Project Pearl

deecee

New member
November 2015

Got the neighbour to skip the discs at his workshop for free. Used my old rear discs, but they were the wrong size for the RC. So many little differences
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Needed to get the bonnet, bumper and guards painted, so loaded up parts and took them to the panel beater.
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And why is the RC called Pearl? Because of the pearl paint :)
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Needed to repair the drivers seat. I found a Celica up at Pick A Part with the confetti pattern, but the drivers seat was pretty crap. So I decided to take the passenger seat and swap material and possibly foam over.

Following pictures go through the disassembly and reassembly of the seat step by step. Will add little notes where I think appropriate.

Take headrests off.
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You're left with bracket attached to the main plastic cover
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Disassemble underside of seat
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Seat bolster and material destroyed from years of use
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deecee

New member
Main plastic cover needs to be moved up to unclip from the seat back
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Remove the brackets first
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Note locations of the clips
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Back of seat and actuators to adjust the seat
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Remove hog pins. Note, all hog pins were pried apart for reuse later
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Pull through cable
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Remove hog pins which hold in the rubber hoses which hold the seat material in place.
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Unbolt the seat back
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Remove the ajustment dials on the side
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Use a screwdriver or two to pop the clips.
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deecee

New member
Remove the tilt handle
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Remove screw under the tilt handle
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Remove side cover
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Remove screws for side cover, belt buckle, undo seatbelt sensor wire
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Remove bolts either side to remove seat base
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Then you are left with the seat frame
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Remove hog pins to release seat base material
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Unlatch the plastic side and rear clips
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More hog pins to remove
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Now the base is free
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deecee

New member
Remove hog pins to side. Note, the rubber tubing holds the material in place. Remove hog pins, do not cut the rubber tubing.
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The seat back material is held in with metal rods using hog pins. Remove carefully and yes, they are a pain in the rear to reach.
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Seat back is 5.4kg with motors, no foam or material. Heavy suckers
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As I was swapping material from Passenger seat to drivers seat, here are photos of the passenger seat disassembly
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deecee

New member
Headrests. Remove screws inside rubber grommet. Note the different colours and length
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Pull plastic cover down
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Unclip plastic tabs
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Remove material
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Remove foam
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The seat back foam is the same between driver and passenger sides
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Obviously drivers side has actuators to control side bolsters and lumbar support. Doesn't mean you couldn't put in a drivers side seat back on to the passenger side if you wanted. Would just need another control box and loom.
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Seat back material has a rod at the bottom. Thread back through the vinyl
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deecee

New member
Rubber tubes, metal rods and long metal rod which loops around are removed to be able to wash the covers.
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Time to clean. Honestly, the covers were absolutely filthy.
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And in to the washing machine
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After washing and drying on the line, the seat covers came out amazing! Previously you couldn't even see the pattern there was so much dirt embedded.
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Time to reassemble the seat.
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Use one of the rods to pull through the rubber tubes
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Seat back material ready for reassembly
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Attach the foam
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deecee

New member
Put material over foam and frame
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Position material around the headrest adjustment
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Manipulate the material in and around the foam
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Reuse the hog pins
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Once the seat back is finished, should look like this
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Seat base is a little more fun. The rods are embedded in the foam with gauze. Commonly the gauze will disintegrate. Do you best to not rip the rods straight out.
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Seat base:

as you can see, the guaze can break apart easily. Base material has rods as does the base foam. Both rods are joined together with hog pins
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Fit material over the foam. Attach the rods between the material and foam together with the hog pins. Tip, rotate the sharp edges of the hog pins down to prevent sharp objects pointing up in to your bum. Read for the frame
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deecee

New member
Frame held to foam with rods and hog pins. Using a screw driver, I pushed the rod against the frame and then put a hog pin on.
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Seat base done
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Give the seat base a brush down
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As I swaped the passenger side base material to the drivers side, I needed to cut out a hole for the bolt hole on either side. Note, you can't swap the frame over as there is provision on the drivers seat base for the vertical lift mechanism.
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Find the hole
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deecee

New member
Identify size of hole
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Cut carefully
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And done
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Bolt in base
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Bolt in back
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Used zip ties to finish up the holding the seat material against the frame as I couldn't hold the material and manipulate a hog pin in to position.
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Put plastic cover back on, manipulating the cover over the headreat adjustment
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deecee

New member
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Clip the loom in to place on the underside of the seat.
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Clip bottom cover back in to place
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Put seat buckle wire in place
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Put covers back on. Screw in
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Note, the covers have clips
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Put screw back in
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Put tilt adjustment handle back on
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deecee

New member
Put circlip on to adjustment dial
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Push dial on to spline, then push the circlip down
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Headrest is easy to reassemble
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Note, clips which need to go clip on to the headrest frame
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Rubber has location points to mount correctly
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Material needs to sit over the corners of the frame
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Clip cover in to place
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deecee

New member
Screw down, remember which screws go where?
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Mount headrest
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Using a small screwdriver, position the rubber over the bracket on the seat back
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And a drivers seat disassembled, cleaned up and reassembled! :)
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Remember what we started with?
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deecee

New member
23 November 2015

A NZ GT Four Club member came over to inspect the RC's ECU. The caps in their RC had leaked and blown a track on the board. They needed to look at mine to identify where the track went.
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Since the ECU was out, I decided to send it up to Auckland to a friend to get all the caps replaced.
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Firstly I provided him with these cap values: 2x 10uf50v; 15uf35v; 100uf10v, 33uf35v; 220uf10v; 47uf63v
He said he had them in his workshop, so the ECU refresh was a go.

Interestingly, he has the equipment to read and write EPROMs, so we had a little conversation about modification of Toyota ECUs. What was interesting was the ability to design custom boards and get them prototyped in batches of 100 or so. So there is the potential to create new RC ECU's if there was ever a need. But after some analysis, there really was little value in doing so as it was just as easy to buy a MegaSquirt or move up to a Link or Haltech due to the prototyping cost.

Once the ECU was in Auckland, Dee had a look over the ECU. He noted the following:
- Just doing some research. These eeproms looks to be masked which means if I try to read it I will get garbage for data.
- Ecu does have a moisture barrier/conformal coating. Looks to be laquer based as isopropyl turns it sticky.
- All the caps are done..im working on thr eprom now. I trying a slip on chip adaptor before i try desoldering it. I should be able to read it without pulling thr chip. Saves melting the lacquer coating and making it look like a mess.
- Its garbled data. The chip has a toyota specific part number so i cant manually identify it. The auto detect mode on eprom reader reckons its a 27c512 chio but data comes back as garbage.

After that, he did ask about setting up a simulation bench so he can probe the logic. But too much effort and I was on a schedule as I was picking up a new project car in Auckland that weekend.

Here are some photos of his work:
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deecee

New member
25 November 2015

Had some issues fitting the exhaust system once everything was hanging from brackets and flanges were bolted up. Decided that I needed 10mm in a straight section, so the exhaust came out and I added a 10mm secion of pipe. Respray in heat temp paint and reinstalled with new gaskets and exhaust sealant.
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December 2015 - March 2016

No work on Pearl was done during this period of time. Promotion at work = more work, Christmas in Australia with my sister's family, and I decided to install a decent stereo system in my daily driver.

Stereo system in the car was a project in itself. Two months to do and I still haven't installed the sub yet lol
- Pioneer P99RS competition headunit which can be controlled by steering wheel controller
- 3 way active front speaker set up using custom speakers in factory locations with full sound deadening
- rear custom speakers in factory locations with full sound deadening
- re-wired the car for active speaker setup
- built amp rack for high end amps with fan controller system
 

deecee

New member
21 March 2016

Back to work on Pearl. Inner CV boot was torn. Time to replace the boot and regrease the inner CV.
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26 March 2016

Nick wet vacuumed the passenger seat as it was pretty manky.
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Disgusting to say the least
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A clean of the headliner was also in order. Disinfectant to start.
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Time to fit some mesh on the bumper and bonnet.
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Spray it black before bonding to the bumper.
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deecee

New member
Install side mesh insert which were saved from the original bumper. Cleaned up and sprayed black
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I wanted to see if the RC centre mesh could be used in the new bonnet. I ended up cutting off tabs to test fit
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One of the final pieces of the interior was the missing glovebox
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Tried the orginal mesh in the fibreglass bonnet, but the mesh was warped due to the crash. Time for some replacement mesh.
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Nick bonded in the spray painted bumper mesh
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Tried fitting the bumper but had a number of issues with fitment. Took bumper home to mod

April 2016 - May 2016
Bumper sat on the workbench at home for a couple of months. Got busy, unmotivated and at the start of May, fell down some stairs, so really screwed myself up for a month with a sore head and bruised leg.

3 June 2016
Finally I was up to standing for long periods of time and got back in to the garage after a call from someone who was enquiring about purchasing Pearl.

First things first, time to sort out the bumper fitment.

Got my aluminium crash bar and original RC bumper and checked clearances with the FG bumper and mesh.
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Trimmed some of the mesh
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Tried fitting the bumper again, but again, no success.
 

deecee

New member
4 June 2016

After looking at the flanges to the side and thinking they were too thick I removed the side brackets to sand the FG flange down a bit. Reattached the bracket once I finished sanding.
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Decided that I needed to test the original bumper and aluminium support and so packed up the car with a bunch of stuff and headed back to Nick's. Bought some lights to work outside. Ended up being 5C and foggy that evening..

Nick changed the plint backing on the back as there was some adhesive left from a shitty bage left over. Pays to have spares around my garage
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Testing supports next to each other revealed nothing new. Pearls support was not bent/warped in the crash - phew!
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Honestly, Pearl spends half her time with body work off. Had to remove the guard as I snapped a bolt off in the guard so we needed to get it out.
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Decided to fit the fibreglass bonnet
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Nick removing said broken bolt after I drilled a hole in it at home.
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Bumper finally fitted on passenger side and bonnet trim added. Starting to look like a car. We still had bumper fitting issues though with the drivers side not fitting. Initially we thought the chassis rail was warped due to the crash or the guard was warped. After looking at the design of the original RC bumper and even test fitting it, we determined that the shape of the bumper at the bracket point couldn't flex due to the flange in place. The bumper, around the indicator area, does flex a bit and the FG bumper could flex with a bit of effort as well.
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Back to the bracket. As you can see, the flange is quite thick. 4.6mm if I remember. The stock flange is around 2.5 - 3.0mm or so.
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As you can see, the thickness is uniform along the flange. Obviously the moulding wasn't perfect and the shop added more material on to the flange for strength.
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Drilled out rivets again
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Dremal time
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Trim down was more intense this time with more measurements and test fitting of the bracket
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Better fit of the bracket
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deecee

New member
And success! Everything was fitted up. I let Nick put the licence plate on as it was a huge moment for both of us to get to this point.

I fixed up the glovebox as well which required swapping the latch and swapping out the locking mechanism which is for Elephant.

So time to start the car and give it a shakedown on the road. Clutch needed pumping a lot to get it in to gear and then on to the road for a proper test. Drove for 15 minutes and when I got back the car was smoking and steaming as the paint on the exhaust flashed off and the rust build up on the discs was removed with glazed pads. Quite funny to see it smoking from the underside of the car.

Time for a wash! Needed to get rid of the grime and brake/rust on the wheels.
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So after Pearl's wash, it was time for a shakedown out to the coast to see how the car was tracking and to check if the ECU would throw any codes. Of note, the speedo was way out, and is something that needs to be fixed before going for a warrant of fitness and road registration. Apart from that, there was various squealing from the brakes as they bedded in.
 

deecee

New member
Took some photos to show Pearl in the sunshine. Such a momentous occassion to see her back on the road for the first time in 2.5 years.
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deecee

New member
And some shots to show off to the prospective new owner
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Finished up the evening by parking up and chucking the cover over.

And so Pearl is back up and running and nearly everything is fixed up.
Only things to finish are to fit the bonnet washer jets and fix the speedometer issue.

I wonder if the speedometer issue is due to the cap replacement, but I will swap in another gauge cluster to see if the original gauge cluster is the issue.

So now after 237 photos of the past year, you are now up to date.

Cheers, Dave
 
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