Well here it is finally, a build thread. Feel free to ask me anything you like regarding this build and I'll try to answer as best I can and let you know how I did it.
I bought this car waaaaay back in 1990. I was 19-20 at the time and I originally had gone to the dodge dealership to look at getting a stealth. Why? Well clearly because I was stupid at the time. Anyways, the dodge dealership wouldn't give me the time of day and didn't consider me a serious buyer. The salesman actually had the balls to say, "Ya, kid, why don't you go look at a nice Honda down the block. There will be no free test drives in a fast car you obviously cannot afford! Get lost."
Man was I ever mad, like steaming mad. So since my father sold motorhomes and such and some of them came on a toyota chassis he mentioned that maybe I should consider a toyota. I was driving an 86 celica GTS at that time and thought it was pretty quick. And had heard that there were such things as Turbo AWD Celica's to be had. So I went to the local dealership and inquired and was very quickly told that the chances of finding/getting an ALLTrac were slim to none. I think it was the point in my life that I was on a AWD track and then thecorner of my eye caught a red rear end of a Turbo MKIII. I immediately fell in love with the MKIII fat low muscled looking ass.
Asked the guy what that car was and what it had to offer. The sales guy laughed and said, "That my friend is a real car! Thats a Supra, wanna take a look inside it?" Before even getting into it I noticed the entire roof was removable and I was already in love and my mind was set. When I heard it had a 6 in it and that it was also TURBOCHARGED! I had to know how it drove.
I took it for a spin and there was no way that any other car was for me ever again. And I have had it ever since. Girlfriends have come and gone, years have passed, 7M's have come and gone (4 of them in total) and now it sits in my garage with a 2JZ.
My 7M at it's peak was a fully HKS setup, fcon, vpc, timer, boost controller, T71. And I really had alot of smile per mile at over 500RWHP. For most of my ownership I have not been involved with the processes of maintainence or upgrading and always paid a shop to do everything for me. Up until oneday just after getting a newly built 7M put in (JE pistons, etc.) less than 2000 KM one of my cylinders developed a nasty clanking noise. Turns out I had broken a wrist pin in number 5. HOW? Ya, how, it turned out that the shop that built my motor had left a fairly decent size steel washer in my intake. It had made it's way all the way through my motor, gotten shewed up and then spat out my turbo. How do I know this, well we found half of it smashed into the number 5 cylinder and the other half chewed up inside my turbo.
I was pissed beyond belief, and even more angry when the shop tried initially to pass this off as my fault, for not breaking it in properly and then driving it too hard. I told them to stuff that because while I wasn't the most car knowledgable I knew enogh to know that no amount of shit bagging a car would cause a huge washer to materialize inside my motor.
They finally agreed to rebuild and replace it on their dime but not until I had gotten a lawyer involved and made it clear I wasn't going to go away. Unfortunately for me there shitty workmanship wasn't a onetime thing and my new motor went on me almost immediately with a BHG dispite having a HKS metal stopper type HG. Yup you read that right, I blew a HKS metal HG.
Well this was the turning point for me, I decided to take matter into my own hands and do all future work myself. Which is a little intimidating to say the least. On disassembly it became clear that they had not torqued the head down at all correctly and 2 of my expensive arp bolts on number 6 were just slightly more than hand tight.
And from that I had a bent rod also. So I got yet another 7M ready to throw in there, all machined up and set and then my entire setup was stolen while out of the car. So now again I was back to square one.
Well, if I'm gonna do it, I figured I may as well refresh the whole works and get a 2JZ swapped in and have a updated motor. Keep in mind I had never done any automotive work at all previously and had no clue what I was headed for. So I did lots of research here and learned all the parts I needed to do this swap and while waiting for parts and such, I figured, why not go all out, lets repaint it too.
Never painted anything before either. So I stripped all the parts right off the car down to the subframes, and they came off eventually too.
So here begins the pics of my build. As I went along I kept setting myself back by always insisting to do one extra thing, while I was there before moving on, greatly extending my build timeline but now I think it was worth it.
I doubled all the spot welds in the main body while I had all the paint stripped bare and then foam filled the cavities. And then decided to smooth the rear winglets into the fenders and vent my front fenders (functional). And then to further smooth out the sides and make it a little more modern I shaved the door handles and installed a set of door poppers. And I had just finished building my own CNC router and was itching for tasks for it and came up with the idea of clear side moldings with the back painted rather than the normal way. They looked great in tests and the sun really is a cool effect.
Pics are sizing, please stand by.......
I bought this car waaaaay back in 1990. I was 19-20 at the time and I originally had gone to the dodge dealership to look at getting a stealth. Why? Well clearly because I was stupid at the time. Anyways, the dodge dealership wouldn't give me the time of day and didn't consider me a serious buyer. The salesman actually had the balls to say, "Ya, kid, why don't you go look at a nice Honda down the block. There will be no free test drives in a fast car you obviously cannot afford! Get lost."
Man was I ever mad, like steaming mad. So since my father sold motorhomes and such and some of them came on a toyota chassis he mentioned that maybe I should consider a toyota. I was driving an 86 celica GTS at that time and thought it was pretty quick. And had heard that there were such things as Turbo AWD Celica's to be had. So I went to the local dealership and inquired and was very quickly told that the chances of finding/getting an ALLTrac were slim to none. I think it was the point in my life that I was on a AWD track and then thecorner of my eye caught a red rear end of a Turbo MKIII. I immediately fell in love with the MKIII fat low muscled looking ass.
Asked the guy what that car was and what it had to offer. The sales guy laughed and said, "That my friend is a real car! Thats a Supra, wanna take a look inside it?" Before even getting into it I noticed the entire roof was removable and I was already in love and my mind was set. When I heard it had a 6 in it and that it was also TURBOCHARGED! I had to know how it drove.
I took it for a spin and there was no way that any other car was for me ever again. And I have had it ever since. Girlfriends have come and gone, years have passed, 7M's have come and gone (4 of them in total) and now it sits in my garage with a 2JZ.
My 7M at it's peak was a fully HKS setup, fcon, vpc, timer, boost controller, T71. And I really had alot of smile per mile at over 500RWHP. For most of my ownership I have not been involved with the processes of maintainence or upgrading and always paid a shop to do everything for me. Up until oneday just after getting a newly built 7M put in (JE pistons, etc.) less than 2000 KM one of my cylinders developed a nasty clanking noise. Turns out I had broken a wrist pin in number 5. HOW? Ya, how, it turned out that the shop that built my motor had left a fairly decent size steel washer in my intake. It had made it's way all the way through my motor, gotten shewed up and then spat out my turbo. How do I know this, well we found half of it smashed into the number 5 cylinder and the other half chewed up inside my turbo.
I was pissed beyond belief, and even more angry when the shop tried initially to pass this off as my fault, for not breaking it in properly and then driving it too hard. I told them to stuff that because while I wasn't the most car knowledgable I knew enogh to know that no amount of shit bagging a car would cause a huge washer to materialize inside my motor.
They finally agreed to rebuild and replace it on their dime but not until I had gotten a lawyer involved and made it clear I wasn't going to go away. Unfortunately for me there shitty workmanship wasn't a onetime thing and my new motor went on me almost immediately with a BHG dispite having a HKS metal stopper type HG. Yup you read that right, I blew a HKS metal HG.
Well this was the turning point for me, I decided to take matter into my own hands and do all future work myself. Which is a little intimidating to say the least. On disassembly it became clear that they had not torqued the head down at all correctly and 2 of my expensive arp bolts on number 6 were just slightly more than hand tight.
And from that I had a bent rod also. So I got yet another 7M ready to throw in there, all machined up and set and then my entire setup was stolen while out of the car. So now again I was back to square one.
Well, if I'm gonna do it, I figured I may as well refresh the whole works and get a 2JZ swapped in and have a updated motor. Keep in mind I had never done any automotive work at all previously and had no clue what I was headed for. So I did lots of research here and learned all the parts I needed to do this swap and while waiting for parts and such, I figured, why not go all out, lets repaint it too.
Never painted anything before either. So I stripped all the parts right off the car down to the subframes, and they came off eventually too.
So here begins the pics of my build. As I went along I kept setting myself back by always insisting to do one extra thing, while I was there before moving on, greatly extending my build timeline but now I think it was worth it.
I doubled all the spot welds in the main body while I had all the paint stripped bare and then foam filled the cavities. And then decided to smooth the rear winglets into the fenders and vent my front fenders (functional). And then to further smooth out the sides and make it a little more modern I shaved the door handles and installed a set of door poppers. And I had just finished building my own CNC router and was itching for tasks for it and came up with the idea of clear side moldings with the back painted rather than the normal way. They looked great in tests and the sun really is a cool effect.
Pics are sizing, please stand by.......
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