Haven’t had as much time as I’d like to work on the cars lately but I’ve got a little bit done. October 2017, I replaced the fuel tank on the white car. December 2018, I walk into the garage one day and smell gas. Of course the new fuel tank is leaking. Had to run the car pretty low on gas, sand the tank down, and put some Quicksteel on it. People of the internets say it works decently well but I suspect I’ll be replacing the fuel tank again soon. I spent part of my day today putting new battery terminals in the car (the ones I bought when I did my battery relocation didn’t tighten down on the Optima tight enough but oddly they were great on the Interstate battery I had before) and hooking up a backup camera. The backup camera really isn’t necessary but it didn’t cost me anything and the wife likes it. Ran into one small issue but otherwise a pretty easy install and it works great.





In GT-Four related news, I spent part of last weekend putting the stock downpipe back on so the car will pass emissions to get it registered. Turns out as of January 1st, Colorado requires a new form for RHD cars to go through emissions so now I get to jump through those hoops just to get the paperwork. I replaced the bulbs in the gauge cluster and key ring light with white LED’s since I’ve never been a fan of the stock green, and replaced the license plate bulbs as well. That’s when I found out that someone has done the independent fog light mod on this car. Not something I’ve ever been interested in doing myself but it’s nice to see that it’s done.




I also spent a little time tidying up some small things, nothing really worth mentioning, but I did disable the T-VSV so the car will run full boost in first gear. But I also turned the boost down when I was cleaning things up, so I honestly don’t even know what the boost is set at right now. No sense in even trying to dial it in with the stock downpipe on. We’ve decided that the Greddy boost gauge in the car has to go too. No sense in looking at a boost gauge that reads in BAR and trying to do the conversion in your head while doing a WOT pull, so we picked up a new Prosport Evo boost gauge. It’s 52mm where the Greddy gauge is 60 mm, so a new gauge pod is in order too. We haven’t ordered one yet but we’ll be getting a wideband soon so we ordered a cheap A-pillar pod for now and we’re eventually going to switch to one of the nicer dash mounted pods.

The Greddy gauge and Greddy pod:






The new Prosport gauge and pod with a sad, empty hole in it that needs a wideband:






Not the nicest boost gauge ever but it reads in PSI and does the job. Took one of the wheels off to test the Superstrut with a pry bar and snapped a picture of the wheel specs while I had it off. Needs scrubbed pretty bad...



17x8 as far as I can tell, which is what I had guessed they were. +35 offset with what looked like 20mm spacers but I didn’t take the time to measure them. Thanks to Alex, I keep looking at Gram Light 57CR’s... gotta do a lot of other things first though. Good news is that the front brake pads still have some life left in them and the Superstrut passed the pry bar test with no play at all.


We took the twins to a Cars and Coffee this morning. Didn’t bother taking great pictures but here’s what I got.











After owning the car for a couple of weeks, I’ve found a few things. First and foremost, when you turn, this car turns. It changes direction much better than our FWD car. The tradeoff seems to be suspension composure. The GT4 isn’t rough or overly stiff but the suspension is easily upset over bumps compared to a Macpherson equipped Celica. A Macpherson strut Celica can hit a bump or several back to back and keep going, where the Superstrut tends to get upset over moderate or multiple bumps. It rides just as smooth if not smoother than our white car on Sportlines so I doubt if it’s bad struts or springs, just more like the reason why the rally cars switched back to Macpherson. Other differences are minor but after owning USDM Celicas, it’s just unusual to see the differences. No dimmer for the gauge cluster, the lights don’t automatically shut off after you shut the car off and open the door, windows won’t still roll up after shutting the key off, the driver window is auto up in addition to auto down, no electric lock switch on the passenger door, and who knows what else I haven’t found yet.

And then?

How many people thought the GT4 was a Supra at this one?
You guys are the coolest haha. I thought we were cool with our pair of twins but your pair of twins are way better

This post has been edited by punkxrckprincess: Jan 6, 2019 - 11:36 AM

im sure you getting the feedback from suspension in the steering wheel, but still not an apples to apples comparison. you need a fwd only superstrut car with exact suspension to compare honestly. anyway. nice pics.

Looks good bro, cant wait to see it in person. I can tell you from first hand experience that the extra unsprung weight is likely what's causing the suspension upset. Its a small price to pay for the stellar gains in handling otherwise. SS is a weapon on smooth twisty tarmac

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A much-needed addition to the car! I for one am grateful that this car already has them. You don't happen to have a spare ST205 front lip laying around, do you?


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And then *poof* money disappears from my bank account.


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Two that I heard. Potentially a third if you consider the douche that started telling his friends about how Toyota took a Lexus and turbocharged the engine to make these cars, then got all butthurt when I told him he was thinking of the Supra and that these are Celicas, so he ran off. And your twins are awesome!


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I would LOVE to feel a Superstrut equipped FWD Celica for comparison. The GT-Four changes directions quickly and easily compared to our GT and I really haven't even pushed it yet. Hopefully this summer I'll take it up in the mountains a few times to see how it really handles.


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Interesting... you're building a case for the Gram Lights. I'd love to have a set but they aren't an ideal size for the car at 17x9. Better options in 18" but I don't know if I want to put 18's on it.

do the 57CRs. I'm on the fence about 17s or 18s as well, but after looking at the sizes in 18s, I'm not sure how they'll fit. If you do the 5X114.5 conversion, you can run the square set-up of 18x8.5 +37 because the 18X8.5 +45 in 5x100 would give you sunken wheels and you'd wanna run a spacer to get them to set close to flush.

dont you dare put CRs on that.

anything less than 6 spokes or 5 spoke split and you are basically celica hitler.

don't listen to ^that guy.
He's always doing extra things to be extra.

remember, less is more. Go 3 spoke.

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I’ve already got small spacers but if I spend the money for new wheels, and thats a big if, I’d prefer not go run spacers at all. I don’t know how the 5x114.3 conversion would go with AWD. I assume an AWD Rav4 hub would work but I don’t know for sure.


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OZ Chronos are 5 spoke. ‘nuff said. Plus YOU’RE NOT MY DAD!


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No spokes. Gonna put some sawblades on it.


Today I got the car to pass CO emissions. Took three tries because Colorado now requires a form for RHD gray market cars that Malek didn’t need to have, so I couldn’t get it tested on the first try. I had to take it by an inspection center to get it inspected and get the form, then we tried to test it again and the testing center threw a fit about the low profile tires so we had to go to a third place. They tested the car just fine, passed it, and now I can get the car registered. Got insurance on it last week and I won’t disclose how much it costs but let me just say.... damn. You’d guess wrong. Anyway, pikchars.




Rolled over 90k miles shortly after leaving the testing station. It’s getting old, time to sell it.



Got the new key in today as well. They definitely aren’t the same quality they used to be.



We also may have picked a color to vinyl wrap it to hide the paint imperfections.

Miles or kilometers?

90K Kilometers, you heathen!

Send me a link to that key please. kthxby

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Definitely miles, Malek was kind enough to convert it so there’s no calculating speed or distance. So it truly is 90k miles, not km.

As for the key, we bought a couple back in like 2012 from eBay. They used to be thicker and the logos were actually put on straight. This one will do the job but definitely only about half as nice as the older ones. No more on eBay right now but I’ll share the link as soon as another comes up.

I had one of those keys back in the days too. Never did anything with it so I ended up selling it and now they can't be found and I kinda want one again. lol

I have keys too, they start my car.

Small but picture-heavy update. Had to replace our water heater in the house Saturday morning so that cut into my time out in the garage. Once that was finished up, we had a pile of new parts to take care of.




New radio since we didn’t like the Jensen that came in the car, backup camera since they’re cheap and easy to install, new speakers for the front since the passenger side didn’t work at all, AEM wideband, and yellow bulbs for the fog lights. Plus I had a few items to repair on my to-do list.

We started with the radio first since it’s easiest. Brigette said she wanted to install it herself so I showed her how to splice the Pioneer harness to the Metra harness and showed her how to install the radio. She also hooked up the backup camera herself.







She also fitted the HKS intake with a new filter. The old one was dried out and didn’t really fit.





That was it for the night. Today she wanted to take care of a few more things but she was busy so I took care of it because I’m impatient and I like doing racecar things. First up was replacing the fog lights. The car had yellow HID’s in the fog lights which were super bright and a great color but unfortunately each side took turns not working. We decided to switch back to standard halogens, not as bright but dead reliable. Unfortunately, that job was not as easy as anticipated. Very early on I learned that the fog light brackets were not bolted to the crash bar but instead were zip tied in place. The screws that hold the fog lights to the brackets were completely seized, so I had no choice but to remove the bumper.





More work than I would like to simply replace two light bulbs but necessary. I drilled and tapped the holes so the fog light brackets would be properly attached again. Next up was cleaning up the brakes. The calipers just looked a bit old so we wanted to clean them up and paint then. I wanted to do a nice shade of blue, something as close as Baltic Blue as possible. Brigette wanted to do orange. So, we compromised and did orange.







Next up was installing the wideband, an absolute necessity for turning the boost up. I bought an AEM 30-0300 that I was going to put in the Supra and move the AEM 30-4110 into the GT4. The 0300 is slimmer, faster, and has a larger digital display than the older 4110 so I figured I’d swap them out but given that I had limited time and mostly that I stopped caring, I decided against uninstalling the one in the Supra, installing a new one, and then installing the old one in the GT4. That’s three times the work so I took the easy way out and installed the X series wideband in the GT4.




[img]https://i.imgur.com/3JGznq5.jpg[/


Before pulling the car out of the garage for the night, I decided to pull the fuel level sender to see why the fuel gauge has been inaccurate. I forgot to take pictures but the problem was easy to spot and easy to fix. The actual sender was not attached to the hanger. The wiring was holding it in place but otherwise it was loose in the tank. Snapped it back in place on the bracket and buttoned everything back up, turned the key on for a while and the gauge seemed to reflect the actual amount of fuel in the tank. :winning: I was finished up for the night so I snapped a couple of pictures of the cars together. I only wanted to compare the fog light bulbs on both cars for color and brightness but if both cars are parked next to each other, why not get some pictures?







This wasn’t over the weekend but last weekend I decided to use some leftover black vinyl wrap from the 4Runner to cover up the silver fuel door. The silver door stands out pretty bad but at least flat black somewhat blends and draws less attention to itself.






Also found out that my factory intake hose is slightly ripped, and that I’ll need to install an aftermarket catch can. Sigh, maybe when we get back from Miami in March I’ll throw some more money at the car.

Did you put a water heater in last year?

No more silver fuel door, ya dingus!

I have that same wideband in the Poopra. It's nice and does the job. I ended up buying a spare sensor for it when my piggy back was/is bad.

and dibs on the GT4 when I get up there!

The headunit you have for sale has a better playlist.

Too bad you didn't go with blue, it looked realllllly good in the photoshop mockup that I sent ya. lol


also, now I think you need to change the Supra's plates so it read, NTASPRA, NTASPRA, ISASPRA

I forgot to add that since I had some spare LED’s laying around, I replaced the bulbs in the climate control. One of the two bulbs was burned out so it needed to be done anyway and since I had the spare LED’s, why not? The temperature dial came out a nice white but the buttons are all still kind of dingy green.





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Yup. Two of them. This one is #3. Needless to say this one is a different brand and we didn’t even give that company a chance to warranty this one out.


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I was looking into a Prosport wideband to match the boost gauge in the GT4, but I wasn’t sure if they were as good as the AEM. Then Amazon raised the prices so that made my decision pretty easy. I may still swap the widebands out between cars later but I’ll likely be too lazy to do it so you’ll probably see a familiar wideband in the GT4 when you get up here.


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I pulled a sneaky on you to see if you or anyone else would catch it. The name of the song isn’t as recognizable but...



Brigette wanted orange brakes. I still say they’re tacky and don’t look good with Baltic but that decision was above me head.

Also, changing the license plate on the Supra sounds like an expensive game of duck duck goose.

you're playing the wrong track. play this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xNiUK4fPlo

and I agree with Chee La on the plate. Been telling you that for a while now.

As much as I like my ProSport boost gauge, I'm not sure if I'd be ok with their wideband gauges. I like the PLX wideband that's in the Celica, but the display is kinda smol for someone with smol eyes. Can't go wrong with AEM.

We can change the caliper color when I get up there and I'll take the hit for it. lol

Way OT here but I know you guys have some pretty hard water there in Colorado, is scale and sediment at the bottom of the tank causing it to burn through the tank or was this faulty control boxes?

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I think he did a tankless water heater.

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The soundtrack of Tokyo Drift is literally the only thing you’re allowed to listen to when driving a RHD car. Fact.


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We did, but we still have to clean it every few months. Hard water is an issue with tankless heaters so we have to clean it every three months so like clockwork. Both heaters failed in the same fashion though, wiring issues inside the unit. The brand we had before looked good on paper but two failures within a year (one after only three months) in completely unacceptable, especially electrical failures. Nothing quite like taking a shower then your whole house smelling like an electrical fire. Needless to say we did not let them warranty the second one out, there’s no way we’re giving them a third chance.

Damn that blows.

Electric water heater? Well there's your problem, gas is for heating things and electricity is for computers.

in Puerto Rico we use electric water heater.Gas is only used for stoves.

Have you considered installing a water softener system for the house?

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Ha ha! I love it, the compromise. Guess I won't have to deal w/ that just yet being single. Did you ever think about silver or gold? My calipers are gold and I think it matches the Baltic Blue (given that the engine cover was also gold).
Silver would've been another option, less "subtle" perhaps.