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The mkiv Supra Owners Club

Project Tightfist


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Hopefully this project will be a little break from the norm for you all!

 

Up until early March this year I had a 200 mile per day commute to work and back but thankfully that's just gone down to about 200 yards, to keep fuel costs down and try and keep the journey fun I bought myself a Smart Roadster but that's now up for sale as it's served it's purpose honorably!

 

I decided it was time to get myself a fun road car again but I decided to keep costs minimal as my wife and I currently already have a Skyline each and I frankly just own too many cars (slight addiction) :(. So for this project I will spend as little as possible but attempting to get maximum results, I'm going to do as much work as possible by myself with parts bought for as bargain a price as I can secure. I flatly refuse to do my usual thing of just chucking the car at tuners/body shops and picking them up weeks later all rebuilt and shiny :innocent:

 

After doing a ton of searching for what I wanted I decided on a Supra, a couple of days hunting and I managed to pick up this little number for £1700 with 12 months T&T.

 

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The car is painfully standard at the moment but it is in really good condition save for a couple of tiny rust spots under the rear window seal. Mechanically it's running nice and smooth with nothing untowards that I can spot for the time being.

 

Job 1 - New wheels

I hate the standard 16's that were on it but I wasn't about to shell out megabucks on a shiny new set of doublesix or anything so I had a little mooch around my wheel collection for something to put me on until the right deal comes along:

 

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I found a set of silver wheels with the right PCD, sadly couldn't find my spacers at the time, and set about spraying them black. I also found some good tyres with plenty of meat on them so popped them on and fitted the wheels. Although far from pretty, I think it's a slight improvement and that's good enough for now :)

 

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Total cost so far - £8

 

Job 2 - Fuel Economy

 

I worked out that I was only getting about 14mpg on average which I know isn't right, but I was quite surprised to find out the cost of new lambdas from Toyota. In the true spirit of the project I sourced a replacement set for mucho cheapness but I won't be able to get my hands on them until May, an interim solution was required. I nipped to Maplins and picked up a can of Isopropyl alcohol for £5 and got the lambdas out of the car, judging by the effort required to remove them I'm guessing they hadn't been changed in some time! When I took them out they didn't actually look too bad but I gave them a few good old blasts anyway:

 

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I refitted them and am now seeing approx 28-30mpg so I'm happy with that :)

 

Total cost so far - £13

Next job on the list will be to sort out those rust bubbles and get some aero. With regards to the bumpers and skirts etc. I'll be on the hunt for anyone with any damaged or broken aero they're looking to get rid of and repair/spray it myself :)

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