How's the Celica going, Dave?

[Stayt`ie]

mate that yamaha of jacks is " slick ", i was staying in the same motel and got to have a good yarn with him, impressive man, been around this game a long time

[David Leikvold]

Ron, I can't figure out why people aren't building similar cars to his. They all go really hard, they all can use various engines, they're all really simple and none of them would be very expensive to make. The chassis (what is the plural?) are just simple space frames, he's in the fibreglass business so he makes his own bodies, he makes his own front wheels from billet aluminium and everything else is off the shelf. And each one is a logical development of it's predecessor.
All very good reasons not to race a Celica! But at least I'm building something. Maybe I'll know better next time.

[David Leikvold]

Almost lost the Celica today. The lady across the street parked her Volvo 240 at the top of her very steep driveway this afternoon and for the first time ever, forgot to put it in Park and only gave the handbrake a perfunctory tug. A few minutes later the 240 has come flying backwards down their driveway, across the street, straight through our paling fence, got plenty of air over the metre high retaining wall and landed bumper first in the garden before taking out the Hills Hoist, the kids' trampoline and finishing up stuck in the sand pit under the now destroyed cubby house.
It missed the Celica by about 3 metres. It hit so hard that it threw some of the fence palings about 20 metres. The towies took about an hour to drag it out and then used their winch to pull down the cubby house before it fell on anybody. I'm not complaining though, I wanted the cubby gone and now I have room for a shed!

[Rob]

How's it coming along Dave,

I've been following your trials and tribulations sporadically and ran across the thread today whilst researching my own sacrifice to the salt.

Cheers,
Rob

[David Leikvold]

Thanks for asking Rob. The short answer is I'm panicking, there's only 55 weeks to go! Seriously, the car still doesn't look like much but am achieving things. The amount of extra work and compromises I'm not happy with are phenomenal. I will never do another road car. As I mentioned on another thread somewhere I'm currently swapping the big Camry 4 wheel discs onto the Celica to replace the girly little discs and drums (Lynchy reckons it's a hairdresser's car!). The other potential advantage of this is the Camry hubs are 5 stud on 114.3mm which is 4.5", same as Ford. I don't know if the hub centres will match yet. I have removed the rear suspension hubs and struts and will finish removing the fronts this afternoon when I've finally finished driving the kids all over SE Qld.
The other night I trial fitted one of the 15" Camry alloy wheels in the rear wheel arch. It wasn't a roaring success. The nominal diameter of the standard 205/65R15 is 647mm. This fills the arch completely and even mounted solid still gives it too much ride height. How silly would it be to have to tub the rear wheel arches of a front wheel drive car? I still might have to to get the car down in the weeds, so to speak. The weeds are already coming up to meet it! I have considered other sizes including 195/60R15 (615mm) and 205/50R16 (611mm) which I have seen on other street legal ST162 Celicas. The new Camry comes with 16" steel wheels so I can use 15" or 16" without spending too much. I am hoping the alloy wheel will fit better in the front wheel arch. There looks to be heaps more room as there isn't an inner guard, just one of those plastic shields which I have already removed. Ideally I would like to use 16" all round and take along two extra front wheels with the standard 215/60VR16 (664mm) to give me maximum drive wheel diameter, if I can make them fit.
My brother will be up from SYD for a few days soon to help so we should make some worthwhile progress, I want to locate the engine so the drive shafts are as straight as possible but I can't do that until I know where the final ride height will be. Then I can make the engine mounts and get rid of the gantry. I'm thinking I will have to cut the rear engine mount off, that's the one that currently hits the steering rack and forces the engine too far forward. After that's done and the car has wheels I can get new drive shafts made to fit the narrower track of the Celica. I don't know if there's anything off the shelf that will fit, the Camry parts are much bigger and thicker than the Celica. Once they're in, I'll finally know that the project is viable and I can start with the expensive stuff like turbo, roll cage, etc, etc.

[David Leikvold]

Sorry Rob, I forgot to ask, what are you thinking about building? If you haven't already committed to a particular project, here's a clue: Go special construction! There are a million options available in those categories. If I hadn't decided on the Celica I probably would have done a motorcycle engined lakester. I tried for a while to find a wrecked bike with a decent engine, e.g. R1 or Hayabusa or similar but had no luck. There were a few out there but everyone wanted far too much for them. The attraction of the bike motor is gearing, which is everything in a salt car. You can always get an output sprocket with one more tooth and the axle sprocket can be as small as you want. Then lay out all your parts on the garage floor and build a chassis. Everything is easier when you build from scratch. Check out Jack Costella's work with the various Nebulous Theorem cars and bikes before you start anything. Good luck!

[David Leikvold]

I played around with the front wheel fitment this afternoon. With everything removed except the lower control arm and the same big wheel and tyre sitting on a besser block and bits of wood I managed to get a half decent ride height but with no room to turn the wheel at all. It seems as though I will have to tub both ends of the car to get it down to the ride height I want. Now might be a good time to buy a couple of 16" wheels and tyres in the two different sizes I mentioned previously so that my mockups will be more useful. The front struts have a little eccentric for camber adjustment. I might fit them all round so that I can adjust the rear camber to zero if it doesn't go there standard with the new brakes and hubs.

When I crawled under the front the engine was virtually on the ground level so that'll have to come up a few inches too. And the axle centre height has to be horizontal so the further the wheels disappear into the wheel arches the higher engine has to go. That's not really a problem because it'll still be very low to the ground and I will have a bonnet bulge to clear the inlet manifold and maybe even the front cylinder head.

Lots of cars seem to still have some ground clearance and then a big cow catcher front end to keep air out from under the car. I think if I lower the car as much as is possible so I finish up with no more than about 3" ground clearance at the firewall it should be about right. Getting it this low will minimise both the frontal area and the volume of air that could get under the car. I'll still run my own version of the cow catcher under the front bumper but it won't just be a vertical plate, I intend to use a splitter and some air ducting for the engine as required. I've also decided that I'll just run the car in Competition Coupe (with a full belly pan) and forget about Altered Coupe (without). The underside is so messy it would really slow the car down.
Tomorrow will be more of the same with some long periods of sitting down contemplating wheel tubs.

[Rob]

Good to see you're moving forward David and it sounds like you have a "business" plan to keep you on track.

I have been researching for many a long year and still only have two firmed up criteria: 1) Cheap, 2) Streamliner. #1 dictates that #2 will be small. I've had a steel drop tank in stock since the early 90s (and it's small so I'm on track there). Powerplant is still open though I keep coming back to 50cc bike, we shall see.


Cheers,
Rob

[David Leikvold]

Rob, how big is the tank? Could you fit in it without having to enlarge it? The reason I ask is that Dr G and Rev H have put a lot of effort into not fundamentally changing the shape of their tank and have almost managed it. That's free speed and with a whopping 50cc you'll need all the help you can get. Could you go any bigger? A two stroke 250cc wouldn't have much more external volume, has better gearing and would go much harder. Have you seen the GM Ecotec lakester?

[PeterB]

G'day Rob,

So, does the postie know you pinched the engine out of his bike?! Now I know why you haven't put on any weight in the 25-odd years I've known you - if you were my size 50cc just wouldn't cut it!

Cheers,

Pete

[David Leikvold]

With a brickies string line and my best eyecrometer it looks like I currently have about 4'' ground clearance at the firewall and a bit over 5" at the rear with the 205/65R15 tyres, which is a nice rake. With 205/50R16s that should drop by 36mm to be just about perfect. If I run the 215/60VR16s on the front for that last few mph I will definitely need big front wheel tubs and some "chassis rail" modification in the engine bay. Not sure about the rears yet, they won't need to be bigger than the 205/50R16s.
When I started this project my plan was to do only minimal body cutting but that isn't working. I'm still looking for room to run the exhaust out behind the left front wheel so I'll need to chop out the corner of the passenger's floor and the front of that sill to do it while leaving room to open the door. The front leg of the roll cage had nowhere obvious to go because there's nothing flat there but if I cut out the floor corner I'll have room for a big dump pipe and it can also be a big strong flat plate to mount the cage. But first I have to fit the Camry hubs and brakes to see where that will put the wheels. More later.

[Lynchy]

Dave, Dave , Dave....

With a brickies string line and my best eyecrometer it looks like I currently have about 4'' ground clearance at the firewall and a bit over 5" at the rear with the 205/65R15 tyres, which is a nice rake. With 205/50R16s that should drop by 36mm to be just about perfect

Sounds like you'll need to lower it a bit more....

[Rob]

Rob, how big is the tank? Could you fit in it without having to enlarge it? The reason I ask is that Dr G and Rev H have put a lot of effort into not fundamentally changing the shape of their tank and have almost managed it. That's free speed and with a whopping 50cc you'll need all the help you can get. Could you go any bigger? A two stroke 250cc wouldn't have much more external volume, has better gearing and would go much harder. Have you seen the GM Ecotec lakester?

David,
Possibly but I'd have to get VERY intimate with anything else inside and (I think) lay on my stomach which I'm not keen on doing. IF I go this way my intent was to be able to run a few different displacement motors after having got one to work. I've also got an 18RGEU Toymotor but I'd have to sit outside for that one !! I did forget that one other criterion is pretty much set in stone, traditional look.

Pete,
It's many a long year since posties were "frail" enough to be motivated by a mere 50cc

Anyhow, enough of me hijacking David's thread, How's the Celica?

Cheers,
Rob

[David Leikvold]

Lynchy, are you saying that 3 inches off the ground is still too high? I can't really go much lower before I run out of room under the front mudguards, especially if I make room for the 664mm tyres. If I go any lower I'll have to use a thinner gauge belly pan and put a cushion in the seat to see over the engine!
I have it in mind to also use a bit of ground effect venturi shape in the belly pan with an exit tunnel, not to generate downforce but to minimise the volume of air under the car. All it would generate is a stylish rooster tail of salt! I might even use rubber side skirts on the sills to stop air leaking sideways.
The car still has the standard fuel tank under the floor of the back seat which is probably between 40 and 50 litres and obviously far too big for my needs. Can anyone tell me what size fuel tanks they use? It's nicely out of the airstream so I'm tempted to leave it as is. I'll have to drain it, clean out 22 years of crap and change the fuel pump to a 500hp Walbro anyway so I might as well take the opportunity to modify it a bit. If I went to a fuel cell like Big Gaz has in the Shaguar I'd have nowhere clever to put the cap that wasn't inside the cabin, which I definitely don't want. So it makes sense to leave it alone and fill it from the standard external flap. I suppose I could always cut it in half and foam fill it. That would make sense.
Any thoughts anyone?

[Dr Goggles]

Some of the early Corollas had tiny tanks that used to be popular amongst rodders , they're about a yard wide and about ten inches high and deep....kind of sausage shaped , get one from a wrecker for twenty bucks or so, use an external pump and just mount it higher in the boot with a flex to the filler.

keep your eye on finishing the car by October, trust me....it can get out of hand.....