Father & Son's 185

I've been on the lookout for a car to fix up with my kids for a while now. I found a few, but nothing that really stuck out. I found a '69 Camaro, a couple of Evos, lots of WRXs (Subaru's are extremely popular in Alaska) 240s, 280s, a 300zx… You know the usual list. The Camaro was waaay too far gone for me and the others are too common. I didn't know what I was looking for but it had to be special; I didn't want to run into myself at every street corner and I wanted it to be something not a lot of people knew about (That's probably the #1 thing I love about this car). It had to make me feel something too. I had some criteria. It had to be at least rear-wheel drive but all-wheel was better, and I preferred four doors. It had to be black. No wiggle room there.

I was keeping my eyes open for anything that stuck out for months when I remembered a story that my buddy told me in high school about a Celica GT4: It got smoked by what ended up being a turbo'd sleeper Astro mini-van :doh: ... but it was still a fast car, he said. So I checked around and found this. One of very few so I wouldn't pull up between two others at the stop light. Leather, sunroof, cruise control, manual. A great support following and a great pedigree. Perfect. It needed love. Badly. But I thought, "This is perfect. I can teach my kids everything from brakes to bodywork and save this car from certain death." The previous owners really did not treat it well at all.

This will be a slow-but-sure project to bring this car to what it should be. I'm learning as I go about the all-trac, so I want to take lots of pictures with part numbers and help people who may be looking for the same stuff. I appreciate constructive criticism, so if you see I've missed something or think I should try something different feel free to chime in. Please remember: This is as much my kids' project as it is mine, so keep it constructive. Thanks.

If there’s one thing I regret already it’s not taking a picture of it the minute I picked it up, just to show you how bad it was from the beginning. The first thing I did was wash it. And get new wheels.



Yikes! I had to drive around with these for a week. :nono: It looked like James Bond in a Tuxedo T-Shirt. Just... awful.


Much Better!

If you get these make sure you get small diameter lug nuts. I got the black ones:
http://www.gorilla-auto.com/small-diame ... ts-page-02


The upgrades I've done so far have been to modernize it.


TWM Short Shifter http://www.twmperformance.com/shortshif ... ifters.htm


Everything that comes in the box


Old vs New




Installed. I usually don't go for the CF, but this looks really good. I plan to get a new boot. More important things first.

We've done a lot to the car, but we'll post it later.

Props to you for saving an Alltrac, and even bigger props for doing so with your family. Judging by the short shifter you won't be taking many shortcuts on this thing.

Also, moar pics!

Don't worry. I have lots. It's time I don't have.

In January I tried to just take a drive and get used to the car and had to call my wife...


We had more snow this year than ever before on record. It was ridiculous. You couldn't tell how deep it was. I was driving along and then suddenly I hit a drift and it bottomed out. It took 3 hours of digging and our Land Cruiser to get it out.

In this picture you can see the damage to the body by the previous owners. It's like this all over. From what I can tell they locked themselves out several times and attempted to pry off the quarter windows to get in (which is why they leak). One person told me it was an ex-girlfriend with the rest of the body. Whatever it was I've got some work to do.

Now the way I'm doing this isn't starting with the body. I'm starting "outside-in". First with the wheels, brakes, suspension, all the way to the engine. Then the body and interior.

I'm trying to modernize the car a bit with the regular upgrades:


Speed Source motor mounts (I stuck 'em to the wall )


Speed Source crossmember bushing kit


Whiteline 3-point adjustable rear swaybar


New endlinks from Two's r Us

SuperPro Bushings (It took a lot of searching to get these):











A cosmetic improvement along with the Rear Outer Spherical Bearings from Toyota. If you don't have the clear corners, you really should. They look so much better.

Next I'll start tearing into the car...

Glad to see you're getting a project thread going!

I definitely dig the father and son thing. In the future if I have a son, I'm definitely hoping he'll take to the whole car/garage scene (if not, I'll still enjoy it for myself lol).

You can't buy new rocker panels from Toyota anymore.

I know you said the body was one of the last, but I would definitely start looking into seeing what kind of damage there may be around that area.

Bryan

Sorry it's been a minute. Between work, 3 boys, everyday life, and working on the car there's little time to post my progress. I'm actually much further ahead than what is here. I'm almost ready to put bearings in and put the rear end back together! But I'm going to post it all in order. I've kind of run into a snag. It's not a problem, just more of an inconvenience...

We're moving to Utah! I'm really excited because it's only an hour away from my brother and there are actually other all trac members there! I'm being re-assigned to near SLC. The whole family is really happy.

Now the inconvenience part, I need some help with my car...

So when I removed my tire, went to loosen the axle nut:




and this is what I found


I was able to remove it with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Yikes.

Now this is something I never did before I had my current job:

Very important. If you don't do this you should. It makes it so much easier to put things together later. I mean come on, how many of us start on a project and, before we're finally finished, have a nut or bolt left over and say: "... What the heck is this from?". It never will happen again.

So this is what I need help with. The E-brake never worked when I bought the car, and I thought it just was loose or something. Oh no, it was much worse:

Do you see it? Or not see it would be the better question. There is no e-brake. Now I've been trying to find all the parts and part numbers to build the brake back up. I've used toayoztan's thread as he's documented with pictures and P/Ns but I don't have them all. So Bryan if you have the rest I could really use them. These are the ones I have:

90501-14049 - shoe hold down spring
90504-14002 - springs
47491-22020 - adjusting rubber plugs
90507-16009 - tension springs
90213-07018 - washers
47449-32010 - shoe hold down cups
47449-30030 - the other shoe hold down cups

This is a picture of some e-brake parts that I don't have

I need the arms, the pins, the tightener and it looks like the forked thing at the 12 o'clock position in the picture.

If anyone has the P/Ns for these It would be very helpful. Basically I need everything but the shoes. Since we are moving I need to quickly put the car back together to ship. I'm not really happy about it because I'm not ready. I'm about 85% done with what I wanted to do in this phase. But in the end it needs to have a working e-brake. So any help would be... um, helpful.

wow if i knew... my whole back including the arms, diff suspension spindels, etc.. came from a st205, shot the 185 stuff in the garbage...

You can look up part numbers on toyodiy.com - that should help.

It might also be worth putting up a wanted add in the for market place area of the board here. Good luck!

-Charlie

Thanks guys.

phattyduck - I don't know why I forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder.

underscore - Thanks for the info too. There might be a part or two I could use...

Ok, so I found this on villagetoyotaparts.com



The numbers are index numbers but you can find the P/Ns down on the list. FYI 1sttoyotaparts are cheaper. If anyone else needs it, here you go.

Wow! No ebrake. Your car was loved by it's previous owners :shoots:

So, I'm not dead.

And I still have my all-trac :wink: .

We finally got moved into our new house. It's great! Big back yard, big garage that's practically screaming to be finished and the whole family loves it. I'll spare you all the long story. Just suffice it to say we are all very happy... and tired. Very tired.

I'll be posting pictures and some [ :bangshead: ] stories about the car when we have a little more freetime. I'm sitting on a pillow right now trying to eat cereal (boxes everywhere).

Just wanted to say hello and I'm back and all that!

Did I hear correctly that you moved to Utah? Or did you end up staying in Alaska?

Yup, Utah. Clinton to be specific. Right near Hill AFB.

I'm down there from time to time and tjdouble07 works on base. Maybe we'll have to meet up some time.

Congrats on the new house. So has there been any progress on the car since June or was that on hold?

-Terracar

RedCelicaTRD":1z2xpxja said:

I'm down there from time to time and tjdouble07 works on base. Maybe we'll have to meet up some time.

Click to expand...

I would like that. It would be nice to see first-hand what you have done to your cars. I DD mine so you may see me around with my kids some time.

Thanks! We love having a home. Nothing beats having a spacious garage! It's not finished, but I'll fix that! I haven't really done much except general maintenance on the car. To be honest, I'm looking forward to getting some advice on the progression. I'm kinda at a crossroads... I'll leave it at that for now.

Thanks everybody.
-Anthony

Welcome to our great state!!!

If you get the chance to see tjdouble's car, you will be imppressed. That thing is a beast.

When cars and coffee kicks back up you should try and make it out.

I was here some years ago. Had some friends who moved here from Indiana and we worked at a Scout camp. I loved it and always wanted to come back. It's actually very similar to Alaska in many ways. My brother lives near Salt Lake so that makes it even better.

I am really looking forward to taking my kids to the meets. And yeah, I do want to see TJ's car. Pictures don't do it justice I'm sure.
-Anthony

Wayne I would love to meet up some time. I'd be nice to see what my car could be with some hard work.

Well we're all settled in for the most part. Lots of work organizing, cleaning up and getting to know the area. Usual moving stuff, you know? Well before we left I did a lot of stuff to the car. Haven't really done anything since. So most of the pictures you see will be from Alaska. There not in any particular order. Before I left I had to ship it and to do that it had to be in proper running order. That was an awful 2 weeks. I couldn't take the time to fix things the way I wanted. Oh, I hated that. I have to redo a bunch of stuff now.

How it sat for a long time. Poor thing.


Thing 1 and Thing 2. One great thing about using your kids is free labor. The problem with free labor is it's rarely good quality. But, I still love them and they have such a good time.


Sitting in the garage


Picked up some fog lights from ALLensTrac. Sandblasted the mounts, and applied POR-15. Thank you Allen.


Did the same thing to many suspension parts. Pretty much anything that was metal and could fit in the sandblaster.


Dismantled the rear end:


Jeez these spherical bearings were a pain to remove. I had to tap out and let a professional do it.


Diff. I wanted to have it cleaned and rebuilt, but time didn't allow. Had to go back up dirty. Not happy about it, but it happens sometimes. It was mechanically sound though.


See the difference! the axle is what everything looked like: dirty, rusty ugly. The control arm was blasted, and POR-15 applied. It's nice to know that I'll never have to worry about those parts again.


CF driveshaft from the group buy a while back.


Amazing that this weighs less than an axle.


Putting things back together.


Some things I got to make it a little nicer.






Changed what I could to LEDs. I like them a lot better.


Fixed both door switches. Now the lights work.


Oh, yeah. I know I mentioned this before but I don't think I posted it. This is the story of my car; the overflowing love of the previous owners:


Innovate A/F and boost gauge working.


#3 helping to clean up the car


Here you can see the work I have ahead of me with the body work. It's nothing big, but a lot of small stuff.


An F-22. It's cool, but after 3 years of living at the end of a runway with them flying everyday... well you can imagine This was during the Air Show which took place (you guessed it) right above our house.


My camera isn't very good at getting moving targets. They used to take their approach right beside our house and I tried to get a cool shot. If you look carefully you can see it flying into the tree.


I haven't taken one in the new home yet. They shipped the car to Seattle and we had a nice drive! I parked the car in the garage, cleaned up the house for two weeks and now the car turns over and won't start. Not gonna lie... kinda upset. From reading the forum and my small knowledge of cars it seems to be timing? Fuel is pumping. Now, if you had to explain the fix to a 5 year old... So I can... Uh... Explain it to my son... Yeah... How would you do that? 'Cause he doesn't understand how you are supposed to check the timing at idle if it won't run? If you could give some tips I -- I mean he -- would appreciate it. Thanks guys!

-Anthony