rider

I think you need to bring over more than 6. anyone who has read my refurb thread should be worried about their tank guard and how long before it falls apart only to then discover its becomes another discontinued part. I have given my new guard three extra coats of paint and I'm planning on slapping 1kg of grease on the inside and behind the bumper before it actually goes on the car.

Guy responded to my thread has some. I decided to go for new in the end, they were £65 to give you some idea on cost of new. http://www.mkivsupra.net/vbb/showthread.php?345316-Wanted-Inner-wing-cooler-vents

Love it when these old threads pop back up. We are more likely to have sheep stolen around here than Supras but way out in the sticks the dogs sound off to any unusual noises and I doubt any strangers would want to come meet the 4 dogs unintroduced.

See if you can persuade Mark to put his black UK as the restored one seeing thats been mag featured and he did an on stands underneath refurb on it recently. He is fairly local to.

I like it, its modern design which probably means it will look really dated in 10 years time. You'd have to want a kit car to strap that much plastic onto a car though so why not just buy a real kit car for the price of that kit?

I have taken a couple of arms off the 110k mile sub frame that I pulled off my car and compared those to the ones that came with the low miler frame that I'm using to swap onto my car. My original hope when I purchased the loaded frame was to simply swap over stock and barrel the frame, hubs and arms that I purchased last year but once I removed the hub it was evident that the arms were in such a poor state that simply wasn't an option. Looking at the arms I have taken off my 110k miler the ball joints are still tight and the bushes take a good amount of force to rock the bolt. Comparing that to my new arms, the ball joint are not just tight they are as they should be and they take a good bit of effort to move and the bushes are also a good bit stiffer than my old arms. Looking at the arms off the swap frame they are plain shot. The ball joints flop around in their sockets and the bushes are like mush. Not sure what this tells me other then the ones on my car were in good shape after 110k miles and that those on the replacement frame either weren't actually off a low miler or had experienced a lot of unusual hard wear. Maybe they came off a everyday track car that had done 200k miles? Good news for owners is that after 110k miles the arms can remain in functionally excellent shape beyond the rust that has taken hold on all but the top control arm, particularly so on the inside face of the hub connection of the solid track arm.

Got all the new arms mated up with the right bolts, cams, washers and nuts ready to fit. I'm going to give it all a wipe over with a greasy rag before fitting and then seal off the bolt heads and protruding threads with a corrosion inhibiting grease so there should be no more rusty nuts and bolts for whoever revisits the arms. That will be straight after fitting when the alignment will be professionally set. Welder showed on time today which is unusual when you operate in what is called Shropshire time. He is going to cut fresh metal into the outer wheel housing panel on the drivers side sometime in the week so its looking like everything is still on plan to prep, treat and paint next weekend.

I'm with the cola and sponge pad on this. If its a 3" cat back I'd potentially be interested to.

The weight should be a give away. PS - someone wrote their stock spoiler was 2.8kg if that helps????

Got the arms sanded, rust treated and bush masked ready for prime and paint and my little helper turned up. The arms are a bit heavy for the painting line I've been using on parts so he wasn't really helping out this time with the full on claws into the masking tape. He's 16 years old now but was a hell of a ratter in his day, fearless, and we have shared many visits to the vet to get bits sewn back up; rats have sharp teeth too. He and his three furry friends keep all rodents out of the barns, there was no signs of any mice visits in a car we stored for someone for 18 years. I'll need to divert him with lots of food when I come to spray the POR 15 chemical two stage prep then hopefully he will take himself off somewhere else to sleep it off.

The car was outside until I built my garage three years ago. Now it sits in dehumidified garage glory, except when its up on the lift. I used to love underseal. Now I hate it because I have seen what happens under the underseal too many times. Its a warning to others though, that slight shadow under a ever so tiny section of the hard protective coating applied in the wheel housing area could be hiding about 12 square inches of badness.

Got to love Mr T. Charges the earth for Supra bits these day and so far I've had dented tank guard, crushed fuel lines, bent brake pipes and now... Mating up the new suspension arms with the correct bolts and washers etc to make installation straightforward after I got bored (or possibly depressed) sanding today and even though you spend very close to 2 grand the parts aren't exactly wrapped in cotton wool in transit. When the same arms for lesser cars cost a few hundred Toyota could afford to put some of the extra £1500 towards bubble wrap, feather bedding or something. Both of the rods have missing paint (bare metal) and corroded welds. Guess these need to go on the to prep and paint list like the tank guard enjoyed after its hazardous journey here. So the bolt mating didn't get to far. No garage fitting these as new parts would give a toss and they would be rusting away nicely from day 1.

Here is a picture of the rust iceberg unearthed today on the passenger side that occurs when the factory protection applied onto the wheel housing panels fails and rusting is then far worse than on the unprotected area.

The lids are cheap enough from Mr T - think it was £12 when I replaced mine because some oik had snapped a clip and subbed it with a cable tie.

If anyone knows of any good mobile welders in or around Shropshire do let me know. It suits a mobile outfit as the access is optimal with the sub frame off the car and without the sub frame on the car, its not going anywhere. PS - I know a fair few in the trade so I have called in some favours this afternoon and sorted with a friend of a friend coming round on Saturday to assess with a view to tackling it next week. If all works out that fits in nicely with my plans to finish the sanding over the next 7 days and have the following weekend for the prep, etch and POR paint stage. That way I can keep to my timescale of reassemble by the end of the month awaiting then only the delivery of the Blitz exhaust some time in November.

Are you good at cut and patch welding Chris, care poking my classic car?

Its the cabin ventilation flap and behind it everything looks like the day it rolled off the paint line. Its a similar story through the front of wheel housing cooler vents. The metal feels perfectly smooth the internal side of the housing so all rust originates within the wheel housing. This is probably why the external bodywork of Supras always, well almost always, hides the age of the cars extremely well. Any rusting is happening very much out of sight behind the wheel arch and behind the sub frame. Though, I'd rather cut out and patch a wheel housing panel than have to do that to an exterior wing. With one you don't need a super tidy job and a re-spray, with the other you would need to subscribe to both. For those who have recent import cars I'd recommend smearing a substantial layer of grease or preferably something like a Dinitol 3125 spray (thick enough to stick and fluid enough to wipe off) on their outer and inner wheel housing panels from their lower lips up to the factory protective layer. That would go a long way to preventing the panel rust and then under protection layer rusting from ever occurring. If I had know I'd be owning my car since 1998 then I probably would have done that in 1998.

The drivers side outer inner wheel housing panel has a hole. In the corner behind the hockey stick I pulled away the OE protective coating that had a slight lift right at its bottom corner. Being in a corner it doesn't have access to grinders or sanders so hooked the screw driver blade under and started flaking the protective coating away. About 4cm in the metal was getting worse rather than better. Sure enough screw driver attack and it holed, only a 4mm hole but still a hole. Sometimes protection can be worse than no protection. There are a few areas that are heavily pitted on the driver side outer inner wing so on the lookout now for a welder to decide if any parts would be best cutting out and patching. It does seem the drivers side has taken much more of a rust hammering than the passenger side but I haven't got to sanding there yet so cursory appearance may be wrong. Though, the tank guard was rotted out on the drivers side and yet near virginal new on the passenger side. On the other parts, outside of the inner wing arch area now switched up to a large sanding disc on the grinder so the pace has picked up. Lots of heavy pitting though on the lower lip of the inner inner wheel housing panel that not even an aggressive sanding disc can get into. That's going to be the main job for the POR 15 acid etch pre paint prep. On the upside, the two central heat shields have come up nicely to sanding down. seeing they are thin gauge metal exposed to all sorts I'm surprised they have held up so well.

Second day into sanding and some observations to share. I've only done the first pass on the drivers side so far so haven't touched from the middle to passenger side yet. First up its dirty work and I've got through probably 30 discs and 3 small wire brushes so far and two face masks. If there is so much of a faintest hint of a gap between the factory hard coat protection on the wheel housing panels and the metal expect to find you'll lose around 10 square inches of the coating before it wont part company with the metal again. The surface rust has gone a good 2 inches either side of the failed seal and a good 2 to three inches into the coating layer. I've hit good adhesion coating but I now need to sand back further to make sure its pristine metal underneath. The coating is very hard to sand but also brittle material. In the middle part the factory protection is a softer compound than the rock hard coating in the wheel housing and where that has been later waxoyl applied on top its quite bouncy. There is rusting at the panel seams and I can peel back the waxoyl plus facory protective layer. In places I've peeled off largish sections to expose a small rust edge and large sections of completely bare metal. Whether its the factory coating breaking down or reacting with the waxoyl is unknown but from the areas under the petrol tank that are like new and not touched by waxoyl I'd suspect the application of waxoyl some years ago probably has undermined the factory protection. I'm used to dealing with and keeping on top of rust on old cars having several cars over 40 years old and from what I'm seeing anyone looking to keep their Supra long term, now is about the right time to tackle a major rejuevenation especially on cars that have lived anywhere near the coast with the sea salt air for a decent period of their life; which mine hasn't.

I'd look first to a snapped anti-roll bar (which is a tube) as they can shear at the end of the bush, the side facing out of the car. If the anti roll or sway bar has gone it'll be resting on one of the lower arms and bang as you go along.

Wise move, I think part patch panels will have a market to expecially for the wheel arches and structural floor areas as time ticks on these cars. Do you happen to have the inner inner and outer inner rear wheel housing panels? If not, when you get some free of rust examples in let me know.

Can you post or PM the contact please and I'll see if they can source these parts.

I made enquiries on the availability of the inner and outer rear inner wings (wheel housing) just to put them aside for a future decade and the 4 panels for the left and right are discontinued. Breakers have tended to have shells crushed, maybe there are more body panel parts that should come off them? If people get heavy side swipes they better hope firstly their inner wings aren't too rusted and they also have access to really good panel beaters. It really is getting to the lock up your Supra and hide the keys time.

Maybe that was deliberate to protect the auto box on launch?

Does anyone have a set of left and right (they are the same actually) cooler vents and 12 bolts from the front of the rear inner wings? Toyota describe them as diff cooler vents, I always assumed they were there to cool the brake discs so I learned something yesterday. So if anyone has a pair of vents laying around, probably be from a breaking job, do send me a price. Thanks