Tag: celica

by monkeymagic

my dragon lady

monkeymagic86

Last Saturday was the big day. The day I would go to get my new project, a Celica TA23GT with the 2TG engine on 2 double Solex carbs. But before I try to do a write-up of this trip, I want to say thank you to a few people. My 2 co-pilots Tom and Patrick. And Petar for renting me his trailer!

I saw an ad for this car on the internet about a month ago. Contacted the seller and he told me it was sold already. 2 weeks later I just wanted to check if the buyer really showed up to take it away and the guy said “no”. So without having seen the car and with just a few crappy cell phone pics I bought and even paid a deposit for this car. Planned this roadtrip at +-730km (490 miles) one way. The whole thing (1500km/1000 miles) in 1 day.

So the alarm clocks were set early. Way to early for my taste:

First leg, driving to the shelter and meet with my 2 co-pilots. They are exactly as awaken as I am *lol We hitched up the trailer and started for the first 726km (+-490 miles).

Some boring en-route stuff:

Once arrived at the vendors house in the south of France. Gorgeous weather, nice guy,… There even was another TA Celica parked in front of his house :

I finally saw my future car for the first time. Covered in blankets it stood in the garage and awaited it’s new owner. He then showed me all the pieces he got for 1st gen Celica’s and I soon noticed I would never be able to get all these parts home.

So, we loaded the car, tied it up and started to fill up the Celica and the tow car with bits and pieces.


After having completed a huge amount of paperwork, I paid for the car and we went off to the paint guy to get the missing hood.

Some time later we eventually started our way back home. The radio announced lots of highway traffic jams as there were too much people returning from their holidays at the french Riviera. We decided to drive quite some detours in order to be able to roll. Stop and go highway traffic is just to boring. And with a trailer and a manual car it’s a PITA! So we took some nice byroads and enjoyed the south of france.

Just some random new car owner with his stock of bits on the way home :

The way back home was about 834km (560 miles). Took us 10 hours.

  

Finally back at the shelter. We quickly unloaded the car, drank a can of beer to celebrate the roadtrip and drove home.

02:36AM that’s a 23 hour trip in one go. Was hard but fun.

Now I will remount this car step by step, there is quite some work left! Then I will register it and start modifying it.

NEEDS HUGE LOVE IN THE STANCE AND WHEEL DEPARTMENT 🙂