HarleyFDMD

Progress! I got my sh!t together since my last posts and have actually come a long way since. I mentioned previously about the drivers side sill and rear quarter.. the sill had a hole cut out of it so we already knew that was bad, the quarter on the other hand.. So yeah the quarter was a mess underneath a lot of filler. Although fair play to whoever did that filler work! I met a guy through a colleague of mine who works for a company called Project Heaven, he's their fabricator and they build all sorts - mostly classic race cars, E type Jags etc so i knew it was in safe hands. On my hunt to find replacement sills i actually stumbled across someone selling an entire centre floor pan including both sills so i bought that and drilled out the spot welds to remove the drivers side sill.. and so i sent it off to have all the rust and damage cut out and replaced with new metal!

For sale is my single turbo kit, its all pretty much brand new. Its for a GTE engine and comprises of the following: Virtual Works Racing manifold, T4 twin scroll, twin gate. Twin 46mm Precision wastegates Gen 1 Precision 6266 PHR 3" down pipe Oil feed and return with AN fittings and flanges Looking for £2900 collected from PE9

Started to slowly refit new sound insulation. Ive used dodo mat as a base and then applied the acoustic foam ontop. Still more to do, its taken quite a long time because im trying to be as neat as possible! I do not want to be removing that stuff again! Also i finally fitted my UK rear bumper. Had the thing for years now and its been getting in the way so figured I'd sell my jspec one and fit this. Nice little reminder hidden behind it too from 5 years a go poor thing needs a respray so bad! I'll do it once everything else is done.

I am in search of a pair of interior quarter panel plastics if anyone has any? The are the large ones that house the speaker covers as per this picture: If anyone has any please let me know!

Yeah unfortunately - the misses was very patient but inevitably she got sick of it and i had to drag it into the garage the sound deadening was painful to say the least!

Honestly you never need to worry about whether its being looked after or whether i still have it or not - i may lose motivation occasionally but i'll genuinely never sell it or neglect it. In fact me and the misses are currently looking at selling our house and up sizing, my one and only 'must have' is a double garage that is attached to the house so i can extend the central heating into it lol! Its also good to see you're still here and apart of the forum! The supra does need a bit of love and its a shame about the sill and the quarter panel, but it'll all get sorted eventually, the sill will need a new one welding in, the quarter im going to sand back to the bare metal and see what it actually looks like underneath the filler, i dont think its too bad as i can feel the inside of the panel from inside the car, its rippled but not dreadful - im actually really missing driving it, i put it away October 2018 and it hasn't been on the road since.

Forgot to mention previously - How's this for a nightmare... Sound deadening. Any one ever tried to remove this stuff during the summer with a heat gun and a 99p homebase scraper? 10/10 would not recommend. Basically at some point in its life someone had covered the entire inside of the car in sound deadening - like literally front to back. Now that's great and all but what was constantly niggling at me was the fact that it wasn't all that neat. It looked like tin foil patchwork. So i figured I'd remove it all and start from scratch.. with nothing more than a heat gun, a scraper and a tin of thinners - i know it sounds exhilarating but trust me it wasn't. Once it was all removed (which took days, not hours) i got it in the booth, wiped down, masked and primed Once primed i got it all flatted back down and based in Mercedes obsidian black - no pictures unfortunately but tbh it just looks kind of factory. I chose Obsidian black because that's the colour I'll eventually be painting the rest of the car. I like the car being black but the factory 202 is too high maintenance. It looks good for 1% of the time, for the other 99% its covered in water marks and swirls - you ask any 202 owner and they'll agree, but that's the nature of straight gloss black. Obsidian black is metallic and the metallic does a good job of hiding fine swirls while still maintaining depth. My S class is Obsidian black and i can wash it without the need to polish it straight after - something i could only dream of with the 202 on the Supra.

What a journey! Cars looking awesome now though. Love the colour!

You must be the first person to remove a TT lump in favour of an NA looks like a proper project - mind you i bet that would look like a completely different car with nothing more than a good wash!

So this is how it looks tonight.. The worst its ever looked since the day it arrived on a low loader out the back of my parents house 6 years a go. Its going to be a slow process because i feel like I've taken on too much to soon. I now have the engine i still need to get built, sills to have rebuilt and a rear quarter that inevitably going to require work, a respray and interior stuff that i started and didn't finish. Really i should have just focused on one thing at a time but my impatience got the better of me and now I've likely made the whole thing take longer. See you all again in 2022

But.. back to why the car is in a bit of a sorry state. While doing the subframe i noticed a small patch of the sill was starting to bubble. 'Nevermind' i thought.. 'I'll just sand/cut it out and do a small local repair" so i started sanding... and i wish i hadn't. Filler. Lots of it. So my shiney show piece NA5 had been hiding a little secret all these years - at one point in its life it had suffered a bit of a knock on the offside. The outer skin of the sill towards the front had been pushed in and poorly patch repaired. The patch that had been welded in still sat half an inch or so inwards so filler had been applied over the top. The patch had then started to rust from the inside out and eventually through the filler also. Which leads me to my current position... Not ideal, but not life threatening i guess. Everything beyond that outer skin is clean and straight. Finding replacement sills is proving very difficult though so i think its going to be a custom job. The rear quarter on the same side also has filler in it, probably from the same incident. But I'm yet to delve into that just yet!

Also here's a complete waste of time - I had a pair of UK spec rear calipers that i purchased years ago and have been meaning to fit ever since, so while doing the subframe i also stripped and painted them in nissan GTR burnt orange before installing them with chris wilson pads, do-luck braided lines and slotted discs. Then i took the car home, put it in the garage again and then bought a set of wheels that mean i cant use UK rear calipers They came up for sale in the UK at a very good price and i just thought i couldn't pass it up! They're brand new - were still in their boxes un opened when i collected them. But yeah, the UK calipers are now rather redundant!

So since rediscovering the forum last night, this evening i dragged the supra out the garage to show you guys the sorry state it has become.. During lockdown i took it into work and finished rebuilding that subframe that i had laying around for ages! I fabricated a jacking point into the bottom of the subframe to prevent me from having to jack the back of my car up on the diff - as diffs are damn expensive nowadays! The aqua blaster at work made light work of the control arms Then it was out with the old and in with the new.. While installing the new subframe i also replaced the diff with an A02B LSD

First time back on the forum in ages! But yes i do still have her! Not much has changed. Still haven't sorted the GTE engine out lol

Slow progress recently but this evening i got the head stripped down and one bank of core plugs replaced on the block

Very keen to see the end result of this!!!

Got the head off this evening. Ready for new stem seals, oem gasket and ARP head studs. The head is super super clean and has been skimmed also.

When i bought the engine from JDM garage they informed me that they had re-seated the valves and replaced the head gasket and timing belt which tbf all looks brand new - although im replacing it all again anyway. Last night however i came to a stop when i realised i wasn't going to be able to remove the crank pulley as i had no way of locking it up, so today i made a lock up bar that essentially bolts to the rear of the crank and locks itself against the engine stand while i undo the front pulley bolt. So got my big breaker on the bolt and it literally just unwound with next to no effort atall. I reckon whoever did the work at JDM garage just nipped it up with a ratchet with the intention of going back and torquing it up but never did. Lol all that effort for nothing - its fortunate that i didnt just decide to throw the engine is as it was.

Last night i started pulling the engine apart to replace the head gasket + install my ARP head studs. Im extremely pleased with how clean the engine is externally and internally - next to no oil staining atall in the cylinder head!

Complete oem seal and gasket kit [emoji106]

SRD stainless bumper undertray arrived - very nicely made!

Got the injectors, rail and lower runners mocked up properly today. Had a bit of a mare with the seals and alloy injector seats as i thought they had to be welded into the runners but i have since been informed by a very reliable source that they are typically just 'glued' in with gasket sealant and that welding them in isnt totally necessary.. i guess we'll just see how it goes.. Bought a complete oem gasket kit today too

Bought a new genuine gte oil pump, core plug set and assembly lube to add to the pile. Also ordered an SRD stainless bumper undertray, i already have the engine undertray so this'll go nicely with that. Next things will be the genuine gasket kit and water pump.

Still available?

So the 2nd engine came about after a brief conversion on Facebook, somebody mentioned somewhere that they were looking for an engine and this guy replied saying he had one - i didnt need an engine but thought id PM him just to see what he was selling and how much (basically just being nosey) He told me it was a 2jzgte vvti engine that he suspected had a spun bearing. He then sent me some pictures to clarify what he was saying and told me he'd be happy with £XXX If im being honest i thought he was taking the piss. He was up in Manchester which is almost 3 hours away from me and i almost didnt bother going because i thought it was just going to be a waste of time i.e. he wasnt going to turn up and the whole thing was just a wind up. But curiosity got the better of me and i thought it was probably worth the risk - worst case scenario i have a McDonald's in Manchester and then drive home again. I wasn't going to bother going through the hassle and expense of hiring a van though considering i was 90% sure I'd be coming back empty handed. So i just went in my trusty old Peugeot 306, and low and behold i arrived at the guys unit to be greated by a 2jzgte vvti with all the ancillaries hanging off an engine crane ready and waiting to be loaded into a *cough cough* van. I didnt particularly want to leave and come back another day simply because A) it was a bloody long way and B) i didnt want someone else to snap it up in the mean time. So we chucked it into the back of the Peugeot. 320kg in the boot of 90's french hatchback. Yeah.. she squats. I was convinced it was going to fall through the floor at every bump in the road but thank god she made it home safely and i didnt dump a 2jz onto the slow lane of the A1. Initially i planned on keeping the bare block to build on later on but someone made a nice offer on it so thats now gone along with the rest of it. Generated a nice bit of cash for my build.