My many project cars and trucks

[t_raven]

Mirin the 1g

Theres such a huge market for DSMs and I swear I could make a living just by buying them and parting them out. You could srs buy one for 400 bucks (like you did) and join the ******** swap pages and get over 400 for the doors alone. Cult following.

Yeah I love the 1Gs, I kinda prefer the flip up lights. I have a 92 Laser I'll get to, I've got parts waiting to go on it. I'm keeping an eye out for a talon with black leather interior, or a good deal on a 1Ga I can build and swap the drive train from my Laser into. Ultimately I'd want a black 1Ga Talon with black leather interior

[t_raven]

I drove it around like that for a while



I later bought a used set of Koni shocks and Eibach lowering springs. I had a set of C6 Z06 wheels I had planned to put on this car. I painted them a charcoal color and mounted tires.
I installed the shocks, springs, and wheels, and tinted the windows



I finished stripping and scrapped the 00





That’s it for the GTA for now. Later I’ll upgrade the brakes, repaint it, reupholster the seats, install headers, a better intake, and a cam. But for now it’s a pretty fun driver and gets 28mpg on the freeway.

[PervedOut]

Yeah I love the 1Gs, I kinda prefer the flip up lights. I have a 92 Laser I'll get to, I've got parts waiting to go on it. I'm keeping an eye out for a talon with black leather interior, or a good deal on a 1Ga I can build and swap the drive train from my Laser into. Ultimately I'd want a black 1Ga Talon with black leather interior

I'm hoping Im gonna find a 1g Panda on craigslist from some clueless old man or young kid thats given up. Those things are unicorns. I've seen some unique sht...Sebrings, Mad Maxs, and Plymouth Colts with 4g63t in them.

[t_raven]

Around the same time I was working on the GTA I bought a few that I sold and didn't really do anything to.

I bought this 69 Custom S and planned to make it look like a GTO. Custom S was a one year model on the same body as Tempest/Lemans/GTO. For some reason it was it's own model rather than a trim level.

I sold this when I was broke and only months later went back over seas lol. Wish I hadn't sold it. It's hard to find a project 69 Tempest/Lemans/GTO






I woulda made the interior black, but I kinda liked the bench seat and that old aftermarket AC under the dash was cool. I was gonna fix that.




The propane company my dad works for bought out another company that had this truck so I bought it. 1 ton camper special with a 454 and had a little crane on it. Paid $1000, sold the crane for $300 and the truck for $1000.



I found this truck cheap at a used car lot with transmission problems. I paid $1200, had maybe $2000 in it when I sold it and got $4500 out of it

[t_raven]

I always wanted a 98-02 WS6 TA.

I bought mine in '08. At the time they were still about $13,000 for an average mileage, WS6 with 6 speed. I bought mine on ebay for $6500 with 160k miles and had it shipped to Idaho.

I prefer high mileage cars anyway, you can get them way cheaper and use the money saved to upgrade anything that needs to be rebuilt or replaced.

I've apparently lost some of the pics I took of this car, but here it was when I got it



It was a little worse than I expected but I don't regret buying it. It came from Florida and the whole undercarriage was covered in sandy dirt. I don't know where the guy drove it.



It had bad bearings in the axle, the transmission had some issues, and a few other little problems. I used the axle and trans from the 00 TA I parted out, as well as some other small parts.

This is after cleaning the sand out of the engine bay lol. Still dirty



Interior is pretty good. I swapped to a MGW shifter



I bought Koni shocks and BMR springs when BMR was running a sale on the package. I also bought a magnaflow cat back. I lost the install pics for here it is sitting a little lower with the shocks and springs installed, and the exhaust on. I drive this one pretty regularly



Future plans for this:

I already have a FAST 102 intake and throttle body
I have a baby cam, still need springs and pushrods
I'll get headers and build a y pipe.
Paint it
Better wheels if I can ever decide on some
Eventually stroke the engine and get some better heads

[t_raven]

I'm hoping Im gonna find a 1g Panda on craigslist from some clueless old man or young kid thats given up. Those things are unicorns. I've seen some unique sht...Sebrings, Mad Maxs, and Plymouth Colts with 4g63t in them.

What's a panda? White with black top, or is there more to it? This one belongs to a guy that use to work with a friend of mine. The Integra is one of my old cars.

[ForumAlpha]

Idaho brah ay?

Up until last year i have been the biggest American muscle hater. Thats until one of my friends showed me his 1k hp c5. Your builds look amazing brah. Keep up the great work.

Jelly of shop.

[t_raven]

In 2009 I almost bought this 69 Firebird. It was in NY so I was going to fly over and drive it home.



He wanted $30k and I talked him down some, but he changed his mind before I went over. He had a lot of money invested in it, but he basically poured a bunch of money into less than ideal parts. He built up a Pontiac 350 which is kinda pointless when you can build a 400 for the same price and with the bigger bore, run better heads, plus the extra cubes. He put a bunch of money into the stock 8.2” axle rather than upgrading to a 8.5” 10 bolt, or 12 bolt, or a 9”. He bought a non over drive Richmond 5 speed when he coulda used a TKO600 5 speed for barely any more money. He had Baer brakes but the older style. I’m guessing it was just an older build and all this newer stuff came out later, but when it came down to it, the body and interior were all I really like as is.
So I found a good one to build, partly because he said I couldn’t build a car that nice for $30k. I took it as a challenge lol. I can do better for less. I paid $2000 for this in Sacramento. Bought it on ebay and drove down to get it. A killer deal in my opinion considering it’s almost totally rust free.







It had a Chevy 283 in it that had water in it. Worthless to me but I sold it for $50



My buddy went with me to get it. On the way home, we stopped in Portland to look at a Subaru for a friend. The guy that owned the Subaru just happened to own a 68 Firebird I’d been watching on ebay. I bought it and drove it home. More on the 68 later.



I got it home and started disassembly

[t_raven]

Floors and trunk were way solid for one of these cars. You can see the one rust hole on the driver’s side





I bought a floor patch panel and solid sub frame bushings



I patched the floor. I welded the whole thing in with the polarity backwards on my mig welder. I couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t weld right lol. Oh well, just some extra grinding and touching up some spots.



The rear sub frame bushing holes were really rusty so I patched those







I also welded a skit plate on the bottom of the sub frame (it’s upside down in the pic) and painted it

[t_raven]

At this point I moved and got everything out of the storage unit. I loosely assembled the 69. I moved 500 miles so I bought a cheap Duramax, borrowed a guy’s 2 car trailer, and made a few trips to move my 9 cars at the time.



The 69 sat around for a couple years while I worked on other cars and spent a year in Afghanistan.
While I was in Afghanistan the 1st time this 98 Z28 6 speed popped up cheap on cl. I can’t believe no one beat me to it. I paid him $1800 and had him drop it off at my house. The engine had 2 broken rods.



I already had a 6.0L to put in the 69 but it was just a long block. I was looking for a 6 speed and all the peripheral engine stuff so that’s the main reason I bought the Z28.
I pulled the engine and trans and kept them



This car had a lot of aftermarket parts on it. The kid that sold it to me didn’t seem to understand what he had, he didn’t tell me about any of the parts. I sold everything I didn’t want to keep and profited like $10 and kept $2000 worth of transmission and engine parts for basically free.

And I scrapped the body



Once I had a house with a shop I had a place to take the 69 apart again. I built a rotisserie so I can finish the floor. I put the body on the rotisserie





Before I paint the floor I’m going to mini tub it so I have plenty of room for wide rear tires. I started mini tubbing the passenger side.

[t_raven]

I got side tracked from that project lol. Getting the mini tubs done and floor painted is a priority when I get home so I can get it back on its suspension.

After that I put the engine together.

I had a 6.0L I got cheap that had a rod knock. It’s an early 6.0 with iron heads and a long crank. The crank won’t work with a 6 speed so it was no problem that it had bearing noise.





I disassembled it and cleaned the block, bought a good used crank and installed it with new bearings



Put the pistons back in. In hindsight I should’ve honed the block and replaced the rings, but I’m sure it’ll run fine



Bought new gaskets. These gaskets are mostly reusable, but I replaced most. The downside to them is they are expensive compared to old small block chevys, but I hate those engines and love LS engines lol



I replaced the iron heads with aluminum 317 heads off a newer 6.0l and installed the LS1 intake and balancer



The 6 speed is just hanging out for now. Hopefully it’s in decent shape, but I can easily rebuild it if I have to.

[t_raven]

The LS1 out of the Camaro broke 2 rods





Both pistons broke



Block is all beat up. Good for mock up now lol



The truck oil pan is too deep so I used the Camaro pan, but they hit stock steering on 67-69 Camaros/Firebirds so I notched it



That’s it for now for the 69. I’m going to use the seats, dash, and console from the 00 TA. I will paint it a blue like this and probably use these wheels.

[t_raven]

Idaho brah ay?

Up until last year i have been the biggest American muscle hater. Thats until one of my friends showed me his 1k hp c5. Your builds look amazing brah. Keep up the great work.

Jelly of shop.

Thanks, yeah lived in Idaho since I was 14. When I was younger I hated everything but classic muscle cars lol. There just wasn't much of an import scene and late 90s is when the late model American stuff started to get good again. I like everything now though. If it's got wheels or an engine, I like it lol.

[t_raven]

After the 69 Firebird came the 68 I picked up on the same trip. It was just an impulse buy since I was there, I had the money, and I could drive it home. I drove it and my buddy drove my truck towing the 69.

Here's where the 68 was when I got to the guy's shop. It was an autumn bronze car, which I think was the standard color that year, pretty cool color. 350 with a power glide. It was in really good shape. I paid $6500 which was probably too much. I only got $4500 when I sold it, oh well.







Drove it from Portland to Coeur D'Alene Idaho.





I was still working in Iraq so it just sat in storage. I decided it was too nice to do what I want to do with it. I'm gonna do some subtle body mods to a 68. So I sold it in the winter of 2010.

[t_raven]

Before I sold the bronze one I picked up another 68 for $2200



It needs some metal work anyway, so it's a much better candidate for what I want to do with it.



Some body left a bad of fertilizer in the trunk to get traction in the snow, and it ate through the trunk and gas tank lol

[t_raven]

This was a Sprint 6 car. They came with a higher HP straight 6 with 4 barrel carb and 4 speed. They are fairly rare and this one was kind of a cool color combo with green paint, and tan/gold interior



A previous owner had already removed the original sprint 6 and put a 400 in it.



Needing a fair amount of rust repair and missing the original engine is why I wanted this car to modify rather than the bronze one. But I was told where the original engine was so I considered getting it, putting it back to numbers matching and selling it at a profit. I got in touch with the guy that had the engine and had my buddy pick it up. I didn't even bother have him check the number, I figured I'd just take it anyway. It turns out to be a 6 from a 67, so it's not original to the car, but it does have the sprint six intake and carb. So I'll be keeping this car and modifying it unless I some how manage to find the original engine.

I'll probably use this engine just to have something other than a v8 in one of these.



I don't like to be the guy with a bunch of classic cars just sitting around so I try to keep as many drivable as I can. This sat for a few years but once I had my house I tuned it up and started driving it



I picked up some rally II wheels and good used tires, cut the front springs and put the wheels on it. I think it looks pretty good. I like driving ratty old projects lol

[t_raven]

I forgot to mention shop equipment in the op.

I bought a nice big compressor



I hate paying tires stores and tires are much cheaper online, so I bought my own tire machines



Trans jack and oil drain for under the lift





I dropped a grand on tubing to build some things. I miss the days of cheap tubing lol



I built the rotisserie



A work bench



And a frame bench to put cars on for panel replacement and fabricating suspension

[t_raven]

Here's the 69 tipped up on the rotisserie to work on the floor



I bought a good strut spring compressor



Bought a power bead roller



You can do a lot of cool stuff with a bead roller. I didn't do these, just stuff off the web

[t_raven]

I bought a tubing bender and tubing roller, made a cart for them from some plans a guy on ebay sells



I got really tired of fighting to get cars in the shop if they don't run. I can pull all the way through the shop, but there's no way out of the back yard so I can't just tow cars in. I drilled holes in my floor



I then mounted a winch to a plate with 2 pipes on it that slide in the holes. Now I can winch a car into the shop and just have to pull the winch out and push the car under the lift.

[3alaRase]

GJDM!

Open up a restoration business.

[t_raven]

GJDM!

Open up a restoration business.

Thanks man. I have plans to always have a build going to sell and make profit on. I want to eventually have a big enough building to do some various things out of and do some occasional restoration work.

[t_raven]

I use to hate Hondas but I worked at a Honda dealer from 03-06 and grew to appreciate them.


In 2010 this 92 Civic Si popped up on cl for $350. I didn't realize until I went to get it that it belonged to my buddy's sister. Some crack head took the dash out. I bought it, took about 10 mins to put the dash in place and get it started. It needed body work.





The interior was pretty good.



All stock with good engine, trans, and clutch



I bought another wrecked 92 DX to donate panels and sold the rest.

[t_raven]

Cut the quarter out of the Si





Cut the quarter out of the DX



And welded it onto the Si. I used the door and fender from the DX too

[t_raven]

I sprayed the whole thing with flat black rustoleum





I drove it like that for a while. It was a fun little car that got close to 40mpg. The Si has deeper gears and a little higher hp than the other models, so it was fairly sporty for a little hatch back. Surprisingly Honda's little hatchbacks are really roomy for a taller guy like me.

I later picked up some used wheels



I wanted to build an EG with a K series swap and AWD, so I sold the Si to buy a cheap shell to build. I took a 94 Integra as part trade, but kept the wheels







The integra ran but had a rod knock. I had another B18 with bad rings. I re-ringed it and put it in the Integra and drove it like that for a little while.

[t_raven]

I bought a 93 VX with a B18A1 in it for $200. It was a solid shell to build on. That was the B18 I put in the Integra. I lost whatever other pics I had of this car.



I did an auto to manual swap in my buddy's 89 Civic and he gave me the donor car plus some cash as payment. I traded the 90 Civic donor for another Integra. This one was a 94 GSR. Still had the GSR trans but had a B18A1 in it with a broken rod. The guy kept those wheels though



I stripped it and scrapped the body



Having a lift makes stripping cars easy



Now I had the 93 VX with no engine in it. I had the B18A1 with bearing noise and the GSR trans. I bought a good crank at a pick n pull and bought a GSR head from a guy. I was gonna build a LS/Vtec and put it in the 93 and later do the K series swap.



But then I found a K24A1 out of a CRV cheap. This was what I was looking for to put a RSX type S head on. So I bought it, a local yard had a CRV 5 speed so I bought that, and I got all the rear diff and suspension parts from a 1st gen CRV from a pick n pull. No picks of the trans or rear stuff but here's the engine



With all the K series and AWD parts on hand, I sold all the B series parts. I bought my Laser and sold the Integra. I pieced together body parts from a pick n pull. I kept the suspension and dash from the parts Integra to put in the 93. And here it sits now until I get some other stuff done.



Lumping all of the Honda stuff into one category, I only have $178 invested into this EG. That's including the $1000 I spent on all the K series and AWD stuff. I profited on all the other Hondas so that brought the total down.




I want it to be about this color. You can add the TSX 6th gear to a CRV 5 speed so I'll do that, and I'll eventually turbo it.

[t_raven]

I always wanted a white and red 98 R1. It's the first year R1 and it was a one year paint scheme, much more rare than the blue ones.

I bought this one in 04 for my 21st bday. It had a full Akrapovic exhaust and Corbin seat.





After a little over a year, I was tired of the payment and tried to sell it. Had I known I'd be going to Iraq 6 months later, I would've kept it. I was dumb enough to let a kid ride it and he wrecked it



I actually got more money out of it this way. The insurance paid me what I was asking even after buying it back. So I made it ride-able again and rode it until a kid begged me to sell it to him. Sold it for $2000 like this.

[t_raven]

In 2010 I wanted another bike and bought a 2005 R1 Raven. I sold this one last year.



It was a cool bike but I still love the white/red 98s so I started looking for one. A 98 project bike popped up on the local cl. I realized it was my old bike so I bought it back.



I had to do some work to get it ride-able again so I worked on it in my spare time at work. It had a set of Chinese replica fairings with it.



I pieced together a set of factory fairings



And bought a better tank. This dent was worse than it looked on ebay. It's hard to find a perfect tank for these though



I pulled it out as much as I could. It work harded pretty quick and that's as good as I could get it



I used fiber glass to get it into shape



And rattle canned some primer on it

[t_raven]

I love Akrapovic exhaust. The can for this bike is long since discontinued. Mine was dented and I've seen them shortened, which looks cool, so I shortened mine



I need to move the hanger but here it is shorter



I bought a reproduction decal set



A hotbodies under tail



And 04+ R1 wheels. They look better and are lighter

I'll paint them red



I have the paint and started prepping everything and again got side tracked lol. I want to finish it soon and I'll upgrade the suspension and brakes. But I do ride it for now with the repro fairings



This is what a good condition one with some mods looks like, so I need to get mine back to looking like this

[M0hi]

OP I am literally in love with you
Here I am saving up for a stick IS300 after graduating college meanwhile you had 4 cars in high school. What is life.
Almost shed a tear when I read you got your R1 back

Would you perhaps be interested in adopting a college engineering student?
My current plans:
Buy and daily an IS300 for forever
Buy weekend Supra by the time I'm 28, gradually get it to 700WHP and then go cold turkey from the HP addiction and keep it fairly stock looking. Keep that for forever. Haunt anyone in my lineage if they sell it or otherwise change anything. In the same way Real Street Performance finally after all these years found a suspension and tire setup to keep the Supra hooking properly (hence their 1400HP Supra competing with 2000HP UGR Lambos), I hope someone comes up with a new track-oriented suspension because I plan to track the car occasionally (okay a lot).
After that I want to do a pure track car, made from some crazy, irregular swap. Like a irregular v8 in a small car (Like the lexus v8 in the miata), but I'd like to keep things int the toyota playground. But this would be in my 30's so who knows what will and won't be available.
Want to make a custom "go kart" basically a single seater, frame done by myself, small honda engine the back just to have as a toy.

Please keep the pics coming, my testosterone has risen 305% from this thread.


This thread makes me sad though because in maybe as little as 30 years, this hobby might not even exist except to a rare few.

[t_raven]

OP I am literally in love with you
Here I am saving up for a stick IS300 after graduating college meanwhile you had 4 cars in high school. What is life.
Almost shed a tear when I read you got your R1 back

Would you perhaps be interested in adopting a college engineering student?
My current plans:
Buy and daily an IS300 for forever
Buy weekend Supra by the time I'm 28, gradually get it to 700WHP and then go cold turkey from the HP addiction and keep it fairly stock looking. Keep that for forever. Haunt anyone in my lineage if they sell it or otherwise change anything. In the same way Real Street Performance finally after all these years found a suspension and tire setup to keep the Supra hooking properly (hence their 1400HP Supra competing with 2000HP UGR Lambos), I hope someone comes up with a new track-oriented suspension because I plan to track the car occasionally (okay a lot).
After that I want to do a pure track car, made from some crazy, irregular swap. Like a irregular v8 in a small car (Like the lexus v8 in the miata), but I'd like to keep things int the toyota playground. But this would be in my 30's so who knows what will and won't be available.
Want to make a custom "go kart" basically a single seater, frame done by myself, small honda engine the back just to have as a toy.

Please keep the pics coming, my testosterone has risen 305% from this thread.


This thread makes me sad though because in maybe as little as 30 years, this hobby might not even exist except to a rare few.

Thanks brah. IS300s are pretty sweet and Supras are bad ass. I haven't owned any Toyotas yet, but the wife has a Yaris lol. I want an old fastback Celica





Sounds like you've got some fun plans man. I want to get into road course racing and autocross. I'm only 3 hrs from Miller Motorsports Park in Utah, but apparently they aren't renewing the land lease this fall. Hopefully they don't shut down, they do a lot of cool motorsports stuff out there.

I like your go cart idea, I've wanted to get into shifter carts. I bet they're more fun than racing real cars.

It'll be interesting to see how the hobby evolves in the future. As much as a lot of the restrictions are passenger cars suck, they've caused the industry to develop new tech that has helped the high performance side of things. As we move away from fossil fuels, new types of performance cars, or electric motor swaps will probably become common and eventually the performance will follow along. I'm sure there will be some cool stuff.

I'm really curious to see what happens to things like 90s hatchback Civics when they are 40-50 years old lol. I wonder if they'll have the same kind of following and restoration market that things like 60s Camaros and Mustangs have now.