much needed love

After the car got home, we took a serious look at it`s condition. First we gave it a long overdue cleanup. Then we fixed all the annoying rattles, 2 camshaft seals, added missing bolts on the engine, adjusted the TPS properly, put in a new speedo gear in the tranny, new differential pinion seal, put in power-steering (not that I wanted it but I needed to to pass the provincial inspection), changed the muffler, fixed vaccum valves & hoses, replaced heater hoses, repaired the non-working temperature controls, replaced the 2 front shocks with KYB GR2 absorbers, changed any light that wasn`t working already, and a few more things I really can`t remember right now.

The car passed the provincial inspection, and is now insured in Québec! No more ICBC. Lots more money in my wallet :D !!!! It costs me around $500 a YEAR here... good enough for me. Surprisingly the provincial inspection had no emissions requirement...... hmm! Well anyways, I`m sure it wouldn`t have been an issue, the car passed fine last time in BC even with a High-flow cat converter. So here are a few pictures of the car as it is now. I`ve been using it everyday driving around in my hometown of Sherbrooke. It`s fun, doesn`t appear to be too many of these around here as they probly mostly all died of cancer. It`s getting attention, so it`s all good. It`s fun to meet and talk to people who notice the car, or people that tell me they also owned a GT-S at some point in their lives, and enjoyed it. I do plan on storing the car during winter however. This little AE86 ain`t touchy wet cold snow ;)

At last I`d like to mention I was able to pass the inspection thanks to the help and parts from another great AE86/MR2 Guru, Luc, who restores old corollas as well and supplied me with parts for a bargain - saving me from Toyota Dealership`s insanely expensive prices!!! Thanks Luc! Looking forward to doing business with the guy again soon.

Getting the Corolla home

I`ll only post a few more shots from the trip, as we travelled from Manitoba to Québec. More sunny weather, fields, cows, oil rigs, trees, lakes, more trees, dead bugs, getting lost in Kenora Ontario, spending a sketchy night in Sudbury, and on the very last days some heavy rain. The car was leaking oil (from a camshaft seal - fixed it later) and the oil contaminated the clutch thru the transmission`s vents. So all of a sudden on the last day, shifting in and out of 1st gear and while driving at slow speeds was very hard - like the clutch wouldn`t release. It was depressing and worrying to see a problem arise so late in the trip, but with 1 day left to drive, I just figured I`d get the car as close to home as possible. It was mostly 5th gear driving anyhow. I must say near the end we took less pictures - we just wanted to get the AE86 home already.

Banff & Saskatchewan

We stopped in the Banff Upper Hot Springs to check it out, the weather was nice and we needed a break from the drive. We then headed into Saskatchewan - which is as you can imagine, flat.

FIRST OBSTACLE: THE MOUNTAINS

When you head east, you hit the rockies pretty fast. And the car was loaded with around 400 lbs of stuff + both my father and I. So our first goal was to get the car out of BC officially. If you get the chance to do this drive on a beautiful morning, it`s awesome - we were so lucky with weather, Roger`s Pass area was insanely nice!

THE TRANSCANADIAN AE86 - SUMMER 09!

So here is the real big reason behind the existance of this blog: to tell the story of AE86 that drove across most of Canada. Without blowing up.

For a car I used to hope would "idle fine", this was quite the adventure! This AE86 was to be driven 6 full days straight, 5000 km from Vancouver to Montréal, throught the rockies, prairies and the great lakes all the way to Sherbrooke, Québec. And there were times of doubt for sure.

I was even experiencing stalling issues (from a loose connector) until 1 day prior to departure! Fortunately I had help from both my father and a great mechanic and fellow AE86 driver, Takeshi from Taiyo Motors in Burnaby, to resolve last minute concerns!!

The next few posts will show pictures of the trip that I completed with my dad on July 24th this summer.

XXR 002`s, more lip!

So I`ve read LOTS about XXR (Sportmax) on the internet before buying these wheels, lots of bad comments saying "don`t buy this" or just claiming these are crappy wheels. Oh well! I really can`t afford super nice JDM wheels like SSR`s or Starsharks with low offsets in 15 x 8 or 15 x 9 format... I love the real oldschool japanese wheels but at this point I just wanted some more lip. I sold the old 280zx rims and the snowflakes as well to clearup the garage. It helped a lot with the look of the car, however the fitment is NOWHERE near what I want to accomplish with this car. Fitment is a must, and bigger wheel studs and spacers in the rear will be required. Or staggered rims. For rubber I went back to Falken again, ziex 912 - budget!!! :P size is 195/50r15 (tiny stretch on those 15x8 -0 offset wheels). Fans of stretched rubber to insane extents can visit http://www.tyrestretch.com/index.php!

PRETTY

WELL IT WAS ABOUT TIME - the car had been ugly burned blue for a good while now, and it wasn`t going to get prettier unless paint got on there. And NO the windown tint isn`t DIY! I`m not THAT cheap : ) I was also starting to suffer from "need new wheels" disease that seems to affect most tuners, so I got some affordable-nowhere-near-deep-enough-dish-wheels that kinda looked like SSR Reverse Mesh (my dream wheels for AE86`s) to alleviate the pain. Oh and a drift knob (a very well spent $10 in my opinion) and a front strut tower brace - cheap ebay stuff again, but hey, it looks alright!