The GA70 Supra

This car was purchased with the intention of giving it the running gear from the MA70. When we bought it, it had the following mods already done to it:

It also had no engine or gearbox! We decided we definitely wanted to make it a manual, so after some looking we bought the GA61, because it had a 5MGE in it, which meant all the manual parts of that (flywheel, clutch, gearbox etc) should swap easily onto the 7MGTE. Upon dismantling it I discovered the gearbox was a w50, and probably pretty useless. Anyway you can read more about that by clicking on the GA61 on the menu at the left

Later on we ended up buying a w57 that appeared to have an M series bellhousing on it. Once again, due to my lack of thoroughness, it turned out to be very close but not an M series bellhousing. A bit of a PITA but we later on-sold it for no loss.

Anyway, I bought a headgasket replacement gasket set from Toyota, and started work on the 7MGTE for it. I decided to rebuild the head, so I stripped it down completely, the hardest part of the whole process was removing the valve stem seals! Having never done the job before I was very careful about pulling everything apart and making sure I kept it all in order, then I spent some time cleaning the head up, before taking it to get it resurfaced for a metal headgasket. When I went to pick it up, it turned out that the previous owner had obviously driven it quite a bit with the engine overheating, causing the head to warp and soften beyond repair (although I do now wonder if it would be possible to re-harden the head, but it's too late now!).

Not long after finding the 7M head was useless, we came across a 1JZ-GTE and manual R154 (with a 1JZ bellhousing) for sale. We decided to stuff playing around with the 7M and bought it, and began selling all the 7M parts we had acquired.

We also got all the other manual conversion parts we needed for the car. I bought some pedals from a JZA70 front cut in the USA, then while I was waiting for them to arrive I found a manual GA70 at pick-a-part and got the pedals for $20! Along with a manual tachometer and a few little bits and pieces

After cleaning up the motor a bit, and painting the engine bay of the car first "reflex blue", then "space blue" when we decided we wanted a darker blue, we were just about ready to install the engine. It was about then that I decided to go back to university, and it became apparent that with the SW11, the GT-Four, the TA22 Celica, the Corsa, and this, we really had too many cars, not enough time, and soon not enough money to keep them all. Since this was the least loved car of all we had, we decided it would be the one to go.

Pictures:

1JZ-GTE:

Engine bay originally

Engine bay "reflex blue":

Engine bay "space blue":