As posted in the Club Chat section, after nearly 20 years, I have returned to the All-Trac fold with an '88 st165. I haven't decided on a name yet. Maybe Akane, but I'm not quite ready to commit.
About 3 years ago, I started a thread looking for an st165. A member here (mpg) contacted me, we talked for many weeks, he gave me a lot of info and pictures and was overall a great person to deal with. Long story short, timing didn't work out then, but it has worked out now with the person who DID buy it.
Here's a not-so-long-story-told-overly-long for my own future reference and for those who are extremely bored:
A few months or so after mpg sold it in late 2021, I saw a post/photo in a Toyota group on facebook with a familiar looking car. I contacted the poster (Matt) to confirm it was the same car, and did the old "if you decide to sell it one day..." – he of course wasn't planning to sell it.
About 3 years went by, and my wife and I moved into a different home with more garage space, etc. After our previous house sold, I thought it might be a good time to get back into the All-Trac game (or an AW11 MR2). I figured it wouldn't hurt to message Matt again and see if anything had changed. His response began with "Funny timing..." and after a few weeks of messages, photo sharing, etc., we worked out a time to meet up.
Incidentally, the time that worked out for him coincided with my sister visiting, an event that happens once or twice a year. My sister provided me with my first car – a 1986 Celica ST, which she sold to me for $1. She taught me how to drive stick in it, and taught me how to change the oil. That was the car that made me fall in love with Celicas and driving stick shift. Without that first Celica I may never have heard of the All-Trac, Carlos Sainz, the WRC, etc. Since she was in town, she was able to go along on the journey. It was cool to be able to share the experience. She noted that this st165 smells just the way the st161 did, and it's true. I suppose it's probably some terribly unhealthy chemical that is in the dash plastics or seat foam. But it's a nostalgic smell now. Perhaps the chemical messes with the brain and makes it impossible to break away from Celica ownership.
A convenient by-product of not getting the car from mpg is that Matt was located much closer – less than 2 hours from my parents' house. I'm sure most on this forum know that being able to buy an All-Trac that close by is unusual. It certainly has been in my experience anyway.
We drove up last Wednesday and checked it out. It's not perfect, but seems to be in relatively good condition overall for a 1980s Toyota that has spent multiple years as a daily driver in 4 seasons. I went ahead and bought it (obviously Captain Obvious) and it made it back to my parents' without any real problems. I did grip the wheel a bit tight a few times watching idiot drivers in rush hour traffic, simultaneously hoping & praying to make it back in one piece. But seriously, people drive so stupidly in their huge trucks/suvs.
It did seem to go through some oil, as Matt had topped it off before I left with it. That said, I never saw exactly how much the dipstick read. It was a little under the halfway mark of the dipstick the next day when I checked it. Assuming it had read at the full mark before I left, I got a bit worried and decided not to drive it again until I did my own oil change and re-routed the PCV hose back to the stock configuration.
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On Saturday morning, I changed the oil with Mobil 1 5w-30 and a Toyota filter. I removed the breather filter that was on the PCV and routed that back to a bung that had been capped on the intake. While I believe the original hose was in with some spare parts in the hatch, but the hoses were pretty hard & cracked, so I just used a fuel hose from the garage.
It was hard to read the dipstick, but I put in about 4 quarts from my 5 quart jug. From what I could tell, it looked like around halfway up the marking on the dipstick (ie it looked how I would normally think I'd need to add a 1/2 quart to get to "full"). I figured since all I had done was start it for about a minute or two to run oil through the system, I didn't want to add more, figuring there was no way it had lost 1/2 quart through either leakage or burning in that short period. I didn't really want to overfill either. I will note that adding to difficulty of reading invisible Mobil 1 oil is the fact that the dipstick tube seems to maybe have been moved away from the downpipe to create clearance or something, but it seems to always require a little wrangling to get it to go in and down and it scrapes the oil filter on the way in. Not sure if this 1) affects the angle it enters the oil pan, or 2) makes it more difficult to get a "clean" reading of the dipstick.
I decided to check it somewhere near the midway point of my journey home to Indiana from Ohio (generally a little over 4 hours if not taking the interstate, which I wasn't planning on) and take a break to let the engine bay cool a bit so I wouldn't burn my sensitive little hands on the dipstick or anything.
I also went ahead and jumped the wires to have the intercooler water pump set to run constant.
////////////////////
On Sunday morning I headed out sometime around 10:30am. Normally we'd have gone to church and left sometime after lunch, but my sister's flight was before noon. So instead I headed back to Indiana, my route being on US-36 much of the way. I stopped in Urbana, OH for lunch and spent a cool 30 minutes waiting for a $5 biggie bag at Wendy's. Not worth it. I guess they lost my order ticket or something.
Unfortunately, that didn't count as my time to stop to check the oil. The parking spaces were inclined so I figured that would affect the reading. Instead, I made another stop at a nearby nature preserve and took a short hike, then checked the oil afterward. It still seemed to be around the halfway mark, so I didn't add anything.
A bit further down the road I stopped for gas. This became a longer than planned stop, as the car would not start after refueling. Would not kick the starter on. So I sat at the pump for a bit, popped the hood, then found the restroom. After sitting for 20 minutes or so, the starter kicked in and it started right up. That was the final stop. Made it home about 1.5 hours later.
After it cooled a few hours, I checked the oil again, and still was pretty close to the halfway mark.
////////////////////
Info from "mpg" from 3 years ago (parentheticals are my notes):
1988 Toyota Celica All-Trac
Red Exterior, blue cloth interior (plastics/dash are black), sunroof, mileage 173,548
Paint is good, some rust around sunroof
A/C, cruise, power windows, work well, passenger power door lock needs to be manually closed.
The car is pretty much original = paint, steering wheel, stock wheels, shift knob.
The car had service in 2016 with new Cometic head gasket and valve guides, and the gas tank was relined.
4 new tires with less than 500 miles (unfortunately now 8 years old though the tread is still great), new Porterfield front brake pads.
The car has no smog – T-VIS, cat, EGR, are removed and no spares for them.
Mods to car include HKS cat back exhaust, 3 inch downpipe, Turbosmart boost controller, HKS cam gears, new sway bar bushings and end links.
The car runs well and is garaged.
It now has just over 176,000 miles.
Some pictures that Matt sent me, an interior pic from mpg, and one in its new home with its younger sibling (really wish I had a double garage door to go side-by-side, but I'm not really complaining...just a little inconvenient. But grateful to have the space at all).
About 3 years ago, I started a thread looking for an st165. A member here (mpg) contacted me, we talked for many weeks, he gave me a lot of info and pictures and was overall a great person to deal with. Long story short, timing didn't work out then, but it has worked out now with the person who DID buy it.
Here's a not-so-long-story-told-overly-long for my own future reference and for those who are extremely bored:
A few months or so after mpg sold it in late 2021, I saw a post/photo in a Toyota group on facebook with a familiar looking car. I contacted the poster (Matt) to confirm it was the same car, and did the old "if you decide to sell it one day..." – he of course wasn't planning to sell it.
About 3 years went by, and my wife and I moved into a different home with more garage space, etc. After our previous house sold, I thought it might be a good time to get back into the All-Trac game (or an AW11 MR2). I figured it wouldn't hurt to message Matt again and see if anything had changed. His response began with "Funny timing..." and after a few weeks of messages, photo sharing, etc., we worked out a time to meet up.
Incidentally, the time that worked out for him coincided with my sister visiting, an event that happens once or twice a year. My sister provided me with my first car – a 1986 Celica ST, which she sold to me for $1. She taught me how to drive stick in it, and taught me how to change the oil. That was the car that made me fall in love with Celicas and driving stick shift. Without that first Celica I may never have heard of the All-Trac, Carlos Sainz, the WRC, etc. Since she was in town, she was able to go along on the journey. It was cool to be able to share the experience. She noted that this st165 smells just the way the st161 did, and it's true. I suppose it's probably some terribly unhealthy chemical that is in the dash plastics or seat foam. But it's a nostalgic smell now. Perhaps the chemical messes with the brain and makes it impossible to break away from Celica ownership.
A convenient by-product of not getting the car from mpg is that Matt was located much closer – less than 2 hours from my parents' house. I'm sure most on this forum know that being able to buy an All-Trac that close by is unusual. It certainly has been in my experience anyway.
We drove up last Wednesday and checked it out. It's not perfect, but seems to be in relatively good condition overall for a 1980s Toyota that has spent multiple years as a daily driver in 4 seasons. I went ahead and bought it (obviously Captain Obvious) and it made it back to my parents' without any real problems. I did grip the wheel a bit tight a few times watching idiot drivers in rush hour traffic, simultaneously hoping & praying to make it back in one piece. But seriously, people drive so stupidly in their huge trucks/suvs.
It did seem to go through some oil, as Matt had topped it off before I left with it. That said, I never saw exactly how much the dipstick read. It was a little under the halfway mark of the dipstick the next day when I checked it. Assuming it had read at the full mark before I left, I got a bit worried and decided not to drive it again until I did my own oil change and re-routed the PCV hose back to the stock configuration.
////////////////////
On Saturday morning, I changed the oil with Mobil 1 5w-30 and a Toyota filter. I removed the breather filter that was on the PCV and routed that back to a bung that had been capped on the intake. While I believe the original hose was in with some spare parts in the hatch, but the hoses were pretty hard & cracked, so I just used a fuel hose from the garage.
It was hard to read the dipstick, but I put in about 4 quarts from my 5 quart jug. From what I could tell, it looked like around halfway up the marking on the dipstick (ie it looked how I would normally think I'd need to add a 1/2 quart to get to "full"). I figured since all I had done was start it for about a minute or two to run oil through the system, I didn't want to add more, figuring there was no way it had lost 1/2 quart through either leakage or burning in that short period. I didn't really want to overfill either. I will note that adding to difficulty of reading invisible Mobil 1 oil is the fact that the dipstick tube seems to maybe have been moved away from the downpipe to create clearance or something, but it seems to always require a little wrangling to get it to go in and down and it scrapes the oil filter on the way in. Not sure if this 1) affects the angle it enters the oil pan, or 2) makes it more difficult to get a "clean" reading of the dipstick.
I decided to check it somewhere near the midway point of my journey home to Indiana from Ohio (generally a little over 4 hours if not taking the interstate, which I wasn't planning on) and take a break to let the engine bay cool a bit so I wouldn't burn my sensitive little hands on the dipstick or anything.
I also went ahead and jumped the wires to have the intercooler water pump set to run constant.
////////////////////
On Sunday morning I headed out sometime around 10:30am. Normally we'd have gone to church and left sometime after lunch, but my sister's flight was before noon. So instead I headed back to Indiana, my route being on US-36 much of the way. I stopped in Urbana, OH for lunch and spent a cool 30 minutes waiting for a $5 biggie bag at Wendy's. Not worth it. I guess they lost my order ticket or something.
Unfortunately, that didn't count as my time to stop to check the oil. The parking spaces were inclined so I figured that would affect the reading. Instead, I made another stop at a nearby nature preserve and took a short hike, then checked the oil afterward. It still seemed to be around the halfway mark, so I didn't add anything.
A bit further down the road I stopped for gas. This became a longer than planned stop, as the car would not start after refueling. Would not kick the starter on. So I sat at the pump for a bit, popped the hood, then found the restroom. After sitting for 20 minutes or so, the starter kicked in and it started right up. That was the final stop. Made it home about 1.5 hours later.
After it cooled a few hours, I checked the oil again, and still was pretty close to the halfway mark.
////////////////////
Info from "mpg" from 3 years ago (parentheticals are my notes):
1988 Toyota Celica All-Trac
Red Exterior, blue cloth interior (plastics/dash are black), sunroof, mileage 173,548
Paint is good, some rust around sunroof
A/C, cruise, power windows, work well, passenger power door lock needs to be manually closed.
The car is pretty much original = paint, steering wheel, stock wheels, shift knob.
The car had service in 2016 with new Cometic head gasket and valve guides, and the gas tank was relined.
4 new tires with less than 500 miles (unfortunately now 8 years old though the tread is still great), new Porterfield front brake pads.
The car has no smog – T-VIS, cat, EGR, are removed and no spares for them.
Mods to car include HKS cat back exhaust, 3 inch downpipe, Turbosmart boost controller, HKS cam gears, new sway bar bushings and end links.
The car runs well and is garaged.
It now has just over 176,000 miles.
Some pictures that Matt sent me, an interior pic from mpg, and one in its new home with its younger sibling (really wish I had a double garage door to go side-by-side, but I'm not really complaining...just a little inconvenient. But grateful to have the space at all).
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