this van I bought 1 yr ago and I had to replace slave cylinder for hydraulic clutch. then when winter came I realize the heater wasn't working. so I had to pull out the dash and remove the heater core and unsolder the ends and clean out the core with a transmission dipstick. it happens to be the right width for the
heater core. place everything in its proper place thanks to digital picture and tons of info on the internet. I hated doing it but it was worth every hour. One thing about these toyota vans is that toyota used steel lines from engine block to heater core of course this means that if you don't change your radiator fluid on schedule it will corrode inside and little rust flakes will eventually plug the heater core and soon there'll be no heat. It doesn't smoke as myself I happen to be a non smoker but I could not figure out why thing was going thru 1 liter of oil with every fill-up. I figured out that the seal around spark plug was worn right out and was letting the oil leak thru there. this van has 5 spd gearbox with 2.2l efi engine amazing gas mileage the best all round vehicle toyota ever built. However I must admit that my lovely wife does not want to be seen in this van with me. She claims 'it cramps her style I think she wants me to go out and buy a shiny new car. But all I want to drive is this van and it's a lot better and very low maintenance vehicle.

this third picture shows rusted hole behind the driver near the battery this is one other design flaw in this van. I'm thinking that over time the battery acid fumes thats not able to escape makes its way down into this cavity and starts rust thru. I cut the cancer right out and prep the area with a product that we get in canada called rustkill its like a primer paint. once that was applied i cut a piece of sheet metal and pop rivit into place and bondo over the area and later applied a rock guard to
prevent it from reoccurring. and final finish coat went over it twice. as you can see in the picture #1 no rust hole. one thing i have learned over the years is that you can not rush thru a body repair job especially if you doing it yourself at home.

anyway whenever i am driving down the street and see one thats
a little better than mine i just drool over it and my wife tells
me you should see yourself it's pathetic it like it's a woman
or something. Just can't win with woman when you look at a woman
they say what f--k you staring at so when you look at a van it like you stupid or something.

Just an update April 2006
more pics of my recent purchase $350.00 for this spirit edition
I am working on the automatic transmission on this one

March 29 2007
update on the spirit edition. I rebuilt the transmission for this van and it was my first time. I have to admit it's not a easy task. first i recommend a good toyota manual one that's published by them it will set you back a couple of hundred dollars or if you are luck you'll find one on the ebay for much less. I finished rebuilding the tranny and i couldn't wait to get this baby in and when you're in a hurry it's amazing how many stupid mistakes one can make without realizing it.

It was easy enough to pull out the transmission with the torque converter. but when it came to reinstalling it i messed up. I place the torgue converter on the flywheel and tried to bolt up the tranny to the flywheel housing stupid stupid stupid man never ever do that again!!! it cost me around three hundred dollars to buy another torque converter as i had already damaged the turbine inside this components. That's one lesson i'll never forget. so i waited almost 6 months to save every penny to replace this torque converter. So the big day came when I put the new component into the tranny i had built. buy this time i new exactly what size wrench i needed to do a re and re. I had this think put together in less than two hours and I was not rushing at this point.

next i topped up the tranny fluid and took this thing for a spin
bad news something was amiss. what could it be oh no may be the valve body. i was told that one has to be an expert at this sort of stuff. So i pulled out a valve body out of my running toyota van and installed in this one. Same thing I just could not figure it out and i wasn't about to take this thing to a ammaco rip off transmission shop no way. So I went back to the repair manual and took the tranny apart all over again. I couldn't find any thing wrong, damn what now. so i left this thing alone for awhile and was driving the other van of mine it had the valve body which i had rebuild for the spirit edition. it ran fine until one day my overdrive wouldn't kick in. I went to the repair manual looked up all about the o/d and checked the solenoid and wiring harness all was fine. one last thing for me to do was to test the temperature sender near the radiator return line. that was the culprit causing me endless hours of grief. so what this temperature sender does is it lets the engine warmup before you're able to put full load driving in the o/d position. So if you have one of these vans and finding that its not shifting properly don't go to a transmission shop right away as they see dollar signs and not some poor car owner who is looking for a honest repair job. Better to take it to a dealer and ask them to test the o/d circuit. you'll save tons of money
later.

This is my latest purchase. 1985 toyota van.
cruise control, power door locks and sunroof. nice cloth interior. notice the front nose and it does not have turn illuminator light in this model. this one came with 2.0l engine
auto transmission and limited slip differential. I was driving this thing in foot of snow in december. it was trucking like it no problem. mind you i had to place a couple of bags of sand in the back since it's rear wheel drive. I was driving this thing and it was bit low on tranny fluid and the oil pump went on it. so i have to pull out the tranny and rebuild the pump and machine down the pump so the impellers make sealed contact with the backing plate of the pump. A new pump is almost $600.00 so defeats the purpose of buying one cause i can buy a used tranny for around $350.00. anyway I'm getting pretty good with this particular tranny.
Well this is me. I was in Australia last August. This picture was taken at Bronte Beach. As you can see it's deserted.

O.K. Now it's like August of 2007, and I've got to up date you people on my latest project this one isn't a van. My bro bought a VW Rabbit 2.5 2007 Brand new just last September.

Just in may of this year he came to me and told me he had a great idea for his new car, a body modification. I was like really thinking that he's got to be kidding me. The only reason I'm always working on my car is because it's old and if I screw up I can live with it, but a brand new machine no way. I told him no way you're crazy.

Well the next thing we now he went out and bought some paints and fillers and other expensive kits. He was trying to do this one on his own. Well you can only do so much when you live in an apartment you know. Soon he realize that it wasn't going to be easy. So I offered to help him out. As it turns out he knew I would fall for it and jump right in only because I'm a project junkie.

Well you'll see these photos show how the front and rear bumper are modified. I think he's got good vision for styling. From the front bumper we removed the rub guards in the corners and fill it out. Got new grill and in the rear bumper we took the two piece and bond them together to make one uniform piece. So have a look.