"Herschel" the Tercel new owner/new member

[JWHart]

Hello all, my name is JW. I'm the guy who bought Bryan Thompson's 84' Tercel "Herschel".
Just wanted to say hello and give some back info.

I'm 25, my wife is 21 and we have a 7 month old baby boy. The Tercel is our daily driver, grocery getting-family truckster. We live in eastern Ky so the little car made quite the journey from Hollywood but has settled in quite nicely.

I grew up around vintage cars and cars in general. My parents owned a car wash and detail shop throughout my childhood. My Dad was an air cooled VW nut, having owned 35+ examples at my Mother's last count. As I got older I found my love in old Toyotas. My wife found her love for Toyotas when we dated in my 82 Toyota pickup.

Fast forward a few years... I'm forced to sell my beloved daily/baby/workhorse 82' pickup of almost 10 years becuase...where we gonna put baby? So we found ourselves a cherry little 91' Camry and all was well. Until one night my wife and I were watching YouTube and the motor week Tercel 4WD video comes on, we were in love and in less than 2 weeks we had Herschel setting in our driveway. Sounds nuts but what gear heads aren't a little hickory? Lol

The Tercel has been awesome since we've had it, kept us safe last week in almost a foot of snow! We were the only vehicle beside Jeeps and lifted trucks left on the road, quite comical!

I've documented all my cars with photos and look forward to sharing our journey moving forward with you all! After all that blabbing we are really just here for the pictures right?!

image.jpeg

Clean little Tercel

image.png

image.jpeg

Tercel 4WD captured in its natural habitat

image.jpeg

Interior details, interior is in great shape

image.jpeg

image.jpeg

Maddy loves his Tercel!

image.jpeg

My wife and my cherry 36k Firebird, I gave it to her when we got married. (Sold)

image.jpeg

Im a sucker for patina, this truck was like a good pair of worn in jeans

image.jpeg

LC Engineering took a lot of my money, new weber/emissions delete/header. It was fun!

image.jpeg

Our 91' Camry (sold)

image.jpeg

[dlb]

welcome to the forum, JW. it looks like you really scored with your tercel purchase. hopefully you won't need any assistance with any issues for a while but when you do, this is a great forum to ask for advice. lots of helpful, knowledgeable folks.

[irowiki]

Tip: Clicking on the pictures will usually view them right side up. I don't know why the forums do that..

Anyway, nice Camry! Do not see many good third gens around anymore.

Sadly, we had to move from a Tercel TO a Camry Wagon once the oldest outgrew his car seat, as there are no shoulder belts in a tercel to use with a booster seat.

Also, you will want to figure out a way to anchor the forward facing car seat once it is time, there's mount points in the cargo area to screw an anchor in.

[Petros]

welcome the forum,

Great story, nice Tercel4wd. looks like your youngest does not mind inverted driving at all! hard on the paint I suspect, but lots of fun.

[ARCHINSTL]

Welcome to the Club!
Bryan is one of those guys from whom you'd buy anything without any trepidation.
Tom M.

[JWHart]

welcome to the forum, JW. it looks like you really scored with your tercel purchase. hopefully you won't need any assistance with any issues for a while but when you do, this is a great forum to ask for advice. lots of helpful, knowledgeable folks.

Thanks dlb, I think it's a score for sure. I'm proud to own such an umolested original loaded early example of our T4's. I've already had my share of mechanical quirkyness from this car in my short ownership but that's to be expected when daily driving a 32 year old vehicle. Luckily it's been really easy to service!

Tip: Clicking on the pictures will usually view them right side up. I don't know why the forums do that..
Anyway, nice Camry! Do not see many good third gens around anymore.

Sadly, we had to move from a Tercel TO a Camry Wagon once the oldest outgrew his car seat, as there are no shoulder belts in a tercel to use with a booster seat.

Also, you will want to figure out a way to anchor the forward facing car seat once it is time, there's mount points in the cargo area to screw an anchor in.

Thanks for bringing the car seat issue up irowiki, that's true. Oh thaaat old Camry? Lol it really was nice, interior was perfect. But no where remotely close to how cool the Tercel is!

welcome the forum,

Great story, nice Tercel4wd. looks like your youngest does not mind inverted driving at all! hard on the paint I suspect, but lots of fun.

Thanks Petros! We have been driving the crap out of the little car but the pictures are deceiving, it really has been right side up lol! I uploaded these pictures from our iPad and everything looks perfect on this end. I'll try to fix them from a computer today (sorry guys)

Welcome to the Club!
Bryan is one of those guys from whom you'd buy anything without any trepidation.
Tom M.

Agreed ARCHINSTL! It was a pleasure dealing with Bryan. Our deal makes for quite the wild story. I knew what I wanted, and he knew it would be coming to a good home.

[bryanthompson]

Welcome here, JW!
And thank you, Tom for the kind words.

That little car has come such a long way, in a short amount of time, and that makes me so happy. A true rescue and revival story.

Without stealing it's thunder, I can hint that the red car who donated his engine and entrails to Herschel will soon have his own story to tell...

Keep the updates coming!

Best,

BT

[JWHart]

Hey guys

I'm currently replacing the head gasket on our Tercel after it failed 4500 miles into our ownership in February (it's been parked in a garage since until I was able to fix it)

I'm not sure why it failed so I've got a Toyota head gasket and Toyota thermostat, getting a double row radiator and new rad hoses to cover all bases.

I'm following the method outlined by Petros I have everything successfully removed/labeled/disconnected as per his guide & am ready to remove head.

I have 2 questions at this point for you all:

1- Is the motor supposed to be set at TDC before letting the timing belt lay out of the way and removing the head? It wasn't in the first steps so I didn't and wanted to ask before I remove head.

2- Does the tube (outlined in picture in yellow) just release when head is removed or is there something I have to do?

[irowiki]

If you even remotely overheated, that will kill the head gasket.

Setting it to TDC will definitely help. You might have to remove the crankshaft pulley anyway if the belt skips teeth.

Yeah that tube will come with the head (or stay in the water pump).

[JWHart]

Thanks irowiki everything ended up going smoothly got the head removed yesterday, the head gasket failed between the 3rd and 4th cylinder closer to the driver side.

I'll check the head for warpage as per the FSM, preliminary checks look good cylinder bore looks great, all valves look good the camshaft and all caps look good. Timing belt looks brand new.

The pistons are aftermarket and overall everything in the motor looks fresh, so seems to be a newer or recent rebuild.

--the spark plugs were all black. And there was a fair amount of carbon build up on first 3 pistons 4th piston was steam cleaned. It always fired right up but then would run rough a few seconds later so I would have to race engine until it smoothed out. (Choke not operating correctly or improperly tuned?) I will verify vacuum routing after assembly and run through all the carb sequences. Also will verify timing set to your guy's recommended 10btdc.

--I wonder if this is a higher compression motor (possibly due to a milled head with the rebuild. I never had any ping but used low grade instead of premium and wonder if this may have caused head gasket to fail. Could've been torqued improperly. I drove it 4500 miles after buying it from Bryan before head gasket failure.

I'll post photos later they keep posting upside down this morning for some reason.

[irowiki]

On my 87 which had quote supposedly unquote been rebuilt the head gasket ended up going out because they did not torque the heads properly or did not retorque them after the job is done.

[JWHart]

If you click the photos they will load right side up, I apologize for them being displayed upside down I cannot figure out why this happens I've tried uploading from multiple devices with no luck. If anyone can fix them or tell me how let me know.

Here's some photos of the block after I removed the head, and engine bay after some much needed cleaning

-J.W.