Corona RT134 restoration

[cman]

Hi,

Since the TORC forum seems to be quite a sedate forum, I decided to get some more comments by showing you what I've been doing lately. Ladies and gentlemen, here's my Corona RT134 Liftback Luxury Edition Liftback 1980 w/ 20R engine and a 3-speed A40 tranny.

Here's how it looked when I bought the vehicle a few years ago:




Nice and clean, even when looking under the hood:


However, the vehicle was not new. I wanted it to be, so I had to do something. I decided to start with the under of the car - it was a little bit rusty:


Dropped some parts off:


Changed some new parts:


Sand blasted and painted some parts:


Acquired some new parts:


And finally got something ready:

[cman]

Discovered that the car was a rusty piece of s##t:


And decided to start a bigger project:


Well, I didn't. Just some excuses like 'lack of time', 'lack of money' and 'lack of inspiration'. The car stood in a garage for a long time.

Sometimes I wanted to do something and took some smaller projects:


Until one day I decided to remove the windshield:


Just because there seemed to be a little bit of rust there:


One day my friend stopped by and promised to give me a hand with this:



The engine was surprisingly quite a clean:


As I told you, I wanted it to be new. The actual restoration started here:


Had to reproduce most of the decals:


They look almost 100% original:


Cleaned the whole engine:


Found some rust holes fixed by the previous owner:

(nice work, eh?)

Bought a water pump that didn't fit in:


And broke some expensive parts:

[cman]

After doing a few hours of real work, there started to be some progress in sight:




Finally there was something to show my friends:




The engine looked just like I wanted it to look like:

[cman]

The body was - as I mentioned - a little bit rusty. Even though it seemed to be in a good shape, it wasn't.

[cman]

All the rust damages were fixed:








The new cap surrounding was taken from Carina TA60:




More and more holes were found...


...and fixed.












This is where we're now. The body is waiting for the finalization and a new paintwork. Thanks for watching

[tc]

Wow! That's an excellent presentation of the story so far.

It is certainly scary how a car can look in really good condition and then, after closer examination, a very different story!

I'm looking forward to seeing her finished.

Well done & Good Luck,

Tim

[gerald7]

whoa. nice work. I think I have seen the pics before. You have a blog or something or posted in other forums before?

Keep us posted about the progress. Looking forward to see the work in progress!

[cman]

Apr 10, 2009 7:40:20 GMT gerald7 said:

whoa. nice work. I think I have seen the pics before. You have a blog or something or posted in other forums before?

As I mentioned in the first post, I tried in TORC forum.

Thank you for your comments.

[Uncle Bob]

Again great attention to detail and some top quality welding i see

[cman]

Thank you!

Now I need to have a small break with this car. It's still early spring here in Finland and I have no garage where I could build this car. I need to wait for the summer...

When the weather gets warmer, I'm planning to start removing the old paintwork, fixing the welding seams and filling them with tin. I try to avoid using any other fillers as far as possible.

Forgot to say that there are bigger pictures on my Corona restoration page.

[gerald7]

Apr 13, 2009 7:30:46 GMT cman said:

Apr 10, 2009 7:40:20 GMT gerald7 said:

whoa. nice work. I think I have seen the pics before. You have a blog or something or posted in other forums before?

As I mentioned in the first post, I tried in TORC forum.

Thank you for your comments.

I have no clue whats TORC but I did find your blog when I was doing research about engines. specifically 20R ;D

[cman]

Apr 16, 2009 7:22:51 GMT gerald7 said:

I have no clue whats TORC

Toyota Owner's and Restorer's Club

www.toyotaclub.org

[cman]

This project has slowly continued with cleaning the driver's door. I knew it was bad but didn't know (again) that it was THIS bad!

It looks like the door was hit a million times with a hammer, let it rust a bit and then filled all the holes with fibre glass and a new paintwork. Then the rust has eaten the plates and the door is really difficult to fix - at least by "not-so-professional" like me.

Now I'm desperately seeking new (better) doors - with no luck so far...

The body is going to be soda blasted and it should be all clean after that. Then I can start filling the "craters" with tin and preparing the body to be painted. If only I could find good doors...