It's Happening! twotone's Build & Restoration Thread

[twotone_ra64]

Another small project!

We recently got a table saw, and that has opened up the possibilities for so many projects now. One which popped into my head - making a new trunk floor! This cost me about $10 all in. I really wanted to finally fix the nasty and torn stock trunk floor. I won't be running a spare tire ever again, so this design reflects that.



Materials include: 2'x4' sheet of 1/8" hardboard, one M8x1.25x90mm bolt, scrap 2x6 wood, furniture felt pads, and a couple pieces from the spare bolts bin.

To start, we have the hardboard sheet. I used a jigsaw to cut a shape roughly the same shape but a little larger than the stock piece. This makes the floorplate.





Next, the 2x6 scrap went on the table saw, and I cut a 2-1/2" wide section of it. This is about the height required to space the floorplate off of the spare tire mount. A hole slightly larger than the M8 bolt goes through the center.



I placed the support on top of the spare tire mount, glued the support piece onto the floorplate, and used my spare starter motor to weigh it down while the glue dried.



Almost forgot to bore a hole through the plate itself once I had glued the support on.



Little pieces of furniture felt placed around the edges of the floorplate in various spots will hopefully keep the vibrations dampened. In some locations, it is stacked double-high.





I took a wingnut and washer from the parts bin and JB welded them to the M8 bolt head. This will make for easy removal of the floorplate later down the line. I need a welding machine..



And that's it! I finally have a load-bearing surface that won't sink in.



More to come!

[nick83]

Nice installation!!!. You also jogged my memory, you can now go camping of all things. The wife and I went to New Mexico one year to go to Chaco Canyon National Monument. 25 miles of washboard road and with stiff KYB shocks it took us over an hour to get there. To far to come back out so we planned on spending the night. When you put the back seats down you have 6ft of length and it is enough for two to sleep for the night. Throw a sleeping bag down for a cushion and you are good to go.
The slow drive in was worth it.

[twotone_ra64]

Nice installation!!!. You also jogged my memory, you can now go camping of all things. The wife and I went to New Mexico one year to go to Chaco Canyon National Monument. 25 miles of washboard road and with stiff KYB shocks it took us over an hour to get there. To far to come back out so we planned on spending the night. When you put the back seats down you have 6ft of length and it is enough for two to sleep for the night. Throw a sleeping bag down for a cushion and you are good to go.
The slow drive in was worth it.

Thanks! Wow!! That's awesome, I'll definitely have to do some camping and try that out for myself. Maybe bring an air mattress for that luxury feel.

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Another small update! The seat was one of few ergo mods I had planned, this being another one of them. I was very excited about this one. As much as I've loved the Celica 1600GT AA63 wheels I had installed previously, I bought a beautiful black leather Momo Retro steering wheel in a 360mm diameter, with the appropriate Momo hub (part #7711).







The wheel came with a nice trim ring that sits around the horn to cover the wheel bolts. I had a hard time deciding which look I liked best, and eventually chose to go without it.





ra65gts mentioned to me on Instagram that, with the Momo hub, the wheel was going to spaced further away from the wiper and turn signal stalks. I wanted to check exactly how much of a difference that was going to be, so I made an initial measurement from the front of the steering column trim to the approximate center of the wheel grip. I got 3-1/2".



Installation of the hub and wheel was extremely straightforward. Hub onto steering spline, 19mm nut to secure it, horn contact ring on hub, steering wheel on top of that, insert one of the supplied countersunk hex head screws through the wheel to hold it all in place to work with the wires; the black ground wire for the horn goes onto the horn button, the yellow/green wire goes from the horn button to the horn contact ring, and bolt the wheel in with the rest of the screws, torqued to 6 Nm (~53 in-lbs). Finally, the horn button can be pressed into place.

The stock wheel is about 395mm in diameter, so the size difference make the new wheel look tiny.



A new offset measurement yielded around 4-3/4", so the offset increased by about 1-1/4". ra65gts was right, but I desired the steering wheel to be slightly closer to me. The stalks aren't hard for my long fingers to reach, so it's totally fine. I wanted them more out of the way, since I'd sometimes bash the stalks with my fingers when countersteering in a slide.



But maaan, does it look good. Yes, the manual steering effort increased slightly with a smaller wheel, but, my more solid bucket seat base and the slightly closer wheel placement makes it much easier overall to steer.



Peep those Expert OZ floor mats, too.

[Teranfirbt]

Nice, that's definitely my favorite Momo wheel, such a classic look!

[twotone_ra64]

Nice, that's definitely my favorite Momo wheel, such a classic look!

Right?? Thank you!! It feels awesome to drive with too. Took my car for a spin yesterday, and the wheel passes the test. The only time it gets really tough to steer is when the front wheels get loaded up hard in a tight corner. Otherwise, it's no harder to yank the non-power-assisted tiller. ;-)

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I've been finally feeling up to fixing all the small items on my car. First was to fit the 3rd-gen mudflaps. I'd been running 2nd-gen flaps for a while, but decided to make the correct ones fit!



My quarterpanels were missing the little inserts to screw the mudflaps on, but I found that the 1/4" nylon nuts from Oreilly (Dorman 961-351D) fit perfectly in the square holes. They might also be labeled "license plate retainer".



Another little tidbit I found was the "Kia" nylon nut pack, Dorman 961-302D, works perfectly to secure the hatch privacy cover tabs in place on the inside of the hatch, underneath the plastic trim. I was using something else that didn't really work well.

A while back, I traded all of my blue trunk trim that I'd dyed black with a fellow BACC member for some spare OE black trunk trim that he'd come across. I wanted true original black trim, since I'd swapped all the interior parts in my car for black. But there was one problem; the panels covering the taillights didn't click in properly.



I found that the little tabs to click it into the rear trunk panel were sunken in, and the little panels themselves were a little warped. So I took a note from my book of Miata tricks, and was able to apply it here!

I started by getting the heat gun out and straightening out the bent portion of the panels as best as I could. Then, I cut 3/4" long pieces of a 5/16" wooden dowel, shoved them behind the tabs and pressed them forward to push the tab back outwards. This allows the tab to grab the rear trunk panel snugly!





And it was a good fix! The panels stayed in place and didn't pop out during the drive.



This Miata "trick" comes from an issue in the '99-'05 NB models where the tabs in the kickpanel underneath the steering wheel bend inwards over time, and the panel won't click in and hangs loose at the top.

The last little thing I got done was changing the diff fluid. I was previously running Motul 90PA, which is a clutch-LSD specific fluid with friction modifier. It may have not helped my diff lock up previously. So I swapped it out with fluids I had laying around - about 1/2 quart of AMSOIL Severe Gear 75w90, and 1 quart of Mobil 1 75w90 for LSDs. The overall combination probably had a lower concentration of friction modifier compared to the Moutl fluid. It definitely helped - I found an open patch of road, steered left, dumped the clutch, and the rear end swung immediately. It would have spun like an open diff before. So another item off the list!

Next update will be on the JDM cluster, promise!!

[RA61Kurt]

i had no idea the mk2 and mk3 Celica mudflaps were interchangeable! Might help when the supply of spares inevitably dries up 

[twotone_ra64]

i had no idea the mk2 and mk3 Celica mudflaps were interchangeable! Might help when the supply of spares inevitably dries up 

Interchangeability is a great thing! You will have to drill 2 new holes either side to make it fit, but the overall curvature of the flaps is what counts most for fitment.

[twotone_ra64]

As promised, here's a bit of info regarding the JDM cluster swap!

Warning: This took way more effort than it was worth. I'd say 20+ hours went into making this mod work properly. There are more differences between the LHD and RHD clusters than you probably can think of at first. At the very least, I now have a functioning temp gauge.

One of the first modifications you'll have to make is to drill into the dash frame behind the stock cluster. The speedometers are swapped sides between LHD and RHD clusters, so a new hole will be needed to route the speedo cable to the cluster. Don't be conservative on this hole - you'll want it to be at least 2" in diameter. So get the hole saw and go to town, because otherwise you'll start too small and spend hours grinding away like I did.



Next task is the wiring. I was lucky enough to get a copy of the AA63 Celica wiring diagram, courtesy of my friend Kuwahawa-san on Facebook. It took a while to decipher the Japanese diagrams and understand which plugs the pinout was referring to. Probably a good 6-8 hours. But, after cross-referencing with the factory wiring manual, this is what I came up with:



All you have to do is re-pin the stock connectors. The O/D indicator wire will of course be unused, if your car was previously an auto, and you'll have to splice together two of the red wires for the Digital clock (B+ and ACC) to make it work properly (B+ is for clock memory, ACC for the display). Other than that, it'll work fine! No more seatbelt warning light, that gets replaced with an exhaust temp warning light. Finally, there's an extra blue-red wire that you can hook up to a ~kinkon~ Initial D speed warning chime if you want. I still haven't wired in mine.

You should end up with a harness that look like this:



And the new wire color / plug layouts:









Fitting the cluster in the hole needed a little bit of grinding to one of the tabs (darn asymmetry) but that was all.

Even the fuel warning light works!





That's pretty much it, and hopefully it takes some of the guesswork out of doing this if you so happen to do it yourself!

[Teranfirbt]

I'd say you need the 4AGE to go with that redline, but you've got it covered in other ways

[ozzie]

The double hole saw trick - for when you start too small

[RedCar]

Aha! So I'm not the only AvE fan.
Awesome channel.   

[Sigma Projects]

The double hole saw trick - for when you start too small

that's actually good advice, I'll remember that for sure when I'm fabricobbling things.