Rust restoration/suspension up grade

I bought a 91 all trac little over a year ago in Erie pa. I randomly bought the car hoping to have a soild car. My plans was to make it into a street car. The craigslist add said the car had a blown head gasket. I figured I would go check it out. A blown head gasket wasn't going to stop me from owning a all trac. The guy wanted 3500 dollars for it. I drove out to Eire after renting a car hauler. Yeah stupid me rented a hauler with out seeing the car in person. Well needless to say Eire is about 2 hours from Pittsburgh. So 180 dollars later I reach my destination. While talking with the guy I gathered some information on the car. He tells me just a little rust has started nothing major tho......... :bs: I started walking around the car looking at this so called little rust to find it was worse than he said. What a surprise.... I had a magnet with me to make sure nothing was fiber glassed. The car checks out and I work my way to the underneath of the car. I discover lots of issues.. 1. sway bar mounts rotted off. 2. rigged up brake lines/fuel lines. 3. Floor starting to rust thorough. :bangshead: After questioning him about his (little rust) he tells me he had no ideal... I ask him to take me for a ride the car was very low on power. He tells me once again it's the head gasket. I checked for signs of head gasket failure ( exhaust smoke,coolant leaking in oil/around head,over heating) I didn't find any of that. The only thing I found was small amount of coolant going into the over flow once at operation temp. At this point I'm starting to get real upset over this whole trip.. I just said screw it and seen what was going to be his lowest price. After stating the fact he basically wasted my time and my money. He lowered the price to 3000. Long story short I wasn't leaving without it. I got the car for 2000 with out the rims. Here is the add check it out guys. http://www.celispeed.com/forums/sale-fo ... 5-gt4.html Nice looking car in the pictures. But let me just say that looks can be deceiving. After unloading first thing I did was a comp test. #1cyl-184 psi #2,3,4-180 psi. Amazing for 158k miles. So I checked plugs wires cap and rotor to find all in great condition. I decided to take it for a little ride. Throughout the 45 min drive the car got worse i barely was able to make it back home. The next day I took the timing covers off to find the timing belt was super lose. I put every thing at TDC. It was off by 3 teeth unreal I still don't know how I got it home.. The belt looked fairly new so I took the tensioner off. It was so shot the push rod fell clean out of tensioner. I took off the tensioner off the gen4 motor I have. The only thing I modified was the metal timing cover to clear the longer tensioner. Slapped everything back on turned the key and boom she's alive.. The coolant over flow issue was due to a faulty rad cap. That's about the only luck I had with the car. I took the car apart winter of 2012 to discover the rust damage was just sickening. Words can't even describe the damage. Like the saying goes pictures are worth a 1000 words.

:shock: :doh:
Thats amazing.

So what are your plans for it?
I hope you are not considering repairing it?

Heres some more small rust. notice the body work done. some one pop riveted galvanized sheet metal then fiber glassed over!!!! I also like the fact the sun roof drains right into the rockers that's what I call custom. The end result of the driver side is this.... This is what happens to a rare beautiful piece off rally history in the hands of a guy that don't know body work.

by MWP » Tue Nov 12, 2013 9:11 pm


Thats amazing.

So what are your plans for it?
I hope you are not considering repairing it?


Yes I plan on restoring It. The driver side is done already. I have a amazing body guy doing this for me. He welded in rockers of a st. The only reason I didnt use gt-s or all trac rockers is the fact the plastic flares collect water dirt ect. I will post the finished driver side shortly. Check out my intro new member from pittsburgh pennsylvania in the (new member forum) There explains a lot of why I'm doing it and has info on what I did to make this project happen.

Well at least it sounds like you had about the same mechanical luck I had, shame about all that rust though. You're certainly a braver man than I am, but I certainly hope you can save the car.

Driver side finished. This side was worse than the passenger. Let me know what you fellow all trac owners think. Does this project look solid now? this was the floor that had the huge hole in it. That hole you see is for a rubber plug. I just need to round off the other side. this picture is the inside of the rear quarter. spot welded in and straight as a arrow. this picture here I need to join the two supports and that will be finished.

underscore":1u2aqpjf said:

Well at least it sounds like you had about the same mechanical luck I had, shame about all that rust though. You're certainly a braver man than I am, but I certainly hope you can save the car.

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If I didnt have my friend doing this body work I would have never even thought about restoring this car. I'm more into mechanical and wiring than auto body. She's looking like a solid car piece by piece she is going to be better than factory. I'm making the car a tank she's gonna be builet proof when we are done. :shoots: :smokes:

Here are some more of the finished driver side. Every weld shown will be easily ground down flush. There is no over lapping steel at all. So only a small amount of body filler will be used. This is very good considering the huge amount of body work done. 8)

Here are some pictures of the passenger side. Like I said the driver side was worse. Enjoy.. front of rear wheel well on the bottom of rear quarter. Beautiful eh? This is the only hole in the passenger floor pan. Located in right corner. The good old sway bar mount this area never rusts out...... :roll:
a better picture of the bottom of rear wheel well.
It's hard to tell but this is rusted roof flashing with expandable foam... I guess lows has a automotive section! :shock:
Top view of hole in floor pan.

Very oily and greasy. Soon the under side will be sprayed with thick truck bed liner. As well as the whole inside of the car. This should help with heat seal against water and help with cabin noise. The main reason is purely to protect all of the new steel. Every thing is also going to be seam sealed inside and out. I'm going as far as seam sealing over factory sealer.
But be for I even think about paint/sealer. I plan on welding every seam/joint and brace on this car. This is going to be a lot more work but who cares.. This alone will strengthen the chassis 25% or more over the factory chassis.

Here is what the rocker looks like off the st..

The passenger side will be pieced together piece by piece. Every spot weld drilled out and every brace in side the rocker will be welded into its origanal place. I'm sure most people see a car in this bad of shape and think. Wow this car would never be soild enoff to drive not even as a daily driver.. I trust this chassi reconstruction with my life. I will be putting that to the test with the beast of a motor I will be building next year. :evil: Here are the braces I will be buying once the other rocker is complete.

I will be using 3 of these drop sections flipped upside down. One up front as close as I can to the fire wall with out interfering with the transfer case,heater and air conditioning. I can fab up new mounts for clutch/brake/gas peddles if need be. The second one will run rite under the rear mounts for the front seats. I plan on bolting the seats to it. Then the 3rd section will run along the bottom of the rear seats. It will be counter sunk into the backing plate behind the passengers heels. Off subject but drive shaft loops will be mounted to theses drop sections. I may buy theses.

I will probably make my own tho.

Here is a few pictures of all my suspention parts I blasted and primed.

I lost a lot of my pictures of what the suspention parts looked like before here's a few that I have left.

Bushings all new oem suspention bolts from toyota and more.

Off topic but here is the rebuild I did it's all stock but very clean. :wink:

I sand blasted and painted the engine parts just with high temp spray paint for now. I just want clean and stock untill next year.
I lost a lot of my engine build pictures to. :x
that's about it for now. So let me know what u guys think about my project. It's nice to read other peoples thoughts on a project I am dumping money hours and love into.

Nice! Im glad your restoring it. Im in the same rust boat with my all trac and we will be starting to repair it very soon. I was up in the air about doing it but after seeing yours come back to life (your rust is worse than ours) I have alot more faith i can restore this. Did you guys run into any issues with the body needing any straitening or repair just because so much of the unibody was gone? I was worrying myself about structural integrity when having to replace so much metal.

you're in pittsburgh? where abouts?

littlemissalltrac":fzq69f9v said:

Nice! Im glad your restoring it. Im in the same rust boat with my all trac and we will be starting to repair it very soon. I was up in the air about doing it but after seeing yours come back to life (your rust is worse than ours) I have alot more faith i can restore this. Did you guys run into any issues with the body needing any straitening or repair just because so much of the unibody was gone? I was worrying myself about structural integrity when having to replace so much metal.

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Thank you. Ya I. Glad I'm fixing her up also there to rare to scrap it's just worth it to me. Glad my rust bomb gives you the confendence to make you start fixing yours. The rust we cut out was just nuts. We had to run a support brace from the front of the door frame to the back. Good thing we did cause the car looked like a wet noodle after we cut it all out. If you put the time into your car and drill out spot welds. You will find it so much easier to peice every thing in like factory. Honestly it looks very hard and then you start thinking what did I get my self into. Trust me if you cut out old rust drill spot welds out and use clean 90-93 celica rocker. Non convertible. It's like playing with big boy Lego's I think I'm going to be doing the passenger side my self with out the help of my buddy. I hate body work even painting. But the way things came apart and went in was like a no brainer. Think about it it's already preformed so you can't mess up body lines. If your floor is rusted out people won't see where the patching's are at. Unless carpet is not being used that's another story. The underside people won't see anything with bed liner. But anyway my car is super strong. Better than stock cause every thing inside my rocker (braces) are spot welded where toyota did cause I drilled out the spot welds. Then my buddy went ahead and ran beads of weld under overlapping brace that was spot welded. Like I said I will use 3 2x3" drop sections flipped to clear drive shaft and low enoff into the floor to not poke up trough the carpet. That's going to add over 80+ pounds but who cares my car will not flex period. I was lucky enoff all the owners used it as a dd. If It woulda got into the hands of a dude like me driving it hard like I do everything. That car woulda been toast. 8)

mx6er2587":1tweie7i said:

you're in pittsburgh? where abouts?

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I'm really in beaver county I live in hopewell just off 376. You?

I'm in the south hills just 15 minutes out from downtown. There's another board member with a trac who lives just a few blocks from me.

I've got some rust (not nearly as bad as yours) in my driver side rear quarter. I've been trying without much success to find a solid replacement for it.

mx6er2587":2gp4leeb said:

I'm in the south hills just 15 minutes out from downtown. There's another board member with a trac who lives just a few blocks from me.

I've got some rust (not nearly as bad as yours) in my driver side rear quarter. I've been trying without much success to find a solid replacement for it.

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Yeah I'm about 20-30 minutes from downtown. That's awesome to know there are some owners close by. I shoulda jointed a long time ago. Just in September my buddy got a bunch of random people together to have a little car meet/cook out at the raccoon state park. Do you know where that is? It woulda been awesome to see some all tracs there. Ha the majority of the cars there where cobalt SS's. :rofl: There was only 3 yotas all of them being mr2s counting my buddies. I don't know maybe you have seen this mr2 before?

Yeah my cars pretty bad but it's all going to be steel no fiberglass or anything. This pictures my Bottom rear quarter.

Is your rust in the same area? This pictures is also driver side rear quarter into the lip of the fender. I have a guy up by Kennywood with a gt-s he is going to be cutting out both driver and passenger quarter skins. If I was you just call around to junk yards ask if they have 90-93 gt-s and go from there. I'm not sure but I'm most positive nothing flares out (wide body) on the lower half of all 5th gen celicas. Non convertible and I'm thinking even the coupe stays the same. I'm speaking from the door molding down. Coupes/hatch models (gt-st) have the same rockers. All trac and gt-s have the same rockers with the plastic moldings under them. But like I said I used rockers off a st coupe so. You can make anything work as long as you put the time into going to junk yards. I'm assuming your car is drive able so that alone will make it easer to matching it up once at the junk yard.

my rust is just behind the driver side door and is a result of a shitty accident repair early in the cars life. The panel is pretty wavy and there's so much filler in it that I was just going to replace the entire rear quarter if I can find one. So I'll need a gt-s or alltrac donor.

My car is almost drivable. I pulled the fuel rail out to replace some injector seals and have been doing some general clean up under the hood. I could have it put back together and running in a few hours if needed.

Never seen that mr2. That's a car I would remember. and yes I know where raccoon park is.