Media | Articles
Against All Oddities: No New Projects, He Said
I can see the judgment rolling in already: “Matt, you have enough projects! Why did you buy another one? Do you hate your family, personal finances, and mental health?” No, no, no! Of course not. Allow me to explain.
In the last installment of Against All Oddities, I regaled you with the story of my newly purchased blue AE82 Corolla. Initial diagnosis confirmed it needed an engine swap. Should that be a 16-valve 4A-GE? Would be great, but they all need rebuilding at this point. Should it be something fancy, like a modern three-cylinder turbo from my work’s race team? No, I prefer to keep my job, so probably no G16E-GTS. I was homing in on a 20-valve 4A-GE, but they too were getting expensive. Back in the day, I remember when a guy could get a silver top 20-valve for somewhere around 1200 bucks. Well, $2800 is the new $1200.
It’s not just year-over-year inflation to blame; all the motors in Japan are native to cars that have themselves become valuable. Where it was once commonplace to cut a Levin Coupe or Carina GT in half with a Sawzall and pack it into a container with twenty of its brothers (that’s a lot of valves), such a thing is frowned upon now that those cars are desirable. And the motors from chopped-up cars that got exported out of Japan fifteen years ago? Why, they’re already chugging away project cars on these shores! My normal tactic of creating a myriad of Facebook Marketplace saved search terminology with my most salacious Toyota swear words was, to my dismay, unfruitful.
Imagine my great luck and pleasure when a silver-top 20-valve popped up on my feed, nestled sweetly inside a 1990 Corolla All-Trac. What led me to it in the end was not any of my engine-specific search terms, but rather a a revisiting of my last round of searches that netted me the blue Corolla. I guess the algorithm got smart and surmised I was desperate. As for the motor being in a car that hasn’t been chopped in half yet? Green flag.
The Corolla All-Trac was a somewhat odd replacement for Toyota’s even more strange four-wheel-drive Tercel, which the brand sold in the 1980s. To make matters even more unconventional, someone in the North Carolina mountains had taken it upon themselves to swap the Corolla’s original 105-hp 4A-FE four-cylinder for the much more powerful and interesting 20-valve. It was an intriguing story. I briefly imagined myself in an all-wheel-drift, center diff locker button depressed, the tach wound out to its 8,300-rpm limit, while Foggy Mountain Breakdown crackled out of the blown-out door speakers.
Marketplace
Buy and sell classics with confidence
Perish the mere thought! Fifteen minutes after it was posted, the seller had a $200 deposit in his PayPal and a tentative commitment from me for $1800 more if drove onto my trailer. Let’s go grab this pile of junk, shall we?!
As always, nothing is simple. I didn’t care about the general condition of the car. From the ad, I could see that it was extremely rusty. Buncombe County rust, by the look of it—a symptom of gravel roads nicking the rockers, limited road salt attacking fasteners, short winters, and mud packing the quarters. This is not the kind of caustic environment that would force me to bust out the torch for every repair, but it would sure eat up body metal. Personally, this kind of corrosion is my second favorite, just behind the “surface” kind.
No matter, the body would be useless to me anyway. In terms of items I did care about, I needed to make sure that the engine and wiring were in swapworthy condition. The seller disclosed that the car (and motor) had an intermittent running issue, hence his willingness to accept suspiciously little money for it. I didn’t even care about the gearbox, as this piece is specific to the all-wheel-drive models. I offered free storage rent and the promise of dinner and beer to foundry friends Thomas and other-Matt-Anderso(e)n. They agreed to head out to Raleigh with a compression gauge and a trailer.
As the pick-up time drew ever nearer, my anxiety about the condition of the motor started to grow. Why was it so cheap? On the flip side, my excitement for the Corolla All-Trac itself started to develop. This sudden interest was out of step with the overall goal—an engine for the AE82—but I let myself feel the feelings. I gave Thomas a long list of things to check, which he didn’t really need me to do for him. In parallel, I started researching replacement rocker panels and quarter panels. Not because it’s a project or anything. Just curious about the parts cost…
On the scheduled pick-up day, the weather was a disaster. When it became clear that the inspection was taking place outside, in pouring rain and 36-degree F ambient temperature, my list of things to check over shrunk down to verifying oil pressure and making sure that it ran on ether. Forget about pulling the plugs, forget about the compression test. Just focus on not getting pneumonia and bring the crunchy wagon home safely.
As one can expect of a 35-year-old Toyota Corolla in awful weather… it fired right up and drove onto the trailer. Thomas handed over the rest of the cash.
From Waffle House, Thomas texted me and exclaimed “Dude, this thing is mint!” This information told me two things:
- Our respective definitions of mint are further apart than I expected.
- I could imagine myself feeling guilty for tearing this car apart.
Let the record show, this marks the second time that I’ve purchased a car with a 20-valve 4A-GE engine in it—intended to harvest the thing—and uttered “dammit” at the sight of the donor car’s unexpectedly good condition.
I hopped in and gave it a quick rip around the block.
“Not half bad. Sounds great, too! Hmm, the seats fold flat. The seats are actually really nice,” I said to myself at 8,000 rpm.
I pulled the All-Trac back into the shop, pushed in the clutch, and the engine died on its own, not to refire. The plugs were soaked. I hopped on eBay and ordered a new set. I kept scrolling. “Hey look, those rockers are 10% off…”
Well, I guess the comments section kinda saw this coming.
Find more values
Search for prices of other cars, trucks, vans and motorcycles
A similar tale…I was given a BMW E21 3 series–owner’s daughter had run it out of oil–twice–going to and from college, to the point where it seized. What I wanted was the 5 speed to bolt into my 2002. But M10 engines are notoriously tough and after adding a little–no a LOT–of oil, it started and ran. Well enough that I didn’t have the heart to part it out. Did a little parts scrounging to recover absolutely worn out seats, found the windshield leak that filled the glovebox whenever it rained, and replaced one brake caliper. Ended up driving it for a year. Ended up selling it for $1000 and took that money to buy a CRX… and gradually pyramided my original free car into a very nice E30 318is, but that’s another story.
Kinda? I’m sorry to report we saw it coming from ten miles away 🙂
But I feel REALLY sorry for the blue AE82!!! 😢
I know a guy that does what you do, except he doesn’t have a warehouse. No offense, but folks like this are handy to know. He takes the initial risk and brings the car to the neighborhood. I size it up and make an offer when his interest moves on to the next interesting car. 3 of my 6 have come my way through some variant of that process… which doesn’t exactly put me too far out of the same arena. I hear a lot of discussion about getting younger people into cars, and I struggle with that because cars is something that gets into you.