The 1995 ae111 Pre face Lift Levin Build

So in November 2010 I had decided to go look for either a Toyota Levin or a Glanza V as my new car with help from my girfriend we decided on a levin. Now I was always a fan of Pre face lift edition of a car make so to come across the Levin I now own on my first search was a stroke of luck.

This was the first picture I saw of it:

Now I knew the fact the car being from waterford that it had probably had a hard enough live due to the attention to drag racing down there but I contacted the owner and met him on December the 1st, now if anyone remembers christmas 2010 you will remember it snowed a lot, at the time i lived in Clonmel and my friend brought me down in his s14 silvia to check out the car... great fun that was!

When we got there we checked the car twice over, obviously not been able to test drive it I took a chance on it seen as the body was so clean. After the snowed had finally cleared and I got my chance to give it a proper hard drive on a nice twisty road I discovered it was very very smoky after 6000rpm and very bouncy on the entry to a bend, granted it still held like a train! So back to the shed with it to discover the two back shocks were gone and it had all been converted to macpherson suspension and the cat had been hollowed. I'll be honest here, I was very unhappy to find it was non ss but had to live with it. Got two back shocks with tein springs on them and a new cat from someone in portlaoise, put the shocks in, while i was at it I decided to replace all the drop links, arb links & bushings. Made me very happy to discover one of these o the back: , a cusco arb bar

Upon more routing through i discovered more nice parts including a 3 point top mount front TRD strut brace, TRD carbon fibre radio surround, TRD carbon fibre clock surround, TRD window switch surround.

So I done nothing with the car until around May or June of 2011 when we finally got some bit of sun I cleaned it up & took a few pictures of the car, still no change since when I first bought it:




Right now my spec was as follows:

Engine: 4age 20 valve blacktop
Gearbox: 5 speed c150
Inovite 16" wheels
Cusco 19mm rear anti - roll bar
TRD front top mount 3 point strut brace
TRD interior carbon fibre clock surround
TRD interior carbon fibre radio surround
TRD interior carbon fibre window switch surround
Aftermarket steering wheel ( no brand)
TRD Horn button
Lowered 40mm all around on macpherson setup
Bzr spoiler
Oem pre face lift front splitter
Aftermarket high tension leads but missing the King lead and with no brand name on them!
CZK de-cat

The car was very quick even though it was smoky which was surprising.

1st job on the list for me were the wheels as although they were nice on it, the chrome was very weathered so the needed a clean up, i always had an intention of making the car someway stealth looking so i sprayed the wheels matt black:



Then i got rays engineering stickers made up, because they are a replica but i didn't see the harm in it:



Myself and the girlfriend have a thing for teddy's in a car so the levin acquired some travel buddies:


I bought interior cluster clocks at this stage, oil temp gauge, oil pressure gauge, water temp & volt meter:


Also when I bought the car the spark plug cover was missing so I got myself one of those and sprayed it red, I also proceeded to spray the strut brace red and black to clean it up, here a quick shot of the engine bay when i was working on it:


Cleaned out my throttle bodies:


Me working on it :


I hit a kurb one day and broke one alloy, so off came the wheels and a new colour choice due to too many people telling me the matt black did not suit it, here was the new design:



Now the reason as to why i have no pictures of the finished wheel on the car is because a set of TSW stealth's popped up for a very good price and I had to have them due to the fact when i was growing up my brother had them on everything he owned and I had grown a love for them, here's what they looked like on the Levin:




I had also sprayed the grill at this time as seen in the above photo's and also i had now upgraded to a c160 6 speed bzr gearbox.

Not long after I had bought the wheels the car started to take a lot of oil and I was expecting a bang any day soon but it never came, it became so smoky that if i pulled away from a crossroad the person behind me could not see for a few second's at least!

I brought it to a good friend of mine who is a very experienced mechanic and he looked over it and told me my valve stem seals had failed and needed to be replaced, so the car was left with him and at my request was about to receive a full engine rebuild, I first bought these to strengthen it a bit, TODA high compression forged pistons :




Next came the seal kit from rhdjapan.com : .

Then i picked up an FGK manifold very cheap:


New oil and water pump:



Next i sent the head and valves away to be shimmed, skimmed, ported & polished, this is when the bottom end was coming out, all work done in the car by the way, the engine or gearbox were never removed:


The head came back after 2 weeks and looked the part perfectly:


My friend in the meantime had taken all of the bottom end apart sanded all of it down to get all the crap out of it, cleaned out the sump and the filter and put it all back together with the TODA pistons:


The only oil he recommended for the Levin:


At this stage he was very busy with my car so pictures were hard to get but with his brother being a panel beater i decided to get all the front end cleaned up while it was there:


Bought a thrust 10 row oil cooler kit and sandwich plate:


Since then I have bought a HKS superdragger cat - back system and fitted it, I will put a pic up of that soon and I fitted the oil cooler kit temporarily with cable ties until i make brackets.

The car run's smooth sometimes and sluggish other times due to the piston's as it is in need of a new ecu and a map but is quicker than previous and doesn't burn a drop of oil.

Spec now:
Engine: 4age 20 valve blacktop with TODA 80mm High compression forged piston's
Gearbox: 6 speed c160
15" TSW stealths
Cusco 19mm rear anti - roll bar
TRD front top mount 3 point strut brace
TRD interior carbon fiber clock surround
TRD interior carbon fiber radio surround
TRD interior carbon fiber window switch surround
1995 momo wodden framed steering wheel
TRD Horn button
Lowered 40mm all around on macpherson setup
Bzr spoiler
Oem pre face lift front splitter
Aftermarket high tension leads but missing the King lead and with no brand name on them!
CZK de-cat
FGK manifold
HKS superdragger cat - back system
Thrust oil cooler kit
Oil temp, oil pressure, water temp & volt meter cluster gauges

My future plan's for the car are as follows:

Spray the inovites a gloss black and go for the stealth look again.
Remove the bzr spoiler
Get coilovers and lower it 55mm on the front and 45mm on the back
Tomei poncams
Bike carbs
Mappable ecu
Re- map
Dyno

very nice dude some nice parts gone into it looking forward to seeing more

Some amount of working going into this! I was going to buy one of these a while ago, but could get insurance

Lovely motor dude!

keep up the good work bud,

shes a keeper

alot of nice parts there bud

she looks very well

Some work gone into this, really need a 9-5 job and i can start doing similar work to my yoke. Would love to buy a 2nd one to keep on for special occasions

nice project mate keep it up