Photos Unboxed: Saving an AE86 Trueno - Juiceboxforyou

If you scroll back a bit you will see the original post where we went to check the 86 out for the first time. Looking at these photos it’s actually hard to believe this is the state the car was in for at least two or three years. I really wanted to shoot as many photos as I could the day we rescued it but to be honest, I was a little wiped out pulling this thing out of the bush. So many things were going through my head as I trying to focus on making some sort of a decent video to kick start these vlogs. It’s funny looking back over a year and a half later at these snaps and take it all in once again. I really had no idea how this was going to pan out.

After looking at the car and going back to Waterford, I was back and forth on the phone to Dan trying to negotiate a price for the car. A week later and after a bit of haggling we settled on four thousand euros. This might seem like a lot to some, there was easily that money in parts alone if we were to break this car.  One of the main things I promised Dan when purchasing the car was that id restore it if possible. I had already bought the other two door shell from Duggie which I had intended on building up with parts from this car if it was too badly damaged.

Dan had removed most of the rubbish he had stored on this thing for the past few years but wanted to leave it as rough as possible as it would make for a good video.

Let’s not forget how the Trueno looked before we started giving Dan shit for burying it in a pile of rubbish. This was the first photo I had seen of the car in years and was blown away at just how engulfed it was with random rubbish. In a way, I think having all this stuff on the car may have preserved it!

To be honest I really didn’t know what to when looking at it in this state. I had already written the car off in my head as totally unusable and figured it would be an ideal parts car. I thought the shell was completely ruined from sitting in that soggy grass. I was taking a huge risk.

Imagine all the spiders that were still living in the Trueno the day we pulled it out. Id love to have seen a David Attenborough style documentary on the ecosystem that lived inside the car!

Sadly as I write this, Aidans Vitara sport is no longer with us, she put up a good fight and will be forever immortalised in the vlog series. Here we are looking for a tow hook to try and drag the car out of this position.

I think we all thought the Vitara was going to pull the front end clean off. To our surprise, it moved perfectly under its own weight with a little bit of persuasion. I can just hear the screeching brakes and pads from this photo alone.

As I said earlier, this whole experience for me was completely surreal, I had just handed over four grand for my dream car, a car I had lusted after for most of my life except this example was in such a sorry looking state. I remember trying to explain to the Credit union what exactly I needed the loan for. The guy was actually pretty hyped on giving me the cash as he too was a car enthusiast.

It was hard to tell just how good of a condition the shell was in. The half rubbed down sanding efforts of dan combined with the vast collection of spiders and foliage left us in the dark.

Regardless, I had my dream machine, if it couldn’t be saved at least I could reuse most of the parts. Dan was pretty sad to see it go but knew it was going to a good home, god knows how bad this would have gotten if it sat around for any longer.

Poor Aidan was on winch duty as he pulled the stubborn 86 up onto his trailer. Fun fact: the trailer is actually made out of hospital beds!

Honestly, it’s nice to look back at these images now and realise just how far we have gone with this build, how deep we have gotten on the metal work and just how much the vlog series has grown. ON this day I really had no idea what we were getting ourselves in for, or if anyone would even care about such a restoration. I was doing this for myself and the Vlogs would be a nice way to document the whole journey.

This car had history with my close friends, It had a Waterford reg and it was a 3 door Trueno, everything I had wanted from an AE86 (I’m from Waterford, and it was cool to have a reg from your own place). I was praying that this could actually be saved and we really would know until we got the car back to the shed. Dan kept assuring me that cars do not rust up around his part of the country and you know what he was actually telling the truth.

Luckily Kildare is inland and away from the endless battering of the Atlantic Ocean. If this car was in a field down our way it wouldn’t have stood a chance. Once we got back to Flips shed we threw it up on the lift and to our surprise, most of the floor was actually still intact. The dream machine was salvageable. Happy days!

Did I mention Bryan likes cleaning? The very next day we brought the car around to our shed, chucked it up on axle stands and Bryan removed as many spiders his pressure washer could find.

The original paint job actually came back to life covered in water and started to show the potential of this car.

After a wash, you would be fooled into thinking this is actually not a bad looking car, that is until the water disappears and you are left with the rubbed sanding marks Dan left on the body.

Once Bryan was happy with the spider cleansing, we got to work on trying to get this thing started. An oil change and then fuel change. Dan had left the fuel tank open to the elements for the past few years and left a rag sitting at the mouth of the tank. This invited over six years worth of rainwater down into the fuel tank, promoting rust and all other sorts of chaos.

Duggie quickly disposes of the box of spiders we accumulated from the interior using the fucked fuel from the tank. He almost sets the entire street on fire in the process.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at”

“I need another bucket, quick!” Look at the colour of that Petrol/Water combination. This tank was full to the brim.

Progress is nicely distracted by a BBQ.

Dave showing us some manoeuvres on an old Haro BMX.

Marty giving the signature thumbs up.

While all this nonsense was happening with my car, Reuben was packing to head to Gatebil with his freshly build C33. I was, unfortunately, able to make it that year due as I had just dropped a chunk of cash on the AE86.

Damn the C33 looks awesome here. I must admit, I miss seeing this car around. Hope it’s enjoying its extended stay in Sweden. How funny would it be to park the March and this together? Same race liveries from the same era, but on completely different cars.

I’m going to have a lot more of these behind the Vlog photo sets over the coming months. Cheers to anyone if that made it this far down the page. As always stay tuned for another post over the next few days

– Neil