Thinking About Getting One Of These...

Tossed some coat of bed liner on the horn and bracket that might show through the bumper if you lay on the ground and take a look. It'll probably chip off from road debris but it'll still disguise it well enough.

I love the horn! I honked at one of the tow guys when he was getting in his car at the yard (I pass by on my way home and always honk at the guys if I see them) and he caught up to me at a light and was asking about it "did you put a air horn on your car?!?" He said it's louder than the little flat bed tow trucks (it is actually).

I got one door lock actuator rebuilt, I also dampened the door with a sq ft of butly sound deadener, put some thin acoustic foam behind the woofer, and then sealed all the holes in the door. Both together seem to have REALLY made a massive difference in how the one side sounds, there is MUCH less distortion at higher volumes and bass levels from the one front speaker now. I'm working on doing the other side this evening and into tomorrow in the same way, I'll have to tear into the rear speakers and do the same thing back there in their cavities as well because now they sound atrocious compared to up front.

I got some rice.

They look decent, I think I'll polish the edges and get some better thinner mounting tape.

Me too, a good way to use my obscenely bright side markers and get turn signal repeaters on the side of the car without cutting into my fenders. I'm still on the fence about the JDM Supra side markers. I think they look cool but I just don't know.

Yes, which is why I'm so on the fence. I've found some pictures of them during the day time but none lit at night. They're a shade darker than the current orange and I'm not sure about that. Also it's $80 for a pair of them and that's hard for me to swallow.

So I replaced my AC condenser at home, that went fine, I pulled vacuum on it, also went fine, though the gauge I borrowed didn't show vacuum so I let it run for about 5 minutes and figured it was good enough. Bought 2 12oz cans, then a can tap, screwed the tap on to make sure it fit not realizing the tap point was not fully up and that's why I charged 11.5 oz of AC into my system in 40 degree weather. I put the can in hot water to get almost all of it out, there was NO liquid in the can and the compressor pulled the low side down to about 20psi before cutting off due to low charge. So enough is in the system to let it sit and look for leaks but I can't charge by pressures till it's in the 60's and I need my own gauge set because my friends I'm borrowing sucks. High side gauge doesn't work and that's where I needed to look for problems.

Sight glass looks good, I know it's low because I don't have all 16oz in there but I'm close enough, it would probably be cycling to the low cutoff in this weather anyway. I think I'm driving it tomorrow, low chance of rain but it's dirty anyway, and temps in the low 60's. It'll be a little chilly in the morning but not unsafe with the tires, they do OK when it's dry in the 40's and dry in the 50's is fine as well. I kind of hate the time change, I'd rather drive it at dusk/night because I got those amazing OEM HID headlights on it now and all the super bright LED exterior lighting but oh well, as long as I get to use my huge air horn! I need to go check tire pressures tonight so I know I'm OK to drive on the highway, felt fine around town. I used bead sealer when I mounted them. Hopefully I have some rack time to do a quick oil change at work tomorrow, have the filter already to go. No oil sample this time, it's $25 each time so I think I'll just do every other.

And it's leaking at the lower fitting. Looks like I may have pinched the O-ring, I kind of had to wiggle the fittings and it just popped together sharply. Loosing some oil from the connection.

And I bought a DD Intake Manifold.

Used with the Q45 throttle body for $650 shipped. Not so bad. Q45 throttle bodies go for like $100 around ebay sometimes if you hunt so I got the manifold for 1/2 price with a free throttle body if you think about it that way since the IM is $1,400 new. I dunno, we'll see. Still need to sort an intake for it and see if the 2AZ injectors will work, may need a stronger fuel pump yet too.

Me probably even more so than you. The money I saved on the IM I can blow on the everything else I need to get it running right and hopefully net better than 10hp.

Boss over charged the cylinder on the AC machine at work by a few pounds so I can't evacuate it out till we charge up some cars that need it i guess....or figure out how put some back. Oops.

I just authorized UPS to leave it my back door on Tuesday. I'm excited. I need to get with DDPR about the air intake setup, they said they have 3 options depending on budget so I need to see what those options are and if I can reuse any of my existing intake piping possibly. It's got the filter sitting behind the fog light with a stainless heat shield to deflect any water spray when driving in the rain. It sounds pretty nice there since it puts all the noise right in front of the driver side window and it's air is very segregated from the engine bay. I shot them an email to get back to me next week with some options, I'll probably just buy whatever through them assuming their markup isn't horrendous. I know buying through them I'll get real stuff, not knock off parts or crap used junk.

My fist fits inside the mouth of the throttle body. Sweet googly moogly what have I done?

So I installed the front mount insert needed to stop the engine from rocking and smacking the manifold into stuff. Only driven the car a few days with it and I think I can tolerate the vibrations. It kind of sucks loosing my smooth idle but the loss of that is kind of worth the gains from the solid-ish mount up front. It doesn't feel rubber bandy when I shift at high RPM, no more torque steer and wheel hop in low traction situations, no more torque steer shifting at 8000 rpm and 80mph (that one is sucky), I can power on a tight turn without hopping my inside wheel, inducing power on understeer is easier and more predictable, etc etc. All around more gains than losses. Bonus, my seat is now a massage chair at long red lights!

So I'm thinking about painting my brake calipers candy red with metalcast base and color coats. Is that too rice? I feel like it might be, but it would match the front Toyota emblem and rear red CELICA letter inserts. Now if I paint them I'm also thinking about getting some black decals that say Celica to break up the red some, but that would surely be rice right? The decals are only good to about 300F and the paint to 500F. I think I'd be OK with the paint, might melt the stickers. I plan to grind the rough cast surfaces down smooth so the calipers look nice, I need to bleed the brakes anyway so I'd pull them off one at a time and bleed one at a time as I paint them. It's going to be too humid the next week to do it anyway. I made a little doohicky with a bolt and some thick round rubber spacers that lets me seal up stainless brake lines without hurting them, invented it working on a Jag with factory SS brake lines!

So rice or not?

I think I'm getting used to the mount. I fixed an AC leak with some assistance from the boss, the Toyota supplied O-ring was leaking, lost about 1/2 my 1lb charge in about 6 weeks with a good spot of dye oil marking the location, the same spot I had a small leak before and a small leak when I bought the car. I thought I had damaged the o-ring during installation somehow but I took it off and it was perfect, so he helped me find one just a tiny tiny bit fatter that fits super tight and caught that the line was tweaked a little and may have not been pulling in totally flush when tightened, so hopefully between those two things it's fixed! Also the scale on the AC machine is out of calibration so he helped me eyeball it by pressures since a 1lb charge was sending my high side pressure sky high, even sucking it down to the .9lb min charge was still showing a high charge by pressure. Things are as they should be now and it's nice and ice cold again.

I'll have to keep an eye on it for a while to see if it's leaking or not, If it still leaks I don't know what I'll do with it. Maybe get a new high side line, there's a couple small nicks on the non sealing areas of the line that I guess might cause an issue but I can't see how, they were present from whenever I took it apart the first time.

I rebuilt/repaired my passenger side door check, it hadn't been holding the door at the half way point very well on a slight incline and a bit of wind would start it trying to close even when fully open. Kind of annoying after a while! My driver side is much worse, it basically won't stay in position unless I'm perfectly level and there's no wind, and even then it'll slam itself closed because a horsefly in Albuquerque sneezed. I'll repair it next once I'm sure this is a good repair.

So inside the door check are two nylon shoes and two rubber blocks which are a rectangle shape. I simply flipped one block so it sat taller and pushed it all back together, initially I tried to flip both but it was impossible to reassemble. Here's some photos of what's inside.