Project Peanut (Very pic heavy!)

A little while ago my brother said to me he was after some retro japenese car preferably from the mid 70's, I searched around through all the usual places but could only find stuff from the early to mid eighties. We went to Leicester to have a look at an 1983 Toyota Cressida on a garage forecourt but after a test drive he decided that it didn't float his boat, even with my hard bargaining to put the obligatory 1JZ in it! After a little while longer I was scouring pistonheads and found in the lucky dip of all places a 1976 Toyota Corolla. Showing my brother the pictures of it on there he was not convinced by the little (36 year old!) Corolla. Now I could see the potential in peanut so after searching around a little bit I found some pictures of some modified ones around which once my brother saw what could be done he was sold in it. A trip to Loughborough later we were returning back to its new home in Bristol. 

 When the car left the factory way back in 1976 the 1166cc engine was making a staggering 53 brake horsepower and after 36 years and 42000 miles later we had to put the car on the dyno just for the giggle to see what it would actually make and low and behold a staggering 55 brake was made from the old girl! With some fresh fuel and tweaks with the mixture and some timing mods she made 60.3 brake!

 After a lot more reading up my brother decided what course he wanted to take with the car and managed to source a Toyota 4AGE 20 Valve black top engine from Nipparts in no time. Once he bought that he read up that the best gearbox for it would be a T50 from the AE86 Corolla. He searched for a day or so then rang me in a blind panic because these gearboxes fetch good money and are few and far between. So then I picked up the reigns and managed to source on from a chap in Manchester for quite a fair price. Unfortunately though this was a T50 but the bell housing was wrong for the 4AGE engine and again with a little bit of ringing a few people and bit of searching we sourced a T50 to 4AGE bellhousing from premier performance cars over in Ireland. The bellhousing was shipped super quick and these are top guys to deal with.

Now came time for the strip down, Kev has cracked on and been very sympathetic to the old girl taking his time and being extremely careful with all the original chrome, trims and other fixtures and fittings etc. Once most of the components were stripped we have been faced with what is actually quite a good shell to begin with, but, we shall have to see once she has been to the bead blasters to see what sins she is hiding. We know that the rear arches have been repaired with new panels but the front of the car is in quite good condition. We decided before the car goes off to be bead blasted we wanted to do the full mock up to see what problems we would come up against during the transplant.

When we got to this point Steve and I were stood in the workshop surmising about how we can bring Peanut in to the 21st century but keeping it sympathetic to its 1970's origins when Steve got a flash of inspiration! Within no time we were out and measuring up an S13 and well yeah, you can see whats coming......

Now Peanut was up in the air with the S13 on the ramp next to it we stripped the front subframes off of both cars to offer the S13 up to Peanut. Sure enough with some modification to the S13 subframe it slotted in to Peanut perfectly

After a phone call to Paul at Japspeed S13 adjustable arms were here next day and going on along with eibach top camber bolts

I got drenched doing this but it was needed! All the bay is now nice and clean so we can start with getting rid of any rot where we want to do some chassis work. Where the chassis rails meet the bulk head we have welded a panel in to add strength and will be seem welding along the legs and around the strut tops.

We know already that to get the black top to slot in we need to remove the distributor and will have to go stand alone on it so we stripped a few more items off the engine ready for a test fit in the bay

We have dry ran the engine and box in to see where the mounts line up and to see what else would need to be modified to get the 4AGE in the bay. We managed to get an OBX manifold as 20 valve manifolds seem to be few and far between!

More updates coming soon so watch this space!