Well as some of you may know, I've been after a 90's 4 door family saloon car for a few years now, but sadly most that I've been to look at have been rotten, or have a sunroof or a million miles on them. However the other day this nice Toyota Carina came up for sale on Facebook. So having spoken to the seller, and with a little weather interference, I managed to drive the 200+ miles (round trip) and pick up this dirty but solid example.




The car has done 92,000 miles, and has had 2 owners from new, the last one has only owned it for about 6 months.

 

Aren't these known for going on forever, what made you want one?

 

Beirut taxi?

 

The main reason is back in the early 90's I attended a lot of B.T.C.C races, and was often in and around these cars. I have a few great memories, and just thought it would be nice to do something a little special

 

LoL, I've not heard that before

 

As you can see from the photos I took, the inside wasn't overly clean, and it really stank inside the car

 

My mum and dad had one of these when i was a lad, M497 LPE. 1.6 GS model lol. The only thing I seem to remember about it was The alarm was brutally loud and always went off

 

Some of the things you find in a car you've just bought, well it's amazing. But as you can see the seats are all in-crusted in grime.

 

Sounds interesting

 

Well I resisted the urge to remove the interior (for the time being), and set about using my "Henry" to get up the worst of what I could. That alone made a shocking difference to the appearance of the car. I even started to go around the car with an anti bacterial car spray, cleaning all the years of crud off of the switches, door handles etc

 

The engine bay I will save for a long weekend, but I did try cleaning the worst off of the seats with some foam cleaner, and hopefully this weekend if the weather is good I will dig out my wet Vax, and see how much more dirt I can get out of the seats and carpet. So, having spent about 6 hours working on the Carina on Sunday, well I'm happy with where the car is at (so far).

 

So late this afternoon (Monday) when I returned from work, I thought I would have a go at the boot area of the car.

There seems to be a fair amount of green life in and around corners of the car, but I will give it a wash and detail another time.



The boot floor is a little off colour, but once I find the paint code, I will order some paint, and give it a quick coat.

 

The spare tyre looks un-touched, but it was flat, so a quick pump up and all is hopefully fine. I will give the wheel a coat of paint another day.

 

As I was limited for time, I washed the boot floor, but only really the areas you can see. Once the weather is a little warmer I will set about removing a lot of the interior and doing it again. At the moment, I just want to make the car usable, and less smelly.

 

I've found a little bit of rust coloured paint, which again I will treat very soon. I think a jack is meant to go here ?

 

So spare wheel back in, cover fitted, carpet down, and a quick vac, and that's most of the boot done to a usable state.

 

Then to finish off for tonight, I put the rubber mats back in (after I washed them), and was about to do some more, when work called. The list of jobs I have left to do is rather long, and each little thing I find, I make a personal note of what I need to do in the future.

 

So is the plan a touring car rep then ?

 

Yep I'm going to try and keep it correct to the year, 1994.



It may take me some time to do, but the shell is very good, and I've a lot of research to do, but the wheels, suspension, exhaust and brakes, will all be done this year

 

Well despite the bad weather today, I managed to do a few little jobs today. First up was the windscreen wipers, and despite the original ones being Bosch, they didn't seem to work.


Despite these being cheap'ish blades, they seem to work well, and will do for a while. Hopefully the sun will be out soon, so they won't be needed

 

So this morning despite feeling a little cold, I got up early and set about working on Carina (her new name).

As you can see the engine bay was in a real state, so I thought a little starter clean may do her some good.




This was under the bonnet, as it stood around 9:30 this morning, a little dirty but not bad given the fact it's white .

 

I'm not sure I did this in the correct order (?), but I went about cleaning the underside of the bonnet first.

I used some muc-off and meguiars products.



I worked the solution around to try and break up most of the dirt, as it was baked on.

 

So after a lot of work, which seemed to take a couple of hours, the result was this.



It's not perfect yet, but it's a little better than it was, and I'm pleased with it.

 

I also fixed the pipe that allows the screen wash through.



The cable ties are only lightly held on, as I don't want to restrict the water flow.

 

The engine and plastic was a little harder to do, but for a first pass, it's not bad.

 

So I managed to do a little bit more today, after a little shopping trip. Oddly enough the only place I could find open was Halfords



I've needed a new light for some time now, as my old one went orange. The paint and primer is for the Toyota, code 040, as I plan on doing the boot stains, just to tidy it up a little. Oddly the oil will do for both my ST170 and CarinaE, as a top up, as I usually don't use unbranded.

 

The Demon Machine I bought was to clean areas like this, as I've ran out of Muc-Off, which if I'm honest, I prefer. But I only managed to take two photos due to the bloody freezing rain again.

Before:



After:



It still needs some work, but I seem to have lost some of my little brushes

 

Nice work mate, it’s amazing that cars seem nicer to drive once cleaned up like this.

 

Yeah agreed, it's actually a pleasure to drive, and so different to the ST170

 

Again as I was on an early today, I managed a little bit more on the Carina.




It's almost as if Toyota didn't paint the parts of the car you couldn't really see lol . So both areas I cleaned a little, treated with Kurust, and gave a quick flash of white paint for the time being.



Neither is perfect, but it's treated now.

 

I drove my mother in laws golf plus...it reminded me of this, they are softly sprung, quiet and comfortable....I wonder if the future will remind us of what we missed. The best riding car ever (IMO) is a bmw 528i comfort spec on 70 profile tyres, around 1999.

 

True, it's funny how things have gone. When I drove it home I remember going over a speed hump in a car park, and I found myself tensing my back ready, only to realize that I'd already gone over it. I'm sure once I get some tyres and wheels fitted that will ruin it

 

Well here we are, the weekend again, and I've managed to borrow a few hours of my day to work on my Carina.

I was up early and made a start on trying to clean some of the rust stains and tar spots off the car.

First off I started with the near side front wing, and used some tardis and another cleaner to try and remove the stains around the micro rust blisters and the wing edge.



Tardis is very good, but a little smelly , but the results I got pleased me, although it did take about an hour to do each panel, but upon finishing each panel I went over it with some Beeding marvellous wax .

 

The off side wing was just as bad, and I'm in two minds to either have the panels repaired or replaced (if I can find some).

The photos aren't the best, but it was fairly dark this morning, and overcast, which obviously moved onto rain .

 

Finally was the drivers door, the worst for staining, and this panel took an hour again, but it's far better than it was. Sadly the very lower inner lip of the door has some rust on it, which I've treated, which should slow down the worst of it. Again I would love to find some mint panels, but I've not actually looked yet.

 

really surprised at the before/after on the door

will be following this, at least the majority of bits you want to do are available like the wheels etc. What are your plans for the interior?

 

Thank you, the door bottom took rather a long time lol, but it's so much better for it.

I'm really in two minds over the interior. I can't decide on full on track interior, or keep it original, and just up rate things like the radio/tape player lol, and speakers. I kind of thought maybe a combo of the both. But I suspect over the years the car will change as I go along. If I'm brutally honest, I would love a full on multi-point roll cage, and just one seat lol.

 

Tonight I thought I would have a quick go at the roof gullys, as they were green. Once I hook up my pressure washer I will give them a good blast but for now, it's better.

 

Both good options, do the outside then start on the inside. What suspension are you planning on running as obviously the touring car route is a lot lower

 

I'm looking at a selection of different coil-over sets, but haven't made any choices yet. But then again I've not really looked into "works" suspension. What I don't want to do, is get lowered and uprated springs, then later on change them out for coil-overs etc, I kind of want to do the buy it once thing.

I think I will be ordering some Pro-Race 1.2 alloys in 17", those will be the main daily wheels, and then others for other events etc. I'm not sure how much "arch" work the car will need for clearance, but I do like the look of the wheels and tyres being underneath the arches.