Roreri":11wkmxss said:
Super nice find! I saw the Hachinohe plate on that Canter. I know Hachinohe decently well, having been over to Misawa a time or three. They still got those Gundam statues by that barber shop on the road up to Misawa?
Northern Japan is a dang near perfect place to own one of these. Beautiful countryside. If you haven't been, I recommend a ferry ride over to Tomakomai now and again the roads in Hokkaido are great for touring, too.
Interesting about the GT-Four door decals being replaced with a Castrol sticker. I have a JDM Gt-Four too and the GT-Four door decals are missing--I'm wondering if this is just a thing they did there, or whether the stickers were not applied, or what.
Badging is always interesting. I see you have CELICA on the front hood trim, but no Toyota emblem, and no badges on the back. The previous owner of mine put a Celica AllTrac badge on it.
No ABS or sunroof, like mine. No loss, in my opinion.
Funky gauge cluster addon there.
What's going on with the weird switch outboard of the steering wheel? Looks like something was put in there? On mine it's just a circular plug with no switch.
Nice that you have the fog lights, mine were gone.
Based on how you were able to get the gloss back on that paint, if you get a clear coat applied I bet it will come back sharp.
How's the rust situation underneath?
Almost 150,000 kilometers is a high mileage Japanese car for sure! If this GT-Four is in typical Japanese-owned condition it should recover well from its long slumber--I can't see any shaken stickers to make a guess at when last this was road legal (mine's shaken expired in Heisei 17). It doesn't look like anything crazy was done to it--a good sign in my opinion. Looks in overall great shape.
Welcome to the forums! Looking forward to seeing more about this. You bringing it to the states or are you long term staying in Japan?
Yes the Barber shop guy still has the Gundam Statues, they're really cool. Yeah didn't like the Castrol stickers, I removed them, and began the wet sanding process to completely remove the etching of the sticker. I will be adding st205 celica spoiler GT-Four emblems in it's place, will also try to get a new decal for the turbo all wheel driver sticker. This car didn't seem to come with badging, I see no sign of them taking them off, unless they removed and polished afterwards. I am also glad it doesn't have a sunroof, and or ABS i prefer the nimble feeling of a simple celica. for the switch, they added it for the fog lights, really weird since the oem fog light switch works, it's hooked up to another independent relay system, from what I could see is they had other fog lights connected before, but removed them and never took out the switch or the relay. I will be doing this eventually. I want to take out all excess wiring, to include the turbo timer it currently has, I will verify proper installation on the turbo timer and go from there. the gauge cluster has that ugly white cover, i will also remove this and put it back to stock, or could possibly mold it and make it out of dry carbon. on the shine, I will do a proper 3 stage paint correction, and follow up with a ceramic coating, the car definitely needs a new paint job, but I won't do that till the car is back home with me. For now it's just a paint correction/ ceramic coating, and touch up paint where it needs it. The underneath is flawless, we inspected it with a frame inspection hammer, as mentioned car has sat for a very long time, and the owner had it stored indoors (some make shift farm shed). according to owner kilometers went up a lot because he commuted from Towada to Sendai once a week before putting the car away (his words). Either way car is in good shape, not perfect, but good specially for its age, timing was done a year prior to being stored, coolant seemed really clean. But will still do all the belts and seals to make sure all is good. i am also replacing the Radiator while at it. Mostly just going back and doing much needed maintenance. We recently did the Shaken (we, as in me and a Japanese friend (mostly him lol), I was lucky enough to find a Kakimoto complete exhaust system on the Auctions for a really cheap price, that's all that was changed other than fluids. passed emissions easily, and ran decent after 2 tanks of gas to clear out the old stuff. all it needed was a headlight alignment, and brighter bulbs to pass, so it wasn't hard. My plan is to bring it home with me when i leave here mid 2023, I own a composite shop in Mexico so plan to mold and make body parts that are heavy on this thing, one thing for sure is the hood, it weighs a lot lol. Ill make sure to post more, snow is melting away now so soon, ill put on the summer wheel set (a set of Works) not an aggressive set up, but good for now.
