New adventure Toy(ota) in AZ

Jrally

Adventurer
The front end, a-arms, strut spacers, and some of the subframe where all modeled in SolidWorks to check for proper angles, arm lengths and figure out the ball park for correcting the bump steer. When I built a 3" drop down subframe, I had to move the tierod location up roughly an equal amount to minimize the effect. But, the a-arm pivots also got moved in, toward center 3" per side, so I could run longer then stock arms, minimizing suspension angle changes with travel. This helps with ball joint binding. Some how, I got it right and reduced bumpsteer slightly over stock.
I modeled the back suspension too, had to figure out where the top arm, front pivots had to go to get the right axle bite for traction. The other concern was pinion angle changes when going from the stock 5" of travel to the current 9" of travel. It was worth the time spent at the computer, the car, other then trophy truck amounts of body roll, handles great and hooks up in the dirt and on pavement extremely well, it never gets any wheel hop...

-Jon
 
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It's been said, but, dang, that's a neat concept, designed well, and fabricated with skill.... Not much impresses me on the web anymore, and that is impressive!
 

Jrally

Adventurer
Like most projects, it'll likely never be "done". But, I'll be sure to keep up with the updates. This week, I decided with all the weigh I'm putting back in the car and the street legal exhaust, that the engine might need some help. So, I bought a header to free up a few ponies to go along with a bigger bore throttle body. I figured, why should my race car be the only upgraded engine at home. :) More then anything, just planning ahead, as the roof rack is going to add wind drag and probably about 25-30lbs of weight. 22re engines aren't exactly known for making a lot of HP, good torque though and super reliable...
-Jon
 

Jrally

Adventurer
Not much car work done, except getting all the wiring harness redone for the oem radio to go back in. For some reason though, I'm more excited about finishing up building my headsets for the off road intercom. I suppose it was important to me, since I'm going off roading this coming weekend with my old rally co-driver. I'm heading over to SoCal, Lebec/Gorman for a www.CaliforniaRallySeries.com race. I was suppose to be running my rally car, but things fell though, so instead I'm taking over the now street legal Toy...

-Jon

Headsets.jpg
 

Jrally

Adventurer
I took the car out to Gorman Ca this past weekend to hang out at the rally that was going on. We got the chance to run around with the competitors on thier recce session (pre-run) in the Celica
A couple short video clips...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOVOszLqxNc"]YouTube- BadgerHairPin.AVI[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Uv7BgVmUs"]YouTube- MaxieClimb.AVI[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5qL7pidjVI"]YouTube- PowerlineWht3.AVI[/ame]

-Jon
 

Cody1771

Explorer
man that looks like to much fun! i was thinking of doing this with my 93 Cehvy Cavalier Z24 back when i owned it but it got sold to pay for school :(
 

Mamontof

Explorer
I took the car out to Gorman Ca this past weekend to hang out at the rally that was going on. We got the chance to run around with the competitors on thier recce session (pre-run) in the Celica
A couple short video clips...
-Jon

Jon ,look like you easy can press gas for additional 10 miles more:elkgrin:

Great fun !!!
 

Jrally

Adventurer
The Celica is a pretty unique car in that it's basic driveline is that of Toyota trucks back in the day. The body/chassis is unibody, but the engine tranny directly swap with the 2wd trucks and the rear axle is a fairly beefy solid axle, upgraded by myself (bigger housing and truss welded across it). Ideally, I would have installed the 7.5" rear axle out of an earlier Supra, but they are like hens teeth to find in yards.

-Jon
 
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Jrally

Adventurer
I've been prepping the car to be the Course Closing Car at the Prescott Rally, Oct. 1&2. www.prescottrally.com The car got a lot of compliments at the last race, at which time the organizer for Prescott asked if I would be willing to volunteer myself and the car. So, of course I jumped at the chance, since I'm not racing this year.
I've been making the car as reliable as possible, zip tied all the plug wires to the distibutor cap, since the coil wire fell off a few weeks ago on a series of wash boards. I finally got my aftermarket gas tanks fuel sender hooked up to the stock gauge. Full reads low, but empty means empty, which seemed more important than full. I replaced the inner tie rods and dust boots to take some of the slop out of the steering, still running it without power assist. This week I swapped out the rear springs for a slightly stiff rate, to raise up the back end a little and to get the car ready for carrying more cargo in the future. Hopefully this will take some of the load of the rear shocks as well. The progressive springs work great, but on dirt roads they oscillate so much that the shocks get VERY hot. I'm also having Bilstein look into building me proper off road valved front struts, like a rally car would use.

-Jon
 

bajajoaquin

Adventurer
The Celica is a pretty unique car in that it's basic driveline is that of Toyota trucks back in the day. The body/chassis is unibody, but the engine tranny directly swap with the 2wd trucks and the rear axle is a fairly beefy solid axle, upgraded by myself (bigger housing and truss welded across it). Ideally, I would have installed the 7.5" rear axle out of an earlier Supra, but they are like hens teeth to find in yards.

-Jon

Does this mean you could swap in truck 4x4 IFS?
 

Jrally

Adventurer
Anything is possible I suppose, but it would be a lot of work to do so. The floor pan wouldn't be very accomodating to a shiftable transfer case. Maybe a very small divorced TC from a Suzuki could fit in a bit easier. Also my current front arm mounts would have to change, there is a frame piece right where the axle would need to come through. If that wasn't the case, one could have used the strus and uprights/hubs off a fwd Toyota to make it happen, for the least amount of work.

-Jon
 

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