'88 L Street/Track Build- Coilovers • B6ZE • Weber DCOE's • Widebody • Chopped Top •

[dliverance]

Those first gen celicas are great. I had a 72, 74, 76 and 77 but never a liftback.

Here's my 74 before i sold it. I was the second owner. Got it in an estate sale.

[Advancedynamix]

My uncle had several of those early celicas when I was really young. He had one that was pretty built up. I remember him drifting it when he would take me places in it. I've always wanted one too.

[skeeters_keeper]

That celica is cool!

[theastronaut]

Yeah I was stupid for selling the Celica. I've really missed it and I don't want to mess up my chance to buy it back. The guy that owns it now finally put a price on it this week so the Miata is listed for sale. I'm working to finish up one of my '66 C10's in time to take it to Goodguys Charlotte next month. Hopefully they'll both have new homes soon.

I've been driving the Festiva more since the weather has cooled off a little, especially last week. Still haven't found 15's I like so the NS-2R's are sitting in a corner of the shop collecting dust.

[theastronaut]

I never found Maxima wheels so my next choice was 15x5.5 Acura Legend wheels. I found a set on eBay but forgot to bid on them and they ended at only $95 shipped A few days later they were relisted so I sent a message asking if they'd set up a buy it now listing, so I was able to go ahead and buy them. They arrived today so I started working on them after work.




After about 45 minutes on the "lathe".






Dropped on wood blocks to check how they'll look at ride height. They're 45 offset so I bought a set of 33mm spacers to get them fitted like the Escort wheels.




Hub lettering smoothed off.




Before shot.

[dliverance]

Man that came out really good. What finish are you going to go with?

[theastronaut]

I'm thinking a light/medium charcoal metallic with satin clearcoat, should tie in well with the grey trim on the car.

[dliverance]

Yeah that sounds awesome. I have to look and see how you refinished your bumpers again. I got myself a new/used set to replace my janky bumpers.

[theastronaut]

I used a red scuff pad with lacquer thinner to get all the dead/oxidized plastic and any road grime off. I used a Duplicolor or similar rattle can pant made for trim but it's starting to fade slightly and peel off of the side trim. Plus whatever I used has a slight bluish tint that I don't like, it's not a pure grey color.

I'd suggest SEM dye, I used it on the rubber running board covers for my '64 VW back in 2002-2003 and they still look great. Plenty of colors available and its durable, even out in the sun. I've had kids jump up on the running boards at shows and it doesn't scrape off.

[theastronaut]

Mounted the new wheels and tires today. I can definitely tell that the sidewalls are shorter and stiffer- the steering is more responsive and it turns in quicker. They seem a bit greasy, which I expected from reading reviews that they need some miles put on them before they grip their best. I only have about 20 miles on them so far. They seem to communicate that they're reaching their limit of grip very well, both braking and cornering. Im even more impressed with the stock brakes now that the tires have more grip- the brakes still have plenty of power to slow the car at the limit of grip even at 70-75 mph. I need to raise the car back up about 1.25"-1.5" to get the suspension geometry back in its sweet spot so it'll corner without understeering like crazy, and then I can do a better comparison between these and the Achilles ATR-K's. I have a couple of different video apps with g-meter overlays, I'll try to get the camera mount out and take some vids at the autocross Saturday.

[dliverance]

I'm curious. What is your sweet spot height? I got mine lowered today and its about 30mm from tire to fender but I haven't test driven for performance yet. Maybe saturday.

[theastronaut]

I'm curious. What is your sweet spot height? I got mine lowered today and its about 30mm from tire to fender but I haven't test driven for performance yet. Maybe saturday.

Right now I'm at 11" from the fender lip to the center of the hub up front. I think I was about 1.25" higher back when I autocrossed it and it had more grip then. Right now it understeers a little, where before the front would bite hard enough to get the rear to rotate around a bit when diving into a corner.

[theastronaut]

I had a great time at Madness 10 this past weekend! It was great to finally meet so many of the people from here and the Facebook group and see their cars in person. I met up with Jerry (Team Lightning) Friday morning and followed him to Barb's house in Raleigh for the cookout that night. I had a couple of guys interested in seeing how well Charlie's suspension setup performed so I took them on test rides. Both were blown away at how well the car behaved when driving normal but still had a ton of grip when thrown into a corner at speed.

Saturday was the big show. It had rained in a couple spots on the way up so I looked up nearby car washes to stop at on the way to the show. Everyone else must have had the same idea because there were Festivas in nearly every wash bay, Festivas wating to get in the wash bays, and Festivas outside of the wash bays lined up for a convoy to the show! I should have taken pics, it was pretty cool seeing that many in one place. I didn't take many pics at the show either unfortunately. After the show we stopped in the parking lot of Char Gril to take group pictures, then headed back to Barb's house.

One of the highlights of the weekend was getting to meet and hangout with Charlie. I'd definitely be out of the Festiva game by now if it wasn't for finding his Advance Suspension topic and setting up my car using the info he posted. I really appreciate what he's done for the Festiva community and hope more people could experience how great these cars are with the suspension he's developed. Getting to ride with him driving my car was pretty neat too even though the car wasn't running 100%, and we were surrounded by residential areas so he couldn't really push the car very hard.


On to the pics...

This was at the show Saturday. There were 70 Festivas and 5 Aspires, the largest show so far.






I found these three pics posted on the Facebook group.










Panororamic pic of the parking lot at Char Grill.





Charlie and Arty diagnosing the rough-running issue. Ended up being loose spark plugs, the previous owner must not have gotten them tight enough and they finally worked loose! I should probably check up on what's going on under the hood more often... (pic stolen from the facebook group)





Back in my hometown, 712 miles later.





I checked the mileage on the way there and got 34.3, which was the best I've got since swapping to the heavier 14's. On the way home I took the roof rack off and kept the windows rolled up most of the way to cut down on drag and got 36.26 mpg. I'm sure the fully tightened spark plugs helped a bit with that too!





My previous top speed attempt was 98 mph, downhill with the roof rack loaded with truck parts and the windows down. I tried again on a similar downhill stretch and was able to get up to 103.

[Advancedynamix]

Thanks for the kind words John, it was great to meet you and drive your car. You did a great job setting it up.
103mph is pretty good for a car with less than 60hp! That's a strong little carb engine.

[Team Lightning]

I got to watch his car on the interstate, it's quick for sure.