Toyota Carina TA62 4A-GE 16v Redtop

[nyberrg]

Hello!

I have been working on a Toyota Carina for about 1.5 years now. bought it as my first car not knowing anything about the culture behind cars like it.

I bought the car without seeing it in real life. My father found it and sent me a picture and based on what i saw i decided to buy it



You may call me insane if you want to
I picked up the car a couple of days later for around 320€. mechanically it was all working good except for the clutch. it literally felt like putting your foot on a huge rotten orange.

Step one of the build started before even knowing it was going to be a build. finding a clutch wasn't the easiest thing in Sweden, a country that has a very limited interest in cars like these. After about a month I managed to find one from germany, got it home and installed it and the car was now roadworthy.

A stock EUDM Toyta Carina isn't the best looking vehicle around, I think we can all agree on that, so next up was something for the looks. When I bought the car it had the original rear wheels (13") and Saab steelies (15") in the front, of course this looked ridiculous. I decided to have the 13" original steelies widened 1.5" and bought some fresh new 195/45 tires

At the same time I had started searching around for similar cars and found out that the JDM Carina had a much cooler front end. my father came up with the idea of using Nissan King Cab lights to sorta replicate the JDM quadlights



A Volvo 940 lip was also fitted upside down

Shortly after the original rims were done I found a set of wheels with tires for a cheap price and decided to buy them. At this point i admitted to myself that this was now indeed my project car.



The wheels are XXR 002's 15x9" 195/45/15 all around
The stock springs got cut somewhere around the time of fitting the steelies as well, the car still sat way too high..

Next on the list was coilover suspension for the front. Since I was on quite a tight budget back then a coilover conversion kit was bought



This is what the complete product looked like, and holy shit it was stiff. Turns out the entire strut was too long and I had no travel at all. The car was riding on the bump stops.



After a while it was back to the drawing board to chop it all up again.
Got some Golf mkII shocks that were shorter than carina shocks and cut a piece of the strut out to make it shorter.
The difference this made is displayed in the pictures below!





At this point the car had started to look pretty good

stuff that I didn't mention..
full 2.5" exhaust
JDM rear lights (thanks to Banpei for help with finding these )
____________________________

Come winter and i was pretty bored of the 78hp that the old 3T-C pumped out (at some point at least)

It was time for some power upgrades in the form of a AE92 sourced 16v 4A-GE




Working on all of this I had a lot of help from my father, me not being so experienced on working on cars could not have done this myself. I have however learnt a significant ammount about working on cars after this winter.

The worst part of the swap by far was the electrics, but even that went pretty smooth. It helped a lot that i had the luck of finding a second AE92 that I could cut cables on and see what happend


The second 4A-GE AE92

Since the AE92 is a FWD car and my Carina is a RWD car there were some natural problems with the swap. for example i had no gearbox that fit the engine and the intake manifold was facing straight into the firewall. I was lucky enough to find a T50 gearbox with the right bellhousing from a Daihatsu Charmant 1600, the only car ever sold in Sweden with that gearbox. For the intake manifold I had some help moving the opening of it to the 'right' side







Had to cut a hole to fit the airfilter, I wanted to fit the original box but it was way too big. In the end, it sound better with this airfilter anyways



Custom built exhaust manifold made by the same guy who reversed the intake. He also widened the steelies for me when this all started, very good person to know I must say! It has since been wrapped to help with heat since it sits right over the starter engine and some other parts



Stuff that i forgot: As many parts as possible were salvaged from the first AE92 Corolla, the engine, the radiator and the fuelpump were all used. The gastanks were cut open to take out the fuelpump and the little tub that sits inside was taken out.





Currently the car is up and running with the 4A-GE




A couple of pictures of the almost current state of the car, I can never have updated pictures since i always buy something new
The differences are minor. A new wind screen has been mounted the car is currently on jackstands waiting for a set of T3 camber plates to lower it a bit more and get some negative camber in the front! I will update once I have them installed

If you have any questions about anything that you feel I forgot to type please do ask!

EDIT: Forgot the rear suspension upgrade. front shock absorbers for a Saab and rear lowering springs for a Volvo 240, cut to pieces






Cut the lower ring off of the Carina shock and welded it to the Saab shock and it fit (I didn't actually do any of the welding, my father helped me a lot, as i said )