We all wrestle with the human condition. From the most disciplined, productivity-focused self-help enthusiasts to the 10-hour-a-day-screentime dopamine rat gooner retards, we all have our vices...
Mine, is the 1982-1987 Toyota corolla. How embarrasing.
I am ashamed to write that this corolla is AE86 #7 for me.
This 86 started life as an SR5 car with a 4AC (useless) and a zenki sr5 axle (even worse).
When I had the Nissan Silvia shell, I was previously after this car and even drove 4 hours to trade with the previous owner, but he backed out of the trade when I showed up. 4 hours home in silence that night
He was really tasteful and smart too, It was wrapped this amazing plum color and had great +75mm flares on it all around.
The car may have been, and I mean this, the ugliest 86 that I had ever laid eyes on. I'd like to also say that part of Kentucky sucked. I hated that whole deal.
Anyway, a friend ended up with the car some time later - he traded him his work truck, and the insufferable looking purple car became his daily driver.
For the sake of this article we will call him Billy- Billy made a series of choices involving the car, and I can't say they were great choices.
The car in its current state is ass. The fenders don't fit right (he cut them), the quarter on the left side is cut out completely (why). The interior was riddled with clothing and random objects. The paint was roughly primered and the paint prep is uneven. This is an 86 most people wouldn't consider buying that had the budget to buy a cleaner bodied example.
In my situation, this Billy character owed me a significant amount of money for a 1JZ, and for one reason or another could never manage to pay it off- so I guess Klarna should implement a Toyota AE86 payoff option at checkout because that's what I had to do.
The silver lining of this entire deal was the engine package- the car has a 3SGE Beams swap from a Toyota Altezza! The car feels so much faster than a 4ag and the j160 is really nice!
It also has some decent parts, my friend had spent some money with T3 to get all new arms in the front, and he ditched the LED lights in favor of a kouki grille and headlights.
Unfortunately- he retrofitted some corvette lights into the housing, which requires me to replace them regardless. C for effort.
The car uses a rather unusal rear end- typically SR5 cars will opt for one of two rear ends, the GTS rear, or the celica supra rear end. This one has a 2wd Toyota truck rear end with the 8" differential. This is a strong rear axle but poses a wheel fitment issue due to it's 56' track width.
The most egregious problem to fix is a body related issue. Whoever cut the body for the widebody went overboard and pretty much torched the entire left quarter panel. My objective soon is to sheet metal over it, doing my best to create soemthing strong to aid in the structural integrity of the car, while also maintaining a flat surface for attaching the rear overfenders and ensuring no debris or tire smoke can enter the cabin or develop moisture. This will be a learning task as I have never ever welded a day in my life, but what *is* life without challenges like this to overcome.
The hydraulic handbrake is another pain point- I wish people wouldn't install them in general, but this one also was installed in such a way that it made the car significantly worse. The brakes are currently a "suicide brake" setup, meaning no stopping power goes to the rear when the footbrake is pressed, and in order to use your brakes, the hydraulic ebrake must be pulled. As someone who doesn't even use an e-brake while drifting- this is one of the first things I will undo about this car.
The car DID have an auxbeam panel, but because of the nature of LED buttons flashing in the interior- I authorized Billy to remove it prior to sale so long as he paid me a little money to construct a switch panel of my own. I am trying to retain a slightly more period correct look, but more on that in a later blog post.
The objective for this upcoming weekend is to bail the car out of a friends house that is an hour south of mine. Once the car returns here- I can do inventory of what the car needs, and begin ordering more parts to undo a lot of the generational trauma this chassis has inherited through years of bad decisionmaking. I have already ordered corners, headlights, and a full Jblood front kit for the car- so I am pretty excited to see where this car goes.
This was pretty unique, near where I purchased the 86 was this 2000s build.; originally a LHD USDM 240sx converted to RHD, and the tail light section converted to R34 GTR tail lights. The owner is allegedly looking to revive this chassis in the coming year, unfortunately he also plans to revert the tail light section back to Type X.
