The time has come to try out something a little different, something that's not an e30 or a miata. Something with the motor in the BACK, something #radwood approved! Ladies and gents, meet Zola:
She was actually spotted on SF craigslist by my friend Chris. He's a fellow Abarth owner who, like any good samaritan, tries to get his friends to buy random project cars. He shot me the link late on night and I thought to myself, hmm I've always liked SW20s and this one is within budget and seems like a good deal. I ended up sending the owner an email and did not hear back for a few days. Out of the blue, on a Thursday afternoon, I get a text from the owner apologizing for the delay as all the craigslist replies went to his spam box. He also said that he was getting pummeled with offers and that he'd only entertain cash at or near full price. I thought about it for a full minute and told him full cash offer and that i'd get the car the following Saturday. The car was a 1991 MR2 NA with a Gen3 JDM 3sgte swap. Owner stated it started overheating on him and that while chasing that problem down the clutch went out.
Luckily for me, I have other very supportive friends who enable my (questionable) behavior. Such friend is Dmitriy, aka Kronus, he enables me a lot with his awesome van aptly named Groot:
(Chris in the background checking tire pressures on the trailer)
When you drive groot, you wear the funky hat. It's kind of a thing.
With all the excitement of buying my first SW20 and first Toyota I overlooked how far this car really was. Turns out it was deep Northern California, aka Kelseyville. The road there was absolutely epic, driving through Napa and beautiful villages like Calistoga, make you really fall in love with the area (side note, the fires are raging again, keep the affected families in your thoughts please help in anyway you can)
Once on site I met the owner, Kevin who had build the car. A very stand up guy who was sad to see his cherished ride go. We spent some time loading the car on the trailer, which was... fun:
Tied her down
And joined the owner with a goodbye beer before driving off back down to SF.
We arrived in the bay area a little after midnight and low and behold the car drove off the trailer! No more stuck clutch! WTF?!
I drove the car around the block and it was driving perfectly. Clutch engaging and disengaging as it should, turbo building boost nicely, did I just land the deal of a century? Hmmm nope. The next day it went back to not letting the clutch disengage :(
I purchased a master and slave clutch cylinder on Amazon as that would've been the easy fix. Sadly it made no discernible difference. I put a pry bar on the release lever of the clutch when my friend was pushing it to see if there was any travel left.. unfortunately, no. Time for the transmission to come out... womp womp woooooomp.
A couple days later I have a brand new LUK clutch, (4) quarts of transmission fluid and friends that are willing to help. Pulling the transmission out of a mid engine car, how hard can it be?
Here is my buddy Frank having his way with Zola's subframe. Frank owns three citroens. THREE CITROENS. The man has more patience than I will ever have.
When you're tall, you don't stand under a car that's on a lift... you sit:
And there you have it, an e153 LSD transmission out siting on the transmission jack in the foreground.
And the culprit! The little metal holder had broken off allowing the spring to jam itself between the clutch disk and the pressure plate. This made the clutch not disengage.
That night Dmitriy and I put the transmission back in and took the car out for a drive. WHAT A BLAST. The turbo noises behind your head are... intoxicating!
The next day I installed a different lip and went down to see my buddy Dirk, a huge Datsun aficionado.
Step one when you see Dirk with a new car is ask "Hey, wanna drive it" and, unless it's a Fiat 500 (lol) he replies YES with enthusiasm. His wife actually stole the keys first though! She took the car around the block and loved it. When she got back Dirk and I went for a lovely drive up the mountain roads of the peninsula. Up Skyline and down Pagemill.... until the car blew up - LOL
"Hey look Julien, a reliable Toyota"
What happened is that the car overheated and dumped all it's coolant out into the overflow tank. Or what I call "pulling a Subaru." We couldn't have broken down in a more picturesque place though!
She was actually spotted on SF craigslist by my friend Chris. He's a fellow Abarth owner who, like any good samaritan, tries to get his friends to buy random project cars. He shot me the link late on night and I thought to myself, hmm I've always liked SW20s and this one is within budget and seems like a good deal. I ended up sending the owner an email and did not hear back for a few days. Out of the blue, on a Thursday afternoon, I get a text from the owner apologizing for the delay as all the craigslist replies went to his spam box. He also said that he was getting pummeled with offers and that he'd only entertain cash at or near full price. I thought about it for a full minute and told him full cash offer and that i'd get the car the following Saturday. The car was a 1991 MR2 NA with a Gen3 JDM 3sgte swap. Owner stated it started overheating on him and that while chasing that problem down the clutch went out.
Luckily for me, I have other very supportive friends who enable my (questionable) behavior. Such friend is Dmitriy, aka Kronus, he enables me a lot with his awesome van aptly named Groot:
(Chris in the background checking tire pressures on the trailer)
When you drive groot, you wear the funky hat. It's kind of a thing.
With all the excitement of buying my first SW20 and first Toyota I overlooked how far this car really was. Turns out it was deep Northern California, aka Kelseyville. The road there was absolutely epic, driving through Napa and beautiful villages like Calistoga, make you really fall in love with the area (side note, the fires are raging again, keep the affected families in your thoughts please help in anyway you can)
Once on site I met the owner, Kevin who had build the car. A very stand up guy who was sad to see his cherished ride go. We spent some time loading the car on the trailer, which was... fun:
Tied her down
And joined the owner with a goodbye beer before driving off back down to SF.
We arrived in the bay area a little after midnight and low and behold the car drove off the trailer! No more stuck clutch! WTF?!
I drove the car around the block and it was driving perfectly. Clutch engaging and disengaging as it should, turbo building boost nicely, did I just land the deal of a century? Hmmm nope. The next day it went back to not letting the clutch disengage :(
I purchased a master and slave clutch cylinder on Amazon as that would've been the easy fix. Sadly it made no discernible difference. I put a pry bar on the release lever of the clutch when my friend was pushing it to see if there was any travel left.. unfortunately, no. Time for the transmission to come out... womp womp woooooomp.
A couple days later I have a brand new LUK clutch, (4) quarts of transmission fluid and friends that are willing to help. Pulling the transmission out of a mid engine car, how hard can it be?
Here is my buddy Frank having his way with Zola's subframe. Frank owns three citroens. THREE CITROENS. The man has more patience than I will ever have.
When you're tall, you don't stand under a car that's on a lift... you sit:
And there you have it, an e153 LSD transmission out siting on the transmission jack in the foreground.
And the culprit! The little metal holder had broken off allowing the spring to jam itself between the clutch disk and the pressure plate. This made the clutch not disengage.
That night Dmitriy and I put the transmission back in and took the car out for a drive. WHAT A BLAST. The turbo noises behind your head are... intoxicating!
The next day I installed a different lip and went down to see my buddy Dirk, a huge Datsun aficionado.
Step one when you see Dirk with a new car is ask "Hey, wanna drive it" and, unless it's a Fiat 500 (lol) he replies YES with enthusiasm. His wife actually stole the keys first though! She took the car around the block and loved it. When she got back Dirk and I went for a lovely drive up the mountain roads of the peninsula. Up Skyline and down Pagemill.... until the car blew up - LOL
"Hey look Julien, a reliable Toyota"
What happened is that the car overheated and dumped all it's coolant out into the overflow tank. Or what I call "pulling a Subaru." We couldn't have broken down in a more picturesque place though!
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