Will's 1985 celica supra restoration

[vdkk]

Savage.

All i can say to describe your drive and natural ability.

[Rockheadjc]

I completely admire your skills, man. I see you LOVE to weld. I'm thinking about picking up a small mig package and teaching myself the funness of welding.

Fantastic work!
Keep the pix comin!

[bshapton]

Just out of curiosity, what welding setup do you have - Mig, Tig, Cobra, or?. I had a Miller Firefly Mig for awhile and got great results on heavier stuff using flux core wire but couldn't get it set up for a decent result using Argon and solid core wire on body metal.

[SupraFiend]

Hey, nice to see someone else taking restoration to this level on these cars too.

I don't know if you've been following the thread I've been working on (Deanfun's "Let's do this... slowly (Canadian 85P restore)") in this same section) but there might be a few things in there that could help you. The more you dig into these cars the more rust you find huh?

Just a tip on those quater replacements. I'm guessing your donor metal was already cut on the C pillars so you had no choice, but next time you harvest a quater skin, take it up to the top corner as the roof and quaters are actually seperate pieces. If you wire wheel into the section at the top of the C pillar, underneath some bondo should be some nice and easy spot welds to drill out so you can take the quater skin off easier and avoid having to put a seam in the middle of it.

Hope you're having fun, you crazy mofo

[02taco]

Just out of curiosity, what welding setup do you have - Mig, Tig, Cobra, or?. I had a Miller Firefly Mig for awhile and got great results on heavier stuff using flux core wire but couldn't get it set up for a decent result using Argon and solid core wire on body metal.

I'm using a Millermatic 140 with solid core wire and I forget what my gas mix contains, it's supplied by Praxair and they call it their "Gold Mix" (mostly Co2 and a little argon i beleive). It's a pretty fool proof combination. I haven't tried the flux core mainly because i'm not a fan of chipping all that flux afterwards although the refills on the sheilding gas can be expensive if you don't know someone in the industry....

Another important factor is your speed and power settings. My welder came with a thickness gauge and a cheating chart to tell me what settings to use based on thickness of metal. Ellimenates the guessing game.

If you have a Praxair supply store nearby, pop in and see them, they should be able to set you up with the correct gas and wire combination. or any other welding supply place for that matter.

[02taco]

Hey, nice to see someone else taking restoration to this level on these cars too.

I don't know if you've been following the thread I've been working on (Deanfun's "Let's do this... slowly (Canadian 85P restore)") in this same section) but there might be a few things in there that could help you. The more you dig into these cars the more rust you find huh?

Just a tip on those quater replacements. I'm guessing your donor metal was already cut on the C pillars so you had no choice, but next time you harvest a quater skin, take it up to the top corner as the roof and quaters are actually seperate pieces. If you wire wheel into the section at the top of the C pillar, underneath some bondo should be some nice and easy spot welds to drill out so you can take the quater skin off easier and avoid having to put a seam in the middle of it.

Hope you're having fun, you crazy mofo

Yeah i was definatly aware of the factory seam near the top of the C-pillar but this was how they were cut, not a biggy. That would have been more ideal, but this worked out fine.

The trickiest part about having the seam at the mid point was getting the two halves to match up with a perfectly straight edge along the top.

I have been following you restoration as well and thanks to you i will be re-doing my rear seatbelt bolt areas. I repaired mine early on and now that i know what could be back there I can't sleep at night. Yours is coming along pretty good, can't wait to see it all done.

[02taco]

I completely admire your skills, man. I see you LOVE to weld. I'm thinking about picking up a small mig package and teaching myself the funness of welding.

Fantastic work!
Keep the pix comin!

Thanks man.

Do it, go buy a good mig welder. you can use it for a ton of things. Like when i can't rent a tool for free at the parts store cause they don't carry one, I just make my own using old sockets and scrap bits.

[SupraFiend]

Yeah i was definatly aware of the factory seam near the top of the C-pillar but this was how they were cut, not a biggy. That would have been more ideal, but this worked out fine.

The trickiest part about having the seam at the mid point was getting the two halves to match up with a perfectly straight edge along the top.

That for sure, I avoid butt welds like the plague and always try to hide my seams under trim or flares.

I have been following you restoration as well and thanks to you i will be re-doing my rear seatbelt bolt areas. I repaired mine early on and now that i know what could be back there I can't sleep at night. Yours is coming along pretty good, can't wait to see it all done.

Cool, thanks man. I JUST posted a new update, have a look. It might interest\scare you. I was going to note that since you grafted on complete new quater sections that maybe you didn't separete the inner unibody from the outer skin at all on your donor metal. Its hard to tell from your pics if the outer skin went on just as skin on the bottom areas, or if you replaced the inner bodywork in one shot too. In my new update there's a good shot of what the outer skin on the rear rocker looks like on the inside of a low miles garage queen. I posted a similar shot many updates ago of the inner panel area on the quater skin underneath the gas tank tank lid too which was even worse. If you havn't opened up those areas yet you might want to, I doubt your donor metal is in better shape then mine.

Stupid Canadian winters huh? My black 86 project car is originally a Calgary car too. Luckily since it was bought new in Calgary and winter driven there for a bit it got the full crazy aftermarket undercoating, inner panel coatings, etc when it was new, then it moved to BC after about 5 years so its much better rust wise then even most Vancouver Supras.

[02taco]

[QUOTE=SupraFiend;649073] It might interest\scare you. I was going to note that since you grafted on complete new quater sections that maybe you didn't separete the inner unibody from the outer skin at all on your donor metal. Its hard to tell from your pics if the outer skin went on just as skin on the bottom areas, or if you replaced the inner bodywork in one shot too. In my new update there's a good shot of what the outer skin on the rear rocker looks like on the inside of a low miles garage queen. I posted a similar shot many updates ago of the inner panel area on the quater skin underneath the gas tank tank lid too which was even worse. If you havn't opened up those areas yet you might want to, I doubt your donor metal is in better shape then mine.QUOTE]

I appreciate your concern, I did a pretty thorough check and beleive it or not they had less rust then the ones you had. I was just trying to limit myself on how many pictures i put on my photobucket/thread cause i'm posting while at work.

The only rust i found on my new 1/4's were from either getting wet after they were cut off the donor car or a really insignificant amount that easily cleaned in between the upper spring seat and the inner wheel well (where toyota forgot to fill the gap with seam sealer.

[02taco]

well here is an update of what i did last weekend.

A while ago noticed that there are a couple of locations on the doors that seem to be prone to cracking, at the location shown below on almost every door i have seen. Both of my "mint doors" are cracked at this same location.

Pictured is the passenger side door looking at the area just back of the mirror location. this is what it looked like after wire wheeling the 3 stress cracked that were discovered.




there is also a location near the back of the door (along the bottom edge of the rear most cut out) that i found a couple of stress cracks on both doors. If anybody is having their cars re-done they might want to look and make sure these areas are fine.

Below is a picture of the welds prior to grinding.



The next thing i undertook was the similar repair of the rear seat belt re-inforcement plates done by Suprafriend.

Before pics.



hidden rust.




After separating all the pieces I discovered that there was too much rust on the plates and chose not to use them. The rust had pitted the metal and was too deep, so instead i made some new plates out of thicker metal (spare exterior 1/4 panel outer skin)





next i'll replace the metal on the floor to remove that rust. (If and when i get time in the garage)

I did manage to sent a second round of parts to get powder coated.



I also cleared up some space in the garage and made $20.54 by recycling some metal which was mostly scrap supra parts.



Here is a current shot of my status.


Stay tuned