21 Patches --- Slow but worth it !

[#04]

At last, after working on the restoration of a 86 for 5 years, we are starting
our first build thread.

Some members elect to start as soon as they get their car started and
some elect to post further along the build process, which we are doing.

The Story

Many years ago, my dad had a 84 and then a 86 Supra.

We do not have any photos of the 84 but we do have one of me standing
beside the 86, so thought it would be a good place to start this thread.

Since we both love cars and I restore cars as a hobby, mostly 240's, we
decided approximately 5 years ago to find an old Supra and do a restoration.

Being from Ontario Canada it is difficult to find a decent car that can be restored
without having to totally rebuild from the ground up.

Long story short, we did locate a car in Toronto for $500, ( in the winter and lots of snow
on the ground so we did not inspect as closely as we should of ) and which we thought at
the time may be suitable for restoration. Just clean it up, repair some rust and make it into
a weekend driver.

WRONG !

After bringing it back to our shop and inspecting it more closely, it quickly became evident
that the car was not worth investing any time, effort or money. Age and the salt that is
applied to our roads had done far more damage to the underside than was evident from first
looking at the car in freezy snow.

We decided to keep it as a donor / parts car and continue searching for a Supra in
better condition.

After several months looking we were able to find a rolling shell in Leamington Ontario,
about a 3 hour drive from Cambridge.

Learning from our first misadventure, we were now more critical in examining the underside
and body for major rust. There was some typical bad rust spots that Supras are known for but
overall nothing that could not be repaired. Overall for a Canadian car that had seen many winters,
it was in relatively good shape.

We now had a pretty good Supra, no engine or tranny, to start the rebuild.

We did consider using the engine and tranny from the donor but with over 230,000 km
on the 7M, we decided to find a low km engine and tranny from a Toronto Japanese
engine importer.

In our next thread, we will continue our rebuild posting with our 1/2 cut 1JZGT.


Also this is likely 2010- judging from the empty shop, I moved across the farm from a 4000sq/ft (four people shop - 2 unemployed nonpaying) to a 950sq/ft 1 person shop. I thought 950 would be plenty (wait for 2014 photos, I was wrong)



Darian and Doug (EDIT - title change)

 

[#04]

entry 2;

so after a quick once over (bumpers removed, rocker caps removed) I determined that the burgandy car would be better suited as a parts car/resto map.
The Mustang rep wheels sold quickly for $300 so, burgandy cost me $200, well worth it just for plastic plugs etc...


The original car this project was to replace was a 1986.5 white/burgandy/targa, so back to the search.



So I found the above chassis on our local club (toronto supra club) about 3 hours away, $750 for the roller...
I bought this car from a father/son autobody etc shop, it was destined for the father until he found his 240z that he bought new, so bye bye supra.
Knowing this, I was told she was straight and a good project starting point, maybe she was...

 

[#04]

So after some thorough research I decided 7M was not a route I wished to travel on, I mean ol dad must have put 600,000km on his 86.5 and well it was okay, but toyota jumped ship for a reason was my thinking. Off to the importers;




So a TTR front clip was sourced, as you can see the 72,000km's at less than $3000 was a nice price, the body panels were more/less packaging a totally damaged, dash bitched, FMIC was pinched...

A lot of parts on the TTR clip got shelf'd, more got used, I would suggest this method to people, going for a mild build. For example the heat exchanger for the AC was compatible for LHD use (near $400 part)




so here we are, 4 months in (i think) and 2 -1/2 supra's later and I think I am ready to go hard

Also; you can see my 1995 240sx in the background, she's waiting for the supra to leave as I blew a transmission on that beast, and had a hood latch failure, insurance set me up, but alas, she waits.

 

[#04]

So onto the white chassis... initially I had hoped for a quick chassis clean up and re-spray but after pulling the carpet that seemed very optimistic.

but whilst researching I can across many nice builds and decided that mediocre was not for me. This thread in particular I really liked, it was the attention to detail;
http://www.supramania.com/forums/showthread.php?30512-My-restoration-project-Rusty-89

so it was settled that nothing short of a proper resto would do, being a supra it would have to be a resto-mod since, it'll never be a blue chip car.

so I pretty much stirpped the car leaving it rolling while I did the center section between the wheels. Sand blasting, priming, and sorting out patches.

I hammered out that rear quarter dent, took hours but it was closer than most body guys would have done prior to bondo.

which is where the thread title comes from, this car needed 21 patches in the end. some tiny, some medium, and 1 large.

I ended up stripping ALL undercoating off with those 4 knives, touching up the left overs with a wire wheel, but we'll get into why later.

 

[#04]

somewhere around here we also began sourcing parts; I found an imported 92TTR that was being parted out
from that we purchased;


Wilwood fronts
OEM rears
ST sways X2
BIC(?) endlinks
TTR taillights
TTR body moulding
89+ rocker caps/mudflaps X4
89+ spoiler
strut tower bars
TTR mirrors

I thought about taking more of this guys cool stuffs, but a (regular) person can only spend so many thousand a week

other parts;
Sparco wheels/RE-01 - which got veto'd - its alright cause they look fine on the nissan(came off an FD-RX7)
Tein "master control"? coilovers....

Pretty sure another part out yielded a gas tank, and an additional set of door glass (bronze)

so from here it was decided this would be half JZA70 half MA71

 

[#04]

so now lets get into chassis prep;



at some point I decided that stich welding this chassis should limit some of the targa off flex. I did this inside and out, leaving only the sections between the bumpers and outward edge of the strut towers untouched, so hopefully I have a little bit of "crumple zone action"




I cannot find the under the floor pics, but that was also stiched, front to back... I must have added a few thousand welds to the structure... it was so much that I measured the chassis from FULL stripped to 80% assembled (because my body-worker friend suggested the roof distance WILL change), the overall flex/change from on the box empty to %80 assembled on tires was immeasurable with my tape measure (double metric - euro tape measure - think millimeters) so I think it worked..

somewhere around here I had to replace the outermost metal where the upper-rear subframe mounts, 4 spot welds and funny shaped patches later we had solid metal there too.

 

[#04]

onto the good stuffs;

Decided that I kinda like the Barrett-Jackson "chassis cam", its my favourite part of the auctions, so something extreme was called for.

It was PPG epoxy primer - base white. when I was picking up my special order, the body guy behind me in line made eye contact, smiled and nodded, I asked "what are you thinkin?", and he replied that he loved this product but can't convince his customers to spend the dough. So I knew i made a good choice..

with all the floor patched/stiched I could move forward towards assembly;





So yeah, I got carried away with the PPG (perhaps), as I painted the insides of the; doors/bumper/hatch/roof. I just wanted to know the parts were coated, and from under the car I wanted the bumpers to look good (from the inside) as I hate seeing overspray, un-painted, raw material inside bumpers

Not sure if I have pictures of the next step, but gravel guard (for floor panels/wheel wells) had too much texture for my liking, so I went with rocker guard which has 1/2 the texture (less boogers), to protect from stone chips. I mean Epoxy is unlikely to chip, but I want it pretty. Unfortunately, it only comes in limited colour choices, and natural (almond) was the lightest colour I could find. so after the rocker guard it got epoxy primed AGAIN!!!

 

[#04]

reserved

 

[#04]

reserved*

 

[#04]

reserved**