great thread given me a few ideas luckly i have a lightend st185 so dont have to go as far as the wing mirrors as there done by hand anyway. think the hamerite might be my next step stripping down all the running gear carnt wait to see your finished product keep up the good work.

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sketch

Well here's an update of progress on the rear suspension and a little on the front.

The plan was to get both ends of the car rebuilt prior to starting to measure the lengths needed for the brake lines. However as is Standard Operating Practice with this car that failed to be the case. for a variety of reasons.

Now that we had the subframe on it should have been an easy job to fit the rear end, so on went the strut.



All looking fine from here but when viewed from above it becomes horribly apparent that with adjustable camber plates there is no way to get to the Allen bolts to change that camber. I didn't have a picture of before but her is what the angle grinder resulted in.



All sorted. Not pretty but it does the job we will be getting some gromit strip to go round the edge of this and tidying up the cuts once the car is nearing completion. The rest of this side was really not that difficult...



The other side however was where the fun started.

This happened when we were removing the whole assembly in the first place so we got some nyloc's and a bit of threaded bar, to fix this particular issue. We do the same thing on the Karts all the time with various bits and bobs and it was much more reasonable that getting fleeced by toyota.




This all went together ok following this and we ended up with both sides fitted minus the roll bar drop links.


The drop links themselves we went about fabricating a set from some aluminium bar we had lying around and a few rose joints from the Kart steering arms.





I'm not going to write a DIY on that as it seems pretty straight forward, and they work a treat aslong as you get the right diameter rose joint's - which we didn't

So another set have been ordered but these adjustable ones will be getting upgraded to go onto the front so that we can preload if needs be.

The front in itself wasn't too much of a hassle we thought. We had bought some bolts for the strut hub joint and this was all going great until it transpires that a 185's front hub bolts are about a mil larger in diameter than a 205's. Great so rather than getting silly and getting more bolts we went to work with the pillar drill. Suffice to say it all fits now and is awaiting fitting to the car.

Here is a final picture of the steering knuckle modification you need to get the discs once skimmed to fit correctly without any silly spacers.



So thats the update until we get back to fitting the front end fully and get the brake line plan completed. The brake caliper mounting will be done using welded captive nuts. More detail on this in a future update.

I have also spent some time pondering our stripped loom and Code 54 problems, so to avoid any problems here I am going to make a small loom to fit right next to the ECU. So this begs the question is the ECU pin out diagram on GT fours correct for a JDM ecu?

great build
where did you get the rear camber adjust topmounts? ive been on the phone to BC and they dont sell anything off the shelf to fit the GT4.

thanks
andy

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Sprint ST165 aka "The 500BHP Sledgehammer" #6 in the Toyota Sprint Series. GT3071 1.9bar

Andy,

Tuning Developments do them. There's a catch though you need to get them for a 202 or 185 I can't remember exactly. Suffice to say BC don't "Support their use" as it's one in the recommended application but it's the same mount no great issue there. I think it's a 202 mount as the struts are off a 185....

Pete

I did wonder what struts you were using. There was a time when some people fitted Eibach ST202 springs to their ST205 and then wondered why the front of the car collapsed after a few months! A salutory lesson on what can happen if you fit the wrong spring and damper rates.

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Don
GT4DC Chairman
1994 Toyota Celica GT-Four ST205WRC JDM 269bhp @ 0.9bar
1994 Toyota Celica GT-Four Special GT 590bhp @ 1.8bar
1989 Van Diemen RF88/89 Formula Ford 1600
2008 Nissan Patrol GU 3.0L ZD30DDTi 154bhp

Yeah we did consider using a 202 set but as you said the 185 is probably a better idea given the additional weight.

The only real issue is that the front top mounts are a different orientation on a 185 to a 205 so you have to be a bit creative, but I'm keeping my eye out for a set of noltec mounts for the front

Really enjoying reading about your project Pete. Its really showing some lateral thinking and innovation. Keep up the good work!

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Don
GT4DC Chairman
1994 Toyota Celica GT-Four ST205WRC JDM 269bhp @ 0.9bar
1994 Toyota Celica GT-Four Special GT 590bhp @ 1.8bar
1989 Van Diemen RF88/89 Formula Ford 1600
2008 Nissan Patrol GU 3.0L ZD30DDTi 154bhp

thanks pete. i have the 185 inverted coilovers on my 165. finding out about the 202 mount is great news as my plans for the winter were to find a way to ditch the camber bolts in the rear.
i was going to weld locating washers on the rear struts, but now i can use the topmounts instead

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Sprint ST165 aka "The 500BHP Sledgehammer" #6 in the Toyota Sprint Series. GT3071 1.9bar

Well this weekend has resulted in a huge step forward, work progressed in a few areas, here's he first one.



Commencement of door lightening. To summarise the locks and electric central locking motors are now gone. The large bit of metal that covers the inside of the door is gone, as is the crash bar.

Initially you'd think this would be fairly simple but owing the the crazy locking mechanism that has about a million pivots if you take the locks out then the door will only open about 50% of the time.



This is reduced to only this.



I took this photo in the oft chance someone wants to do this. This should save alot of time, to prevent the unlocking arm from being able to swing you need to make a system that will constantly be engaged. This will make more sense when I take the other one to bits and add a phot here next time I have the chance. But suffice to say that particular problem was fixed with a little bit of angle iron, a self tapping screw, an allen bolt, a few washers, and one of the old rubber rocker cover washers that has had the rubber removed to give a nice smooth flange. Good engineering example no 1 in this update .



here's the crash bar removed the way to do this is to cut through the thin metal at the non-hinge end then use a hack saw blade to cut through the blobs between the bar and the door skin. Then finally bend the bar out and cut through the pipe. We couldn't fit the angle grinder in there.

Here is the pile of stuff that comes out the door.



Total of 3.5kg per door!

Task number 2 was to work on the Macpherson conversion. So here is how we tackled the issue we covered in the last update, of holding the caliper to the hub.




A few spot welds and the hubs have a few captive bolts.



not much clearance on the other side we rotated the nuts a bit but on this side we just ground a slight edge off the nut. When it all bolted together it was looking good!





Then we took the brakes to bits and mounted the hubs, and finally it looks like the macpherson conversion is complete!







So there we go machperson conversion dont...no silly spacers behind the disc, no big brake kits, just a bit of a milling and some bolts, total cost around £100. Good engineering no2.

Then the final task was the rear end. the droplinks have been fitted nicely and now the last bit of work was rebuilding the handbrake drums. All fine and dandy on one side, but in true GT4 fashion it was all going a bit too easy....so it transpired we had a few bits missing firstly was the kinky pin.

So a nail was modified!



Good engineering number 3!

And then we were also missing the washers that hold the straight pin together to springs, so once again the old rocker cover washers make an appearance and here we are!





we can bolt a wheel on!



So there's a mammoth update for the weekend. Next on our list is measuring up brake lines, then also doing some more on the front end...all in all it's looking good I'd say!

those hub flange faces are so much thicker than the 165

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Sprint ST165 aka "The 500BHP Sledgehammer" #6 in the Toyota Sprint Series. GT3071 1.9bar

Looks really good.

Are you comfortable with the spot welds on the captive nuts? Not sure I would be.

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GT4DC Events Co-ordinator
1996 ST205 UK

Yeah not too worried, we'll be running some high temperature loctite on there and once it's all tightened up it's no different to the system on a 205 where there is just a thread tapped into the hub....

It's just realistically to hold the nut in place before you tighten it up so your not messing around behind in that tiny gap when it's all built up.