Hello from Japan!

[PlaneTMRS]

Hi everyone!

My name is Nik and I am actually from Germany but moved to Japan and ended up with this beauty of a project

It started off as a field-rescue at a quite well-known tuning shop and from pulling it out i've spent the last year repairing and getting it on the road.
There is still a lot to do and to fix, since it has been sitting for a while and was a former amature rally car so it has some deformations on the chassis that i had never seen before but it's slowly getting there

The engine made a healthy 105PS on the hub-dyno and sounds and starts amazing. The rest of the chassis is not in the best shape but that's the fun, isn't it?

I'll take good care of it and have the plan of getting into drifting a bit and take it to the Gunma mountains more !

Nice to meet you all!
I'm also developing some parts and want to start reproducing some more affordable replacements for some parts that I think got too expensive to buy new

[banpei]

Welcome!

I see you got yourself a GT spec Levin and it looks much better than when you pulled it out of the lot.
Does it still have the drums or has that been swapped over to discs?

Not sure if you are in the same vicinity, but Clemens is also from Germany and currently living in Japan. He's restoring a two-door Levin as well. He has a Youtube channel where he is posting videos of his progress: https://www.youtube.com/@ClemensInJapan

[PlaneTMRS]

(05-20-2025 10:11 AM)banpei Wrote:  Welcome!

I see you got yourself a GT spec Levin and it looks much better than when you pulled it out of the lot.
Does it still have the drums or has that been swapped over to discs?

Not sure if you are in the same vicinity, but Clemens is also from Germany and currently living in Japan. He's restoring a two-door Levin as well. He has a Youtube channel where he is posting videos of his progress: https://www.youtube.com/@ClemensInJapan

Hey, thank you for the hint, I'll hit him up! What a coincidence

About the car, I heard from the people I bought it from, who were best friends with the original owner, that this car was a really weird spec in general. 2 door levin as a 1984 early model, but with full disc breaks all around. A guy I met meant the interior didn't match the GT trim but still everything matches like the dashboard and door cards?

The past of the car is a bit mysterious to me but to be honest I also don't know too much about these cars yet

[banpei]

That sounds like a big mystery to me! I'm trying to collect as much information as possible surrounding trim levels and installed options, so I would be very interested in learning the information on the firewall plate. Would you mind sharing it via DM?

[PlaneTMRS]

(05-20-2025 04:20 PM)banpei Wrote:  That sounds like a big mystery to me! I'm trying to collect as much information as possible surrounding trim levels and installed options, so I would be very interested in learning the information on the firewall plate. Would you mind sharing it via DM?

Sure, I'll take one later and send to you!
I would also love to find out what the trim actually was and what was changed afterwards.

I think this car was supposed to be used in motorsports from the beginning on, maybe thats why it was pretty bare spec, no PS, A/C probably removed later since most cars in Japan come with A/C in general but then it got the discs in the back.

When you check the plate, I would love to know what you think!

[banpei]

Thank you very much for sharing the firewall plate!
From what I can decode from the firewall plate, your car was originally produced in March 1984 in the Higashi plant as a white Levin GT without LSD. The mirrors are the more streamlined mirrors that only became available in March 1984, so that matches up.

The interior is indicated as the grey GT interior, basically a variant of this one:


The only thing visually that doesn't match up is that the front bumper was taken from a kouki Levin, and the panda paint was applied afterwards.

The two-door GT was intended for rally driving, hence the drum brakes in the rear to make the rear wheels lock up better. The absence of a factory LSD wasn't an issue, as most drivers would upgrade to a TRD LSD anyway. Maybe one of the previous owners swapped the entire axle and thus also swapped over the disc brakes?

The GT trim level only featured PS as an option, and tilt-steering wheel was also absent. In principle, all AE86s in Japan only featured AC as an option. I hardly ever see one for sale without AC, even the lower spec cars (e.g. SE / GL) and sporty spec (GT-V / SR) for sale on sites like Goo-net all feature AC. But I would expect a rally car to be ordered without AC and PS to save weight.

[PlaneTMRS]

(05-21-2025 05:19 PM)banpei Wrote:  Thank you very much for sharing the firewall plate!
From what I can decode from the firewall plate, your car was originally produced in March 1984 in the Higashi plant as a white Levin GT without LSD. The mirrors are the more streamlined mirrors that only became available in March 1984, so that matches up.

The interior is indicated as the grey GT interior, basically a variant of this one:


The only thing visually that doesn't match up is that the front bumper was taken from a kouki Levin, and the panda paint was applied afterwards.

The two-door GT was intended for rally driving, hence the drum brakes in the rear to make the rear wheels lock up better. The absence of a factory LSD wasn't an issue, as most drivers would upgrade to a TRD LSD anyway. Maybe one of the previous owners swapped the entire axle and thus also swapped over the disc brakes?

The GT trim level only featured PS as an option, and tilt-steering wheel was also absent. In principle, all AE86s in Japan only featured AC as an option. I hardly ever see one for sale without AC, even the lower spec cars (e.g. SE / GL) and sporty spec (GT-V / SR) for sale on sites like Goo-net all feature AC. But I would expect a rally car to be ordered without AC and PS to save weight.

Wow thank you! Thats really interesting. Yes with the Axle it makes total sense, it has a super hard LSD, I don't know if TRD or Cusco though.

However, I have a red interior, see here:


Also it came with three steering wheels and one of them was this factory one which I couldnt find on any of the spec lists yet, I only found the leather ones:


And the other funny part is, it had the standart seats like in the higher grades (like Takumi's 86, I dont know how to describe them better ;D) the ones with the headrest fixed connected to the seat but since they were super disgusting, we swapped them for Toyota Carina seats and apart from a different stitching, they actually look similar to the picture you posted

[banpei]

Ah, now I see what you meant with a different interior.

The steering wheel belongs to the GT Apex and GT-V spec. This is an example of the GT-V interior:

We also got this steering wheel as standard in Europe.
Usually, you will see the leather variant of these steering wheels in the photos, but that was only when you purchased the Sports Package (available from March 1984).

I also see I made a mistake with the interior colour code. The grey interior (kouki models) has the 2 as the first digit (for example, GX21), and the pre-facelift only has grey interiors outside of Japan. The correct colour is Maroon, so that matches your dashboard.

In the brochures, the seats are generally referred to as the "sports seat".
What Carina did you take the seats from? The third-generation RWD? That generation also has sports seats, but those are not similar to the ones in the picture.
I also found that the seat rails of the Carina are just a little bit wider than the Corolla, so they need some adjustment to fit.

[PlaneTMRS]

These cars look soo cool in the brochure pictures

Wow, thank you for the insight!
Then it makes sense that the color fits and who knows where this steering wheel came from. I'll need to take a photo of the seats. They have a cool "Twin Cam" stitching, I'm not sure what generations the car was though. I think it was a twin cam turbo one.

And yes the rails needed some welding to fit! They are pretty comfy and have adjustable side bolsters which is pretty cool But sadly they are very high so I'll need some lower ones since im pretty close to the rollcage with my head already

[banpei]

I think these are the seats then:

Those are from the third-generation Carina. If they feature Twin Cam Turbo they're from the GT-TR, without the turbo they're from the GT-R.