rider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI9FIrJYH-o&ab_channel=longphung

These days the cars tend to go through classic car auctions rather than you dealer trade in and ex-fleet BCA type auctions. With the classic car status now afforded to MkIV Supras then most of us are now on agreed value classic car insurance. Invariably a condition is that the car must be garaged overnight when within X hundred meters of home. If you go for general car insurance that is usually cheaper and you will have your normal driveway insurance. There have been issues in the past when owners have come to claim in a total loss situation and their general insurer then values the cars at 20% of their value. You pays your money according to the risk and negotiating hassle time you are prepared to put in. You probably should look at your insurance options ahead of or at least at the same time as looking for a car. Way back in the 80's I was considering either a Supra MkIII Turbo or a Sierra Cosworth, the insurance on one was £300 with no strings attached the insurance on the other was £5,500 with a stipulation list to make anyone cry from fitting a tracker to having it garaged in an alarmed building 23hrs a day. All because one car was highly nickable and I lived at a suburban address at that time without a useable garage; because the house was built when cars were 4 foot 6 inches wide. I would have been kicking myself if I'd bought a Cossie and then looked to insure it.

I had a garage built just to home my Supra after it had spent the first 19 years of my ownership outside. So outside is fine, at least they then get aired. Keep you eyes of FB and car auctions, you do get the occasional bargain at an auction.

"rear subframe is the unknown so will get it blasted and see what it’s like" Your sub frame will be fine. Its a thick gauge metal. I had my sub frame oven baked which gets to the inside as well as the outside. All the rust is then easily dissolved inside and outside in an acid dip. There will be rusting inside your frame that blasting simply wont touch. The bake and galvanizing wasn't expensive when I did it in 2017. Details on the companies used and costing are on my underside refurb project thread if you decide to go that route.

I believe historic cars are exempt from ULEZ so only a few years to wait until these cars reach 40.

Message Andy Ven, he worked (more successfully than I managed) on sourcing alternative new sensors and is retailing them at a decent price.

I had the same predicament when I sold my MkIII Supra for a BMW 7 series to accommodate the arriving and growing kids and hated it, so I got rid of the BMW and bought my MkIV Supra for myself and a new 4 door car for the wife. Where there is a will, there is usually a way.

I took my car off SORN today and went for a 30 mile B road thrash. That second turbo grunt could get addictive. Roads were busy so lots got to see a Supra out and about around here today. I expect they won't see another for a long time.

With inflation on the rip no one should sell anything unless its for investment in something else straight away. Supra inflation +25% or cash erosion of -7% and rising is a big void to fill or to fall into.

You have missed the Supra boat if you seek a factory manual car. There may be a modified NA car with a BMW manual gearbox for that kind of money but anything with a factory fitted V160 or V161 Toyota original box is now well over your price range. People are asking approaching £10k for just the V160/161 box alone before you get to buying the rest of the car. Have a word with Keron off the forum. He trade the cars and bits for the cars and he is by some margin the lowest cost dealer whilst also being a trusted trader of Supras.

I did a refurb on all four of my callipers in 2017 and they are all still fine using standard, which means cheap eBay parts. So long as they are well greased up with the Castrol red rubber grease they should be good for years. The other option people used to talk about was stainless steel pistons supplied by forum guru Chris Wilson. You can look him up and give him a call, he doesn't do messages or email. He has his contact number as a footnote on his posts.

Its been a nicely warm early spring day today so that afforded quick drying time allowing me time to get the centre caps painted and the first coat of lacquer applied. I'm more than happy with the colour, a very lush distinctly grey silver. It'll be a second coat of lacquer tomorrow and then I'll let the wheels sit for a couple of months before having tyres fitted to give plenty of time for the clear coat to fully cure. I'll either go with Continental or Bridgestone tyres and I guess the next picture should be these wheels sporting new rubber on my car sometime later this year. The OE alloys are such a key part to the stock look that many owners are now hoping to return to, its a pity that most sets got themselves scrapped leaving them a bit of a rare item these days.

The good bit of painting is when it goes well it goes really well and when it doesn't, then it doesn't. I collected all the wheels together today and gave them a nice wet sand. When primed they look great but you know once the paint goes on what isn't perfect is going to get amplified. And so it turned out. This is after each wheel has had its sanding, ready for the first tack layer base coat spray. The silver looks very grey in its mixing bottle which is promising as I always recall the Toyota silver being a darker silver than most. I mixed up a little over 200ml of paint, 50% with thinner. I found the gun pressure at 45psi a bit high for the mixture so this blend settled into a nice flow pattern at around 37psi. I've sprayed a lot of cellulose and enamel which must be thicker as they both work well with a higher gun pressure. With the first tack coat its amazing how a little paint goes a long way. Probably no more than 60ml to coat the 4 wheel faces and rims. Then after the 3rd coat. in all less than 200ml paint was required (actually 100ml paint mixed with 100ml thinner). These wheels are still wet so have more of a shine to them than they will when dry. The two right side wheels have a lot of rough areas, due to these wheels being painted a few times there are old runs and and blemishes showing through that didn't reveal themselves at the primer stage. So, I'm going to have to have a think whether I sand and start again with those two wheels or not. Though they looked absolutely perfect when I took my glasses off. Once the wheels are done then its onto the centre discs and after that they will all get the 2K lacquer treatment. The silver colour does look to be the correct period grey silver colour so for anyone looking for what silver to go for this could well be the colour code to your OE look; BSB 104 Silver - Toyota Standard.

Be worth removing the bushes from the sway bars for a pic or two as they can wear right through the bar under the bushes and snap. Actually, that is the only fail point on the bars. They form an interesting conical wear pattern and then snap at the outer part of the bushing.

Air conditioning is just like your fridge in reverse so its not especially complex or complicated. It has a compressor, a condenser at the front of the car where the refrigerant liquifies under cooling and pressure (from the air flow and compressor) then an expansion valve leading onto the evaporator inside the car when the refrigerant turning from liquid to a gas removes heat, effectively cooling. Its not rocket science stuff. You need first to check your system can hold a vacuum. If it can, great, your plumbing is all good. You then need to see if the compressor works, there are a few aspects to that. The A/C switch to send power to the clutch and the sensor which is pressure regulated. No pressure then no clutch. No power then no clutch. Until the clutch engages you won't get the compressor running. You don't need a full charge of 600g of R134a to persuade the compressor to fire up. 7psi on the suction side of the compressor, the low pressure side, will keep a compressor running. An idle system will sit around 50psi. A running system will be a little over 1 bar positive pressure on the suction with running compressor. If the clutch doesn't engage when you have pressure in the system then it is either the clutch or sensor not working. the clutch can be hot wired to be always engaged which will help pinpoint where problems lie. If your system hold vacuum and pressure then it is a simple fix to get up and running again. Most expensive repair will be a new compressor. If it doesn't hold pressure then you have a leak so first task is adding UV dye to track the leak down. If its a core failure you'd be in trouble as Toyota no longer supply parts for the A/C. If it is a pipe leak then any good A/C engineer can mod up a new pipe. You don't need any particular A/C specialist to diagnose your problem(s). Armed with a set of pressure gauges and a vacuum pump will tell them pretty much all they need to know. As a final point to note, R134a is being phased out and is no longer used in new vehicles. This has two impacts, one is pricing and the other is reducing availability that feeds back into pricing. So, R134a is getting very expensive (currently around 10 times the cost it was 20 years ago). So, you may want to consider other gasses rather than going with R134a. Some of those are hydrocarbon blend (mainly butane) flammable and some are like R134a, non-flammable HFC's.

" Toyota AC light flashing If you have a Toyota AC light flashing condition, the problem may not be as bad as you think. Toyota AC compressor clutches use a lock sensor circuit to make sure the clutch is fully locked-up to the compressor when the AC is on. The lock sensor generates an AC voltage as the clutch turns and sends that signal to either an A/C amplifier or ECM (depending on the car model). The signal is compared to engine RPM and that’s how the system knows that the AC clutch is slipping. Diagnose Toyota AC light flashing So the first question you have to solve is what’s causing the AC clutch to slip. The first thing to check is the belt tension. Check to see if your engine is equipped with an automatic serpentine belt tensioner. If so, read this article on how to check the condition of a belt tensioner. If your engine has a manual tensioning device, check the tension by pulling up and down on the belt to gauge belt deflection. If it’s more than 1/2″ it’s too loose. Next, check for poly-rib belt wear using a belt wear tool. You CANNOT gauge poly-rib belt wear visually. Read this post on how to measure poly-rib belt wear. Trust me on this. If the belt is properly tensioned and in good condition, you’re next step is to check the AC clutch Why is my Toyota AC light flashing The AC clutch works with an electro-magnet. The AC clutch coil can burn out, short out or sometimes even become too weak to engage properly. However, those same symptoms can appear if you have a pitted AC clutch relay. So your first step is to use a jumper cable to provide battery power and ground directly from the battery. Hotwire the AC clutch and start the engine. If the Toyota AC light flashing condition disappears, replace the AC clutch relay. If the AC light flashes, make sure the magnetic pickup inside the compressor is still in place. Sometimes they can fall out. If you still have the Toyota AC light flashing condition, replace the sensor"

Zunsport make these insets and there is usually a 20% discount code around the internet somewhere.

Its been a few months with the wheels all primed sat under towels waiting for the weather to warm up. You shouldn't paint in an ambient under 15C or onto a cold surface so I've been waiting for the weather to warm up, which is now happening with grass cutting under way again. So, I'm hoping to lay down the base coat onto the wheels in the next couple of week and we will then get to see what the BSB 104 Silver - Toyota Standard paint looks like. Can't wait, I need to crack on if I'm going to get these wheels onto the car come the Summer. I've purchased a set of new wheel nuts (they are an amazing £12 a nut from Toyota) to go with the newly painted wheels as I'm not certain if the wheel nuts for the current fitment set of BBS wheels are suited to the OEM wheels. I do love a bit of spray painting, its so rewarding. Until you get the runs, the overspray, a bit of peel effect and the likes. Its all a matter of keeping the gun flow and distance optimal to get the best effects which is always a little hit and miss for occasional sprayers.

I'd like to wish you good luck on this request, they were like over £1,000 each when available so its hard to imagine anyone would be sitting on a pair of new panels. Off to the breakers somewhere might be the only way or take a donor car and sell the rest in bits for £millions.

I bought a Range Rover Vogue a few years back and love it. It goes anywhere and is so comfortable. Kids love the rear screens to play games or watch DVD's. They are reasonably quick too and you can pick up a L322 variant for not a lot of money. Love mine so much I'm busy stashing a car fund at the moment to replace it with a newer L405 SDV8 Vogue. Up to £35k set aside so not to much more needed for the age/mileage that I have in mind whereas, my L322 TDV8 is only worth around £6k but that's what I paid for it 4 years ago anyway. Second hand prices are really over inflated at the moment so I'd recommend you put off a purchase for as long as you can because there has to be a big downturn coming in the near future to get back to historical depreciation trends which is definitely nothing like the large rises in all used car prices we have seen over the last 18-24 months.

I replaced both cats with shinier ones taken off a car that went single. Both cats before and after are the pre-facelift versions so they have internals. The facelift second cat has always been an empty space.

You never know quite what happened to these cars in Japan. My car, that I purchased in 1998, looks totally original under the bonnet aside from a snorting Blitz blow off valve but of the 6 cars I looked at, this one being the 6th, it was by no small distance the quickest. The acceleration was totally different to the others. The car had and still has the two cats fitted and it tipped the dyno at well North of the new car spec at the drive wheels. So, I never felt the need to decat my car, there are no restrictor rings fitted and whatever magic dust was sprinkled on the engine in the factory or in its first 2 years in Japan has proved to be completely reliable. You do also have potential issues with MOT's under the new regulations that cats are required on these cars due to their being a standard factory fitment. SRD do a really well priced refurb service on brakes if you don't fancy rebuilding them yourself.

I bumped into a disabled lady with a Supra at a local car show in the Summer of 2019. Surprising combination as the three don't usually go together. She had a NA auto that was black metallic, purple under sunlight. It'll be interesting to see if it is the same person/car. The car I saw on the showground did look well used and in need of a bit of TLC. Fuzzy used to run a pre-war Austin to the same show so if it is one and the same car/lady he may have also met her there.

I had a lid tab broken by a hammy fisted garage and got a new one from Toyota, pretty cheap as well which was a pleasant surprise at the time. So although the boxes were discontinued the lids are still around or were until recently.