Alright so I figured I'd start a build thead before I got too far ahead of myself in this project. I bought a 1977 Toyota Corona off a Facebook page sight unseen while I was bored at work. It had the perfect look I wanted that's really hard to come by in Canada. Things don't patina here, they rust to pieces. But this one has almost zero rust, just a bunch of lost paint. The guy I bought it from picked it up from an older lady and apparently it sat in her driveway for 26 years. It's only got 90,000 miles on it. The door cards have the arc of the sun faded into them haha. But time for some pictures.

Im not sure, I think he bought it locally in fort macmurray AB, and then he brought it down to Edmonton for me

it already has lol it currently has an ls and six speed sitting in it, I have to catch up with posting here.



the body will be left alone, I'll just be waxing and oiling it to maintain the patina. I was thinking about clear coating it but it would get too shiny. I'm going to build a rear for it, not sure how exactly yet, I think tubing wouldn't fit the "look" so I might try and make something else work.

haha I fell in love with it pretty quick too. It's an awesome little car

So im building the car to run on drag week, and I'm shooting for a single digit pass at all five tracks. The plan is a forged rod and piston l33 block I have, using a stock crank and 243's. Single turbo, either a precision 76/75 or an s476r, and a water to air intercooler. I'll be using a lot of parts from my supra I built a few years ago, including a t56 magnum, ACT twin disc clutch, Megasquirt gold box, accessories, and probably a few other odds and ends. The rear will be a shortened 8.8 or 9" mounted on the stock leafs, and I'll be fabricating some sort of traction bar setup. It looks like I'll be able to clear a 10 wide slick without modifying the wheel tubs.

The entire point of the car will be a fast, reliable old car to take on road trips, go camping, and some racing in between. I'm going to try and make it as usable and street friendly as possible

this is after I got it home and cleaned up a bit unfortunate it didn't come with the rims in the pictures from before, but it's getting converted to 5 lug anyways so they wouldn't have done me much good lol


Forsize reference, this is the s480 off my Silverado lol this is going to be a tight fit


These are 26x10 slicks off my supra, I think with some fender rolling they'll clear. They'll sit about an 1" higher than the picture


Stock 90hp bullet coming out


From right to left. Stock 3 speed auto out of the car, stock 5 speed that came with it, and t56 magnum goodness


And here it is with an Ls sitting in it! I just threw a block in there to see what it would look like, but it got me excited lol

thats the best part, 2567lbs with no driver

Made some progress, I got the trans in, driveline angle is about 3* down, which is perfect









it's going to be a tight fit, but that's it sitting in its final resting place. The white box is a lock up I made of the water to air intercooler I want to run. The ls6 intake also isn't here to stay, just threw it on there to see what it would look like.

What a fat pig...... lol, jk man. Awesome build look forward to seeing this one.

So, onto clearance issues. (There's a few lol) the first of which is the heater core lines. You can see them behind both heads in this picture.


There's a chance I could make them work, but that's hacky and the factory heater box is a monster. So I ordered a vintage air heater only unit (https://www.summitracing.com/parts/vta-506101/), that takes up much less space and weighs less than just the blower motor, let alone the rest of the stock heater core. This way the lines can come out in a much cleaner way. I was thinking around here





I'm going to weld a bulkhead plate up that's -10 on the engine bay side and female 1/2 npt on the other. I know AN Is overkill for heater core lines but I have a bunch of -10 stuff leftover from my last car, so why not. This next shot is from the inside of the car, you can see on the right the wiring harness going through the fire wall, so the bulkhead will be just to the left of that. And then the stock giant heater core that's getting trashed

Definitely unibody....

Its a unibody, it's incredibly simple underneath lol

Did you use rubber hose behind the dash? That seems to be what most people do