Homer

Nice! That exhaust routing is perfection

I believe he's retaining that part of the metal, but I will need to check. Thanks

Thanks, is that per side? I'll check with the bodyshop if they're needed

The panels are being made by hand, which is why it's costing so much. The chap doing it is an old school eastern European fabricator, he's come highly recommended.

Which Nash is it? There's one I've dealt with in the past and he ripped me off.

Good and bad news on the rust repair…. - The front sills and jacking area are not as bad as first thought. The sills have collapsed from the car being jacked up in the wrong place multiple times. Thankfully the actually jacking area is fine and the thicker steel is rust free. These just need the sills straightened and re-welded. - The rear sills have the same but there is severe rot in the structural steel heading up the chassis. He’s only opened up the drivers side but it’s so bad the screwdriver test managed to get all the way to it he interior where the rear carpet can be seen. I had no idea it was this bad, but it needs to be fixed correctly so that’s what I’ve asked him to do. I’ve asked for it to be fully repaired to oem standard but the cost is obviously quite a lot (well over £2k) for everything. All the repair panels have to be hand made so it takes a lot of time. Next update due in a week or two hopefully.

The parts that need paint are past being saved by a wet sand, the clear coat has failed. The parts that need paint are the bonnet, drivers side rear quarter, the sills passenger side lower rear quarter and all the replacement/new bodywork parts. We should be able to get a decent finish on those at home, but it's colour matching that's going to be the biggest challenge. Kev has been making some test samples at his place so we'll check those against the car when it's back.

Warmer weather is here and it’s time to get back in the rebuild. I’ve not done too much over the winter due to family commitments, however a couple of decisions have been made. 1) I’ve machine polished the car and much of the paintwork has come up better than expected. Due to cost issues I’ve decided to not go for a full respray and just diy the parts and panels that need a coat of paint. The money is better off spent on getting a capable gearbox than making it look perfect. @evinX is going to be doing the paint and I’ll do the prep. It won’t be perfect but it should hopefully be good enough to get it back on the road this summer. 2) The car has been sent for the all important rust repairs on the sills. It’s possibly a bit worse than first thought and the cost of repair is likely to be close to £2k. Another reason to try and save some money elsewhere! Passenger side after a machine polish. Not perfect but good enough: I managed to get some facelift headlights in almost mint condition for an absolute steal on eBay (again thanks to @evinX!). I didn’t think it was possible to get them so cheap and I’m trying to keep it as oem looking as possible. UK versus facelift: On its way to the bodyshop:

Yeah, I have one but it's in poor condition. Needs repainting and I think there is one clip that's broken on the back.

Normally I'd say £3-400 per door, based on what I saw last summer. It's generally not a good time of yeah to be selling parts, prices and interest always seem to take a dip during the cold months. I guess it could be that a lot of people doing rebuilds tend to put their projects away for the winter (unless they're lucky enough to have a warm garage space!)

Quick update from todays work… I’ve been a bit on/off sick after getting covid last month but hopefully I’m now free of it. That’s one reason there’s not been a lot happening. That’s my excuse anyway! Today was a troubleshooting session with @evinX to figure out the why the pump wasn’t turning on. We’ve made quite a bit of progress but still not found the real culprit. However the bypass means the car can be moved around freely so that helps. 1) We tested the pump operation by connecting it directly to a battery (with fuse!). This worked so we know the pump and the hanger wiring is good 2) Next removed the FP Ecu and gave it a 12v feed, all fine so the ground is good from the chassis loom and also the replacement wiring from the FP Ecu to the hanger is okay. 3 )Finally we bridged the FP Ecu 12v line and it worked fine, but obviously the pump is on all the time when the ignition is on. This means the power side of things is working as intended. It’s either the FP ‘on’ signal is not being received from the Ecu, or the error reporting back to the main Ecu is not working. I’m going to dig into the wiring diagrams again as this *should* work… most likely there is a broken connection somewhere but it’s not anywhere obvious so far. The signal is a 5v modulated one but unfortunately I don’t have the equipment to test it at the moment. 4) With the jury-rigged setup we decided to bring the car up to full temperature for the first time. It ran perfect, no leaks, cooling is working well and engine sounds great. 5) Idle is not working well and it’s around 500rpm. It idles fine when the rpm is brought up to around 800rpm. It’s not running rich so we suspect this is a sticky ICV; a future job is to remove that and clean it. 6) The power steering noise has cleared after adding a bit more fluid, it was initially dry so probably took a while to self bleed. Fuel pump test, it works but is surprisingly noisy. 355lph walbro might have been overkill! Cold idle: Warm idle: Just a supra reversing, but sounds good!

Back on it today again with @evinX We had a bit of a break due to family commitments and getting covid, so not a lot has happened in the mean time. 1) Kev soldered the wiring for the new fuel pump, was a bit of a hassle getting the new wires to take the solder so not a quick a job as it should have been. However this didn’t solve the stalling issue. Now there’s a walbro in there which is much louder we can now tell if the pump is running and it seems that again it’s not turning on. There has to be an intermittent issue somewhere as we did manage to get the car driving for a while. The issue reappeared and all we’ve changed is the pump. More troubleshooting on this tomorrow… 2) Front bumper is now assembled except for the indicators and the upper support bars. I managed to save the original oem ones but they need a good clean before fitting. We also started installing the oem rad ducting but ran out of them to finish. 3) IC lines are now fully refitted. 4) We decided to go through some old storage boxes and found a few rare parts. I’ll get these up for sale soon to help fund the project. 5) Drained the rad of water and changed it over to antifreeze to help stop rust. Might do a full drain again if we can get the car running properly. Also changed the rad pipe clamps from old rusty ones to new ones. Not many photos today

Thanks for all the inputs gents, all very helpful recommendations and comments I’m going to go for PS4’s from camskill (thanks @Burna and @m12aak for the recommendation). £507 delivered is a lot cheaper than elsewhere! I tried to find Eagle F1’s but it doesn’t seem it’s possible to get a matching set in oem size anymore. Asymmetrical 2 for fronts and 5 for rears

Thanks @m12aak, I was hoping for more input so appreciate the comments. I noticed someone put a similar question up on the FB group recently that had a lot of replies. From that it seemed a lot of people are recommending the Pilot Sport 4’s. They’re very much on the higher end of the price range but I guess you get what you pay for! I’ve been out of action with Covid for over a week so never ended up looking more into the tyre choice, so time to get back on it

Loving this restoration Darren, it would be almost impossible to be more thorough! So good to see the reconstruction phase begin, this is the fun part Please keep the pictures coming!

In the meantime, another important part arrived. A front crash bar from @keron since these are long discontinued and impossible to find used. I’m really impressed at the quality of it and it lined up perfectly on a test fit. While I was getting all the oem bumper items ordered I didn’t realise that these are pretty essentially to supporting the bumper foam and helping hold the bumper in the correct place to prevent sagging. Lesson learnt! The bumper I had on there had no foam and no support and after years it slowly sagged to the point of not being easily reusable. So far I’d estimate the cost of replacing the front bumper is running close to £1k not including paint. That’s also reusing the lower bumper trim, alu strips and facelift bar. If active spoiler was included I think the price of a whole oem facelift front bumper assembly these days would easily cost £2.5k before paint

Thanks Darren, much appreciated. I wouldn’t class this as a restoration at this stage, that would be an unfair comparison to the level of work guys like you are doing It’s more a case of getting it running, drivable and them roadworthy (MOT pass). The restoration part will probably be some time away and done in parts, rear subframe rebuild being the first bit.

They’re £200 plus postage if you need it, I bought one today. If you have the equipment to make one then it’s a no brainer, you could also try to build it so it adds some element of ducting to the top half the FMIC. I’m still routinely shocked by the lack of ducting done on mid-high end builds. It has a hugely positive impact to the cooler efficiency at minimal cost.

That bumper is shockingly poor. Damage can happen, but the rest of it… It’s a subjective thing but I think the Ridox is a far better looking bumper than the Bomex anyway

Messaged you a possible contact. It took me about 6 months to source one. In the best way, good luck

Thanks. I’ll have a look at the Uniroyal then as I must have overlooked them. I’ll also look at the Hankook again as I thought they were ditch finders, again probably lack of knowledge on my side. Pilot sports are quite expensive and more than I can really afford. However I’m very aware this is one area it’s not wise to skimp on cost…

Hi all, I’ve not bought a set of tyres for a supra for 10 years, since then it seems things have moved on and to be honest I’m a bit confused about the choices available now. This is for a daily driver, so need all weather tyres with good balance between wet and dry performance. Also stock tyre sizes. In many years past I always went for Good year eagle F1’s as they were well balanced, but now there’s so many variants I’m not even sure which one is the right one. I’m also looking at Toyo Proxie Sports as they are well priced and seem to have fairly good reviews. So, any recommendations, good or bad, ones to avoid, etc?

As usual waiting on parts (or in this case numb nuts here ordered the wrong ones ). In the meantime @evinX and I got on with the bodywork side of things. 1) Rusty rear crash bar is finally removed! Kev brought his welder over to try and tig some nuts to the remains of the old bolts but it just wasn’t working. Ended up cutting them up with a grinder so I could hammer a socket onto the remains. That worked out well in the end 2) brand new crash bar installed. I’ll get the bodyshop to paint this when it goes in. 3) Replacement rear bumper is fitted. Used mostly new hardware for this. This luckily still had the bumper foam fitted. 4) Kev fitted the replacement side pods, hockey sticks and side panels, again they came with almost all the hardware. These are OEM ones that someone gave for me free in exchange for sourcing some parts. I think I got the better end of that deal! 5) Started assembling the new front bumper, but since the bolts I ordered were too short we had to stop. 6) redid the IC pipes as one blew off on the last run. Found a couple more were loose so removed them and refitted and put clamps on all. 7) FMIC is now removed. For the time being I’m going to use a stock side mount. Fmic will go into storage until it’s either needed or sold. Next job is to finish the fuel pump once my DR-25 heat shrink shows up. Then test again and see if the new pump has solved the fuelling issue.

I recently had my facelift and pre-facelift apart and the differences are surprising. Apart from a lot less sealer and poorer quality sound deadening (in some areas), there was a surprising lack of underseal on the facelift, as in almost nothing. The pre-facelift was in far better condition even though it's been in the UK far longer. Are you going to fully weather proof the underside, even though that wouldn't be OEM? Personally I'd want to even though it's not standard.

Not as bad as it first looked but still ouch Have you decided on a front bumper? One word of warning about the do-luck, they’re massively impractical if you have speed bumps or any steep transition changes on your driveway or any local roads. They stick out a long way in front and constantly get hit. Still love the look but wouldn’t have one again! PS: Those Halfords rubber mats are bloody awesome things for the price Saved a lot of back and arm rash!