So I bought a 1987 Tercel SR5 4X4...

[daosplace]

...and it's a barrel of fun! For $150 with rego, I really cannot complain.

Runs perfectly, and so far (only had the thing for a few hours) I can't find any problems with it. I mostly want it as a little bit of a play thing through the hills (windy tarmac roads), and maybe a little bit of soft-core dirt rally play. I used to have a WRX rally car, but wrapped it around a tree, so this is a nice cheap way to have a little bit of fun on dirt roads. I want to use this car mostly as a play thing, it will not be my daily driver.

I have a couple of quick questions, which I cannot seem to find answers for while searching on this forum. Hopefully you guys can help!

1. Are there any wheel hubs that I can use directly on this 4X4 model that will let me convert it to a 4x114.3 stud pattern? A friend of mine has dozens of sets of decent wheels for his AE86, and he said I can use his wheels and tyres whenever I want to have a play in the windy tarmac roads.

2. What sort of mods are most people making to these to make driving more 'spirited' around tarmac roads? I don't really care about performance increases so much, I'm think more along the lines of steering/suspension/brakes/wheel offset and whatnot. If anyone has any relatively basic and easy suggestions for performance mods I'll gladly listen and take your advice into account, but it's the handling aspects that I'd be most interested in. I have good mechanical knowledge (I own a motorcycle shop here in Australia) and don't mind spending a bit of time and money on this thing, but I don't want to waste time and money if it can be avoided.

Thanks guys!

Dao

[takza]

If you go with 14" Ford Escort wheels and 60 series tires (or find the adapters)...plus "rubber donuts"...2 each per spring...that's about the cheapest way to see some handling gains. You can get an easy 20% power gain by advancing the ignition some.

[Petros]

Welcome to the list! Nice to have another member from down under.

Not quite a 20 percent increase, but you do get some cheap power improvement by advancing the timing to about 10 deg BTDC.

The easiest way to switch to 4x114.3 wheel pattern is to swap the whole rear axle assembly to a one off an older RWD corolla, or better an AE86 GTS, it will give you disk brakes in the rear, the bolt pattern you want and there are LSD available. But you will have to find a 4.11:1 ring and pinion set for the 6.5" diff in the back, and either alter the diff input flange, or have a drive line shop weld a new larger flange on the back of your drive shaft. And I do not know any way to switch the front hubs over, most of those early Toyotas that used the 114.3mm bolt circle were RWD.

In short, there is no easy way to make it work. It might be possible to make adapters, but it would widen your track by about an inch or two. The wheels from the later AE92 and the MR2 will bolt right on, are 14" dia and wider, and noticeably improve handling.

As far as preformance mods, best thing to do for the suspension, besides going to 14 (or 15") wheels, is to install gas filled dampers (struts) front and rear. There are threads on this forum about doing various types of lifts with wrecking yard parts, but I am not sure these are sorted out yet. So you can copy some of the changes in the threads, but you will be on your own to sort out the problems we found so far.

These cars are rather underpowered, and this engine is not really a good plate form for a lot of performance up grades, due mostly to the obsolete 8-valve head design. But there are a number of simple things to do to the engine, one is to switch to a weber carb. The other is to find a performance reground cam. There is a pretty inexpensive regrind available from a company here in Tacoma WA, Delta Camshaft. I do not know if it is worth the cost of getting it to you down under but it is a decent street performance cam. The cam that is in the auto trans Tercel is supposed to be slightly better performance which you might be able to find there. A good open exhaust would be a help too, not really any good headers available for it, so you would have to make your own, or just live with the factory exhaust manifold.

There are a number of other tweaks you can do if you rebuild the engine, over bore, flat top pistons, open and clean up the ports, balance the engine, lighten the flywheel. But even with a lot of effort you will at best get only about 85 to 90 hp out of this engine. A much better performance option is to do an engine swap with a fuel injected 16-valve 4afe or 4age. The 4AGE has a lot of performance parts available, and stock has more than double the hp as the 3a engine.

You might want to go to the repair guides and see about doing a front brake up-grade to MR2 brakes and Master cyl.

There are threads on all these topics, search them out and read up on them.

Good luck

[ARCHINSTL]

Welcome to the Club! Someone just joined from Melbourne as well!
Lots of good info availalble with using the Search feature. There is a FSM available for perusing and D/L as well, at the top of each page - it's for LHD North American cars, but with interpolation you will be OK.

I like that stripe treatment - may have to revise Goldie's.
What is that black disc below the rug strip between the bumper and wheel well?
Tom M.

[lance]

Some one else in my neck off the woods who has just joined.
Good luck with your new toy.
Dont do what i did and go out bush bashing buy yoursalf.
Got stuck over two big muddy ruts and it took quite a while to get out buy mysalf.
Did some damage to the drivers side sill with a small log trying to lever it out.
My back not the best aswell.
Lesson learnt

[daosplace]

Welcome to the Club! Someone just joined from Melbourne as well!
Lots of good info availalble with using the Search feature. There is a FSM available for perusing and D/L as well, at the top of each page - it's for LHD North American cars, but with interpolation you will be OK.

I like that stripe treatment - may have to revise Goldie's.
What is that black disc below the rug strip between the bumper and wheel well?
Tom M.

Hello! Sorry about the delay in reply, I couldn't find the thread again. That disc is the filler cap for the LP Gas system, in Australia it's common to fuel cars with natural gas, like a barbecue.

[dlb]

that's super weird because i was just thinking about what a propane conversion would be like on our cars. i assume that the previous owner made that modification?