The Donor Car
Here is a donor car he picked up from a private junkyard closeout several years back. I think it was more of an impulse buy, because not very much was useful from it. But the cars are so rare, anything including glass is a rare commodity. Originally he was going to restore this one, but due to the severity of the rust damage, he decided to scrap the idea. Luckily the red 72 came along.
The head was pulled and taken to a machine shop to clean up, and install new valves and valve guides. General overhaul. Its anyone's guess as to how long there has been water in the cylinders. So I doubt the block is any good.
One of the reasons this car would be very difficult to restore, is that it appears that a fire burned the wiring in the engine bay, and burned the hood pretty bad. The metal on the hood is rusty and very fatigued from the heat damage.
The interior is also in very bad shape.
Here is the final nail in the coffin that killed this project and turned it into a donor car. There was just so much rust. There should be a floor board there where you can see down to the concrete. There was nothing to weld to in most places. It would take another year or more to do this level of restoration. The time and money involved would be better spent on another car.
The Project Car
Some more pictures, for no reason other than I took them.
Some things to note:
1) The US gasket that holds the windshield in has a chrome strip on it. In Japan the gasket was all black. JDM all black front and back windshield gaskets will be installed in the future.
2) In the US the front grill was all chrome. In Japan the grill and headlight bezels were blacked out. These will be painted in JDM fashion.
3) The US blinker and parking lights are all amber. In Japan the parking lights were clear and had integrated turn signals that are amber. The side lights next to the headlight also have a reflective material in the US version. In japan they didn't have this. These lights will be converted to the JDM versions.
Most of the dirt, tree leaves, mouse nests, and other debris have been removed.
The hood is extremely rusted and was pulled off to take to a sand blasting shop. Only the shop doesn't use sand, because sand pits and warps the metal so bad. This shop uses baking soda. Which works awesome on so many levels. Its very mild. You can take paint off and not damage chrome and other parts that one may be too lazy to remove. It also leaves a coating of baking soda on the raw metal. This allows the part to be stored for a significant period of time before it needs to be primed without worrying about rust. You do have to wash the baking soda off before you paint the parts.
Soon the engine will be pulled out so these shots will look different.
Everything in the engine bay will be removed so it can be painted. Its going to take a significant amount of degreaser to get this section clean.
The cluster and parts of the dash have been removed to see how bad the damage is behind them, as well as to remove the wiring harness from the car.
As you can see the dash and the steering wheel will have to be replaced. Here you can also see the location for the US factory radio. This will be moved into the center console with a nice JDM console swap.
The Automatic shifter will have to be removed and the tunnel will have to be cut. The donor car has already been cut. (pictures later) This will be the before picture.
As with the shifter, this is the before shot of the pedals. It isn't really impressive now. But you have to have before shots so that the improvements are noticed.
These seats are going to go. SR5 seats are waiting in boxes to take their place as soon as the car has been competed enough for them to be installed. Maybe a year down the road. I'll try to get pictures of those as well.
I thought these bumper stickers were ironic. The car was purchased with these already installed. If you can't tell, that is a rebel flag. That is just an odd thing to see on a Corolla. I thought the organ donation bumper sticker was very relevant to this restoration, seeing as how many parts for this car have come from other cars.
The Plan
This car is from a '72 US brochure. It is very close to what this car looked like brand new.
Shown in this pictures are the blacked out JDM windshield moldings without the chrome strip, and the blacked out grill and head light bezels.
These are some of the options shown in the JDM brochure from the same time period. I think the US mirrors will be kept, but the SR5 fender flares will be used. Also pictured is a close up of the lack of a chrome strip in the rear window gasket. There is also a picture of the three gauge pod and a/c controls that he will be installing as well as the center console with the radio relocated to the floor to make room for the three gauges in the dash. I think he even has the clock option, but I'm not for sure.
Yes, its got a Hemi. The 2tc engine utilized a hemispherical head just like the legendary Mopar Hemi, only smaller.
