Late 2009 i purchased this 1973 KE20 Corolla for $400 as running project thru a friend.
It was about as rough as this image quality in 2009, The car had had some questionable body repairs through out the 70's / 80's including in parts having 10mm more than required bodyfiller in one of the rear quarters giving it a sort of overfender look. A friend removed all the filler and panel beat it back to normal then i i started on the bodywork myself.
Painted the car in my parents unfinished garage with dirt floor as the concrete hadnt been poored yet, turned out ok considering.
Wet sanded and polished the entire car
I'll post the rest later as i was having issues with uploading the whole build.
Paint work was starting to look beat at this point so started prepping the body again then got lazy and it sat in the garage almost 3 years half prepped. Finally got some motivation mid this year to finish it off .
As usual high quality spray booth.
Added factory fender mirrors and and ordered a pair of 7j's to match the rear wheels as i was never much of a fan of the staggered sizing.
And that was how it was going to stay a weekend cruiser, i drove it around for a couple months until a shitty driver fucked up at a give way and fucked my shit up so now we wait for insurance to do their thing so i can get fixed back up again.
Broke a couple stock 4K (1,290cc) engines over the years these were never much good but bit larger capacity than the 3K (1,166cc) than these came factory with, Australia never got any good spec engines in these just the lowest power & cheapest on offer.
I didnt want to do an engine conversion as it needs to be engineered to be registered and costs thousands in fees and tests. So the car was always built to be returned to factory spec if need be and it did at one point to remove at defect notice for fitting a Nardi wheel.
I had the bottom end built with the oversize pistions (1,430cc) Balanced, blueprinted, rods modified to accept 4AGE ARP rod bolts, 4.2kg flywheel, home ported the head fron 25mm to 30mm to suit the weber manifold, double valve springs nothing too fancy.
Picked up a KP61 Starlet TRD 2 way which bolts in other than having to redril the tail shaft flange.
Had to make some stuff to get some things to work.
Throtte cable stop plate for the throttle cable with the webers
Spacers for the shock eyes to fit the AE86 TRD shocks to the chassis
Having acess to lathes and mills at work is handy.
Engine in and having to learn tuning weber carbs
Made about a stomping 81HP at the wheels untuned other than balancing the carbs and playing with mixtures, Nothing amazing but plenty fun for this little car.
Found some weak points more than once, Uni joints arent designed for much more than factory power haha.
Picked up some little Hayashi's 13x6 & 13x7 +10
Had to go to inspection as it was from interstate, so back to factory spec 12's with hubcaps
Once passed i could add suspension
Lower leaf springs with TRD green adjustable dampers, 2 inch or so shortened struts, HSD coilover kit, Bilstien VW Golf short stroke dampers & Cusco TE27 camber tops.
Some slightly larger disks & calipers from a later KE30 Corolla. I had to machine spacers for the backing plates as theres a difference in bolt sizes to mount them.
Daily drove it for about 5 years
Got some decent headers and had a 2 inch stainless exhaust made.
Went to Japan & picked up some oversize pistons, titanium valve spring retainers & WPC treated bearings from Kameari Engine Works for the motor i had planned to build.
Really cool shop that has Toyota K engine (KP61 Starlet) parts instock. They were super helpfull calculating my compression ratio with my specific head & shipped the engine bearing at a later date as they didnt have the WPC treated items in stock that day.
Crazy that these are 50 year old cars now 🤯 looks super nice!