Diamond in the Rough - my 1985 Toyota Tercel build

Aw man I like the factory wheels. But im curious to see the daisy wheels installed.

 

I don't mind the look of the factory wheels, I just have a hunch that they are a bit heavier than the Miata daisies, and so when I feel like spending the money on tires, I want to give the alloy wheels a try.
Before that, I also still want to clean up the curb rash a bit on these alloys, as well as re-paint them in a different color.
I am thinking a darker gun-metal gray, or similar color. Trying to decide between that or just matte black.

 

I'm picking up what you're puttin down

 

Consider.....most salvage yards will dispose of vehicles more than 10-15 years old. A 35 yo salvage ride could be like finding unicorn teeth. If you do find one, the driver's seat will likely be in similar condition.

Suggest to pull the driver's seat. Take it to an upholstery shop. Let them do the seat rebuild.

Nice find.

 

Updatezzz

 

Busy busy time at the moment as I prepare for finals at ASU. Fear not, I've got a garage full of parts waiting to get replaced on the Tercel, as soon as I wrap up my finals.
new shocks & struts, strut mounts, bellows, power steering pump o-ring kit to fix my super leaky power steering pump... and hopefully some other fixes.

I have recently repaired my fuel tank sending unit, so that it reads much more accurately. I will get some pics uploaded of that soon.

 

My finals are over! So that means I finally get more time to spend on my projects. I've got some work to do on my Tacoma but a lot more for the Tercel.

My plastic coolant and washer fluid reservoirs are starting to get old and brittle. I tried giving them the heat gun treatment with little success. Didn't seem to cause the plastic to bond to itself any better than before. Oh well... I do have a fiberglass repair kit on hand, ready to use on these tanks once they start to get a bit worse off and more brittle.


Back to the topic of my gas gauge not reading properly... I took my fuel tank sending unit out once more, and took the thin metal cover off the back "box" of the unit. I discovered a considerable buildup of corrosion on the wound wires for the sending unit.


I scuffed the surface with lightly applied sandpaper and cleaned off as much of the corrosion as I could across the surface that the metal arm sweeps across. This is what varies the resistance applied as the gas gauge reads from empty to full. The corrosion was making the reading wonky.


Much better. Reads all the way up to the top of "F" now.

Lots more to do in the next few weeks but here is a snippet of what I've been up to in the meantime.

 

Very cool project. My dad had one of these with a manual when I was growing up and I learned to drive on it. It was an 1983 in light blue and checkered pattern on the cloth seats.

 

I just spent the last two days completing a whole lot of work on the Tercel:

New rack & pinion / tie rod boots
New sway bar bushings
New front strut inserts / cartridges
New front strut mounts
New front strut bellows & bump stops
New front CV axles
New front diff fill bolt
New front diff fluid, GL-5 SAE 80W-90

I didn't get pictures of everything, but I tried to document as much as I could with photos.
I was under a time crunch, as I had an appointment to get tint installed. Thankfully, everything (mostly) went as planned and I drove 30 miles to my destination today to get tint installed with no issues! The new parts feel great. Front end feels solid now. No more bouncy struts, busted sway bar bushings, or growling CVs when I go through turns.


Those busted CV axles through a LOT of grease around the undercarriage, I spent at least an hour or two of my time just scraping old grease and garbage off the underside of my Tercel. Probably reduced my curb weight by about 5 lbs.


I could have spent days deep cleaning the undercarriage, but I tried to restrain myself and not go overboard, since I was on a schedule. Here you can see I had started to make progress scraping out the wheel wells.


My old sway bar bushings were rough. I suspect that my general front end drippage expediated the degradation of these bushings. They seemed spongy and soft where the oil had came into contact with them for extended periods.


As I was installing the front sway bar bushing on the passenger's side, I ran into a bit of a SNAFU... the threads broke off inside my crossmember for one of the bolts. Yikes.


It's always fun when you get to use an angle grinder for a fix on your car! I had to use my trusty angle grinder & cutoff wheel to remove the stubborn bolt from the crossmember horn that could no longer be loosened.


Harbor Freight to the rescue. I picked up this bitchin' rivet nut setter to attempt to add a nutsert to my crossmember.


Not an exact match to the OEM bolt (right), but I figured that an M8 x 1.25 nutsert & bolt (left) would provide a close enough match to the strength of the factory bolt. This size was my best choice given the hole I was left with in the crossmember. Not quite as beefy as the factory bolt, but certainly enough to hold the sway bar up in place.


I tested the nutsert tool on a piece of scrap metal to ensure the tool functioned properly before adding the nutsert into my crossmember. Looks good!


I checked the outside diameter of the nutsert - 14.3mm! I was pleased with this. This would certainly hold itself in place in my crossmember. Now to add the nutsert to the Tercel...


Success!


I held my breath, and bolted the sway bar bushing back in place on the passenger's side. I repeated the process quickly on the driver's side, and breathed a sigh of relief. I hoped that this would be the last of my intrusive repairs while performing my planned maintenance. To give me warm & fuzzies, I used a bit of paint marker on all of the sway bar bushing bolts, to ensure I can detect no movement in the future.


Moving on, it was time to give some attention to those tired old front struts.


Much better! New strut mounts, bellows & bump stops, and brand new strut cartridges bolted into the strut body. Not pictured: dish soap scrubbing with scotch brite pad to remove dust & crust.


You can really see the carnage my old CV axles had experienced here... these things have been in serious need of replacement for quite some time. Certainly since before I owned the Tercel. They had been growling when I made turns. The boots were all torn apart, and most of the grease had flung itself out of the joints and all over the underside of my car.


If you look carefully you can see that the new tie rod boots I added didn't exactly match the proper diameter on the large end, sadly. I had to cut into them a bit to get a semi-decent fit. Will have to consider replacing these with proper fitting boots eventually. For now, they'll work. It's better than the destroyed boots that were in place before.


Another shot of the nastiness caused by my torn CV axle boots... You can see the layer of sludge caked on the backside of the steering knuckle here.


A nice underside shot showing some of the shiny new parts. Really satisfying fixing all of these gripes at once.

There's lots left to fix in the future. My power steering pump is still leaking, and through the process of my cleaning & undercarriage inspection, I've determined that my rack & pinion is also slowly seeping. More parts to be replaced in the future for sure.

 

Another picture of all the old axles and strut innards just for fun.


After all of the work, I took the Tercel across town to get some nice ceramic tint professionally installed. Really happy with the results.

 

Those front brake disc's dont look great but nice work on the beast!

 

I bet the tint shop guys loved the car.

 

Yeah, I know that front disk looks rough.
I had my local O'Reilly turn them but they didn't do the best job. My brakes made noise for about 250 miles after they turned them, and they eventually stopped making noise; they're quiet now but as you pointed out, they sure don't look the best.
I should mention that the front calipers are technically missing some clips & springs that are meant to hold the brake pads in place in the calipers, but I don't really think those are of critical importance, or are enough to cause those grooves in my rotors.
I will try to get a closer look at those grooves again soon. I should be able to get these rotors turned another time, easily, if needed.

 

Check out the seats I scored for $200. They are out of a 2016 Tesla Model S!

I am working on getting the powered Tesla seat accessories to work in the Tercel, but I need further testing to get them to operate properly. I have had some success using a drill battery with power probe wires, but both the driver's & passenger's Tesla seat behave differently when probed with the DeWalt drill battery.
I am doing some research into this now, but I couldn't help myself and I came up with a way of mounting the seats into the Tercel, without the use of the power features.




What I did to mount the seats for now, is trace the dimensions of the existing Tercel's seat "feet", cut the feet off the Tercel's seat rails, and weld the feet in place on the Tesla rails. This is not ideal, but works for now to let me enjoy these super comfortable seats while I do more testing & reserach to figure out how to get the powered features working properly.

I figure that worst case here, if my research tells me that I am missing some other piece of the puzzle like some sort of computer module, I don't think I'll be entirely hosed.
I can try to frankenstein the Tercel & Tesla seat together. My idea is that I could potentially bolt the Telsa seat onto the Tercel seat rails, which I know will already bolt up and slide manually on the seat rails inside the Tercel without issue. This wouldn't be ideal though. I may or may not be able to use the back seat angle adjustment & lumbar features with the Tercel seat rails, this is to be determined still.

I have a lot of research and testing to conduct still. I've made some promising work so far on getting the seats to move with power applied, but they don't yet move entirely the way I need them to yet. For now, The driver's seat is bolted up in place and even though I can't slide it around yet and the seating position feels just a touch far forward and upright compared to where I would like it, it is super comfortable. The guy I bought these seats from worked for Tesla, I think he said Recaro makes these Model S seats for Tesla? Anyone here know anything about this that can chime in?

If you are reading this & you oddly enough have some sort of Tesla wiring knowledge and can offer assistance to me, please feel free to post here.

 

I purchased some used Yakima 1A rain gutter towers on eBay, and I had two 48" lengths of 3/4" gas pipe cut out at Lowe's. I used 120 grit sandpaper to scuff the pipe, and gave them a coating of high heat matte black BBQ paint. The finishing touch was a set of Yakima rubber bar caps.

I also finally threw on this NOS window louver from AutoPlas that I acquired several months ago. You may be able to make out the turn-lock fasteners on the louver. It included some plastic brackets & tabs but I cannot for the life of me, figure out how to use these to attach the louver to my window. So I just finally decided to use 3M double sided tape to adhere the louver to my rear window. So far so good. I will keep an eye on it and see how it looks as it starts to get warmer again.

 

Grimey old power steering pump is out of the engine bay, and ready for its re-seal on the workbench. I am not doing that this evening, but it will likely happen sometime over the course of the next few days. I have the rebuild kit ready to go on my bench.

Happy holidays. I hope everyone enjoys some rest and relaxation.

 

Tomorrow is assembly day for the power steering pump. Everything is cleaned & painted, and I've got o-rings and a shaft seal that will be replaced when this gets put back together.

 

So is this full time 4x4?

 

No, it is typically in FWD when driving around on the street. It can send power when commanded to the live rear axle, on a coil sprung 4-link suspension setup.
Longitudinally mounted engine, but FWD. Not a typical layout choice, but it's what Toyota went with on these.

 

Cus ik i cant drive my truck with 4hi on pavement even snowy or rained pvent cus itll be too much friction. So its more of an awd system?