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AE86.weblog |
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Monday, February 24, 2003
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Also... once I find out exactly what color I'm going to use, I'm just going to start getting the body panels painted individually. I'll get the fenders and hatch painted. Then the hood, then the doors, etc. That way I can get everything painted the right way (no color seams or red showing) and I can pay for it in little chunks.
Man... so much bodywork to do. I also need to get a new bumper. From this pic, you can see that the left corner took a hit. It sags pretty good:
Little bit at a time... |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 2:39 PM
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Well, the blue I like is a GM color that I've seen on a late 90s Cavalier and Sunfire. I can't tell for sure, but I think the color is "Dahlia Blue". I either find pics of the right color without any color name, or color name with crappy pics, so I can't tell if it's the same color or not. Here's the color I'm going for:
I just joined f-body.org and I'm going to post that pic to see if I can get anyone to tell me what color that is.
In the mean time, I've FINALLY, just now, tracked down the email address to the owner of that blue Levin. I'll ask him what color he used. The other blue I'm KINDA considering is Acura's "voltage blue" that they used on some Integras. It's slightly lighter and less purpley than the Civic SI blue. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 1:51 PM
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Tuesday, February 18, 2003
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| The more I look at that blue Levin, the more I want that color. But, I'm starting to think it's not that Civic SI blue. It looks a little lighter than that. Maybe it is the Volkswagen blue. Hrm... I have to track down that guy and find out what color that is. =\ |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 6:42 PM
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Well, slow weekend as far as the AE86 project goes... I left the wiring diagram at home, so I couldn't work on the electrical short. And I've sourced a caliper, but haven't ordered it yet. The sun visors and 1985 "eyebrows" are en route, so they hadn't arrived in time for last weekend.
Then there's the tires. The lamers at the tire warehouse took FOREVER to deliver the tires to Reyes Racing. They were about 4hrs late. Finally, when they DID arrive, they brought the wrong tires. I ordered the Kumho 711, and they brought the 712 (see "new and busted" below. =P ). I was so late getting up to Bakersfield by that time that I just left the 2 wheels with Art and he offered to deliver them all the way down to my house in Garden Grove when I got back into town! And the delay wasn't even his fault. Man! Talk about service! The upside to all that was that I got to hang out with the Reyes Racing crew for a few hours... all of which own AE86s. Cool bunch of guys with some nice AE86s. =)
So, while I had nothing to really do to the Corolla, I picked up some Brasso and polished up the taillights. And... just to experiment, I also polished up my cracked and jacked "eyebrows" on the headlights. Aside from the cracks and missing corner, they look really nice. I also experimented on my cracked driver side mirror housing. It shined up really nicely... too bad it's broken to begin with. Nice to see how well those things polish up, though. =) |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 4:08 PM
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Thursday, February 13, 2003
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Screw it. I just ordered a pair of Kumho 711 from Reyes Racing. KILLER DEALS! 195/50/15 mounted and balanced for $49/ea plus tax. DAMN. That's awesome. Give them a call:
**edit**
Sorry, Reyes Racing is no more. =(
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- posted by //Ender-DI @ 2:38 PM
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Monday, February 10, 2003
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| Today, I saw an article on Club4AG about interior vinyl and fabric dying. It looked really nice and gave me new confidence in going with that route. Seeing the photos in that article gave me all sorts of ideas on how to re-style my interior. (I'd post pics, but I need to ask permission first) I've been talking for a while that I want to update the AE86's interior to look pretty much the same, but with more modern materials and colors. So I think I'm going to use some 1985 door panels (mostly vinyl with integrated arm rests) and color it flat black and graphite. Same with the rear side panels. Then reupholster the front and back seats with a nice black fabric from a late model Japanese car. Not sure which one, just something that'll have a nice modern feel to it. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 3:06 PM
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WOO HOO!! Well, on Sunday, I went with Chris down to one of the junkyards in Bakersfield and looked for Cressidas, CRXs, and Camrys. Out of all the cars I looked at, there were NO CRXs with their front spoiler still on them, only ONE Camry and it was one that didn't come with the lip, and I only found 1 Cressida that still had its front lip spoiler. And that Cressida was probably a 1989 or something, so it's lip was slightly different. It flared out quite a bit at its tips. I picked it up anyway, figuring it would be cheap and I could still play with it and see what would come of it.
Well, just as I was about to give up on that lot, I found a 1989/1990-ish Mazda MX6 that had a front lip spoiler that looked just about perfect. We measured it off and it was near perfect. It seemed about 1.25" too long, but other than that, it looked really good. Another bonus was that it was a 2 piece spoiler - it joined in the middle, making shortening it an easy task. Despite it being fastened with philips head self-tapping screws every 2" across the whole width of the car, it came off very easily. I took it and all the screws home with me and matched it up to the Corolla. As I suspected, it was a bit too wide and it didn't quite make it to the tips of the wheel wells. But it didn't look bad, so I thought I'd give it a try.
This spoiler seemed like it was MADE to adapt to other cars. The mounting surfaces were nearly flush with the top of the lip so mounting wasn't a tricky task. The way it fastened in the center made shortening it a snap. I just took off 1.25" off the right half and the left half just slid right back into place. Then i secured it with 2 10mm bolts on each side and secured the rest of the mounting points with the self-tapping phillips head screws that came off of the MX6.
  
I love it! It looks great! I'll also be writing up a tutorial on how I did this for my AE86Links Project page.
*happy*happy*happy*happy*happy*happy*happy*happy*happy* |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 2:53 PM
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Friday, February 07, 2003
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Well, I've spent the last two weeks looking at EVERY car on the road during my commute to and from work each day. I've been looking at other cars to see which ones might have stock lower lip spoilers that might fit onto the bottom of the stock USDM AE86 bumper/lip. I saw a pic on Club4AG where someone had put a 2nd gen (maybe 1st gen) Integra lip on it. It was very thin and didn't wrap all the way around. Still, it was a nice touch. So that got me thinking about other cars that might be a better match. So far, I've come up with three good candidates.
The first one is from a 1985 Cressida:
I like the shape of this, but it's pretty thin.
The 2nd one is from a 1985 Honda CRX:
I like this one too, but it's pretty large and I don't know if that would create clearance problems.
The 3rd and one that I like the best, is from a 1990-91 Camry V6 LE:
It's a good blend of the Cressida and CRX ones. It has the nice shape of the Cressida and is between the sizes of the large CRX and the small Cressida. It took me a while to figure out which Camrys had this lip spoiler. And still, not all V6 LEs had them. So... good luck finding one.
I'm at work now, so I'll post pics when I get home. |
- posted by //Ender-DI @ 11:31 AM
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