He went to Mexico?! EPIC 😆
Wait, do i recognize that gray driver’s seat cushion? 😆

 

yeah we've been driving since Thursday 😂

That's the skin from the seats you gave us. I thought I could swap cushion for cushion but the seat frames are not the same. It's earlier in the thread almost a year ago now. Hard to believe I did that that long ago. I thought it was the start of summer.

 

I found someone admiring the Rolla when cleaning up my garden.

 

We've taken my son to Blaze Pizza in Stores CT plenty of times now he's taken us with the Brown Hornet.

so many cool old cars out this weekend but we recognized this one from a YouTube video recently.


can be seen about 2 minutes in.

 

All old Toyotas lined up.

 

Almost forgot this one, his first solo ride with the Brown Hornet. It was a while back but we've been real busy here lately.

 

spotted on Season 4 of Stranger Things.

if you look closely in the background my grandfather's 77 Rolla. Incidentally he and my son share the same birthday, December 25.



I took the Brown Hornet to work the other day. I readjusted the wheel bearings and added grease so wanted to test drive it and spotted the old international harvester again.

then my son stole it🤣

 

I think i used to own a blue one like that! Got it for about $250 with a blown head gasket. I think i put $300 in it and sold it for $500. Not a sustainable business model. 🤣

 

This is the best photo of the Brown Hornet, because I wasn't there to take it😉

He sent it to me at work.

 

Custom trunk release 🤣 The key stopped working on the cylinder and the replacement lock cylinder was junk right from the start and didn't fit so I added this to the cable release that I made for it. It's cheap China junk ( that's why the cable i add is still in) but a cool addition . Oh and no directions. Good times.

 

So this is the current situation for the Brown Hornet

The good: I may have finally found the driveline vibration. Hopefully fingers crossed. I took the wheels off broke the bead on each and vacuumed the Dyna beads out that I put in. (They worked great on the Echo even up to 80) Took the wheels to get balanced. I always figured one or more wheels may have been bent. The shop said only one so that's good just put it in the back see how it goes. I had a bad feeling when I noticed even that wheel didn't need a lot of weight to b[size=12pt]alance though. I put The wheels back on and it still has the shakes. So [/size][size=12pt]I decided see what it looks like up on jack stands when the drive shaft is spinning. It looked like the drive shaft was bent but turns out that the u joint I just put on is sliding around. [/size]

[size=12pt]The bad: I took the drive shaft to the drive line shop that I had rebuild the rear diff. They found a new end for the yoke to fix the sliding around part but the new u joint they got also moves around in it. Don't know what's going on there. So maybe for some reason it needs an OEM u joint. Looking online, it looks like there's 2 different sizes or model numbers .So I went by the model number for the car ( TE 31) .I'm gonna give a new one a try see if that fits. [/size]

[size=12pt]The ugly: the only other option I can see if that doesn't work is looking for used drive shaft.[/size]

spotted at the drive line shop.

 

we found a drive shaft for it in NH . I'm waiting on 1 more OEM u joint that I found on e bay to arrive and am going to bring it all to the driveline shop to see if we need to combine both the original and the drive shaft we just picked up then balance.

 

So just to see how the replacement drive shaft is I decided to try it as is. Just the drive shaft alone fixed the vibrationwhen driving. Even though the original rear u joint is a little stiff and will be replaced soon. But I noticed right away it was better.

 

We took the Brown Hornet to the drive line shop to pick up the old drive shaft. I told him don't waste any time on the old drive shaft. Its spare parts now.

 

First test on the highway today. 60 feels slow now. The speedometer is a little off. We thought we were hitting 70.

 

Good to see the Hornet buzzin’ again heheh.😁

 

My son is glad to finally be back in the driver’s seat! It had been too long and the drive line vibration was a major issue since day one but I was so sure it was one or more wheels. Now even though we know one wheel is slightly bent we don't feel it at any speed or during breaking.

 

What’s on the mods list?

 

Back in the saddle again. Had to take a trip to Paul's Boutique Records in Vernon.



My wife clowning around in the back seat.

 

Not much to mod somebody slready put an 82 drive train in so instead of the 1.6 it has the 1.8 and a tranmission from 82. They also deleted the air injection stuff and EGR stuff but we added a weber carburetor and now it is so much happier with that. They also added bigger exhaust that I fixed back in the fall.