1977 Celica GT Liftback Ad on Craigslist

One of the Celicas being advertised was in (barely) running condition, albeit with poor cosmetics, a leaky cooling system, and carburetion issues.  However, the seller was willing to part with it for almost nothing.  The second was in much better cosmetic shape, but did not run due to a half-completed swap of a 22R-TE motor (a somewhat rare turbocharged variant of Toyota’s fuel-injected 22R-E).  After some negotiating, I bought both of them for pretty reasonable prices.

Ryan securing the rustier of the two Celicas

A couple days later, me and a friend (Ryan) set out with a truck and a car dolly to pick up both cars and bring them to his house in Eden where we’ll be working on them.  The running Celica proved little trouble, as we simply drove it onto the dolly, disconnected the drive shaft, and rode off into the sunset.  The non-running one was rather more troublesome.  Ryan suggested we try using ratcheting tie-downs to haul the car up onto the dolly.  It seemed such a simple idea in theory, but the tie downs I had were light duty and the ratchet mechanisms certainly not designed for bearing the kind of load we tortured them with.  After about an hour (in the rain) of laboriously tightening ratchets a single tooth at a time, moving and swapping tie downs, ruefully evaluating the per-centimeter progress up the ramps, and muttering muffled expletives, the second Celica was ready to go and made the trip to Eden with no further issues.

Less rusty Celica stares down a deceptively long distance for ratcheting tie strap hauling technology to overcome

The current plan is to start stripping down the “better” of the two Celicas and assess how much rust damage it has, then start repairing the body.  Hopefully we’ll be able to restore it to a nice looking and running condition.  In the mean time, we hope to get the rustier RA29 running smoothly for future use as a parts source and possible LeMons race car.  Whatever pans out, we sure will be developing a lot of experience doing body work and rust repair, and hopefully without inspiring too much head-bashing frustration.  More photos of the Great Celica Retrieval of 2009 follow.

Steering stem tightening procedure from the SV1000 service manual

Not so helpfully, the tools mentioned cost about $140 + shipping from the cheapest supplier.  Finding this preposterous, I went to the local Suzuki dealer in hopes of borrowing the tool for a day.  Oddly, they couldn’t find the exact tool to fit the nuts and suggested I might use a spanner wrench instead (um… no).  So it was time to get creative.

Not about to shell out $150 for a single-purpose tool, I picked up a $6 1.25 inch deep socket from good ‘ol Northern Tool and some heavy duty Dremel cutting wheels.  After an hour and a half of bathing in a shower of incandescent sparks, I had this:

Home made Suzuki steering stem socket

Take that, obscure expensive proprietary Suzuki tool!

In the process of writing all these pages on the GT Theremin, I realized that my site layout afforded horizontal insufficient space for text given my penchant for verbosity.  Therefore I’ve updated the style sheets to give me some breathing room and hopefully make longer pages less tedious for you to read.

2000 Suzuki SV 650 (source)

Lately I’ve been hunting hard for a motorcycle, but I haven’t had much luck as yet.  I had an appointment to buy a Suzuki GS500 which I confirmed twice with the seller.  When the scheduled day came and I called the seller again, he informed me that he had sold it two days earlier.  Thanks a lot for letting me know!  It’s not like I had taken time out of my schedule and a friend’s to meet the appointment!  Sakes alive…

I really have my heart set on finding a Suzuki SV 650 (I love naked bikes), but it’s proving extremely difficult.  I found one in Atlanta but couldn’t manage to pull together the necessary arrangements to purchase it and store it for a few days.  I’ve seen two in this area, but they were both sold within a single day of being posted on Craigslist.  One was posted Sunday afternoon, I called about it this morning, and the seller had apparently sold it before he even got my message.  Oh well, the search goes on.

For even more excitement, my spider problem is still ongoing.  Apartment management has been accommodating thus far, but I haven’t yet seen a reduction in the number of recluses.  On the bright side, I caught a big live one over the weekend and took some pretty good photos of it.  I’m going to be sending some of the specimens I’ve preserved to the entomology department (under which arachnology is typically paradoxically lumped) at NCSU for a positive identification.

Update: The entomology department at NCSU confirmed that the spiders I sent are brown recluses.  Well, no surprises there.

Yup, I completed the MSF Basic Rider Course!  It was fun, and you gain a lot of valuable information and skills.  I highly recommend it for anyone who rides or wants to ride a motorcycle.  Today I went the the DMV (ugh) and got the class M endorsement on my license, so now I’m official!  They even updated the picture on my license, which was taken when I was fifteen years old.  Now if only I had a bike…

I actually have a lot more to talk about, between my new apartment, moving, work I’ve done on my car, etc.  Unfortunately this move is keeping me extremely busy at the moment, so I’ll have to write about it another time.  Suffice to say I’m moving into my apartment this Friday and starting my job on Monday.  More information will follow once I’m settled…  As a door prize, I’ve written the first of two pages on the GT Theremin’s circuit details.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll probably wonder what the heck I was thinking when I designed this contraption.  Read on to shed light on exactly that.

Stay tuned!