New Look / Same Poor Taste

[Gibbs 0]

nice man great work!

[Nigel_Vertigo 0]

Did you have to cut a clearance hole for the extended MKIII R154?

[Gordo 0]

Nice job on the tunnel piece.

[Urrik 0]

@Nigel_Vertigo for the old trans, I originally just bashed the roof of the tunnel up until the neck of the shifter housing cleared. And opened up the back of the auto trans hole a little bit because Driftmotion made the shifter longer than I had told them to.  The tripod needed a bit more than that though.

Mocking up a stock location Garrett GTX2971R using a turbine housing made by some Taiwan company

[Urrik 0]

Love this turbo

 

4x4 Russian ride height mode

 

Picked up a donor car for the Cressida

[battleaxe 0]

damn ya hell. how many monies do these donor type cars go for down yonder?

i was playing with the idea of getting a vvti 1uz for my d21 as the KA has lived a few lives and i want to put it to pasture. locally even the first gen LS400s, the ol $500 tops cars are going for 3-4k here now

[Urrik 0]

Same here. The clean, all original LS's are now 3-5k territory. If you're lucky you can still find one for two thou. Which to me is still madness as I felt like the 1000 I paid for mine in 2013 was still too much. 

Earlier in the winter, we picked these up for an outrageous 1500 and 700, respectively, and they're both beat.

The LS appears to be some kid's failed VIP project, complete with galaxy print door panel inserts, sheet metal rear flares that I've torn off by hand, and Amazon's Choice coilovers. The engine runs flawless and will be swap fodder for my friend's AE71.

The GS appears to have been driven from the original owner's summer property straight to the ghettos of Springfield, MA, where it received eBay headlight assemblies, purple windows, subs, stick-on gel wood texture interior trim package, and G35 wheels instead of a timing service.

[battleaxe 0]

hoe lee cow, thats some kind neglect!

guess we are all fucked with rising car prices and how ppl see them as valuable or something instead of a donor

[Urrik 0]

Update:

I don't own a Cressida for the first time in 11 years. Sold it to a close friend who had recently gotten rid of his 280Z that we 2JZ-GE VVTi swapped. He wanted a V8 cruiser that was larger and more comfortable than his Z was, so I did this for him:

 

Myguy ended up buying a lower mileage Soarer 3UZ from an importer, so I've got that running on the GS400 throttle body, harness and ECU with immobilizer delete and AT-EMU from Quantum Auto.

Reused some more parts from the GS like this power steering bracket re-bent to fit:

 

Since the VVT engines are returnless and gay, I looped the rails at the front and added an AFPR:

 

There was a great spot on the rear water crossover casting to drill and tap for a 3/8 NPT fan switch:

 

Bro wanted to contribute to his new chariot, so he did all of the welding and exhaust work.  He also picked up a TIG welder and started messing around with it, like shortening the megaschlong that is the 3UZ oil filler neck:

 

Abortion exhaust manifold for the driver's side:

 

For the transmission, we revisited my old R154 with the trashed tail housing. Here's the carnage:

 

Pressed that shit out and replaced with the new updated version.  Also in need of repair was the boss for the 5th gear shift rail spring detent.  The casting had cracked and split so the threads no longer held torque.

 

Using the TIG and a helicoil:

 

I chose to mount the V8 quite far forward in the bay in order to clear the firewall and factory brake booster, so I bought the cast shifter housing from Xcessive that puts you about 2.5" back from MA70 location.

 

This also came with a bespoke cast shift select lever, which is a complete piece of shit.  Once again Xcessive comes close and fails.  The striker was machined down too narrow (shown left below) so when installed, it doesn't even contact the spring pins on either side of the extension housing.  So don't use this unless you like a loose, sloppy shifter

 

We made our own out of the factory piece that also, when installed, ended up being more centered on the shifter housing opening than the XM one was

 

At this point, I wanted to say that I still only trust XM to make something as simple as an engine mount bracket right, but even one of the UZ brackets I received laughably had one of the gussets welded too close to the slotted hole to be able to use the entire slot with a reasonably sized flange nut or washer.

 

For the clutch shit, I stubbornly wanted to retain a factory style external hydraulic slave cylinder. I used a Thai bastard cast bellhousing that came with an Aisin turbodiesel Land Cruiser 10.5" clutch, and a five million pound flywheel.  After cutting up the auto flex disc, removing the starter ring gear and pressing it onto the new flywheel, I had it balanced at a local machine shop.  Glad I did because it was 10g off.

The rest of what came with the ladyboy kit was worthless, and I had to figure out something else that worked.  Ended up using a 1995+ V6 truck clutch fork and slave cylinder and a 2007+ 70-series Land Cruiser throwout bearing.  V6 truck throwout wouldn't have worked, the OD on the end of it was barely large enough to touch the springs on the Cruiser pressure plate  Had to machine down the slave cylinder and clutch fork pivot mounting surfaces to get everything to line up properly. The bell casting looks like a foam movie prop.

 

Tested it together outside the car to make sure all of this bullshit worked before I put it in.  Hell yeah.

 

So that's it for the X8 I think.  Home boy is going to do small projects to it here and there, stuff I never bothered to take care of.  I'm not sure I'll ever own another one; I think the Cressida owning part of my life needs to be behind me now.  In some ways, I still see building this car as a mistake and a wrong decision, and I'm not sure why 24 year old me had it in my head that I needed to do it. But here it is regardless.

[Urrik 0]

This past year with the Mark II:

Did HKS 264's, Denso 550's, Aeromotive 13131.  With the valve covers off, it's fairly easy to snake the fuel rail out without touching the intake manifold at all.  Also picked up some b r o w n floor mats and painted the valve covers b e i g e

 

Some pics from last year

 

 

E70 is being swapped next

[ChriSOL 0]

nice camry!

[Nigel_Vertigo 0]

God I wish my GX100 had a rear wiper. Great choice on wheels.

[Urrik 0]

@ChriSOL thanks myguy, I'm keen on getting into more Camries as I've been trying to convince a buddy's dad to sell me his '99 factory 5 speed.  Also in b e i g e so the desire is high.  I want to put some form of 3S in it

@Nigel_Vertigo shit dude I just saw the FS section.  Congrats on the 100.  At first I almost didn't notice my shit had the rear wiper until I saw the controls for it, and found it had been removed with some threaded cap stuck onto the motor stud at the base of the glass. I was very glad to find the wiper arm still in the trunk and slapped that shit back on.  Like an idiot, I removed the washer reservoir and used the bracket to make the new PS reservoir bracket.  It was kind of an eyesore anyway, sprawled out across the strut tower, but I will eventually re-mount it in the trunk somewhere

[LUMBERZACK 0]

GOLD BADGE ALERT

[Urrik 0]

I'm caucasian, I swear

[battleaxe 0]

ouffff, this is a real nice update with some really really nice work.

I think the cressida is just a hurdle you want to overcome because of the general amount of failed or unfinished projects for these cars.  I like the jzx81 but haven't ever really been a fan of the chassis.  I was a bandwagoner once I saw G's multi coloured blue one from long, long ago and was like, hey, that would be cool.   I think all I really liked was the 1jz and I should have just got one of those and put that in a better car.  I do like some versions of the cressida, and theres maybe a handful total of these cars that are like, whoa, nice, excellent work, but man the amount of bad ones ruins a lot of them for me.  I'm kinda looking forward to not having mine anymore after a part out but like you and many that stuck with it, I want to see it to its final phase where you enjoy it for more than a month if there wasn't another six problems popping up you need to fix.  I think we all have some ego/vanity issues of, oh, they don't even know what this thing is...a thing that makes a bunch of weird noises and might be faster than the Camry they are actually in...must be the 16yr old in all of us...or maybe just me.

[Urrik 0]

For me I think it was the particular car I bought and chose to modify.  Initial bad decision caused a chain reaction of headaches, like all the rust repair, and regrets, like hacking up the fenders for flares (I prefer the stock body now and wished I had left it alone).  But yeah, out of stubbornness and pride I needed to see it through. At the point I painted it, I was just happy that the car was all one color for the first time.  I could've saved myself all that wasted effort if I had waited and found a nicer example.  But I was impatient and needed to satisfy a pipe dream.  I had discovered X71 and X81 Mark II's and after I saw people doing front end swaps to Cressidas I decided I needed to have the closest thing I could get to one in the US.  I liked the idea of this site, the attitude towards this hobby, and what the Cressida represented, or at least what it used to.  Fuck what everyone else is doing, it's all attention whoring idiots who are too enthusiastic and excited about cars.  Cars suck.  The rest of the world is crazy, you're not.  You can build a better, faster, more interesting car for a fraction of the cost using what you know.

[WhoreMouth_Jr 0]

Dang whats with these trans.
Recently mine ejected my tailshaft bushing.  I found a huge puddle of gear oil under my car with the output seal pushed way back on my driveshaft flange as well as the tailshaft bushing free spinning on the DS flange as well.  Who knows how long I drove it with low fluid lol

[ChriSOL 0]

🙃