Project: Good things come to those who wait...apparantly!

When I started working for Redline Magazine as a 20 year old numbnut who was still a little wet behind the ears, I got my first taste of just how awesome the Toyota Supra Twin Turbo really was, and after taking many a passenger ride in our Castrol graphic smothered project car, I'd fallen head other heels for one of the greatest cars to come out of Japan. The one sore point in my otherwise flawless fairytale, was that until I was 24, I wasn't allowed to get my sweaty palms behind the wheel for (which was probably a good thing at the time!) Apart from thoroughly pissing me off at the time, the rejection just spurred me on even more to one day have my own Supra and be able to stick my middle finger up to the powers that be who ran our magazine car insurance. Night after night, I'd been dreaming about driving around in my own Supra and even became a member on this very forum around 7 years ago just to get my fix. Thankfully, last year, the planets aligned and all my dreams came true, I finally became the owner of '93, J Spec TT Supra that I could drag back to my man cave and lavish all my time and attention. I bought the car last June for a very good price that I dare not repeat, but with the bargain price tag, also came a hefty list of things that needed doing to bring it back up to scratch with the VSS at the top of the list. The car already played host to most of the HKS products catalogue and rumour had it that it was running BPU at around the 350-380bhp mark. This is yet to be confirmed thus far, but even in the 7/8 months of ownership, I've done my very best to improve on what has taken place before, and make the awesome JZA80 into something I'm really going to be proud to pilot. Below are a load of pics I've taken as I've gone along sorting little jobs here and there and generally trying to tidy things up a little. Hopefully my little descriptions will give you a little bit of direction as we go.

Hope you like it as much as I do!

Matt

When I got the car, it looked like this, active front spoiler, 19inch HRE wheels and factory boot spoiler, the latter was the first to go.

The Supras 'ashtray' sorry...interior had seen better days and the owner seemed to flick his fags out wherever he could, I got to work sorting this first!

When I got it

Plasti dip interior panels

New Momo wheel and flocked gearknob

New headunit

The engine wasn't in such bad shape, but I still had my own vision of what I wanted it to look like.

It went from this:

With a bit of this

And this

To this

On the outside, I removed the rear spoiler to look like this

Added a front intercooler and some more breathing like this

And with the addition of some Nismo GT-R vents and a new front splitter, the front end currently looks like this

Carbon wrapped low level spoiler from Ibraar added

Showing off

I've just finished converting the car to permanent TTC and I've removed all of the hard pipes, butterflies, actuators and hoses that aren't needed anymore, I've also wrinkle finished the cam covers and replaced the gaskets, just need to get a few pics of the setup.

I'll keep you posted!

Nice work on the bumper mate

That was a great read, very inspirational. Glad you got their in the end, it looks like a lovely example

Nice work on the bumper mate

what he said

Looking good. Keep the pics coming!

I really like the HRE wheels, they really suit your supra.

Cheers for the comments guys, much appreciated! I'll try to keep this up to date as much as I can. Off now to swap over my starter motor, wish me luck

Here's how the engine set-up currently looks with everything removed!

Each to their own - personally think your car looked spot on when you bought it with its tasteful mods.

your engine looks much better now - however whats with the very dirty looking spark plug cover?

It's wrinkle finish paint IMI, looks great in the flesh, but hard to capture on camera!

It's wrinkle finish paint IMI, looks great in the flesh, but hard to capture on camera!

Ah OK - so not a glossy finish then?

Nah mate, it's matte! Like this:

Cool car bud, engine bay in particular has been transformed, I've got the plate and fan shroud from Dude's group buy too but haven't fitted them yet, they look great

Do you still have your active spoiler?? If so, I've been on the lookout for one for a while...

Cool car bud, engine bay in particular has been transformed, I've got the plate and fan shroud from Dude's group buy too but haven't fitted them yet, they look great

 

Do you still have your active spoiler?? If so, I've been on the lookout for one for a while...

Cheers fella! Nah, the active spoiler went a few months back! He got a bargain lol

Ah well, the search continues I've got a day off tomorrow, your pics have given me the kick up the arse needed to get out and fit Dude's carbon bits

Each to their own - personally think your car looked spot on when you bought it with its tasteful mods.

 

your engine looks much better now - however whats with the very dirty looking spark plug cover?

This. Each to there own but in that first picture it looked amazing.

Ah well, the search continues I've got a day off tomorrow, your pics have given me the kick up the arse needed to get out and fit Dude's carbon bits

They're a pretty easy fix mate and look great...even if I do say so myself!

This. Each to there own but in that first picture it looked amazing.

I think it has much more prescence now, but hey ho!

Hi Matt, nice work so far you've done a brilliant job transforming the car.

Keep the updates coming and just remember, it's your car so do what you like

Nice work on the bumper mate

Agreed, bumper looks great

Cheers Kaan, appreciate it mate! How far is yours from completion now? We need to get it shot and in the mag

Cheers Kaan, appreciate it mate! How far is yours from completion now? We need to get it shot and in the mag

Yeah getting there mate it should be done around July

I've been having an intermittent problem with the Supra starting and decided to swap over the starter motor to a spare I got free when I bought the car, trouble is, it wasn't the problem. I've since tracked it down to the crappy Toyota electrical system that doesn't allow enough power to turn the starter all the time (voltage drop). I can override the relay under the bonnet at any time by bridging terminals, but I will be doing the relay mod that is popular more with the mk3s to allow a boost in power to sort the problem once and for all. Everything else is pretty sweet!

It's been bugging me lately that the shade of red that I had my Auto gearknob flocked in isn't quite the same as my Momo wheel and the fact that I couldn't carry over my Quaife gearknob as I'd intended from my previous track project had convinced me it was time for a change. I took the lever off and had a gander at what could be done and to my surprise, it was easy as pie to swap over the gearknobs. I simply removed the plastic that previously helped the auto-box to select gear and then bolted the gearknob straight onto the threaded bolt. Not only does it look much better, but it still works exactly as Toyota intended with a push down operation to select gear instead of the button press. Overdrive has also been moved to a dash mounted switch too, so all in all, a right result!

As the sun was shining I thought I'd get a bit of a jump on cleaning the Sup ready for Japfest next week and of course with vigorous cleaning comes a shed load of fresh pics of my baby. Enjoy!