We assemble wheels for the AE86, tracking down a set of used SSR Star Sharks from Japan.
It’s hard to convey here just how happy he was to finish his seven-year itch finally. I’m not going into great detail here. I think we covered it perfectly in the video on the 86, but being able to finally do a shoot like this on an unusual April evening in the same spot I had shot this car seven years before. I don’t think the vehicle will even look this good again, but either way, I wanted to get these photos on the website for some time.
As sad as this sounds, and I know there won’t be a lot of people looking at these, I never thought a time would come when I could finally post my build on Juicebox; doing this blog since 2009, I was always out of capture whatever I thought was cool in Ireland and beyond. I hope to get my car to be proud of up here. By the time I got to it, blogs were essentially dead, so we’ve moved the story to YouTube, but it’s a real sense of achievement to shoot this car and post it on the blog. Please enjoy a generous amount of images from that evening. And as always, thanks for looking.
With the AE86 project finished, what’s next for Juicebox?
The AE86 comes home from paint for the final assembly.
The final paint and AE86 assembly with Jackie and Barry before it comes home
We visit an AE86-only restoration shop, which rebuilds these cars to an incredible factory fresh finish.
The videos are flying along, I guess because we have met a deadline for the 86 unveil(which is a good thing); Im trying to catch up with that progress, which makes the timeline for the rest of the videos a little weird, but we will figure it out. These photos are from late last year; when the car came out of the booth and received another coat of lacquer, we started fitting panels, and things hit me when the glass was fitted to the back paired with the ever-so-good-looking redline tails. I think I was almost sexually aroused by that rear end the first time we finished it; as strange as that is to say, I’ve probably fantasised about having this look for way too long. It’s been such a fucking journey with this car, and it’s insane to think that the mega building aspect of it is coming to a close; here are a few photos from this time, a bit of Barry welding, Bryan helping put stuff back together and Jackie working his magic on the tail lights.
Bryan and Barry double team assembly on the AE86 while Jackie fixes the redline Trueno tail lights
This post is a monster photo dump. The 48 hours photographed below were some of the best hours of my life. It’s a corny thing to say, but this intimate object has brought me so much joy and misery over the last seven years, from mega highs to mega lows and everything in between. I felt like this day would never come; there were points in this build where it felt like we hit a brick wall with the progress during the pandemic, times when we hadn’t the money or no motivation or similar.
When this weekend finally came, it felt like a dream; the night before, we pulled a super late one to get as much done as we could, and I’ve said it many times, but Jackie and his level of m motivation, even Dylan, who threw some hands-on whenever he could, made this one of the most memorable weekends ever. You have seen the video so that I won’t ramble too much on here, but I know there are people like me who enjoy looking at the photos. I tried to capture as many pictures as possible; I think I have about 400 photos of the same thing on my hard drive, and I kept shooting the same photo in disbelief. Anyway, I narrowed it down to about 60 from that weekend below. Enjoy the most significant milestone on the build!
The day has finally come! We get some paint onto this AE86 Trueno after six years of work.
I never really appreciated the effort that went into blocking with a paint job because I had picked the best colour for body panels. Jackie was adamant that he wanted this car to be perfectly straight; I even started to lose track of the process, with the Trueno being blocked, spray-filled and then blocked again. Throughout the process, Jackie remained consistent with enthusiasm and attention to detail; most of the time, standing back and admiring his commitment, even after a full day of misery at work, was incredible. It’s been inspiring, and I’ve aimed to keep that mindset in my life as we advance. He wants to do the best he can all the time regarding his craft.
Here are the photos leading up to painting the car. We tried to get the best finish possible because, as I’ve learned, it’s all in the prep.