Old School Pilipinas Nostalgia » WIQDTOY http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog Official Blog Site of Old School Pilipinas Community Tue, 08 May 2012 12:55:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 My Start with the Old School Cars – Part 5 http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/04/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-5/ http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/04/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-5/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:30:44 +0000 WIQDTOY http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/?p=704 We Made History!

And we finally had reliability with our new found power. And we proved it. We took our “house” garage built cars on a long road trip. A 7 hour road trip to the biggest all Toyota shows in the US. We had no idea that we were going to shake up the pillars of the old school community by our Honda powered old schools.

There were 5 of us. 3 first year Celicas, 1 1981 Toyota Starlet, and 1 1974 Toyota Corolla AKA Mango. All were F20C’d powered and all driven down just for the show. Most, if not all, of the 5 cars had only a couple days of test driving. And some had just finished being built right before the long road trip.

We all made a bold statement when we won in our respective classes in the show. Our cars with the Honda swaps became infamous. Many in the show asked how we could do such a thing to such iconic old school Toyota cars. Many in the the show voted for us to win our classes since the judging was done by the people.

We made our cars with junkyard parts, eye ball engineering, and a little luck. Our cars were good enough to park next to any car at the show. Also good enough to run with some of the best out on the tracks! We made history.

But best of all, we made friends. Good friends that shared the same passion as we did. Thinking outside the box of restoring and modifying old school cars. An accomplishment that I have always been very greatful and very honored to be a part of to this very day.

]]> http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/04/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-5/feed/ 1 My Start with the Old School Cars – Part 4 http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/04/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-4/ http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/04/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-4/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:29:48 +0000 WIQDTOY http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/?p=701 Ready for the Swap

It wasn’t until one of them decided to swap in a Honda S2000 motor inside a first year Toyota Celica chassis that really caught my attention. Yes… a Honda motor! I know, BLASPHAMEY right? But the Honda S2000 (F20C), pound for pound, had the highest power output of any motor on the planet period. The F20C was an all aluminum twin cam that would rev to over 9000 RPM. Stock! 250 HP and a 6 speed transmission that had the shortest throw I had ever driven. VTEC was crazy! It was like feeding an 18RG steroids!

It didn’t take too long for us to realize that this was an awesome swap to regain some of the balance lost when swapping in bigger motors. It was balance that made the first year Celica a very formidable street car. Able to keep up with high horse power cars on the freeways and able to carve up the twisty mountain roads with some of the best handling cars; thanks to adjustable suspensions we produced over the years.

We kept the swap simple and tried to push the motor closer to the middle of the car to get as close to a 50/50 weight ratio as we could. We even grafted the digital cluster onto our stock instrument cluster. With new found power, we had to reinforce the chassis of our cars. We hooked up with a local shop that specialized in custom roll cages that would pass any tech inspection for road coursed and drag strips.

]]> http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/04/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-4/feed/ 2 My Start with the Old School Cars – Part 3 http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-3/ http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-3/#comments Sun, 20 Feb 2011 11:11:56 +0000 WIQDTOY http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/?p=698 A Little Help from the Experts

It wasn’t until I hooked up with some local crazy guys that I finally got to see what were truly insane motor swaps. They convinced me to buy a much lighter chassis Celica; a 1971 Toyota Celica. A first year Celica. And thus started another chapter for me modifying these old cars.

These local guys I ran into were truly insane. Like me, they had their shares of vintage motors like the 18RG, 2TG, and 3TGTE’s as well as various 20/22R, 3TC, and 4AGE domestic motors we got stock here in the US. And like me, they too grew tired of blowing up these motors when building them for max power. They started swapping in motors from different makes of cars. More powerful and more modern than the common vintage motors that we started off with before.

Motors like the SR20DET from Nissan and the big bad V8 LS1 motor from Chevrolet.

They would shoe horn these motors in the engine bays of these tiny Toyota Celicas and would often custom fab parts to make them fit. Many times these swaps almost look stock! And many times over engineering the car to have rack and pinion steering, fully adjustable camber plates, and adjustable 4 link rear suspensions.

I was fascinated!

]]> http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-3/feed/ 1 My Start with the Old School Cars – Part 2 http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-2/ http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-2/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:18:52 +0000 WIQDTOY http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/?p=696 Old School Hot Rod

A couple of years of owning my first car, I got bit by the hot rodding bug! I needed more power. Easiest way to do this was to swap in a motor with more power in it. Let the madness begin!

My first quest for power landed me a surplus motor from Japan. The motor I chose was an 18RG which was a twin cam motor that was never introduced here in the US. It had a DOHC Yamaha designed head, dual 40MM Mikuni sidedraft carbs, and a TRD copy header made by Nodalos. I also swapped out the automatic transmission with a 5 speed. Then I was able to score better gearing from a mid 80’s Corolla GTS and soon had a 4:30 rear with LSD. I soon replaced the suspension on my Celica and it quickly became a very fun car!

Again, a lot of lessons learned from my first motor swap and I quickly found that the more I modified, the more I broke stuff. I broke a lot of parts. Then I started blowing my motor up… several times! More power equaled more broken parts. It was insane!

I finally decided to give up with hot rodding. With the amount of money I wasted for my quest for power, I could have bought a Porsche and be like the other snobby kids around my area. Never!

]]> http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-2/feed/ 1 My Start with the Old School Cars – Part 1 http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-1/ http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/2011/02/my-start-with-the-old-school-cars-part-1/#comments Sun, 06 Feb 2011 13:06:06 +0000 WIQDTOY http://www.oldschoolpilipinas.org/blog/?p=694 A Legacy

When I first started out with these so called “old school” cars, they really weren’t “old school” cars at all. In fact they were just “old”. Not many knew that they can be modded or raced. Only to a certain few were they special cars to own and work on. I was introduced to these old cars early. My Dad gave me one when I first got my driver’s license and so begins my story…

My very first car was a 1980 Toyota Celica hatchback GT model. It was an automatic and it was purchased new back in 1980 by my Dad at our nearest Toyota dealership. In fact my Dad bought it right off the showroom floor since it was the dealership’s showroom model. The day my Dad brought it home it had only 5 miles on the odometer.

Fast forward to about 10 years after the purchase, I was given the keys to my very own car. A Toyota Celica that my Dad once owned. I thought it was the coolest car! And it was in pristine condition since my Dad was pretty meticulous about maintaining his cars. He was a jeepney driver and a mechanic when he was in the Philippines. He kept his cars spotless. One can literally eat off the engine bay the way he kept his cars. And now it was mine!

It was a first of many things for me in that car… if my first car could talk it would tell you many stories. I had my first accident in that car and it taught me to respect it. I also learned how to be my own mechanic thanks to my first car. I was a high school student with very little money so I had to do a lot of maintenance on the car myself. That also taught me a lot of lessons learned.

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