Thursday, October 6, 2016

Sunny Southern California


Years ago when I could only dream of getting to rebuild a Celica I found a website that offered fiberglass and carbon fiber panels for these cars (and others).  Now that I'm working on this project I dug that site back up and found the owner in California.





After a bit of work I was able to get in touch with the seller from Toygarage.  He isn't moving as much hardware as he used to and is committed to only helping people truly dedicated to these old classic cars.

The parts I was looking for specifically were a full carbon fiber hood, carbon bumpers front and rear, and a fiberglass chin spoiler.

I wasn't really looking for the spoiler.  The car I have had been converted to the newer style (1973+) of turn signals and front valance below the bumper.  This one has the larger turn signals that sit on top of the valance.  I'd been looking to change it back to the true 1972 and earlier style where the turn signals mount to the core support behind the valance.  Finding an early style valance proved to be very challenging.  A chin spoiler like the one I got was the next best thing.  It mimics the same front valance as the older style, and adds a nifty spoiler to it too!

Bumpers were the same way.  They had been changed out for later model ones with little bumperettes on them.  I had an all metal 1972 bumper, but had been unable to find a front one to match.  With the cost of having them restored and replated I figured I'd look for something else.  Body color painted fiberglass ones are becoming more popular, but I wanted something that really stood out.  Toygarage had the answer.

Due to the rarity and fragility of the hood, both Toygarage and myself were not keen on the idea of trying to ship it.  Instead, I opted to drive 15+ hours south to California to pick everything up in person.

I'm completely amazed about the quality of the quality of the carbon fiber on these parts.  They are complete with threaded inserts for mounting, and the overall finish on them in excellent.  I'm more excited than ever to get this project moving forward so I can actually install these things on the finished car.  For now, they are just going to be works of art in my living room.  It also showed me that the vents I had were not in quite the condition I thought when compared to the hood.  I'll have to redo them as well!









While I was down there I also dropped the dash pad off at Just Dashes in Van Nuys.  These guys have a reputation of excellent work.  Using another Celica dash frame they had in house, they will completely remove the old vinyl from my dash, then rebuild the foam where needed and finally recover the piece with new more weather proof vinyl.  I'd purchased a dash cap for this car originally but found that it didn't cover the lower part of the dash and just didn't fit the way I wanted it to.  Just Dashes was the next (albeit expensive) option.

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