Work gets busy… and the weather is warming up (for the moment). I want to punch the AW out and get it on the road… but I think my standards slow me down. I was surprised to find that the seat rails I made for my AE86 actually fit the AW11… except… in the AW11 they sit about 2″ too wide for the seat. If I modify them slightly however… they will work, and put me in a really nice seating position. Or they could… except there is a weird rail that sticks up about 40mm out of the floor and runs right down the middle of where I want to put my seat. If I just sit on top of the rail, I don’t have room for a helmet…
Why can’t Toyota just make cars with flat floors?
I took a cutting wheel to that odd stamped rail today, and was surprised to find what looks like a 2kg lead weight stuffed loose inside it. Huh? Seriously… I’ll post pictures next time.
Steering wheel on the AW feels like it’s a lot higher than the 86, and that’s a great thing for me. Shift lever is super close to the wheel too… too bad the hand brake lever sits on the far side of the center tunnel. Odd. I’m tempted to grab parts from a zenkei AW that located the hand brake on the CORRECT side… later.
Furthermore… the steering hub that Masaharu sent me is super long. I’m talking like double what the typical north american product is. SWEET. Unfortunate part is that it’s got a lip machined into it which, although it cups the steering wheel, prevents me from mounting my quick release. One more thing to sell…
So… in my time today at the barn, I had planned on getting the interior ready… but… I got nothing done really except look and measure. And that’s about how every day goes… but two months or three months from now… I’ll have a car that I really like, even if it doesn’t look much different than it used to.
Yesterday… I spent my time masking off the top of the car, and covering the bottom half in rubber undercoating. That flat black looks really good… and I think about just spraying the whole car with rubber… not because of how it looks… but because of how easy it is. That’s a silly thing to do…
If I really wanted to be like Mad Max however…
Actually… there have been some cars that look REALLY nice in flat black (not rubber)… one of which is the AW11 based Group S rally car that Toyota built in the eighties… and I imagine building something that could look similar to that…
But then I remember all the other people before me who had similar dreams… and ended up with something that looks like total garbage, even for a car that is supposed to have that raw boro appeal. When I think about it… the only color I’ll be able to paint my car in, that I will never wish I did otherwise… is WHITE. Plain, boring, timeless white. Not because it’s plain, boring and timeless… but because it is the original color of the car… and non matching jams and corners always bother me lots.
Anyways…the rear struts are out for a clean up. Haven’t touched them yet…and I want to build the front ones too… But I’m short on tops and springs. Randy’s springs, being 8″ are look too long. I’ll probably need some seven’s… but I’ll confirm that soon.
Or not so soon… because the clutch finally went on the Legacy, and the weekend plan is to drop the tranny, and install an Exedy clutch and flywheel, as well as Subaru Group N engine and tranny mounts… which btw are scary stiff looking pieces. Beyond those things, are the TD04 Turbo, and IC…
Busy.