You must be logged in to rate content!
22 minute(s) of a 89 minute read
1-14-2013
July 2007 – The build begins
In the spring of 2007, Target Financial Services decided to up my credit limit and give me a proper credit card instead of their crummy store-only credit card. I now had a fresh Visa card and a $4000 limit. I was finishing up my first year as Physics major, finally having some direction in my life, and had just bought a 2000 Toyota Camry. I was paying the bills working campus jobs as a math tutor and lab aide, and being paid to go to school by the VA because my dad is disabled (prostate cancer from Agent Orange exposure = dependent benefits for going to school even though I was 25). In one my wiser (read stupider) moments, I decided that I could rebuild the Corolla and get her racing with a $4000 budget and could handle a credit card along with my car payment for the Camry. Ariel (as I had named her before putting out to the pasture) was brought back home.
While she was parked, I met an AF guy through a friend that also had an 86, and had a wrecked 1985 coupe that his MSgt was hassling him about getting off base. I was able to pull the front seats and a few other odds & ends from it before we junked it (I should have pulled more from it, now that I think back about it). Home from the pasture, I cleaned the dirt and cobwebs off of her, pulled the engine to get it rebuilt, and sourced a new seat, harness, steering wheel, gauges, and a few other things.
I rebuilt the engine back to stock, but added a TRD .8mm head gasket, HKS valve springs and cam gears (stayed with stock cams because I couldn’t justify spending for those along with everything else I was getting), ARP head studs, and bought a TRD header and short shift kit for her as well. I put an Exedy OEM replacement clutch in and resurfaced the flywheel when I assembled it all.
From Rally Sport Direct, a local Subaru/Evo performance shop, I bought a Corbeau Forza II seat and 5-point harness. I found a harness bar on eBay that would fit my Corolla, as well as a TRD steering wheel and boss. I got a NRG quick-release, too.
I also picked up some AutoMeter Sport-Comp gauges so I could keep an eye on the vitals.
September 2007 – Putting it together
In September, after getting everything together on the engine after picking it up from the machine shop, I had a problem with the distributor and exhaust cam. Without the distributor in the head, I could freely rotate the engine assembly. With the distributor in, I couldn’t. In fact, it binned so much that I stripped the teeth off the exhaust cam and bent the teeth on the distributor. Oops.
Since school had stated and homework was always an issue, and since I didn’t have a clue as to why **** had broken Ariel sat alone and powerless in the backyard for another winter.
June 2008 – The build continues
This summer I was determined to get the car running and driving. I also wanted to make sure that it would stop, so I picked up the brake kit from 88Rotors via eBay. New slotted and cross-drilled rotors and new pads were tossed onto Ariel, along with new stainless steel brake lines on all four corners and from the chassis to the rear axle.
I also got bored and livened up the car with some paint.
86 Mafia was a “team” of Corolla owners out here.
July 2008 – Putting it together v2
I ordered an HKS timing belt, think that might be the problem, and put in another largeport exhaust cam and distributor in the head. There didn’t seem to be an issue until I tried starting her, when my dad said he saw the timing belt jumping over the exhaust cam gear. Clearly I hadn’t fixed my previous issue. This time I couldn’t get the distributor out, so I broke it.
Note to self-don’t pry on an aluminum housing if you don’t want to break it.
It turns out the ARP head studs are taller than the OEM head bolts. The cams themselves clear the studs, but the distributor shaft catches on one. Since it catches, the hardened steel of the head studs digs into the softer steel of the distributor shaft, preventing it from turning. I sourced a second distributor and grinded some material off the end of the shaft, before the gear, so that it would clear the head stud. I installed it and the original smallport exhaust cam. I had been using the largeport cams because their profile is more aggressive than the smallport cams. Unfortunately, none of my friends would sell me just the exhaust cam they had lying around since they didn’t want loose a matching set, so I was forced to run a miss-matched set (I can’t remember where the smallport intake cam ended up).
With the cam and distributor sorted, I asked my dad and a brother to help with an exhaust for a drift event that I desperately wanted to drive the car in. I had gotten a summer job working at a tire shop, so I really wanted to work though my growing stack of tires. Some pieces from various cars and trucks and a Magnaflow from a 70’s truck were welded together to produce a side-exit exhaust for the car.
At least it was quieter than running with an open header, but it really didn’t matter because by the end of the night, the welds and coat hangers failed and I dropped the muffler. Oh well.
August 2008 – Exhaust v2
After the drift event, I set out to get the car running right and to give it a fighting chance to pass emissions legally, even in Utah. I figured out a way to route the vacuum lines and hook up all the emissions equipment, including the EGR (which the TRD header has a provision for, just like the stock heat shields bolt onto it).
I painted the silver rim of my Autometer gauges black, because I could.
Obligatory drift charm.
Somewhere in that time frame I pulled the differential out and had my buddy Dan weld the diff. He was working on building a rotisserie to pull the body off the frame for his ’67 Chevelle, so I figured if he could weld well enough to do that, he could weld my diff. Also, a new exhaust was also welded together, one that exited out the back of the car.
September 2008 - Paint v1
Just before my birthday (and because my dad was painting a few other cars at the time), my dad offered to paint Ariel. I had previously thought about a blue/black scheme for the car, so I told him what I wanted. Here are my shitty PS’d schemes for the car for my dad to reference.
It was a damn fine 20ft job that I didn’t have to pay for.
I went to the next drift event and nobody could believe it was the same car.
And then the following weekend, I went to another drift event.
Video my oldest brother shot and that I edited.
And at that event, I managed to spin into a stack of tires marking the course, denting my fender. I was very disappointed I hadn’t hit the door, because I have a spare set of doors, but not a spare fender.
One of my brothers gave me set of wheels as a late birthday present. He had picked them up for cheap, and the wife didn’t want them on her car, so he gave them to me.
16x7” +40 8-spoke knock-offs. They were drilled both 4x100mm and 4x114.3mm. The clear coat was pealing, but I had some “nice” wheels for my Corolla finally. Too bad they didn’t really fit, and I needed new shank-type lug nuts even if I wanted to run them on the rear.
September meant that school was back in session, so I parked Ariel for the winter on the back patio. Sometimes during the winter I’d stare out the window at her, or go sit in here and pretend I was delivering tofu or battling an EG6, EK9, BNR32 GT-R, FC, FD, or Lan Evo on a mountain pass. It was a long winter.
February 2009 – Lip kit
I was bored and a brother was cleaning some things out of a shed since his family was moving, so I took some garden edging and made a “lip” for the car, screwing it to the front bumper.
April 2009 – Driving
Mom & Dad went out of town for a weekend to go camping, leaving me with the house to myself. Instead of throwing a huge party (did that last year instead), I took the Corolla out for a drive. (Mom & Dad didn’t approve of any illegal shenanigans, especially car-related ones after I had been caught drifting my Nissan and was arrested for a speeding ticket I let lapse). I picked up a good buddy from his house and we cruised around a bit.
My first photo opportunity with both cars together.
May 2009 – My first drift of the season
Another drift event.
All of the drift events I have driven at have been at Rocky Mountain Raceways in their 1/8th mi oval. RMR is the houses the local ¼ mi drag strip, and all of our drift events coincided with their “run what you brung/grudge match” Midnight drag series. My skills as a drifter were slowly improving because I only drove Ariel at drift events because she wasn’t registered and I was nervous about taking her out on the street. Regardless, I had lots of fun spinning out and trying things like clutch-kicking and e-braking.
July 2009 – Without a trailer
Time and money allowed me to make another drift event at RMR in July of 2009, but this time, dad’s flat bed trailer & truck were being used so I had to figure out a different way to get my car their. Luckily, we had a hold tow-bar hitch so with a little work (read=taking off the front bumper) we got the car ready to for the 30ish mile journey to the track. To pull it, my brother came to the rescue with his 1990 Toyota 4x4. The 22R-E did an amazing job pulling the car and a few tires and tools down to the track and back.
Unfortunately, just as the event was getting started, I blew the welds in my differential. I did such a good job breaking it, that it didn’t matter what gear or what the engine speed was, my axles wouldn’t get any torque from the differential. Let’s see what a stock Corolla can do to a differential.
August 2009 – Lessons learned
I guess my buddy Dan was right that he didn’t know what he was doing. But it held for a decent amount of time/abuse. Now I was faced with a dilemma: save up and get a proper LSD, or cheap out and see if I can weld the diff again? Guess which option I choose.
I also picked up a set of Celica Supra wheels, complete with center caps and Celica-sized tires.
With the diff welded back together, I prepared the car for another drift event.
October 2009 – Trying new things
The local SCCA has their end of season autocross event as a two-day event at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele in the middle/end of October. They also have a bbq on of the days. There was going to be a drift event the same Saturday, at night, so I thought it would be a great idea to try autocross in my car before drifting later that night. My previous experience autocrossing was back at the same event back in 2007 in a buddy’s 20V swapped Corolla (without heat), in the rain. Fearing the worst, I prepared for the eventual rain showers.
Excellent build! Great photos and details! ????????
Posted by Diggymart on 11/21/19 @ 2:40:31 PM