86 sr5 4wd tercel wagon 6spd manual for sale-St. Louis Area

[dlb]

Interestingly, the area on the left rear below the tool cubby was in fine shape, just superficial rust; but on the right side, when I tried to jack it up using the seam jacking point, it would only go so far and then started to bend. So there may be hidden rust on the right side.

it sounds like you had the jack behind the rear wheel, is that correct? that would be the wrong place, and the reason for the area buckling. like tom said, the jack should go just in front of the rear wheel.

[TominMO]

Your rust/bending situation seems to be an anomaly.
While you prob already looked, check out page IN-8 of the FSM for jack locations; the LR and RR spots are on the "X-members" holding the lower control arms, just in front of the wheel.
The method for jack stands is to raise using points on the rear axle and place the jack stands on the axle or on the "X-members."
Hopefully your bending prob was to the area behind the wheel and not to the X-member.

While OT, you might check all of the areas underneath to make sure the rubber sealing plugs are not missing; a number of Goldie's were, so I plugged with rubber "corks" from Home Depot, after spraying in R-O Rust Restorer.
Tom M.

Maybe the real problem was using the wrong place as a jacking point, i.e. on the seam that unibody cars have. But it looked like someone else had used that location too, as it was bent just a little. This was at the seam in front of the right rear tire. I'm unclear as to what you mean by the X-member, so I will look it up. EDIT: oh got it, the tranny crossmember. Wait, that's on the front. According to p. 1-47 in Chilton, jack positions are front crossmember and rear axle housing, which would raise both front or rear wheels. This looks to be when you are using a floor jack. Then on the same page they mention "pantograph jack position", which means the (useless) double-scissors jack I have. It shows jacking locations to be as I expected, on the seams near the tire you want to raise, in front of the rear tire and behind the front tire. Page IN-8 in the FSM confirms the Chilton info. I suppose I could jack it up with a good scissors jack on the axle housing near the wheel tho.

BTW the stock jack was frozen up when I got it, but some WD-40 and pulling on it while in my vise freed it up. This is an old-style jack, looks like a double-scissors, and is very hard to use. Very poor leverage. It functions well at first, but the higher you try to raise it, the harder it gets, to the point of being impossible to get the wheel off the ground. I used the more-modern "normal" scissors jack from my Aspire at the jacking point on the seam behind the front wheel, and the car went up easily, so I will look for one of those at the JY.

[dlb]

i actually really like the stock tercel jack. i'm probably 50/50 on using it or a floor jack under the axle or x-member, depending on what job i'm doing. maybe your scissor jack needs to be greased. i've never needed to fight mine.

bummer about the rust. i've learned to live with and love some rust and dents on all my cars after an experience of doing a serious paint job on my first terc, only to have rust spots start to show through the new paint in under a year. i know multiple other people who have been in the same boat, getting expensive paint jobs that look good for a year or two and then need more body work and repainting. i can't be bothered with it anymore, and have learned to appreciate the fact that by having an imperfect car, i don't worry about it getting nicked or dented in parking lots or whatever. and a certain amount of rust looks tough!

[TominMO]

i actually really like the stock tercel jack. i'm probably 50/50 on using it or a floor jack under the axle or x-member, depending on what job i'm doing. maybe your scissor jack needs to be greased. i've never needed to fight mine.

bummer about the rust. i've learned to live with and love some rust and dents on all my cars after an experience of doing a serious paint job on my first terc, only to have rust spots start to show through the new paint in under a year. i know multiple other people who have been in the same boat, getting expensive paint jobs that look good for a year or two and then need more body work and repainting. i can't be bothered with it anymore, and have learned to appreciate the fact that by having an imperfect car, i don't worry about it getting nicked or dented in parking lots or whatever. and a certain amount of rust looks tough!

Yeah, it seems there is something wrong with the jack, but it moves freely with no load or a light load. Just gets progressively more difficult to use. I would rather get it right than replace it, just for the nostalgia and "correctness" of using the original jack I suppose. I WD-40'd the heck out of it. I'll try grease tho. Oh, I should add that the right rear jacking point on the seam was pretty screwed up; the seam was all bent up, so the jack could not actually get a good purchase on the seam. So that is probably why the metal started bending. The other three seam jacking points look fine.

The rust on the car is actually fairly minimal for this area. I think it may have originally lived somewhere else, and at some point came to road-salt STL later in life. I have no desire to make it a show car (ha!), but I will treat all rust with that Rust Fix stuff that chemically changes it into a black primer, judiciously use patches where needed, a little bondo where needed, then camo-paint it, which will do a decent enough job of hiding the imperfections. I have a basically rust free right front fender I will use to replace the existing rusty one, and do some kind of repair on the left front one. I expect all repair and painting to come to ~$50, max. I am by no stretch a body man, but would like it to look decent from 5 or 10 yards....

[TominMO]

Update: greased the screw on the scissors jack, still no help. Also the two-piece handle is difficult to use. Going to JY to find a good modern scissors jack.

Painted the front grill, dark brown and dark green. (All colors are very flat camo BTW.) Toyota 4WD logo will be in light brown/sand. Started taking apart the hatch for painting. The large plastic square part on the lower left, which holds the license plate and backup light, will be painted like the grill (what do we call this thing anyway?). The hatch itself will be the same light green as Barto's was. The upper 2/3 of the car will be the light green, with the area on the sides, below the rubber doorguards, being dark brown/dark green camo. Rear steel tow bumper will be flat black, but might do a little camoing of this too.

[dlb]

i think most of us call that thing the license plate holder, or the ATM since it looks like one.

[TominMO]

i think most of us call that thing the license plate holder, or the ATM since it looks like one.

Oh OK, I thought there was some cool special name for this.... Come to think of it, ATM is pretty good!

EDIT: Used Goo Gone to remove a college sticker from the rear window. Seattle Pacific University. Could be why the rust is not too bad....

[Highlander]

I had my daughter use the stock jack to change a tire the other day, She thought is was a great job of engineering and compactness (Heading to her sophomore year as an ME major with a T4WD).
Tom- The factory jack wraps inside and outside of the flange when positioned correctly between the two semi circular cutouts, that keeps you from crushing the flange and starting rust creep. Two of my six T4WDs have been abused this way, so its not abnormal for it to happen.
Enjoy your T4!

[TominMO]

1. I had my daughter use the stock jack to change a tire the other day, She thought is was a great job of engineering and compactness (Heading to her sophomore year as an ME major with a T4WD).
2. The factory jack wraps inside and outside of the flange when positioned correctly between the two semi circular cutouts, that keeps you from crushing the flange and starting rust creep. Two of my six T4WDs have been abused this way, so its not abnormal for it to happen.

1. Yeah, I'm just puzzled as to why mine is so hard to move, once it gets up there. I even put a couple of 2x4s under it to make sure it was tall enough for the 14" tires currently on the car. Also, I didn't like the design of the interface between the jack and the handle--I guess you could call it a "T" commection. It was always coming out for me, which added to the general frustration with this jack. At most I might use it as an ersatz jackstand.
2. I know where the jack should go, as you say between the cutouts on the seam; I should have paid more attention to the fact that I wasn't getting the jack on both sides (the seam was bent over), hence the crushing. Luckily the other three seam jacking points are OK.

[TominMO]

Oh BTW what is the big knob on the front of my SR5 driver seat? I know the one on the left controls the pitch of the seat bottom, but turning the front knob didn't produce any effect I noticed.

Edit: Highlander, I just noticed you live in Nederland. Been there, on a looong road trip (Oregon - Virginia and back) in my 78 VW camper bus. Is that rasta guy still running the coffee shop there?

[dlb]

IIRC, both of the knobs on the SR5 driver seat control the height of the seat bottom. i think the side knob adjusts the rear height and the front knob adjusts the front height. if your car still has the owner's manual in the glove box, it should say in there for sure though.

[TominMO]

IIRC, both of the knobs on the SR5 driver seat control the height of the seat bottom. i think the side knob adjusts the rear height and the front knob adjusts the front height. if your car still has the owner's manual in the glove box, it should say in there for sure though.

No owner's manual unfortunately. The side knob adjusted the front height. Might it be that the front one controls the overall height of the seat, but you have to be out of the seat to adjust it?

Took a closer look and found the traditional rusted-out area under the tool cubby. I had been looking in the wrong place. Gonna put in an aluminum patch and then fill the bottom with foam from a spray can, so I can still use the cubby.

[dlb]

than the front knob should adjust the rear seat bottom height. easy to fix, just remove the four 14-mm bolts holding the seat, pull it out, turn it upside down and take a look. should be easy to see what's wrong.

on two of the project tercs i've fixed up, i filled the rusted out cargo cubby with 2" insulation foam board and spray foam. i cleaned the cubby area where the foam would go, cut the foam board to fit snugly, put it in place, and then spray foamed all the joints. worked really well. less cubby space but still more than enough for the jack and a first aid kit. there's pics of the first time i did it in this post, just scroll down. they're the last pics in the post.

https://tercel4wd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8& ... gie#p56384

[TominMO]

than the front knob should adjust the rear seat bottom height. easy to fix, just remove the four 14-mm bolts holding the seat, pull it out, turn it upside down and take a look. should be easy to see what's wrong.

on two of the project tercs i've fixed up, i filled the rusted out cargo cubby with 2" insulation foam board and spray foam. i cleaned the cubby area where the foam would go, cut the foam board to fit snugly, put it in place, and then spray foamed all the joints. worked really well. less cubby space but still more than enough for the jack and a first aid kit. there's pics of the first time i did it in this post, just scroll down. they're the last pics in the post.

https://tercel4wd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8& ... gie#p56384

Love the color on Reggie!

Come to think of it, I have some foam insulation laying around too, so that will save a little on cost and having to go get something.

I came up with a simple solution for the FWD/4WD selector's boot. I grabbed a dark brown lightweight cloth glove I had laying around, cut off the tip of one finger, and stuck it in there as my dust boot. Not concours d'elegance but much better looking than the gaping hole; and the average person not closely scrutinizing it wouldn't even see anything odd. The center console is tan.

Spent the day fixing little things: missing screws and plastic connectors from my vast storehouse of such things, collected over the years. Changed the oil & filter, and the fuel filter. Swapped the heavy 14" steelies for some older 13" AR aluminum rims, did a little more trim painting despite the rain (I have a garage). Applied a small bit of bondo to the bottom left corner of the hatch, where it rusted thru. The brakes seem a little spongy so I will bleed them soon.

[TominMO]

Went to two JYs today to get little things: a scissors jack ($6), a rubber shifter boot from a Ford Festiva in dark tan, a few little fastener pieces for the grill and hatch plastic. Plastic insert/grommet for the hood holder-upper. Also needed the screw-on connector for the rear wiper. Found it on an '89 Camry. The PO did all the big things, motor and carb rebuild, brakes, etc. but not the little stuff, so I'm chasing these little details down.

I was looking at speedos in '89 to '92 Corollas at the JY, and they look somewhat similar to ours. Could be that I could transplant the guts from a Corolla speedo into my T4, to get my tripmeter back. I will take my spare cluster apart and compare the T4 speedo internals with the Corolla speedo's. I did note that the trip reset is not in the same location, but that does not necessarily mean it will not work. The tripmeter itself might be the same, just use the T4 reset on the Corolla tripmeter. Has this been tried, and with what success or non-success?