Had our season closer meet last Friday. All the Lexus / Toyota / Scion groups tried to come together for a large group closer meet. We ran out of time so we ended working with GrimmSpeed to host us in combination with their final After Hours event, with Toyotas being showcased at their event. We called it the GrimmSpeed Toyota Takeover of 2018!
It was awesome. We crammed i think 10 T/S/L's in their facility as 'showcase' cars. A nice mix of a few different models. Mine was one on display. There were a ton more T/S/L's in the parking lot, along with a huge variety of all sorts of other cars that the GrimmSpeed after hours event attracted. What a cool meet with so much variety, raffle prizes (most of which accrued/donated by the TSL admins). Everyone was very respectful, positive atmosphere, no drama, couldn't have asked for a better event!
Pics can be found here, but i also am throwing a couple up. David is updating the album daily as he gets through editing more photos.
A very nice white mid engine machine made it as well which I was pumped to see!
Been awhile since I updated. Big change for this year was changing out the CD009 setup to a Grannas Tremec Magnum T56 setup. My CD009 was starting to make a wierd grinding/buzzing noise when slipping the clutch which turned out to be a pilot bearing issue. But I also hated that twin disc. So I went with the GR700 kit (Magnum 6spd factory rated at 700tq). Comp Clutch MPC twin disc. This clutch is similar to the McLeod and very catered to high hp street cars. So it's meant to hold power and drive nice, which holy cow does it! Had a driveshaft made local at AA Driveline out of .100" DOM 2.5" steel. Also had to drop the diff and replace the 3.27 gears with 4.10's to match up with this new trans gearing.
So far super happy with it! Drives 100x better than the old setup in just about every aspect. And installs easier too. I actually enjoy driving this car again!!
Now that im generally happy with how the car is running its time to move onto something Ive been seriously slacking on.
Operation Interior Rehab has officially begun. The interior has always been ok from a far. But once you're in the car you realize it needs a bit of TLC. The light beige color just really looks dirty a lot. Carpet is dirty. And this car truly is a street car so i feel like these race seats were a bad idea. So my goal is to clean up the interior and make it a bit more classy and comfy again. Id like to try and imitate the darker tan/black color schemes you see a lot in like bmw's. Im going to have a lot more black then tan i think just because of how this interior is, but i want some of that cool tan contrast coloring.
So here we go! Corbeau's will be up for sale soon. I already purchased a used set of Toyota Celica seats for $85 out the door lol. Looking into reupholstering options but the plan is dark tan leather. Rear seats will be done in the same as well.
Rev 1 of the seat brackets went really well. We adjusted things a couple mm here and there and today I will be trying out Rev 2. Hopefully this is it!
Also the new speakers came in today. Kicker CS line, 6.5" components for up front, and 6.5" 2-way's for the back. And also some new adapter panels for the front doors since this car actually came with 4" from the factory.
Also been talking with Interior Innovations for some new leather seat covers. They don't have a pattern for the Celica's, but they asked if I could sent them the factory cover off mine and they will make one based on that and give me a discount since I'm helping them on a new application they don't already have. Plan is the dark tan for fronts and rears!!!
Old seat covers have been removed and shipped to Interior Innovations. They are giving me a discount since im helping them add a new application to their catalog. Cant wait to get the new covers! No idea what turnaround time will be but i dont care because i can still rock the corbeau's until then.
We finalized the rear bracket design and thankfully lexus kept things standardized. So the same brackets work for both sides (just have to bend them in reverse). Next is the front brackets which should be done tomorrow and they are rly simple so i doubt there will be any issues there.
I also got the front and rear speakers installed. The old rear setup was very odd. I did a bunch of online reading that basically said u can fit a 6.5 in the stock holes, just use some larger washers since the holes dont line up exactly right. So i did just that. I also lined the bottom edge of the speaker in foam so its not just resting on metal. It may not look it but they are fastened down very tight and dont budge. The fronts are in with the door adapters, and i think these tweeters will fit fine in the factory location. The tweeter amp i just mounted right sbove the speaker.
Jeremy helped me with some settings on my head unit. And holy cow this sounds incredible now with the new speakers amd settings, basslink is doing great. So I'm super thrilled with it all !
I also ordered up a bunch of SEM for the interior coloring portion of this project. Should be here Thursday. I also ordered up some supposide clean black carpet. I started removing the interior. All the rear is out and im going to SEM that first and check my results on the rears first before moving onto the front.
Hoping in say 2 weeks or so i have the interior all done mi us waiting on the seat covers! Side note is seat covers will also come with an armrest cover and door oanel inserts. So i might be able to add a touch of more tan with those if i want
Continuing with operation interior rehab. I sourced a couple replacement black interior panels and some black carpet from a guy who is basically the equivalent of the DSM Graveyard but for SC's.
But still many of the interior parts will not be OEM black so I decided to start working on coating some of the factory tan pieces with SEM. Never used this stuff before but man my initial impression is that it's very nice. Time will tell how long it lasts, but it's supposed to be the good stuff so I'm hoping for the best!
1) Clean with SEM Soap and scotch brite
2) Clean with SEM Prep Cleaner (alcohol basically)
3) Spray on SEM Adhesion Promoter
4) Spray on several light coats of SEM Color Coat (Landau Black)
On the first pieces (rear large trim pieces) I ended up using a whole can of Black, and did about 7 light coats (5min between coats) until I felt like all the tan was hidden. On the second pieces I did it only took me 5 coats.
I'm about out of the black so I have 3 more cans on order.
The photos of the large trim pieces show what it looked like with 1 coat, 3 coats, then 7 coats.
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