My Supercharged TOM's Levin - Updated

Bought this levin a few months ago. It had been parked up for the last few years and driven from time to time. Unfortunately the bonnet opened on the road one day when the previous owner had it so the bonnet is in fairly bad condition. The car has the following TOM's parts: front bumper, grill, side skirts, double rear spoiler, horn button...anyway I'll let the photo's do most of the talking










FGK exhaust


Optional extra momo steering wheel with TOM's horn button

I only had it a week and I found this set of New Action's for sale so I bought them straight away



And then I didn't do much with it for a few months until 2 weeks ago.

I sent it off to a mechanic to sort out the breaks as it was pulling violently to the left under breaking, he got the disks skimmed as they were rusted, new pads and a timing belt.

The postman has been busy this week  

I got this apexi RSM



This fiberglass kit and soldering iron





And these extended steel nuts arrived yesterday



So when I got home last night and saw that the lug nuts had arrived I ended up out in the rain putting on the New Actions with only a flashlight to see what I was doing . I also gave the car a good wash, a wax and got rid of most of the haze from the headlights









Thanks for looking

Welcome to the site man  theres gonna be some competition for me in Ireland collecting T101 parts now is there?  ha

welcome to the site, car looks very nice indeed

Welcome to the site! Seen that on toc earlier!

Welcome dude! Love the car, she needs a drop what else have you got planned?

quote="gilli10"]Welcome to the site man  theres gonna be some competition for me in Ireland collecting T101 parts now is there?  ha[/quote]
Haha I'm concentrating on performance and cleaning it up for now so your safe for another while

miib14 wrote:

welcome to the site, car looks very nice indeed

Thanks lad, this is only the start

Cini_T97 wrote:

Welcome to the site! Seen that on toc earlier!

Thanks

MirrorEyes wrote:

Welcome dude! Love the car, she needs a drop ;)what else have you got planned?

Thanks. Ya she does, especially the back, where I live I can't go much lower with the front, My e46 in the background of one of the photos is about 2 inches lower than the levin and I cant go anywhere in it, just today a airbag sensor and the plastic mount for it got pulled off the car on my way to work  

I'm getting the body cleaned up and then a fensport pulley and a fmic. Thats all I have planned for now but no doubt more will be added to the list  

mmm, tasteful mods and nice color combinations that match with the Tom's theme - lovin' it!

Awesome AE101 mate! Really love it!

Sorry I haven't updated this. Here's a copy of my updates on TOC irl over the last few months:

Got a TOM's strada steering wheel and a GTZ gearbox (just incase) from Paulie Dee. Also got a new boss kit as my one had seen better days.



Also was shopping this morning and am broke now   but there will be a good update coming once parts arrive

Haven't done much to this in a while, timing chain slipped in my BMW   so had to buy a runaround for the time being  .

Here's how the car looks at the moment....its a mess ha



I went to fit a snap-off to the steering wheel...



...but ran into a small problem, the boss is broken and twisted from what looks like a past attempt to rob the car...I have a new boss for it just to fit it



The old ashtray was missing the cover and a few other bits so I got a new one to tidy it up a bit as it looked very rough....(not that it makes much of a difference at the moment the cars an absolute mess on the inside haha)





The drivers window is dodgy and only works sometimes so I got another motor and regulator from alanh7488



I also got the RSM wired up...am thinking of mounting it where the air vents were to avoid clutter on the dash, what do ye think?



I also got a turbo timer but its not working right...when I turn off the car the engine stops but the dash lights stay on for the set amount of time...anyone know why this is?



Also got a package from Fensport....I'm sure most of ye can guess what I got off them  



I had access to a mechanics shed yesterday while he was gone away for the day. I intended on changing the handbreak shoes on my Lexus but got sick of that so said I'd give the Levin a good service, I changed filters, oil and plugs. I also found the source of a misfire it was after developing...in short two of the plugs were wanked



I had put the fensport box into the boot of the car a few days previous while we were cleaning the house so said I might aswel have a go at putting it in. Here's what the old one looked like on the car



I spent a few minutes sizing up what would have to be done and debating leaving it to the mechanic but eventually decided that I had gone about doing it so might aswell finish it. So I loosened off the belts, picked up the air gun, loosened the bolt holding it on and pulled off the pulley. Here's the size difference of the standard pulley versus the fensport one



Then I test fitted the fensport pulley...it really is as big as you could fit on without having to go messing with a smaller pulley for the water pump



I have no more photos from here as my battery died. I had to remove a spike coming straight out from the engine, what it was there for I don't know but its gone now. That allowed the fensport pulley to fit on properly or so I thought. I put on the new supercharger belt and the undersized idiler pulley and tensioned up the belt. Then I put back on the alternator and power steering belt and tensioned them back up, which took ages because the fensport pulley was now a lot closer to the bolt for the adjuster, I ended up using a ratchet spanner to tighten it and only getting 1 click each time. I put the splash guard back on, started the engine and instantly there was a steel on steel noise.

At this stage it was 9o'clock, and after 10 minutes of debating whether to leave it of go back at it I decided I might aswel finish its so I  ripped off everything again. The waterpump pulley was meeting the fensport pulley at one point but only on the engine side of the pulley. When I had checked it earlier I didn't spin the waterpump pulley the whole way around, it was able to spin a bit so I presumed it was ok.

I removed a millimeter or 2 from the engine side lip of the fensport pulley, all it was really stuck for was 1mm. Put the pulley back on the engine, this time I made sure it cleared the waterpump, back on with the belts and tensioned them up again for what would hopefully be the last time.

By now it was approaching 11o'clock and the lads who were there with me had gotten very sick of standing around in the cold and my back was in agony from all the bending over. I started the car and everything ran smoothly...Thank God.

Anyway here's a short video I got off Aidan



I got a set of 8.5mm magnicore leads for it today thanks to MCG



I probably won't be updating this again for at around 2 months as I'm just after changing jobs, buying a car and paying insurance which wasn't cheap ha.

I need opinions on where to go with this get it on the road for the summer with all the body work fixed or spend money on more engine mods to try and get as much as I can out of it, I would be hoping for close to 200bhp. So what do ye think?

There's a mod you need to do to overcome the 0.6 Bar boost limit of the Air Bypass Valve (ABV). As stock the ABV gets a vacuum through a Vacuum Switching Valve VSV, if you pipe the ABV to a boost feed from the inlet manifold it allows for a high boost. You might need a better intercooler/location as you start upping the boost.

Big update on the way for this but in the meantime here are two optional extras that I got   





She's a super little car...absolutely flew through the test...I couldn't believe that it passed 1st go after not being NCT'd in at least 4 years

Picked up a few bits for this over the last few weeks....

Jap flare...it's the small things  



The old disks were warped so I got a set of EBC dimpled and grooved disks





I eventually managed to find a bonnet for it after something like 7 months of searching   



The rocker cover gasket was leaking so I got new gaskets for it and went to change them a few days before NCT. When I took off the rocker cover there was a build up of carbon :(so I spent an evening cleaning out the head and brought it to one of my friends the next day who's a mechanic and he took down the sump and took off the oil pick up to clean it out....I don't have any photo's of this cos taking photo's was the last thing on my mind when I saw the build up.

This is how the car was looking 2 weeks ago...white bonnet isn't a great look haha



I had to take off the high rise TOM's spoiler cos it had gotten loose and was about to fall off...to be honest I was lucky it hadn't came off while I was driving it...


Here's a few photo's the woman took of me getting absolutely destroyed while washing the sump and oil pick up







The things I do for that car  

hahah, looks like fun

btw what happened to the black gtz bonnet?

miib14 wrote:

hahah, looks like fun

btw what happened to the black gtz bonnet?

  it was great fun...got destroyed 2 days in a row...had to wash the rocker cover the day before...I was covered in burnt oil and who knows what else

The old bonnet had a heap of dents and bends on it from when it opened on the previous owner while he was driving it one day, you can't really see it in the photo's but it was in a bad way and gone beyond repair, there was a nasty dent on the roof too....but its all sorted now

ah lol ok

I brought this down to killarney last weekend for the rally of the lakes and it didn't miss a beat all weekend. Unfortunately I didn't have time to bring it back to the panel beater to get it compounded after being sprayed before the lakes but I got it done this week.

I tried to keep as much of the original paint as I could as there is no matching the quality of original paint.

I got the stickers removed from the side of the car, the blue KYB ones and the shopping list on the door. The drivers side sideskirt was broken and there was a dent above the drivers side window so I got them repaired

Before





After



On the front of the car I got the bumper, bonnet and grill resprayed and got the bonnet hinges straightened so that the bonnet now sits flush.

Before



Here's a photo showing exactly how bad the old bonnet was



After



I got the trim over the windscreen painted black as the black coating that was on it was chipping and exposing the chrome. The dent on the roof was sorted and the roof resprayed




The tailights weren't lined up right so I got that sorted and the spoiler repaired, resprayed and reattached. And got pressed steel number plates.



Here's a few more photos of how the car stands today.





And one final photo that was taken by DTC Photography before we left for killarney friday evening



I'll be taking the front number plate off again as it looks a lot meaner without it  

Nice job doing the little things that really clean up the car!

gold94corolla wrote:

Nice job doing the little things that really clean up the car!

Thanks lad. I want to get this car as clean as the day it left the factory but there's a lot of work to do to it to get it there

Eventually found a home for the RSM....I put it on the dash between the digital clock and the gauges....there wasn't a lot of space there so I had to cut off one of the legs, then sprayed the stand black and test fitted it using the finest of bluetack ha





Once I was happy with the placement....i.e. it wasnt blocking the clock or the petrol gauge   I fixed it permanently to the dash using the most adhesive substance know to man....double sided sticky tape   



Got a 5zigen decat for this Wednesay and put it in Wednesday night...with a little help from a few lads.

So I removed this....bad aul cat



And put in this....#shiny



While the lads were flat out on snapchat   



Here's a quick video of it taken last night

nice work!

miib14 wrote:

nice work!

Thanks lad ....its getting there now exterior wise but I want to do more engine mods and get a nicer interior

I resprayed the break calipers black, they needed to be resprayed anyway and the red didn't look great with the red lip on the alloys

Before:



During:



After:




I got a pipercross panel filter for it



Changed the supercharger oil



And I got new rubber for it

coming along very nicely, lovely car   

Black looks much better, there's plenty of red already lol

I assume that was you on the Tramore road last week?
Looks good with the Tom's wheels

jdm86gtz wrote:

I assume that was you on the Tramore road last week?
Looks good with the Tom's wheels

Yup it was, I only saw you as you went past me, would have saluted you if I saw you in time. It's not often you see another 101 on Irish roads ha.