Sold Stanky's Celica - provisionally sold

[tooSavvy]

Thanks TS - Just posted over there, we'll see what they suggest.

Ayeee

[Snipes]

It's these part hunting shenanigans that reminds me why I don't have a Silvia anymore, though I still find myself browsing eBay etc looking for a nice ST202!

[Stanky]

CAUTION! CONTAINS BODGERY. AVERT YOUR EYES IF YOU ARE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION

 

yeah yeah yeah whatever. So, the last outstanding task (I am aware of) on the Celica is to fix the ABS light. In a previous episode this was cornered in the front left hand (passenger) sensor. The Sensors for the ST200 (1.8 ST) are different and less numerous than the ones for the ST202/204 (2.0 GT), so you can't just bung any old sensor in. I won a used sensor on ebay for a sum more modest than the £200 odd that Toyota want for a new one, by MyHermes fouled up my plans by losing the flipping thing in transit. The seller was most apologetic and gave a full refund without quibbling, but it was the fact the bloody thing had been lost, not the money spent which aggravated me. I mean its not like its the ONLY FLIPPING THING THEY DO ALL DAY is it?

 

I called a Celica, MR2 and Supra breakers in the west country who were very helpful, but had no sensors in stock. They did however have an ST200 in for breaking, and said they'd put my name down for the sensor when it got taken off, which was nice, but didn't solve the current issue.

 

I asked a lot of questions on Toyota forums, and was rewarded with deafening silence. This left me with one option. Lateral Thinking.

 

A post is a very dark corner of the internet suggested that the sensor from a 1991-1994 camry would fit, and with a bit of adaptation to the routing would do the job. I trawled ebay and found what I think was right and bought it, brand new and boxed, for £35 which wasn't horrific. It arrived (without the interference of MyHermes) a few days later. This was Monday this week. I had no time, and very little light in the evenings when i got home so the job was left for today.

 

And here we are. The usual starting place, wheel off, car up on jack, wheel under the sill, axle stand in.

 

 

I'd undone the bolt that holds the sensor to the hub here.

 

Next up was to compare the old sensor to the new one.

 

 

Old one on the right, new one on the left. I knew the cable exited the sensor differently already, the good news was the sensors were the same diameter and the new one fitted the hole in the hub. Now onto the other end of the cables.

 

 

This is the old one, its a female connector with two male spades going to the two wires. Here is a different angle

 

 

Ok, what does the new one look like?

 

 

 

Uhhh, ok thats not the same is it? Not really even nearly the same. Urgh. screw this. The connector on the new one is a male end with female spade connectors. Screw the internet, the obscure blog with very little detail on this is totally wrong. They are not really the same at all. Buggeration.

 

Right, I've sunk hard cash into this, and can't make it any worse right? And the guy at the breakers will be able to bail me out at some indeterminate point in the future so what have we got to lose? TO THE SHED!

 

 

Lets look at this in a positive light shall we? the sensors are the same, there are two wires, one black, one white on both. maybe I could do some bodging and join the old connector to the new sensor wiring? How badly can this go? BET NAO!

 

First of all i snipped the wire to take the old sensor wiring off the old sensor connector

 

 

Next I had a good look at the new sensor connector. Rather than start snipping, I carefully took the connector apart to see if I could swap the connector housing over without cutting wires. After taking it apart I realised the spade connectors were still wrong. Here is a crap pic of the new sensor connectors

 

 

As you probably can't see, these are female spade connectors crumped on. OK, lets attack it with the snippity-snippers. I cut the wires, and cut some short sections of heat shrink, slid it over the connector end of the wires and broke out my £12 Silverline soldering iron and flux. I'm shit at soldering, so apologies to the professionals on here whose eyes will be offended by what comes next. I'm trying, ok?

 

 

White to white

 

 

Black to black

 

 

And warm up the heat shrink with a lighter to make it seal the soldering in.

 

OK. Now we have the old connector attached to the new wiring and sensor. Lets check it for continuity because its entirely, sense-of-humour-failure-inducingly possible that the break in the wiring in the old sensor could have been at the connector end.

 

Multimeter, GO!

 

 

Ok, we have a continuity reading, good. Now resistance on 20k Ohms

 

 

Also good, we have resistance in the same sort of ballpark as the working one on the driver side. This means the break in wiring in the old sensor was downstream of where I cut the wires off. And my soldering was adequate for the job, if not pretty.

 

Next I carefully cut the cable ties that held the old wiring into the bracket that holds the sensor in the wheelarch, well away from things it might get snagged in, and put new cable ties on to keep it in place. Then went and refitted it to the car

 

#

 

Here it is trial fitted. I used the new gripper thing to keep it attached to the hub. You can see the new green cable ties holding the new wiring inside the bracket/cable run thing here.

 

Here it is from underneath. You can see the wire out of the sensor goes the 'wrong way' and has to loop back up.

 

 

Not ideal but lets see if it actually works, eh? Hopes were not high if I'm honest. I connected it up at the top of the wheelarch and sat in the driver seat. Turned the key to P2 and watched the light

 

 

F

F

S

 

urgh, no dice. Ok, one last thing, lets check the error code to make sure its the same thing, and do the code clear procedure of mashing the brake pedal 8 times in <3s (this is surprisingly hard to do) while the diagnostic paperclip jumps the TC and E1 ports on the diagnostic plug in the engine bay.

 

the code that came up was 3-2, indicating the error was still there with the left hand front sensor. Right, lets do the riverdance style pedal attack as the very last chance saloon before giving up. Done. ignition off. Ignition on. light on (expected). light off (expected). Light starts flashing. FFS.

 

Wait, its still flashing. continual flashing every second.

 

HA, ITS ONLY GONE AND CLEARED THE FAULT!!!1!33£!!

 

Oh yeah. Right, lets take it out of diagnostic mode. Paperclip out, jumper thing back in, close the lid. ignition on. ABS light illuminates. ABS light goes out.

 

w00p w00p muvvas. My frankenstein cable only flipping works! Right, now we need to tidy this all up a bit don't we?

 

My main concern was that the bit of cable between the sensor end and the clip that secures it to the top of the hub might get stuck in the CV gaiter at full lock. I got the slightly bigger cable ties and created this monster

 

 

Two cable ties round the track rod end, holding a third one in a loose loop holding the cable away from the CV gaiter. I got my daughter to turn the steering from lock to lock and there is enough slack in the cable to allow it to move with the steering, and the ABS sensor wiring stays well away from any moving parts or the CV gaiter, so i think we're A-OK here. Can any MOT testers comment on the likely aneurysm this setup will cause the MOT tester, come MOT time? Obviously the light is out now, so that won't fail, but will my cable tie bodgery cause raised eyebrows? I can't see it as being dangerous, and is not really radically different to the OEM plastic clip/cable guide that fits to the hub - its just a mechanism to keep the cable out of moving parts?

 

The wiring has an extra layer which i had to carefully snip off where it went through the gripper thing because it made the cable too fat for the gripper to go round.

 

After this, I got the wheel back on and took the car back off the jack and axle stand. I'm hesitantly optimisitic that this might have actually worked and fixed the issue with a bit of ingenuity/shiter bodgery for less than a fifth of the cost of a new ST200 sensor from Toyota direct. What a result.

[Tamworthbay]

Brilliant work, I nearly this very car but was put off by the ABS issue as electronics and me aren’t the greatest mix. Good to see there was a solution.

[Guest Hooli]

Reminds me of replacing a sensor on my XJ40 when I couldn't source one, X300 sensors fit but need the plug swapping as you did.

 

Nice fix anyway.

[tooSavvy]

I did an e-bay s/h ABS sensor, on my 9000 SAAB. Couldn't be arrissed with dismantling the arch inner so chopped the end off and soldered [no shrink] & leccy tape.

 

The cable was co-ax (core and braid) but I just soldered whatever and it was fine.....

 

Top Bodgery M8.... And forri can be a bit ghostly at times

[taxi paul]

Car saved by man with a shed shocker. Excellent work.

[Snipes]

Great work. For future reference the 1.8 Celica has the AT model code (because 7A-FE engine).

[The Moog]

Top work. If it fixed it then it isn't a bodge!

[red5]

Nice one Huw, glad it was simple...

[Jim Bell]

Great work man. You made the right electric go in the right pipe and everything. 10/10 for style and grace.

[Stanky]

Minor update

 

Took the car to work today - 26 miles of roads and saw ~70mph on several bits of the M27 and A3. No ABS warnings yet, so seems to be working as intended.

 

Unbelivably, Hermes have FOUND the original sensor they lost, and the ebay chap has contacted me to ask if/when it shows up here, can I post it back. I was sort of thinking I'd offer him some cash and keep it, but not sure now - my bodged one seems to do the job, and is 98% new, whereas the ebay one was 100% used and may not survive much more use? Though could be a useful spare thing to have.

 

what a faff, but positive news on the full functioning of my handcrafted solution.

[andy18s]

If it turns up then plead ignorance and let the seller claim from Hermes,who don't have a leg to stand on......

[Stanky]

Sadly its going to be signed for by someone at work so I'll not be able to claim it never arrived. He seemed a decent guy though and has offered to pay the postage back to him so I feel morally obliged to pay him for it if it does arrive and I want to keep it!

[Exiled_Tat_Gatherer]

Top rate alternative surgery there dude....... job jobbed indeed.

The seller of the first part sounds OK - keep him onside! Never know when he may have something else you need...... 

[Tamworthbay]

As spares are thin on the ground I wouldn’t let it it out of my sight if I were you. And the law of Sod states clearly that if you buy it you won’t ever need it but if you don't you will need it next week.

[mat_the_cat]

I'd give him something for the sensor and keep it - even if you don't need it, it will have a value to another Celica owner (more of a value if you delete the bits above about your cut-price modified solution!)

[Guest Hooli]

Aye I'd pay him & keep it, as stocking spares means those bits never break.

[Stanky]

I've been having a serious think about moving the Celica on. I've fixed all the issues I know about over the last few months and I'd like to get something else to replace it. To sum up the last several pages the fixes I have effected on the car are as follows:

 

- Cambelt and Water Pump replaced. Belt was a Gates one, pump was NOS OEM. All aux belts (PAS pump, Alternator, Water Pump, A/C Compressor) replaced with new Dayco belts

- Coolant flushed and replaced with 5 year pink coolant.

- ABS Relay and front left hand ABS sensor replaced. Relay was 2nd hand but fully working. ABS Sensor was brand new for a Camry but works and does not trigger the ABS warning light on the dashboard

- Sill rust patch cleaned back, vactan'd, primed, painted and lacquered. Now the paint has had a chance to fully cure the repair is all but invisible.

- New double-din head unit fitted

- RCL fixed and fully working, though has a short range

 

I have stuck about 2000 miles on it. Mileage currently 126,800 but being used a couple of days a week so will creep up.

 

Reg is R401 GHO. Check out the MOT history and weep. Its immaculate. MOT to May 2019. Taxed to get you home. 1.8 litre engine, manual.

 

Some service history, not complete but not far off. Tyres have plenty of tread and are decent mid-range brands. 2 keys come with the car.

 

Will come with various spare parts - lights, console trim, wing mirrors, other odds and ends. I aim to pick up a spare bonnet before sale too.

 

Would there be any interest at £700? For those who missed it, I bought this from Holbeck for £350 at the start of the summer, but feel that the time and parts fitted in my ownership justify the increased asking price. Its basically totally sound as far as I'm aware - all the major service items have been done and all it needs is routine servicing for the next 60k miles or 5 years.

 

Mechanically its spot on, if you wanted to make it really good it could do with a new windscreen, driving into low sun there are lots of surface scratches, a bit like spiders web. Not generally a problem really though. There are some areas of crazing in the paint on the nosecone and the rear bumper. A can of Toyota Super Red and a can of lacquer will come with the car for you to fix this if interested. The match is excellent as evidenced by my sill repair and repaint. There is a little bit of pogweasel'ing on the passenger door which might be able to be sorted with g12 or t-cut or painted over with the aforementioned rattle can. Its a flat colour so not hard to make a decent job of it. There is a bit of vibration through the steering above 70mph on poor roads, on decent tarmac its fine though. Oh, the AC doesn't work, from what I can tell the clutch on the compressor doesn't engage. Hasn't bothered me. replacing the compressor isn't too difficult but its almost certainly not a case of "just needs a regas m8" if such things bother you.

 

Any takers? I'll get some photos later of the entire car and closeups of the paint crazing/pogweasel'ing. Car located in Fareham, Hampshire. Can collect from local train stations, ferry ports and airports.

[SRi05]

Hmmm, I'd quite like to have this alongside my Prelude, but you couldn't be any further south don't think I have the time or energy for a 7.5 hour drive just now, hope someone buys it before I break

[loserone]

Did I hear £11 a ticket? An random plz.

[Stanky]

Still for sale, roll up roll up. Any interest?

 

In expectation* of a sale, I have been attending to the few remaining cosmetic issues with the car, most notably the crazing on the rear bumper and lacquer peeling off in the outside passenger side light recess in the front bumper. I'd already procured a rattle can of correct colour paint and lacquer from when I did the sill repair so thought I'd use that to fix* it with.

 

This is what the paint looked like before I started

 

 

 

 

They are only noticable from quite close up, but do detract from the overall concours* nature of the car, so lets see what we can do about it. eh?

 

I began last weekend by sanding down the paint all over the affected areas with some very rough oxide paper, then a second go with some finer wet n dry to take the paint back and give a decent key.

 

 

 

 

 

Then dried it off with a clean-ish rag and left it an hour or so to dry properly before priming. I'd taken it back to the original primer, but thought that another coat would probably be a good idea. I'd bought a rattle can of plastic primer from B&M (no expense spared!) earlier in the day.

 

Once it had dried adequately, I set to with the primer. To be honest, it was probably a bit too windy to be spray painting last saturday but I proceeded anyway. I had a go at masking off the lights and the rear wings, but the masking tape had gone all weird and super-sticky so didn't want to come off the roll properly, then when stuck on the car, didn't want to come off that either.

 

Here it is after the first coat

 

 

I gave it 40 minutes to dry, than gave it another go

 

 

Then another 40 minutes and it got one more coat

 

 

In between I'd given the front bumper a seeing to as well

 

 

I really should have removed the indicator lense before doing this but it cleaned up OK with some carb cleaner and a rag afterwards. I have a lot of hope that I could leave it overnight and set to with the red the next day, but it peed with rain all day on sunday. The only advantage to this was that I was able to wet n dry the primer to remove some slightly orange-peel-y bits and flat it back without needing a bucket of water - I just used the rain.

 

I didn't have enough time in the evenings to really do much before it got dark, and the dew settled really quickly too and I thought it might not be a great idea to paint it red and know the dew would settle on it an hour later so left it alone mostly during the week. I finished work a bit earlier on thursday so got home and managed to get a coat of paint on with enough time to dry, and managed the same on friday too. Yesterday the sun was out and I had plenty of time around other things to get more on it. I managed to get 5 thin coats on all in all - using up pretty much the entire can of paint in the process - its amazing how little distance it went, it wasn't even the entire bumper that needed doing.

 

Here it is after the last coat went on, but before lacquer

 

 

 

The colour match is OK, the rear quarters really need giving a seeing to with G12 and a mop but thats something for antother day.

 

I gave the last coat about 6 hours to dry in the direct sunshine, then set to with the lacquer

 

Here it is after 2 coats, about 30 minutes apart

 

 

 

I gave it 2 more coats then went out shopping. Here it is in Aldi's carpark.

 

 

 

Its hard to see, but has blended better than I thought it would. The rear quarters could really do with a mopping with some G12 to make them less pink, and thats a job for another day, but the bumper looks quite a lot better now. The paint hasn't gone lumpy or orange-peel-y because I used lots of thin coats rather than a few thick ones (and a lot of luck, as ever with my expert* maintenance) and I'm pretty happy with it. The front bumper recess is much the same, and looks pretty good, the pain on the front bumper is in better condition and less pogweaseled so the blend is better. You can see it if you know what you're looking for, but at a quick glance its pretty good for an amateur attempt with rattle cans on the drive.

 

The rear bumper is easier to see because you have the stright line where the bumper meets the metal rear quarter panel which is the original paint. I'll see about a mop and some G12 in due course and see what we can do to the less good bits of paint.

 

Thanks for reading, and please buy this car

[tooSavvy]

Don't need *2

 

.... But = Twice the Win

[Alanism]

Some sterling work on a sterling quality car.  Great to see one of these getting the love they deserve.  A bucket of kudos and a hat doffed in your direction.

[Stanky]

In between torrential rain showers today I cleaned out the throttle body on the celica. Its been doing the annoying thing that all cars seem to when the TB is gummed up, if you let the car pull itself along in 2nd gear at idle revs it jerks and bucks because the TB butterfly sticks in position in the barrel.

 

On the celica its soft of 'sidedraft' rather than 'downdraft' and its got all sorts of pipes going into it, including coolant pipes so i decided to clean it in situ with an old toothbrush, some rags and copious amounts of carb cleaner. its now substantially better, with most of the gummy black crud removed from the TB barrel, the edges of the butterfly valve and the top and bottom of it too. One day I'd like to try polishing one of these to see if it made any noticable difference to power due to airflow. Not today though.

 

The bonus of all of this was that an annoying speed-related high pitched whine, which I'd decided was probably the gearbox about to explode has been cured. I suspect it was due to having not done up the clips on the pipe that connects the air filter box to the throttle body. I made sure they were done up tight after cleaning it all and the whistle/whine is gone. I guess it might have been allowing a small amount of air in around the joint and this was what the whistle was.

 

I also used some carb cleaner to remove some of the overspray from the rear bumper painting from the last episode which had gone on the rear light lenses with an old bit of towel.

 

Oh, I also replaced the wiper blades with some snazzy aero ones I got from ECP earlier in the week on a 50% off deal. Just as well with the rain we've had here the last 2 days!

[tooSavvy]

Any post that refers to tb 'toothbrush action' is a Winnah..

 

'power due to airflow' is another for the archives

[Stanky]

A few smoll updates, the whistle turned out to be the cheap shit touchscreen stereo head unit thing, turned off and there is no whine so some sort of lack of shielding is causing a slight interference from the engine. Seriously, don't buy these things, they are probably worse than singing.

 

The car continues to run well, I ought to get some new tyres, they have good tread but can be a bit slippy on a wet roundabout if provoked. However they grip really well in the dry. 

 

Today, while my family slept off staying up to 3am last night I went out for a bit of a run in the Celica. NYD is generally quieter on the roads round here so I thought I'd go and get lost in the backroads of hampshire. I had a look at a map for a roughly circular route and went off without my phone to just drive about a bit.

 

I'll post a pic of the route as it turned out to be very pleasant. Gave it a chance to warm up properly then gave it a good thrashing along some A and B roads which were largely empty. I even managed some heroic overtakes against some elderly opposition. I saw a few classics out - an MG t-type, marina saloon, some Mini's, and a few other things and had a bit of fun chasing a new focus ST down a windy road north of Emsworth but generally a highly enjoyable drive which is a rare thing down here most of the time.

 

map to follow for those who want to recreate my epic* drive

 

[mitsisigma01]

Great roads when empty

[Stanky]

Embryonic idea for solent shiters potentially.

 

I'd quite like to get under the Celica to give it a good seeing to with vactan and underseal, doing this on the drive is all but impossible and fraught with danger of crushing to death and the suchlike. Doing it on a lift would be a piece of cake though I suspect.

 

I know this has come up several times in the past and been poo-poo'd for reasons along the lines of 'if you break the car while its on the ramps it'll cost a flipping fortune in hire fees etc' which i agree with, but I reckon that even someone as mechanically incompetent as me will struggle to immobilise a car by painting it.

 

This outfit just north of Waterlooville rent ramps by the hour, and I wonder if they'd be amiable to the idea of a few people hiring a bay for the day to fix several small jobs (like my artistry, expecting it take take ~2 hours to do) on several cars for one price. I suspect it might be a bit more than the £100 for a day they have advertised, but they might be OK with the idea of a bay for the day for several cars for £150, which split several ways may be quite cheap if you needed to do something similar to me and we can get a few of us together to do it?

 

http://www.autobarnmotorservices.co.uk/Home/Ramp

 

Maybe not at this time of year, but might be something worth looking at in the late spring or summer on a saturday if we got a few of us that needed ramps and/or specialist tools that they supply to do some bits and bobs? Sort of like a sunday spannering session?

 

Also with several of us there, any strange jobs or things that people haven't done before will have other expert shiters around to assist with, and if the worst came to the worst, other cars to tow your stricken car away after you've immobilised it by doing something you now regret?

 

Just an idea, and an embryonic one at that. if there isn't much appetite then I may go and sniff it out for £30 for 2 hours to get a good look at the underneath and treat any surface rust or similar before it gets bad. I can then report back on the place and facilities and whatnot.

 

anyone else interested?

[mitsisigma01]

Mmmm possibly. As for undersealing whilst on they're ramp and workshop could be messy , worth a call to see if they're ok with it , a place I used years ago were fine with af, oil and shit but no undersealing. My mechanic mate seems to of disappeared off the planet so i might have a few bits to tackle .... one day !