Hi,

Here is the story of my Celica build. My RX8 had just been stolen and my wife was pushing me to just buy a cheap daily for myself. So having a long history with Celica's and ST165's. I thought i'd buy a Celica. So I found this 'Automatic'...yes I know. One owner, old lady Celica. I thought, that had to be a good cheap daily. So I bought it and the thing just snowballed. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

This is a picture of it infront of the lady's house, the day I bought it.



First thing I did was buy GT4 Raiser Blocks.



Then came the 18 Inch Rims



Then came the GT4 bonnet



Then it got lowered 2 inches



Then we did a very bad paintjob on the bonnet at home and got some 17 inch rims, which I think are UGLY.



Then came my final set of 17 inch rims, and a GT4 bumper, because someone at work reversed into me, yeeaaah.



Then came a full respray, and clear indicators, front and side.






Then came the JDM tails.



Then came the tinted windows.





All this happened over a 2 year period. I am pretty happy with the way it looks now. The only things I would love to do, is get some wider tyres and some spacers to give it a nice stance. And also, when the 5SFE dies, I am tossing up between a 3SGTE or the Camry V6 motor.

Any feedback or thoughts, go ahead.

This post has been edited by THE20V: Jun 18, 2011 - 1:36 AM

VERY nice looking car, i love the gold/blue combo.

Nice looking celica! Love the gold rims!

Why the gt4 badges?

well my intention is to build a full on GT4 Replica, so I thought the badges would finish it off.

can anyone recommend what spacers to get and how thick to get them?

i run h&r spacers. my rims have a different offset than yours so you'd want to calculate that for your set.

All this happened over a 2 year period. I am pretty happy with the way it looks now. The only things I would love to do, is get some wider tyres and some spacers to give it a nice stance. And also, when the 5SFE dies, I am tossing up between a 3SGTE or the Camry V6 motor.

Any feedback or thoughts, go ahead.-THE20V

If your building a gt4 replica might as well stick with and go the the 3sgte.

Great build by the way man. pretty clean.

Finally got around to ordering spacers today, I went 25mm all round. Should be on by mid next week. I'll post pics soon as I get em on.

a skirt would be nice.. not forgetting splitters!!.. and jdm projectors too.. hehe

I was contemplating on whether to get skirts or not before I got it resprayed. But I decided I preferred the clean untouched look. If I did want to get any bodykit, it would have to be the TRD skirts, with the front and rear lips. I would definately love projectors....who wouldn't. But for the time being I think that money would be better spent on the engine conversion.

Whats the offset of your wheels? I have 25mm Spacers all around too, bet it will look real similar, which I think looks good.

Man, your car is hot, what size tyres/wheels have you got? Honestly I have no idea what the offset of my wheels are. If mine ends up looking anything like yours, i'll be loving life. I tried on a 30mm spacer on the rear, at the place I ordered them from. It looked awesome, but it looked like it may have issues with scrubbing. But mainly the reason I chose the 25mm's was price, they were much cheaper because they're a standard item, whereas the 30mm would have to be custom made he reckons. I paid $220 for 25mm for on all four.

This post has been edited by THE20V: Mar 20, 2011 - 11:31 PM

I finally got my 30mm spacers front and back fitted. My wheels are 40 offset. It did scrub at first, but then some massaging soon sorted that out.

I must say i'm really happy with the result. What do you think?

This is in the workshop getting fitted with the spacers



And the result:











The sucked in look bugged me for so long, I am happy with the way it looks, now I want to work on the interior and engine conversion

Man that looks so nice, the wheel offset and the height of ur car is perfect
Looking at the pic wen u first got ur car... Far out its come a long way lol.

looks sweet with the 30mm, what was your wheel offset before?

This post has been edited by KALLusion: Mar 31, 2011 - 10:57 AM

nice looking car man

>
Thanks, the wheels are 40 offset.

hawtt

dude soooo sexy, great job, im very jealous and want to do that soo bad. but trying to mix performance and style and sometimes go wrong lol

Looks really good! The GT-Four badge is a little cringe-worthy, but visually the car is great.

Took this shot yesterday, its bad quality phone photo, but it shows how it sits from the back.

i was hoping someone could help me out, I have two questions:
1) when I put my spacers on, I have noticed that the right side front wheel, sticks out further than the left side. The guy at the wheel shop who put them on reckons its just an issue of more camber on one side than the other. Has anyone had this before or know how to fix it?
2) i managed to stop the rear from rubbing by 'massaging' the fenders. But what do I do about the front. I suspect the screw thats holding the inner plastic on, is whats rubbing. But if I take that off, it will hang down, won't it? Whats the solution?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Well I took the car out the other day and the Auto Gearbox just kept slipping and wouldn't shift past first. So I thought it may be time for some kind of conversion. I priced up the following:
Auto Replacement $680 fitted
Manual Conversion $1,400 fitted
3SGTE Conversion $6,000 fitted.

Well in the end I decided to just replace the auto, for a few reasons. Cost, the headache of doing a conversion and the fact that it's a daily driver. Also, it helps that it's Auto cause my wife doesn't drive manual and sometimes we need to swap cars.

Anyway, it's being replaced in a few days.

The wheel sticking out is most likely camber, but could be other things like the fender being warped, or more serious the suspension being bent. Sorry to hear about the tranny going out! i would say start saving slowly so by the time something else major goes wrong you can just go all out and put in a 3sgte!!

Camber is my bet. Thats also what the guy at the shop suggested. Do you know how I get that fixed? And how much it costs.

You know what i'm sick of....inconsiderate mechanics.
After getting my car resprayed I went and got tints put on, the guy leaves a huge chip out of the paint on the edge near the drivers door.
Today I go to pick up my car after having the auto replaced, and I specifically told him to take care of my paint job when I dropped it off.
When I got it back, I found not one, but two beautiful chips out of my NEW paint. One on each guard, on the edge where the guard meets the bonnet, it's obvious he's hit it with some tool. So I call him and confront him about it and he just denies it, what can you do in that situation?

I'm just so sick of people not taking care of other peoples property.

$1400 is cheap for a conversion! I got quoted $700-800 in a few places for the box alone, not to mention the gear selector, shifter cables, clutch, fluid etc.

Yeah that sucks! partly the reason I never take my car to mechanics and have just learnt along the way, unfortunately you can't really do anything unless you have evidence, they can just keep denying it.

Car looks amazing btw!

This post has been edited by Euphoria: May 2, 2011 - 7:51 AM

You should take pictures or your car before you lent it to them. Then if something happens, sue them.
The place I stored my car at this winter shipped my rear bumper and they deny it. Though a friend of mine is a friend of the garage owner so I might be lucky.

This post has been edited by dudeofchaos: May 2, 2011 - 8:28 AM

>

Thanks man, you really have to shop around to get a good deal though. The first place I took it to quoted $1,100 just to replace the auto. But while I was shopping around, I found a nice bloke at the wreckers who had a manual car there. So I asked him about the conversion, so he said he'd give me everything I needed for the conversion for $500, bargain. But the deal breaker was that the clutch was 70% worn, so I needed to buy a new clutch as well. And then the labour was $700 to get it fitted.
Thats why I just stuck with the auto. But if i'm honest, I sort of wish I went manual, even with the extra cost. I would love my car so much more if it was manual.

Oh well, just have to wait for the engine to go and do a conversion I guess.