Hi everyone!! :wave:
[Update: June 6th, 2015
Reading some of these super old posts makes me blush in embarassment, but I'll keep it all here for record. I have decided to add page numbers for big events and mile points since this thread is almost 100 pages long (if you have your SM set to 10 posts per page). I'll add in post numbers as well if that helps:
A lot of the pics went missing and the links are now bad, I have no idea why, the Photobucket album has not changed and all the pics are still there. Trying to heal the links is just not worth it so here is a link to my actual Photobucket and you can follow along even if the pic link are broken:
http://s1196.photobucket.com/user/Jetlithium14/story
Milestones:
- Page 26 post 256: First headgasket job
- Page 41 post 404: Rear ended, results in major changes aesthetically
- Page 56 post 553: Rod knock, results in engine rebuild and more major changes
- Page 86 post 860: Pics are finally back, lots of new parts, engine rebuild is still under way
- Page 88 post 875: Rebuilt engine installed, moved to new place
- Page 91 post 901: First start
- Page 94 post 931: Return from two year hiatus and massive picture/update dump
Resume]
I'm Andrew and relatively new to this forum. I've spent the last week or so reading many threads and searching for answers... and now have decided to start my own thread. A little about myself and the subject of this thread. I was recently discharged from the Marines :bigun2: and am on my way to start school and a new life. I was born in Florida but after many moves, ended up in Portland, OR, where my journey begins. I apologize for the lack of photos, they will come I promise (my photobucket has loaded to 35%... and it's been like an hour).. please bear with me and enjoy the story thus far LoL
The 1988 (I think Toyota called it "Sky Blue") Supra turbo and I have a very long history, in fact she was the car I was born in... literally!! (I always address vehicles as she... I mean who wants to ride a guy?!?!) As my parents stated, they bought the car when my mom was pregnant with me because they needed something "fast and reliable" lmao
Anyways, my dad was never into "car stuff" so the supra was simply a "reliable DD" for about 10 years at which point (and this is all what my dad told me) the cylinder rings began to leak, causing oil to get into the combustion chambers. For some reason, my dad deemed this as a no biggy... and continued to drive the car for a couple more years on a couple bad cylinders. I will add at this point that no action was taken to preserve the leather inside the car (pictures will come soon as I am currently uploading to my photobucket account). After the move to Portland, my mom drove the supra for the last time when it "died on the highway". Again, no action was taken to fix the car. Since I was in High School... somehow my interests never strayed to cars as I never felt the urge to get a license, and was preoccupied with sports and girls and guns LoL. Hence the car also avoided my attention and here the story turns south even more.
During a recent discussion with my father (heated too may I add) he stated that he didn't think the car really needed any fixing so he "drove it until it wouldn't start anymore" !!::hang:: ... the car then proceeded to sit on the driveway for 5 years until my contract with the Marines was coming to an end and I needed a car to supplement my license for "life after the Marines". After much discussion I decided the supra was the perfect car for me (let the record show I had no idea what the real condition of the car was, being away for 4 yrs and never having examined the car closely before).
My dad told me all the car needed was a new engine and she would run fine!!... well I found a new 7MGTE+transmission for $1400 from Everdrive. (They have a huge selection of JDM parts for decent pricing... I would link the website but it seems recently the domain is missing or broken.. Not sure it was a good decision but they seemed reputable and even sent me videos of each cylinder getting compression tested) and had it sent to a shop my dad had picked "from a friends referral". Here I made more mistakes, I was still away and had no choice in what shop to use (I later found out after joining this forum that BIC performance was about an hour or so away... I think... *total FAIL). The chosen shop only had one mechanic who, after I finally got home and he was already halfway through the swap, told me this was his first engine swap... :icon_cry:... four months later and $2600 for the labor, I finally got my car back ... yes four months
After the engine swap more problems arose and I had to take the car to Toyota for new front brake rotors (10% below minimum), pads (0% left), and a new left front wheel bearing... all this about $1200
Here I would like to mention that at this point I was 4 months behind schedule on my planned move down to Austin, Texas... so I was in a HUGE hurry to get on the move. I left Portland a month after the engine swap and arrived in San Jose (to visit family and Mom)... I have been here for 4 weeks now... more car problems arose after the 2 day drive down.
Apparently my AFM had gone bad and was causing major hesitation and coughing, and since I my savings was emptied out by the engine swap I decided my current goal was to stay as stock as possible and get the car to a reliable state. After a new $400 AFM, my problems were reduced to (at the time):
-Dying bird squeal from speedometer cable
-Loose shifter
-varying deterioration of interior and exterior
(Again I will apologize for lack of photos... they are coming :icon_surp)
It was during this time I stumbled upon Supramania and truly had my Supra spirit awoken LoL. I will also add that I had the continued help of one of my uncles from LA who works as a technician for Ferrari, and previously owned a MK3, which later was sold for a MK4 that he modded to over 800HP. He now has a 350Z closing in on 800 HP (but he admits that his Supra's are far superior lmao)... As you can imagine his feedback is priceless... I try not to bother him too much though... new baby n all :icon_razz
(56% loading of photos)
During my time here in SJ I have fixed up as much as I could... and in the process found more and more problems... The speedometer cable was replaced yesterday and today I got my new bushings from Toyota and now my shifter is rock solid
(As the second poster in this thread stated, they had LITERALLY turned to dust :aigo
So now that my squealing is gone, I can now hear all the other strange noises the car makes. Today I also found a fuel leak coming from the fuel damper (new part ordered today from Toyota... $147)
As my Ferrari uncle suggested I decided I'm going to start off with a simple upgrade with the Apexi power intake. I also found a really cool set of smoked lights on ebay (I made sure the vendor was highly rated... and lo and behold, my items arrived quickly and in perfect condition Here's the link) Of course I made sure to replace the two front bulbs with orange ones since the set comes with a pair of orange and red for the side lights. As for my intake I made the mistake of ordering from Suprasport since I AM in a huge hurry to continue on my way to Austin. I decided to order from a different source; Andy's Auto Sport located here in California here's the link to supra parts I really don't want to leave until I get that damn air filter kit lmao
Well... this has been such a long post... I think I hit everything... once my photos are done loading, I will post them and include anything else I may have missed...
I really hope there will be lots of feedback as I continue on my journey to restore the Supra and upgrade her to ... since she's going to be my dd... 500hp and the debate in my mind rages on if I should go manual or not... (I still need to learn manual...:1zhelp: LoL)... I have so many thing in mind that I WANT to do to the car... but reality still has the last say lmao
Also, I will try my utmost to answer questions thrown my way and also keep this thread as interesting and thought provoking as a Supra noob can... :dunno:
---------- Post added at 10:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:31 PM ----------
Oh yeah... the shop that did the engine swap said the old engine had a BHG... lmao...
[Update: June 6th, 2015
Reading some of these super old posts makes me blush in embarassment, but I'll keep it all here for record. I have decided to add page numbers for big events and mile points since this thread is almost 100 pages long (if you have your SM set to 10 posts per page). I'll add in post numbers as well if that helps:
A lot of the pics went missing and the links are now bad, I have no idea why, the Photobucket album has not changed and all the pics are still there. Trying to heal the links is just not worth it so here is a link to my actual Photobucket and you can follow along even if the pic link are broken:
http://s1196.photobucket.com/user/Jetlithium14/story
Milestones:
- Page 26 post 256: First headgasket job
- Page 41 post 404: Rear ended, results in major changes aesthetically
- Page 56 post 553: Rod knock, results in engine rebuild and more major changes
- Page 86 post 860: Pics are finally back, lots of new parts, engine rebuild is still under way
- Page 88 post 875: Rebuilt engine installed, moved to new place
- Page 91 post 901: First start
- Page 94 post 931: Return from two year hiatus and massive picture/update dump
Resume]
I'm Andrew and relatively new to this forum. I've spent the last week or so reading many threads and searching for answers... and now have decided to start my own thread. A little about myself and the subject of this thread. I was recently discharged from the Marines :bigun2: and am on my way to start school and a new life. I was born in Florida but after many moves, ended up in Portland, OR, where my journey begins. I apologize for the lack of photos, they will come I promise (my photobucket has loaded to 35%... and it's been like an hour).. please bear with me and enjoy the story thus far LoL
The 1988 (I think Toyota called it "Sky Blue") Supra turbo and I have a very long history, in fact she was the car I was born in... literally!! (I always address vehicles as she... I mean who wants to ride a guy?!?!) As my parents stated, they bought the car when my mom was pregnant with me because they needed something "fast and reliable" lmao
Anyways, my dad was never into "car stuff" so the supra was simply a "reliable DD" for about 10 years at which point (and this is all what my dad told me) the cylinder rings began to leak, causing oil to get into the combustion chambers. For some reason, my dad deemed this as a no biggy... and continued to drive the car for a couple more years on a couple bad cylinders. I will add at this point that no action was taken to preserve the leather inside the car (pictures will come soon as I am currently uploading to my photobucket account). After the move to Portland, my mom drove the supra for the last time when it "died on the highway". Again, no action was taken to fix the car. Since I was in High School... somehow my interests never strayed to cars as I never felt the urge to get a license, and was preoccupied with sports and girls and guns LoL. Hence the car also avoided my attention and here the story turns south even more.
During a recent discussion with my father (heated too may I add) he stated that he didn't think the car really needed any fixing so he "drove it until it wouldn't start anymore" !!::hang:: ... the car then proceeded to sit on the driveway for 5 years until my contract with the Marines was coming to an end and I needed a car to supplement my license for "life after the Marines". After much discussion I decided the supra was the perfect car for me (let the record show I had no idea what the real condition of the car was, being away for 4 yrs and never having examined the car closely before).
My dad told me all the car needed was a new engine and she would run fine!!... well I found a new 7MGTE+transmission for $1400 from Everdrive. (They have a huge selection of JDM parts for decent pricing... I would link the website but it seems recently the domain is missing or broken.. Not sure it was a good decision but they seemed reputable and even sent me videos of each cylinder getting compression tested) and had it sent to a shop my dad had picked "from a friends referral". Here I made more mistakes, I was still away and had no choice in what shop to use (I later found out after joining this forum that BIC performance was about an hour or so away... I think... *total FAIL). The chosen shop only had one mechanic who, after I finally got home and he was already halfway through the swap, told me this was his first engine swap... :icon_cry:... four months later and $2600 for the labor, I finally got my car back ... yes four months
After the engine swap more problems arose and I had to take the car to Toyota for new front brake rotors (10% below minimum), pads (0% left), and a new left front wheel bearing... all this about $1200
Here I would like to mention that at this point I was 4 months behind schedule on my planned move down to Austin, Texas... so I was in a HUGE hurry to get on the move. I left Portland a month after the engine swap and arrived in San Jose (to visit family and Mom)... I have been here for 4 weeks now... more car problems arose after the 2 day drive down.
Apparently my AFM had gone bad and was causing major hesitation and coughing, and since I my savings was emptied out by the engine swap I decided my current goal was to stay as stock as possible and get the car to a reliable state. After a new $400 AFM, my problems were reduced to (at the time):
-Dying bird squeal from speedometer cable
-Loose shifter
-varying deterioration of interior and exterior
(Again I will apologize for lack of photos... they are coming :icon_surp)
It was during this time I stumbled upon Supramania and truly had my Supra spirit awoken LoL. I will also add that I had the continued help of one of my uncles from LA who works as a technician for Ferrari, and previously owned a MK3, which later was sold for a MK4 that he modded to over 800HP. He now has a 350Z closing in on 800 HP (but he admits that his Supra's are far superior lmao)... As you can imagine his feedback is priceless... I try not to bother him too much though... new baby n all :icon_razz
(56% loading of photos)
During my time here in SJ I have fixed up as much as I could... and in the process found more and more problems... The speedometer cable was replaced yesterday and today I got my new bushings from Toyota and now my shifter is rock solid
(As the second poster in this thread stated, they had LITERALLY turned to dust :aigoSo now that my squealing is gone, I can now hear all the other strange noises the car makes
. Today I also found a fuel leak coming from the fuel damper (new part ordered today from Toyota... $147)As my Ferrari uncle suggested I decided I'm going to start off with a simple upgrade with the Apexi power intake. I also found a really cool set of smoked lights on ebay (I made sure the vendor was highly rated... and lo and behold, my items arrived quickly and in perfect condition Here's the link) Of course I made sure to replace the two front bulbs with orange ones since the set comes with a pair of orange and red for the side lights. As for my intake I made the mistake of ordering from Suprasport since I AM in a huge hurry to continue on my way to Austin. I decided to order from a different source; Andy's Auto Sport located here in California here's the link to supra parts I really don't want to leave until I get that damn air filter kit lmao
Well... this has been such a long post... I think I hit everything... once my photos are done loading, I will post them and include anything else I may have missed...
I really hope there will be lots of feedback as I continue on my journey to restore the Supra and upgrade her to ... since she's going to be my dd... 500hp and the debate in my mind rages on if I should go manual or not... (I still need to learn manual...:1zhelp: LoL)... I have so many thing in mind that I WANT to do to the car... but reality still has the last say lmao
Also, I will try my utmost to answer questions thrown my way and also keep this thread as interesting and thought provoking as a Supra noob can... :dunno:
---------- Post added at 10:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:31 PM ----------
Oh yeah... the shop that did the engine swap said the old engine had a BHG... lmao...
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