Photos Unboxed: Barry Working His Magic
At this point, we thought the rust chasing was coming to an end, oh how we were wrong! Barry had worked his way up to the front end of the car, cutting out the last few bits around the shock tower, making his way to the front end.
This is a prevalent spot to rust on these cars, whatever way Toyota pressed the panels together, there’s an extra piece that sits on top of these that creates the perfect sandwich. The perfect place for moisture to sit and inevitably rust its way through. It happens to most ae86’s eventually. We decided to completely weld this area shut to prevent it from happening again.
Barry rang me one evening with a brain wave, as he very enthusiastically explained what he had found, it sounded too good to be true. There was an abandoned 86 not too far from his house they used for a project before. Barry reckoned the chassis leg which was in good shape. He went to check it out and just as suspected, the leg was useable. He came up with the idea to hack it out of the ruined 86 and weld it into the Trueno.
My mate Davey had just straightened it out, but this was an opportunity we couldn’t miss! That entire day was hilarious; the fact there’s even an 86 up the side of this shed, with the only salvageable part being the piece we needed is genuinely incredible. Just another part of this gas story!
I like how Barry kept the two holes on both my chassis leg and the piece he chopped to ensure a perfect fit; it was fascinating watching him fit this into the car.
With a bit of hammering and tapping of the front panel, it was starting to line up nicely. The front was off just a slight bit on top, so a gentle persuasion did the trick.
I love the contraptions we used to get it working, he tacked it in place and then had a look to see if it was all fitting snug.
Once it looked good, he welded it into its final place.
While we were at it, Flo was kind enough to give me a front end kit that consisted of a few gussets to strengthen the engine bay and where the chassis legs meet the body.
Barry was very keen to get these onto the car; I think this was his favourite part of the build so far.
I was going to buy some Nagisa auto braces which are bolted to these areas, but I always enjoyed seeing custom metalwork here and love how they came out.
The inner braces are very cool, I was going to make these for the car, but It’s nice that Flo has them ready to fit just on the shelf. Tsuychia did this to his 86 when he rebuilt it many years ago.
Josh’s inner front panel was next on the list. We used the two tension rod brackets to find the right places to mount the panel and line up the new nuts to mount everything,
Wispa’s and fake Redbull, the meal of champions.
After a bit of messing around, everything looked factory; we even salvaged the radiator brackets from both the piece of chassis leg and my car. We thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, but sadly there was more misery to come…
Stay tuned!