So let me tell you about my trip to get it. As I said before, I sold the white 89 to buy this. Well before I bought it, I bought the cat back Tanabe and had it shipped to Emilio's house. I also bought new tires online at Discount Tire. Emilio was so kind to install the Tanabe before I got there and took the car to have the new tires put on it as well. He changed the oil and had it ready to go when I flew in.
So I fly in and get to my hotel. Emilio picks me up there in his Del Sol. We take the Supra for a spin and to fill it up. I noticed it had a loud noise coming from the rear end. He calls up Steve aka Toyotanos and we drive north so he can check it out. Now the car had been put up for the winter since October of last year and he'd only driven it to the tire shop which was just down the road. Well it turned out to be a bad pinion bearing in the diff. Steve drains the fluids to check for chunks of metal but finds none thankfully, just sparkles of bearings haha. We put new fluid in it and he's not worried about it making the 900 mile trip home so I'm cool about it. I had a good diff still boxed up in my living room. He gives the rest of the car a good look over and we head back to Bloomington. I let him drive it the 45 minutes back one last time and I was fucking sleepy anyway. It'd been a long day for me.
This is how it'd been sitting since October. He wouldn't sell me those 5zigens sitting behind it...fucker. LOL
Here it is in Steve's garage getting checked out. Super cool guy by the way and has a badass 87.
I stole this from Emilio's FB. This picture rocks. Not because him and his sexy locks are in it but the nose of this car is just flat out beautiful! Ok, maybe the sexy locks too.
This all takes place in March and it's still fucking cold up there with snow everywhere. This is the next morning when I'm about to leave the hotel.
There ain't shit to see once you get into Iowa. I-35 is flat. There were some rolling hills in parts of Kansas and Missouri but nothing to write home about. Here it is at a Pizza Hut somewhere in Kansas I think. Woo hoo.
Well. When I'm pulling out of a truck stop just north of Wichita I hear the front end clunking a little bit. I just roll my eyes and since I have no tools or a jack, just plug on thinking I'll handle it when I get home since I am a little more than halfway there. Got the cruise on 70 driving down 35 and I hear and feel a loud clunk under the car like I had thrown a rock up under the car. I check gauges, look in rearview mirror to see if any smoke is coming out, move the steering wheel back and forth to check stability of the car and all is good. It must've been a rock or something. Well it was something. It's dark now and I'm driving through Oklahoma City and I have really got to pee again. As I'm driving through Norman OK, just south of OK City I begin to exit the freeway to find a gas station. Well, as soon as I hit the brakes, all hell breaks loose and I thought a wheel bearing froze or a ball joint broke off. It comes to a screeching halt right in the middle of the exit ramp and I'm like fuuuuuuuck. Everytime I try to move it and touch the brake it locks up. I'm able to limp it to a Braum's parking lot. I call a buddy and tell him to bring a trailer in the morning. So him and his girlfriend drive 3 hours to come get me with a trailer. Luckily nobody fucked with it in the parking lot all night. I had to get a cab and go to a local shithole hotel.
We get it home and unloaded. I take the front passenger wheel off expecting to find carnage galore and see nothing. It wasn't until I put my hand on the caliper that I realized what had happened. The bottom bolt of the bracket that holds the brake caliper fell out (that what I heard clunk under the car back up in Kansas) and when I touched the brake at the exit it shifted the bracket and caliper forward pretty much locking up the wheel. I found another bolt in my bucket of spares, put it in and made sure all the rest were tight and was done. A five minute fix.
I was so pissed yet relieved. Anyway, I jumped back in it and headed to Houston for TX2K14. I missed the show n shine already but wanted to catch the races the next day...which got rained out. Me and a buddy who lives in Cypress went over to the hotel and hung out with some MKIII people for a little while. Wasn't a totally wasted trip.
