Hello Speedhunters! My name is Romas Tamulevicius, I’m from Lithuania, and this is my work in progress - or as I like to call it – my money pit! :D

Everything started with just an idea floating in my head that I needed to build a drift car for myself. Just for fun on the weekends and to have a car that could take a beating. As I’m a total gear head, as well as a Toyota fan, the choice was narrowed quite quickly to a Corolla – which is a pretty rare sight here! So while the search began in the UK, it was finally extended to Japan. As I import cars from Japan as part of my job, with the help of Andy from powervehicles.com, the right candidate was found - an 83’ Trueno, which had had a slight accident, was the right car to start with.

As the car already had some extensive tuning done in Japan – it was nice to already have some parts and the right engine in it (a redtop 4AGE).

As in Lithuania it’s impossible to register a right-hand drive car, I had to get all the left-hand drive parts to do the conversion. So I bought a cut-off from a crashed AE86 just to have all the parts that I needed.

As the car came with some front end damage the first thing on my list was to straighten that out. So the metal works were the starting point.

After some panel beating it was finally looking like an actual Trueno again – ready for some action!

But the action was short lived as I drove her back to the garage to take the engine out and start work on building a new one.

The aim for the engine was to make it withstand ~300hp and add a turbocharger. 

We removed the pocket sized engine in around an hour, tore it apart and found out that it was just the right time to get to work on it as the bearing on piston 4 was just about spun...

A few more goodies and no internal mods and it was back in one piece for now, because there was still some aesthetic work to be done to it later on before it will go onto the track!

With the engine out it was time to look into the LHD conversion. After some inspecting I found out that the firewall on RHD and LHD cars is almost the same.

It was at this point I decided that this car would not be so street legal – so I decided to forego heaters and stock interior parts. It was a fairly easy task making the car LHD – just some cut and shut welding jobs and it was done.

After the engine removal and LHD conversion jobs where done it was time for some chassis work. At first, to make life easier, we had to build chassis roller.

All the parts were removed from the chassis and it was put on the roller to allow for access to the underside of the car.

The main point of the chassis work was to mate a S13 rear end into AE86 body. The reason for this (most people ask!) – was to get parts more easily and cheaper in the long run. AE86 suspension parts might be a real headache because they cost a lot and are not so easily available here. S-chassis parts are available everywhere.

So we started measuring and unlike most of the S13 chassis builds I wanted to get all the mounts as low as possible into the AE86 body.

We cut some heavy duty metal pipe ends for the mounts and used stock S13 rear sub frame bolts to make the new mounting points for the S13 frame. To keep the mounts as low as possible new mounts where added to the chassis:

All the seams around the mounts where re-welded for some additional strength.

Also, the S13 rear strut towers found their way into the AE86 body.

The front end also got a S13 treatment – front arms, knuckles and coilovers from the S13 were a 98% bolt on modification – which gives around 3cm of extra width and as a result all of the steering angle modifications can be done as they would be on an S-Chassis!

To have some more room for the wheels the inner guards were reworked a bit – the same “Nissan” way :D

After all the customization work on the chassis was done the underside of the car was cleaned…

…all of the seams welded…

…and everything sprayed in a protective coating.

As after the S-Chassis was installed I had around 4 cm of extra width I had to do something with the wheel arches. 

So we made some new wider ones out from sheet metal.

Now, with all of the weak points on the chassis eliminated, it was time for another weak point – the gearbox. As I guess all the people who own 86’s know, the T50 can’t take abuse for long, so I chose to upgrade to the SXE10 (altezza) 6speed gearbox. Thanks to a Crystal Body Yokohama for the idea - they sell the same kits to fit altezza gearboxes with 4A engines. I did the same thing with 2 bellhousings... the result was a hybrid belhousing:

Now it was time for more stitch welding; Whole front seams where cleaned and re-welded. 

Strut towers and chassis legs had additional brackets added for strength. 

And new layers of sealant laid on the seams – everything primed / sanded / painted.

After all the welding was done it was time for painting. While the car was prepped for the paint stage – we found that it had been repainted 5 times before in Japan! This is why the chassis didn’t have ANY rust at all - it was so clean that no one wanted to believe that it was an 83’ car. This is why I love Japan!

We also prepped and painted the whole inside of the car the in the same gold color like the engine bay.

While the car was being prepped for paint I started another little project, an intake manifold build. I’m still working on this because I need to put the engine back in to determinate space requirements, but for now home build stacks/flanges where done:

After all of the preparation it was time for color choice. At first – the decision was to paint it red – but at the very last minute I changed my mind and switched to the Lexus burgundy/brown color with some red flakes in the clear coat. 

The results of which I was more than happy with! I guess everyone will agree that when you see your car in a state like this it gives you the motivation to work on it even more – and you know you can see the finish line when you see your car with a nice “dress” on!

Well, the car is not getting slowly back into one piece and with way too much work still left to do there are way too many goodies waiting to be installed! I’m still hoping I will be able to finish it up for this summer and enjoy it to the max! I will definitely try to keep updates for everyone on www.aeu86.org and will send pics of the end result to Speedhunters – that’s 100% sure!

More information about the build can be found here.