Help with Maintenance

[Grandavi]

What rubbers refers to us all rubber seals and possibly rubber hose. The seal may have shrunk or dried up over time. Watch your oil level carefully if you drive it.
As a rule of thumb you change the clutch slave when you change the master. Check your lines for cracks too as you may have a dried hose.

Also.. and read this carefully.... get the car appraised. Will cost between 100-200.00 to do it. I have antique insurance on mine, yours may qualify as well where you live. It covers me for the cost of the car if it gets hit + 1500 for parts on top. If you get hit right now, your lucky to get 6500.00 out of it and that will be with a battle. After an appraisal you should talk to your insurance people and see about insuring it as an antique/collectable for the full appraised amount. You would be surprised what yours is actually worth.

That way.. if you have an unfortunate incident at least you wont be out a very very very rare piece of machinery.

btw.. my insurance only costs 7.00 per month for full insurance providing I only drive it 5000 km per year (about 3000 miles).

That car is worthy of car shows.. : )

 

[7M4EVR]

You guys! Stop telling him to get it appraised before one of us can even make a decent offer at buying it off of him to hold for Supra history!! Hey man, seriously, seriously, want to make the easiest $2,000 you have ever made? Just enough to pay for that new tranny for the corolla?? sign the title over to me= $12,000 cash money! I'll go get the loan right meow just say the magic words!

 

[Grandavi]

This is not a car I would buy. It would kill me to drive it.
I saw an 85 Supra sell for about 18,000 about 3 years back (white one) and thats not near the car this is (imo). There are people who would be willing to pay 25,000'ish for something like this. Should be worth 30-40k.. but who's gonna pay it. Fairly certain it would appraise at over 30 if everything is in order.

 

[7M4EVR]

Grandavi I was serious..Your not helping my cause lol!

 

[Grandavi]

I was talking pennies.. yeah.. thats right... pennies... 30,000 pennies...

 

[mOUs3y]

Hey guys sorry had to leave the country for a while for work. SOoOoO it looks like I'll be having to replace the exhaust. That puppy got some rust on it. I'ma search the forums for what's a good exhaust system for mk3s. I have a gut feeling I should change out my valve cover gasket and maybe the head gasket as well. Sucks the only performance shop in Sacramento I trusted just went out of business

 

[supraguy@aol]

Change the exhaust for new oem exhaust. Yes, replace the valve cover gaskets.
I don't think you should replace the head gasket unless it fails a block test. Have the bolts properly retorqued, and you'll be fine for a LONG time.

If you mod this car or put a single aftermarket, "JDM-tyte" part on it, we WILL hunt you down and kill you.

That said, I DO think you should drive this car. Yes, it's a rare low mileage example, but if you go and put 20, 30 or 40 thousand miles on it, it will still be an ultra-low mileage rare gem.

 

[mOUs3y]

Hi Supraguy! You made me crack up hahaha. Ok I'll go have Toyota replace the valve cover gaskets and check for other stuff like the rubber hoses. If i have to replace the entire exhaust due to rust, isn't it better to actually upgrade it than putting stock OEM? I did tell myself i would try to keep it as stock as possible, but since it's the whole exhaust i have to change out, i might as well right? let me know so i when i bring it to toyota i'll just ask them to put the oem stock stuff. thanks!

 

[TweeT91109]

Lol, this car is unbelievable, and Toyota will not have OEM replacement exhaust for the car, just a heads up. I have already checked.

 

[mOUs3y]

Thanks for the heads up Tweet! Since I really needed to get my exhaust fixed because it was about to fall off, I just ended up keeping most of exhaust stock. I only changed out the resonator and muffler with this magnaflow brand the store had. I wanted HKS, but I couldn't wait for that one or an OEM exhaust because I don't think it would have lasted another week.

Hey supraguy, is it possible to have them retorque the headgasket bolts without changing out the gasket or stock bolts? If so, i'll just have them do that. I don't htink the headgasket is blown. I was just trying to be proactive and change it out because I was assuming it would have been dry and shriveled up like the valve cover gasket. I'll have them change the valve cover this monday. thanks!

 

[Grandavi]

Doubt your gasket is blown, but with that low if mileage you could check to see if a retorque is possible. I'm not sure if you can back them off and retorque individually.

If you replace the exhaust... Go 3" and replace the elbow with a nonrestrictive type. That alone makes the car a demon compared to the stock exhaust setup.

 

[theGOODWIN2012]

Just saw/read through this thread. I'm in between shocked and grinning from ear to ear. This is literal gold. Looks straight out of the showroom. Amazing. *picks up jaw from floor*

 

[mOUs3y]

Heh thanks Goodwin. If you're ever in CA, i'll let you see it. Grandavi, I'll go ask them if they can do a retorque then. Hopefully it'll buy me extra time and money before I have to actually change it out. I hear 3" a lot but mostly on the 7M-GTEs. Since mine's N/A, I heard I should keep it to 2.5 - 2.75 the most because there's a possibility I could lose power. You think that's true? Anyway if I do decide on doing 3" all the way, BIC DDP down pipe any good? Basically I just changed out my muffler and resonator today but I left everything from the cat on up stock. Would keeping a resonator cause loss of power? They told me to add one so the exhaust wouldn't sound "raspy".

 

[supraguy@aol]

No- That was a misunderstanding.
You stay 2.25- 2.5" on the exhaust for the na. The BIC downpipe is indeed for turbo engines.
Just get a standard exhaust. I didn't necessarily mean you should go to the dealer for the exhaust replacement. The are aftermarket companies that make the oem-like system(Walker comes to mind).
I goofed, and didn't realize this thread was 6+ months old. How many miles have you put on it so far?

 

[Grandavi]

Yeah, my bad, the NA needs a certain amount of back pressure to run properly. A 3" exhaust would probably hurt the car.

I think the head gasket should be fine. The way I understand it is they torqued the head properly at factory but had an incorrect torque value in the original TSRM. The rest is just dealing with age.

I'm glad I'm not in your shoes because the car is definitely meant to be driven, however its so low mileage I couldn't bring myself to drive it. Maybe 500-1000 miles a year. I would end up selling it to someone who wanted to collect, and buying a cheaper version to drive, or just by a driver because I bought my car specifically to enjoy its unique flavor. I won't drive it in winter, but in summer I am in my glory flying around and having fun in it.

In my head its very difficult to imagine molesting your car with any alterations.

 

[mOUs3y]

It has 20000 miles now haha. I was going to fix my Corolla but they wanted $2300 for a manual transmission. I'll just save up and try to get the new Miata when it comes out and use that as my DD. I told the shop to keep the pipings the same size as stock. The muffler looks way bigger than the OEM though. Would that cause loss of back pressure or only a change to the pipe diameters would cause that?