that is rare in Supra World) and with this particular car it look rather like its had a broken gauge forever. You say the mileage adds up somehow but how did it get to the MOT station each year, on a trailer? With this kind of black hole you can only buy on condition and I'd value assuming it is a 150k+ mile car with bad paint. That'd fall way within your £10k budget. Some background reading for you.

This thread might give you some pointers.

You might want to give Chris Wilson a call or email on this. First thing I'd be asking is does the uprated clutch work with the standard bore master cylinder if you retained the stock cylinder but Chris if you can track him down would be able to sort you out.

The Lexus owners forums have quite detailed threads on X reference Supra parts. They did this as Supra parts were deemed or assumed to be better in many instances, an example being the suspension arms that are a drop in but with the Supra parts it was claimed they have stiffer bushes so deemed an upgrade. Anyone looking out for this just hop over to the Luxus forums and do a search.

There is a lot of this going on. It can get a bit OCD so I've largely called time on parts buying as there are instances where I've ended up with 2 spares of quite a few things - mainly the electrical parts; just to improve the chances that one will actually work if called upon. At least that means that the part you need should be available somewhere from someone if they are willing to part. Probably most hoards will just end up on auto jumble stalls in 20 years time. Wouldn't a stockpiled parts register be a wonderful thing. Probably find there are 200 sets of headlights sitting on shelves around the country then they could be like £100 a set again.

You maybe need to check out your rear diff to subframe two mounting bushes. If the go spongy then it can cause transmission hop. If you can, rig a camera underneath and drive then you'd be able to see if there is a lot of flex in the bushes power on to power off. I replaced all my rear end for new just over a year ago and the only components that looked like they could really benefit from the change were the diff frame bushes that had gone really soft, much softer than the new OE ones. Keep you fingers crossed it isn't the diff mounts as getting the old bushes out and new bushes in isn't easy with the frame mounted on the car and isn't particularly easy with the frame off either.

There is a USA launch book to for dealerships that I have a copy of somewhere. I think I downloaded that from the NZ Supra site. Recall it gushed about the hollow fibre carpet and aerated compound rear wing as critical weight saving measures but then, the Mk III was a heavy beast.

Will LED headlight bulbs be any more passable than HID? I ditched my HID's for Night breaker bulbs and side by side there wasn't any major difference on the garage wall. Wish I'd bothered to take some pics but I didn't. Headlights aren't something I use these days so I've never used them since fitting so you may want to check out some of the online videos that show night breakers compared to standard halogen bulbs.

May as well replace with new if you can still get the arms. If you just replace the bushes with poly, which isn't cheap if you buy decent ones, you'll still be relying on your old ball joint. The arms if still available probably won't be for much longer so it's a now or never for replacing these parts with OE.

Once you find the wheel stamp you need to then work within the correct width restrictions for that size wheel.