Hi guys, new member Graham from New Zealand. I purchased this car last week (March 2016) and plan on building it over the next year into a Group-A replica car to compete in a new "Group-A" free 1993 era class that will hopefully be part of the New Zealand rally series.
I have already had a lot of help from a couple of you, David, who has some awesome moulds to produce the Group-A style bonnet and bumper that were sold of my car. Also Kevin, who rally's a red Celica in the same events we often compete in.
The car is a 1991 or 1992 Celica GT-Four RC, it looks to have had an abusive adolescence, someone has fiddled with its wiring and looks to have installed a lot of sound equipment. After that it was dumped and pillaged of a few fruity bits, the RC bumper and bonnet for example are gone, with them the turbo and intercooler system and heaven knows what else.
Now, apart from the missing aesthetic stuff, I'm not overly worried as it will be a ground up dedicated rally build.
Small children and those with weak stomachs should look away now, she has bumps and bruises all over and the face is entirely black.. her shoes look to be off a another abused car.
Over the weekend I managed to drive down to Gisborne, a 6 hour drive, to inspect the car and pay the chap storing it. I dropped some GT4 wheels to go on it for transportation to a yet to find workshop space where work will commence.
After researching for the past couple of weeks, and speaking with our local Celica rally driver expert, Kevin, I am thinking I will run a Mitsubishi Evolution RS gearbox, transfer case and LSD's. This gives me a short ratio box and LSD options that are not available economically for the Toyota box. All going to loose plan, I can adapt this to the GT4 engine and hubs... all not going to plan, and what will exclude me from the Group-A series, I may well end up running a Mitsubishi engine. This is not ideal at all, but I am not going to get to romantic about this build, if its something lerned from my last car, you can't make orange juice with apples and I am all to aware of how fast the Mitsubishi's are after years of getting our arse kicked by them in our Subaru Impreza STI RA. Truth is the other "Group-A" cars come from Subaru and Mitsubishi are running engines, gearboxes and diffs from late model cars, I am not even going to bother trying to compete with these cars in a old Celica knowing I am at a massive disadvantage with an open front diff. Im also not too keen on spending 10k trying to upgrade and "work with what I have".
Anyways, thats my intro. Should be an interesting build. Unless I just give up in a few months.. then it will be a boring build.
I have already had a lot of help from a couple of you, David, who has some awesome moulds to produce the Group-A style bonnet and bumper that were sold of my car. Also Kevin, who rally's a red Celica in the same events we often compete in.
The car is a 1991 or 1992 Celica GT-Four RC, it looks to have had an abusive adolescence, someone has fiddled with its wiring and looks to have installed a lot of sound equipment. After that it was dumped and pillaged of a few fruity bits, the RC bumper and bonnet for example are gone, with them the turbo and intercooler system and heaven knows what else.
Now, apart from the missing aesthetic stuff, I'm not overly worried as it will be a ground up dedicated rally build.
Small children and those with weak stomachs should look away now, she has bumps and bruises all over and the face is entirely black.. her shoes look to be off a another abused car.
Over the weekend I managed to drive down to Gisborne, a 6 hour drive, to inspect the car and pay the chap storing it. I dropped some GT4 wheels to go on it for transportation to a yet to find workshop space where work will commence.
After researching for the past couple of weeks, and speaking with our local Celica rally driver expert, Kevin, I am thinking I will run a Mitsubishi Evolution RS gearbox, transfer case and LSD's. This gives me a short ratio box and LSD options that are not available economically for the Toyota box. All going to loose plan, I can adapt this to the GT4 engine and hubs... all not going to plan, and what will exclude me from the Group-A series, I may well end up running a Mitsubishi engine. This is not ideal at all, but I am not going to get to romantic about this build, if its something lerned from my last car, you can't make orange juice with apples and I am all to aware of how fast the Mitsubishi's are after years of getting our arse kicked by them in our Subaru Impreza STI RA. Truth is the other "Group-A" cars come from Subaru and Mitsubishi are running engines, gearboxes and diffs from late model cars, I am not even going to bother trying to compete with these cars in a old Celica knowing I am at a massive disadvantage with an open front diff. Im also not too keen on spending 10k trying to upgrade and "work with what I have".
Anyways, thats my intro. Should be an interesting build. Unless I just give up in a few months.. then it will be a boring build.