Squalled

Finally after what felt like an eternity I finally made my way back to Nasho. Caught up with Adam finally to have a run through with lockdowns stopping us earlier this year and of course the last few weeks of rubbish weather made it well and truly annoying to organise. Took it fairly easy through and gave the car some juice through some of the tighter sections to stretch it's legs and my god I missed going for drives. I have a huge urge to go again but with double demerits fast approaching I don't think it's worth going through again until the new year. While I was with Adam, he corrected a setting on the ECU so now my temperature gauge reads spot on as it did prior to the installation. As usual, it was literally a check box that needed to be unchecked that fixed the problem. Adam also gave some new goodies for the interior as well. Earlier this year I received a prototype spring loaded cup holder that I had used rather successfully throughout the year but since I had received it, the design had been re-done and the spring loading removed. It's a really neat and simple design that works really well. Each end piece has different sizes depending on the drink you have with one side allowing a bigger drink and the other allowing for a smaller drink. So far I've set both of the holders to the biggest size and it fit a 600ML water bottle perfectly. I also received another goodie from Adam. For a number of months he had been tooling with getting a gauge holder to work on the dash without using the aftermarket holder that most gauges come with. Since the ECU install, I had used the pod that had come with the gauge and mounted it to my dash near my A pillar. And now here's the new mount (ignore the bolt as I need to get a shorter grub screw soon) So now I have a gauge pod that's moulded into the demister vent and fits in so well with the interior. The angle of the gauge sits in the perfect spot and also sits a lot lower than my original aftermarket pod as well. Soon I will pull some of the trim off to tuck the cables away as I hadn't done this earlier in preparation for the new gauge pod so that may be one of the little jobs to do over Christmas or in the new year. Stay tuned.

Pretty sure I have a brand new set somewhere that I got about 3 years ago but have never had to replace them. I think I am due to replace the valve cover seal at some point so I might do it then while I'm there at least.

Interesting, I mean this is probably the longest I have left it since it had been a tad over 6 months since I did the last oil change back in mid May. For the most part, each time I've done a change on time in the past it's usually a golden brown colour. Luckily enough for me I'm in the process of moving house where I'll be able to do oil changes in my garage no matter what the weather is, so happy days!

Finally got around to doing my oil change over the weekend. Have been super busy lately and the weather hasn't helped either since I can only really do it outside. This time I got it all done in relatively quick time since I actually decided to turn the filter the correct way to remove it. It had been just a tad over 6 months since my last oil change and I had not even reached 5000 kms yet mostly due to lockdown but the oil was still quite black but in saying that, it still doesn't burn a huge amount of oil considering it's done over 260000 kms now and runs 5W-30 full synthetic. Not much new coming for remainder of the year at this stage but I'll keep the thread updated.

Ah yes the infamous lift bolts. I've got a set in case I need to replace them but I've not had any issues with mine to be honest. I think by the time the Sportivo, let alone the face lift model was released they'd addressed the fast wearing issues from the Celica.

All depends on how they've been driven and maintained. Over the years I've seen a number of ZZT Celica's with well over 350000 kms and 1 or 2 well over 400000 kms and they didn't present any major issues seeing as the engines were well truly over engineered. I've owned my Sportivo for over 6 years now and have basically experienced all of the common issues that arise over time. The most common things to look for are. - Timing case leaks (generally this is the timing case seal that causes the issue but it's well worth doing the other seals while you're there since it's quite an expensive job due to the confined space next to the timing case) - Valve cover leaks (pretty common on most cars of this vintage really. Just make sure to use some gasket sealant with a quality gasket) - Engine ticking - This is fairly normal and shouldn't really put you off buying one. There would be more concern if it was more of a knock noise. - Failed engine mounts - I and many others have found the factory rubber engine mounts to be awful. They cause a lot of movement and wear out fairly easily but there are solid poly engine mounts available now to stop this. - Drivetrain issues - This one is probably the most common fault to occur with Sportivos. There's a wide range of issues which are usually worn down synchro's causing gear crunching, gear block outs, differentials failing, snapped or damaged CV joints etc. A lot of the gearbox issues you see today are honestly 99% of the time caused by drive error. There are a number of fixes all over the net and on here to solve issues (extended pushrod, clutch master cylinder adjustment etc) so fixing those problems isn't all to hard but it can be costly. - Interior - You will likely find a Sportivo with a broken or missing center console flap as the left side hinge had a design flaw which saw most of them break over time. Another common issues is ripped drivers seats and this issue is becoming a lot more common these days just with age in all honesty. - Cluster swapping - It's quite common finding examples with swapped clusters. If it's cheap and has lower than average kms it's probably too good to be true. I mean the car will still serve you well despite the kms but it's still meaning you'd like pay more for a car that's had a $200 "detail" and a $150 cluster swap. Anything else is really just basic used car checks really and there's plenty of that on the net already. These cars only need to be maintained as regularly as possible depending how you drive and driving them with mechanical sympathy will make them last.

Yeah I thought I got lucky since it was out in the open during the storm. Sure do, I had the same thought. The colour is silver metallic and has a bit of a gold/champagne mix through it as well so it's a bit of a pain to colour match. I'll see how I go but in all honesty the dents are quite small and there isn't 100s of them either so I think it'll work out fine 🤞

Long time no updates. Honestly not much to really update as of recently. Have had a lot going on with life and work (positive things at least) and haven't had anything major to really add. Gave the car a wash last week only for it to rain ever so lightly about 30 minutes later after I was done even though my local weather said it would only be overcast but, oh well. It did need a good clean after all the rain anyways. During this time I found that my roof was sadly impacted by the hail storm not too long ago and I found roughly 20-30 small - maybe 50 cent sized dents all over the roof and maybe one or two on the bonnet. It must've been the right lighting since I'd never seen it prior and I only notice it at certain angles so I may end up getting a dent paintless dent removal done at some point but would need to look into it a bit more. Suspension maintenance is ony my to-do list and I'm likely going to look at replacing the sway bar endlinks and lower control arms as I've got quite a bit of squeaking going on at the front but I'm also going to look into a coilover rebuild as I've done well over 100000 kms since I've installed them and they're also a bit noisy these days. Stay tuned.

I'd hope they do a similar deal like they did with the Yaris, they sold those first 1000 units or so in no time and for the most part, the owners didn't sell them within the first month.

If the Yaris GR is anything to go by and Toyota give a somewhat similar treatment to the Corolla GR, I think there will definitely be a high demmand for it.

My thoughts exactly Tony! Where I was, we were getting anything from about 20 cent sized to around golf ball size consistently. It was a huge relief not having major damage and having to go through insurance. Another bonus was that my parents house wasn't damaged as well considering the last major hail storm we had back in 2015 caused all sorts of issues.

Update time. With the storm that rolled through this week I was very very fortunate despite the hail and the size of some of the hail stones I spotted while my car was parked at work in the open, that my car didn't get any damage what so ever other than my already broken antenna being knocked out of it's place. After going over the car at least half a dozen times I've found no additional marks or dents from the storm. I count myself pretty lucky because I've seen what damage did happen to other people. After the rain came through again yesterday it was quite a short and dirty storm leaving horrid dirty water marks everywhere. I ended up going for a quick drive last night to get back into the swing of living normally once again and all I can say is missed driving a lot! Despite only going for a quick drive it was so good to finally stretch the Sportivo's legs after only doing such short trips over the last 3-4 months. Thankfully the weather was clear today despite it being windy and it should be clear for a few days at least so I got in a wash and protection top up this morning. I once again used CarPro's HydrO2 finishing foam, this time also using a microfiber sponge to make sure the product was spread evenly over the panels before rinsing off. Once again, I was left with a super slick surface and awesome beading on practically every panel that I applied product to. Waited a few hours for the car to dry a bit before heading out for another short drive to get some photo's because you know, why not! And one last one when the sun came out again. Can really see the hints of champagne/gold through the silver in the sunlight. Anyway not much too new other than that but, stay tuned for more.

It's nothing flash, it's purely functional but I'm not entirely sure how he'd get around a AE102 with a 2ZZ, that would be a first for him 😅 I mean he modified my injen as it was shorter and fit much better, well for the 2 piece intake that is. My current setup is the 3" with the 2.75" reducers at the MAF but I'm thinking of keeping that aside now that I run MAP. The pipe itself is actuall a Injen pipe from a blob eye WRX but it uses the same MAF style so it works for our cars too. As a starting point I'd honestly advise a full 2.75" intake but, I do re-call reading/hearing that the Celica's are bit more sensitive to intake changes compared to Corolla's. I remember reading people running AEM CAI's couldn't run the Injen CAI because it needed a tune to run them, or something along those lines and I always assumed they were the same size from what I found online.

In terms of intakes, a mate of mine makes them in his spare time down Vic and I'm sure he's done a few Celica's in his time. As for exhaust, couldn't have said it better than Ian. Depending on what yor future plans are with the car, a 2.5" system will yield some nice gains albeit, losing a little low end on the stock tune. Another worth while upgrade while you're doing the exhaust is porting the standard headers, it's not overally expensive and does reduce the low/mid range flat spot you may have noticed. I had ported headers on my Sportivo a few years back before upgrading and they're definitely the best bang for buck upgrade in terms of cost vs gain.

Yeah I used to go while it was raining and I did push it a bit too hard once and understeered a bit and it was the last time I went that hard. I usually go in via the Waterfall entrance since the road is a lot nicer from there to Stanwell. I can't imagine going their on a bike, I've seen plenty go through there and they make me look like I'm stopped 😂 I've seen some crazy things happen in there over the years. First time I went there someone crashed their V6 Eunos and basically wrote if off which turned me off driving in there. Craziest thing I saw was once at Stanwell after going through we hear this loud induction noise coming from miles away. We were all guessing and were proved wrong when a basically bog standard looking N15 hatch flew through and came into the car park and stopped in a cloud of smoke from the brake and tyres while being chased by the police. The police came through and literally drove right past him before leaving and going further on. The guy came out pretty scared and nervous and ended up taking off before the police came back. I don't think I've ever seen anyone drive a car that hard there ever since.

Decided to give the beast a wash finally since the weather looked to be pretty good. Of course, it had to rain over night but the coating I applied seemed to repel most if not all the water and I can barely see any water marks on panels. Also decided to give my muffler a polish and it seems to be a lot shinier than before along with repelling the water much better now. Here's the final clean result before the rain hit late last night. Weather looked bad but the radar said otherwise. Got out and about in the evening before the rain eventually came.

Yeap that's the one. I've gone there basically ever since I had my license, albeit I heard a lot of horror stories about it well before ever driving it myself. Once I drove there myself I have learned a fair bit about steering technique and control and I honestly never over do it but they're recently resurfaced a lot of it making it quite a nice place to drive these days. My mates and I would usually make a Friday and/or Saturday night out of going there.

Honestly, no where special I'm just really keen to go to some national parks, up towards to mountains and maybe some beaches. I've been dying to go back to the royal national park for some time now.

Another year of owning the Sportivo today. 6 years ago after crashing my Honda Prelude I bought it with no real intentions of keeping it for all too long but after the modifying bug bit me harder than ever before, the Sportivo has being far to good to let go. From the moment I had the accident, I was looking at replacing the car. Deep down, I had a bad feeling that I wasn't going to be able to keep it and repair it. I began looking for another 5th generation Prelude but at the time, there was really nothing around that was worth looking at. The only one's I did find, despite having lower kms than my one looked to be poorer condition. Although I was close to moving into a silver 1998 model Prelude, I decided to explore my other options to try something different. Initially I was looking into DC5 Integra Type S' as I thought it was a more modern alternative to a Prelude and in doing so, I also began looking into Sportivo's as well as they were from roughly the same vintage (2003-2005). After doing some calculations on the running costs, I found the Sportivo was much easier to find in my price range, cheaper to insure and run as a daily driver compared to the DC5. After looking around on Carsales and Gumtree for a Sportivo, I had my eye set on a silver 2005 model as I'd decided initially at the time, I wasn't the biggest fan of the pre facelift. Here's how I saw it listed online, basically a completely stock standard Sportivo with then, under 150000 kms (had 1449xx kms at the time) which is what I was after. Other than minor things such as a stubby antenna, window tint and visors it was as stock as rock even down to the airbox and headunit. This was the first and only Sportivo I looked at and after inspecting it, taking for a drive and getting some of the cons from the owner who was a super honest bloke, we settled on a price, much less than what he wanted originally but he was quite happy as there were some minor problems I found along the way that reflected the price drop. Did all the usual paper work and handover while chatting to the owner about his time with the car as he was only the 2nd owner and had owned it for well over 5 years at the time and like most Sportivo owners, he was quite gutted he had to sell it. I popped my p plates on and off I went with my mate back home to do the usual show off to your mates on your new car. Here's how it arrived home 6 years ago. From this day I began quite a journey to get the car to a state where I'm genuinely proud to own it. I've been through the ups and downs of ownership experiencing gearbox and clutch issues, wearing out engine mounts and losing guard liners (which I should really replace by now 😂) but I wouldn't change a thing. It's being a part of my life even from the early days when I met my partner and even she knows I'll never be able to bring myself to part ways with it. Along the way I've met a heap of new people I'm now lucky enough to call mates and without them and my already existing group of mates it probably wouldn't be where's it's at today. So I have a big thank you as always to all the people that have helped and done the hard work to help me. Here's the guise it was in for the longest period before reaching the point where it is today, at 258xxx kms below. Here's to another year of ownership!

Haven't had any issues so far, neither has Adam who has run the Adaptronic setup for quite a bit longer than I have. I mean if I do have issues, I can always change it since it's running the simplest setup for the MAP.

The MAP sensor is a built in one in the E420D unit 🙂

Short answer, no. Unlike some overseas variants which are able to reflashed such as the Corolla XRS, Sportivo's aren't able to be reflashed or tuned. There a few known ECU's that work, you can use a Greddy V-Manage and E-Manage together which basically gives all of the options a standalone ECU will, albeit they're quite out dated. I personally ran a V-Manage for a few years before moving onto an Adaptronic E420D which is a lot newer and has all of the features plus a whole lot more over an E and V Manage combo. Other known ECU's that people use are the Apexi Power FC (2ZZ Celica unit) with an adaptor harness, which is proven and works but super out dated even compared to a Greddy Combo. AEM, Link, Haltech and Adaptronic all work after a working out the wiring as a standalone ECU. The Adaptronic I'm running is wired in as a piggyback unit so I still retain the stock ECU and have all my accessories and cluster working with no issues albeit, the temperature gauge is off which a fix has since being found by my mate who tuned my car and I have a check engine light due to the fact I'm running a different O2 and Lamda setup so the stock ECU does this as it can't read that sensor anymore. Another benefit of this unit is that I no longer need the MAF sensor as I'm running a MAP sensor now which is nice bonus for running less restrictive intake setups. If you're really keen on going down the route of tuning a 2ZZ, it's best you search the web for these units and choose which one fits your intended build outcome in terms of tunability, pricing etc. Best of luck.

Well as always, it rained last night but checking this morning the coating still seems to be beading quite stronly on the roof, bonnet and rear bumper so I'm pretty happy with it so far. I'm thinking of doing a decon wash before we get into summer so if I do, I'll be documenting it for sure!

Not much to add this time around, recently filled up with petrol after over a month of not having to given the lack of driving I do these days and the distance I go. Over the last few weeks or so it's been quite windy and we've also had rain here and there so I decided to give the car a maintenance wash. The car was covered a nice layer of dust and little bits of road grime here and there. It hasn't been this dusty in quite a while so I thought it would be good to see how well the snow foam removes the dust. Left the foam to sit for over 5 minutes to get the dust off and loosen the road grime. After washing it off I was pleasantly surprised to find that all the dust was gone and 90% of the road grime had gone. The HydrO2 coating still seems to be working quite well even after a month since it was applied making the dust and grime a lot easier to remove compared to previous years where I found the dust on uncoated painted quite annoying to remove. Car was all nice and clean again which proved to be pointless as the wind just put more dust and rubbish on the car but of course, it's supposed to rain either today or tomorrow. Oh well what can I do 😅 Really looking forward to having more freedom soon, really looking forward to taking the beast for some long drives to the twisties again. It's being a long time! Stay tuned.

I tell you what, it does unleash our inner bogan! 😁😂