When life hands you lemon, you make lemonade.
but what happens when life hands you a '96 5 speed celica ST, aka Freelica???

so, this thing just kinda almost literally fell into my hands. Thursday night my uncle hits me up on facepage and was like, "hey, i got this sitting in my yard, you interested?"

I'm like "swching! yea!" (but i didn't say the swching part)

so details are it was my cousin's car, they were driving heard a big noise? in the general engine bay/engine area and then it died. got it towed to my uncle's and it sat for 3 years. possibly spun bearings but we'll see once i dig into it some more.

Friday comes around, I'm like ok cool another celica would be nice to have to work on but I'm still kinda broke so i'll let it simmer for now. then my cousin was like, "eh yo, if nobody's interested, I'm junking it today!"

so I hit her up and was all like, "ey ho, i'm interested yo, how much ya want for it?"

she was like "free fiddy!" and I'm like free fiddy?, she's like yeah free dollars and fiddy. you just gotta tow it out and it's yours.
so she left the title with my uncle but forgot the key so that will be mailed to me.

so for the price of towing, i got me a freelica.

onto pick chars.

the pix my uncle sent me:





of course, first thing i do when it got dropped off was line up my green celi with it for a photoshoot. lol



then proceeded to clean the crap out of it.
BEFORE:

seats are trashed. had various smells of old pets and smoke.



seems to have taken a slight hit here. tail light's cracked and pushed in a bit...

came with a half torn apart system? lol

doors are typical of a midwest car. but seems to be the only bad rust i see on the body so far.

rear quarters looks surprisingly ok. this is the worst of it.


AFTER
gave it a quick wash to see what's left of the paint. hood's been spray canned and they didn't bother to mask anything so i had to spend some time scraping black overspray from the headlights and windshield....
she looks good from 30 maybe 20 ft.



dash cleaned up REALLY well. aside from the torn leather steering wheel (i have my stock one and a 3post to replace) and shifter, everything looks in relatively good shape.



I believe I should have an extra door panel to replace this if needed. there's dimples everywhere.

seats, I'll most likely trash. aside from having various stains and rips. the ever present smell of cigarettes just doesn't cut it for me and I still have my tan seats from my green one when I did the 7th gen interior swap.


overall, it only takes a bit of loving to make it able to sit next to my green one. they're both pretty happy I'd say


This post has been edited by cheela: Aug 27, 2019 - 12:03 PM

Let's hope you don't want the 7a in there for long if it does run.

hahaha yeah, I hear ya. one slow 7a is enough. I wouldn't be able to deal with 2.



not sure what my plans are for it yet. If I can fix it up cheap, might be a winter beater or sell it for $$$$. if not, it can be a parts car to supply my green one with a manual swap. and best solution would be to get the v6 from Chris and swap it into this for a fun sleeper, and still be able to do the manual swap on my green one.

I got you boo....

what v6? what!!!! which!!!!

Manual swap the green one with parts from the black one, then 1MZ/E153 swap the black one and turn it into a corner carver/track toy.

>
3mz or 2gr. if i go 2gr, i'll be badgering you day and night just so you know.

>

once i get some funds that's probably how it will go.

Congrats on the FREE Celica!! Those are the best!

Nice, hey cannot complain if it's free right?
Since we already have both 3S types, a 1MZ, and a K20 up in the north... I'd say 3MZ or 2GR! Either car will be cool (BETTER YET, DO BOTH OF THEM).

Wow that dash does look really nice! That's a pretty well-optioned car too

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it cleaned up very well. did not imagine this underneath the dirt and grime. lol
and yeah before i got any details, I was thinking it would be a GT what with it having almost all options of a GT. even leather wrapped steering wheel?!


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had to save this dragon. felt bad letting it go to junkyard heaven.

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k20's down though... lol
I gotta make room in my barn if I'm gonna start going deep into this project. we'll see.

You know, I happen to have an E153 too....

Jus' sayin'.

My ST had the moonroof, power locks, power windows, cruise, and factory 14" alloys. I can't remember if mine had a leather wheel or not.

so... you're saying alls I gotta do it drop my celi off at your garage then?

why did none of this go in any of your 6gcs? lol

lmao!

I always had 96+ cars. No swaps due to emissions testing....

And no. I'm not doing any swaps in the near future. I'm just telling you that I have most of what you need.

peerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressure
peerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressurepeerpressure

ah yeah forgot you have emissions.... bleh. lol

you might have to hold on to them for a bit longer for me cuz while you says peerpressurepeerpressure, my own voice is saying youbrokeyoubrokeyoubroke.
hahah. my bank account is still in recovery mode since buying the house and trying to fill it with stuff, as well as planning and paying for a wedding, just need a few months to get out of the red first. if this car wasn't free, i wouldn't have even gotten it. if anything i was thinking it had at least a few hundred dollars in parts i could make quick and...... now it's another project car. LOL!

Arrange payment installations, he clears up space now and you get stuff now and he gets money slowly but surely. It's a win win win.

>

Chee knows that if he really wants the stuff, all he has to do is tell me. We can work out the details later. That's part of the whole "Midwest 6gc" vibe...

so, I got the key today. thought i'd entertain myself and try starting it to see whats wrong. used a jumpstarter. connected to the battery, turn the key...... VROOM....???? what? I thought they said the engine gave out? a puff of smoke under the car and I can tell the flex pipe is busted so I try to put it in gear to move the car. 1st gear nothing, 2nd gear, nothing, 3rd, 4th, 5th, reverse... nothing... so i guess it wasn't spun bearings. looks like somebody toasted the clutch.

so it looks like i'll be do a clutch job instead or engine swap. I know most of you are booing me right now because you wanted an engine swap. but if this works out, I can have this black one as a daily driver and then focus on swapping my green one.

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You need some speaker grills? Cause I have a few sets of speaker grills laying around. At least I think I still have them...

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I would check the axles first. Just to rule them out. You just never know.

Check for snapped shifter cables too!

I'm good on the speaker grills. they were just taken off for some reason?

yeah, talked with Daniel and we said it could be clutch, axles, or cables.
but I think cables might be ok because I can feel it go into each gear. just gotta wait for better weather to take a look. it's been 50s and rain this past week and this weekend looks just as bad too. rained all day today.

It's amazing how some cars will start after years of not running & others... good luck.

yeah same thing with my RA24 when I bought it. the guy was like I don't know what's wrong with it, can't get it to start. we pushed it onto a dolly and towed it home. I started working on it, poured some starter fluid down the carb and it started just like a toyota should. lol

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Ahhh he'll get it rumning again. Still a k20 celica haha. Na just fo 7age! Lol or throw in a BT 20v and call it a day.

the muffler bearing need lube.

I did check the headlight and blinker for fluids and refilled those but didn't think to check the muffler bearings! you're a genius!!

update:
so this past weekend we rolled it from the middle of the yard to underneath the carport and while we were rolling I did hear a clunking/scraping noise as we rolled it but didn't have time so I just left it at that.

Today, I went ahead and started it in gear and in the video you can hear a noise as it starts but then it goes away. With it in 1st and my foot on the clutch, it sounds normal but as soon as i let my foot off the clutch, you hear the clunking noise. so anytime the clutch isn't in now, it will clunk.

here's a video for a better explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcIf59irS0

Holy bad knock! I’m pretty sure that’s the throwout bearing. Time to drop the trans.