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QUOTE (GT650Schultz @ Sep 19, 2013 - 9:16 PM)
>what's next for the ze beast?
stick-on fender vents, aaaaand this:
Hello 6gc, long time no update.
I've been exercising a lot of fiscal responsibility the last couple of months so the celi build had to be put on hold unfortunately. Now however, I'm all set to continue what was started back in 2011. Phase 2 has already begun with just one small change. I've decided to leave the E154f alone and simply go with an S54-06D from a beams. The 06D allows me to use my current clutch(I might still change it out for something other than Clutchmasters), has good gearing, a helical lsd, and
should (not confirmed) be pretty much plug and play with my superstrut suspension if I use Beams axles. So for the rest of the year I'm going to be reconditioning my GT4 superstrut to function with a USDM LHD chassis, sourcing an LSD S54, and just overall redoing the suspension on the car. Phase 3 will take place in the hopefully near future when I have a larger garage, a welder, and maybe a spare shell. Anyway, here's the progress on phase 2 so far:
Here is a picture of my work bench. It's certainly nice not having a pile of engine internals on it for a change. Instead I have a fantastic example of Toyotas multilink suspension engineering to look at.
I decided to work on brakes first. My clip came with all four rotors so I set to work reconditioning them. The above photo shows what state they were in when I pulled them out of their storage boxes:
First thing to do was get rid of all the rust to prepare the surface for powder coating. Luckily my friend has a blasting cabinet with aluminum oxide that allowed me to strip the surface rust off.
A quick bake in the oven ensured there was nothing on the rotors that would affect the powdercoat finish.
A few hours later we had all four rotors coated with high temperature powder coat. Now it was time to throw them on a CNC lathe.
I took the rotors to my old mans shop where we cut down between 10 and 20 thou off the pad surfaces. Great pains were taken to ensure a consistent runout for all surfaces.
And finally here are the results of all this work. Turned out pretty well for used OEM rotors
Some may say that new pads wont bed-in on a smooth surface like this. And they would be wrong. We've been doing this in my family for years and it's always worked perfectly. The Toyota FSM even calls for a lathe.
Along with working on the rotors I also cleaned, inspected and painted all of the calipers. They seem to be in very good condition so I don't think I'll be rebuilding them. If they do end up needing to be rebuilt I'll order a new seal kit from tcbparts.co.uk. I decided to use VHT caliper paint on these instead of powdercoating them. The reason for this lies in the fact that I've only ever found mixed opinions on whether the rubber seals in calipers can stand up to the extended periods of heat that comes with powder. The fact that brakes are designed to convert kinetic energy to heat makes this almost a no brainer, but there are plenty of people that had leaking problems after coating. So I'm going to try caliper paint first. The porsche guys seem to have good luck with VHT. The key is surface preparation. Observe:
First a quick before shot of how the calipers looked when I got them.
Here's another shot showing the front 4-pots. I spent a lot of time sanding these down with a 3M sanding sponge to get the surface nicks fixed up. I then got rid of all the brake dust in the hard to reach places with a plastic bristle brush before degreasing everything.
From there I spent what felt like an eternity masking off the contact surfaces before applying multiple layers of paint.
Here is a shot of one of the rear calipers. I'm still on the fence on whether or not I should make the Celica logo stand out.
Finally the completed caliper. I'm in the process of ordering new pads and hardware, along with a set of GT4 stainless lines.
I'm going to have to overcome two obstacles in order to install superstrut into my USDM frame. Those are steering rack compatibility, and axle compatibility. Other members on these forums have shown that the inner tie rods on the GT4 steering rack can be transferred over to a USDM rack, the only problem with this is that the overall length that results is too short. Extending the rods offers a solution, but I'm not convinced that doing so wont affect the steering Ackerman angle. I'll have to sit down, take some measurements and do some math eventually. Furthermore I still have to confirm that the GT4 subframe will accept a USDM rack (I'm going to purchase a rebuilt rack this Thursday and compare ). If it does not fit I'm going to have to source another USDM subframe and clean it up instead. Finally I have to confirm that BEAMS lsd axles will fit into a GT4 hub. If they do I have nothing to worry about. If they don't I'm going to have to mix and match tulips between axles, or press in different hubs into the GT4 uprights.
In the midst of all of this I'm also going to weatherproof the entire suspension with POR-15 hardnose paint. This stuff is really popular with guys that restore old cars and should offer the best protection against rocks and salt. To complement everything I'm going to use polyurethane bushings wherever I can. However one of the benefits of a superstrut suspension (Aside from maintaining camber like a double wishbone) is that it replaces a lot of the bushings found in mcpherson setups with solid joints, so it's a very tight suspension straight from the factory. If I remember right there is really only one place where you can find a rubber bushing, and that's on the rear banana arm. So the polyurethane is most likely going to go on the rear banana arm, the sway bar mounts, endlinks, and rear suspension.
Anyway, the first step toward weatherproofing the suspension was to clean off all of the dirt and grease from everything. This is where my power washer came in handy yet again:
Here is the subframe and the majority of the suspension mid cleaning. I was surprised at how much welding splatter there was, guess Toyota didn't really care how it looked back then
Alright, that's all I have for now. Expect more updates in the coming weeks, my target burnout date is November 30th
This post has been edited by enderswift: Oct 2, 2013 - 6:37 PM
). It's not a very good picture but the mounts on the ST205 subframe are spaced too far wide apart compared to a USDM part; everything else is identical however.
