Steady Progress | Dylan’s MK2 Supra.

Reviving the classic. Getting the bumper pulled off, painted, and reinstalled along with ordering a pair of wheels along with some other accessories from Japan to get started on the MK2 Celica Supra build.

As I mentioned in the last article I wrote about Dylan and his Supra, his owning this car has been a lofty breath of fresh air for our team after years of BMW ownership. After a lot of research, Dylan decided to take on the challenge and build his own MK2 Celica Supra from scratch, starting with a nearly perfect, bone-stock example. I was excited to get started working on this car as a team and we knew that we needed to find the right parts for the project. Dylan started by collecting a few parts from Japan as well as having Rudeboy help him source out his first pair of wheels for what will ultimately be the car’s setup.

The very first step in the project was to have the bumper professionally painted to match the way it should have looked from the factory. Dylan wanted to make sure that the paint job was perfect, so he decided to have it done by Mitsuaki-San who you may remember seeing paint the two Kaido Racers that were assembled by Rudeboy Custom this last year. The result of Aki’s paintwork was flawless and the bumper now looked true to form. Hopefully, the strange kids lurking around gas stations now stop thinking that Dylan’s car is a Delorean.

In the midst of having the bumper finished Dylan and Rudeboy sorted out what wheels would ultimately end up on the car. After some research, Dylan decided to reach out to a friend in Japan who specialized in shipping items to North America. Rudeboy had a pair of nice condition SSR Jilbas still sitting in Japan and Dylan decided to buy them off of him and then worked out the details of having them shipped over.

After we reattached the bumper, the next step in putting together the car was to get the massive factory steering wheel out and fit the Boss HKB hub along with a much smaller diameter, era-correct, wooden Nardi wheel. To match the retro style of the wheel we also installed a short, retro Japanese crystal shift knob with flowers encased inside.

The final steps as we finished up the day were to get the fuel door spring fixed so it would close properly and to test fit the SSR Jilbas on the front of the car to see how they looked. They won’t get run in their current spec as the plan is to find another pair of wheels and then have them all rebuilt with new lips to a much more aggressive spec, but the style of the face matched the car perfectly.

After a few weeks of finding parts and working on the car, it was rewarding to feel like progress was already being made in such a short period of time. The car looks great currently and is now in the right state for us to figure out the next phases of the build; such as getting it dumped on new suspension, rebuilding the wheels, sorting out the exhaust and possibly even a few more interior changes and accessories.

Working on the Supra has been a reminder to us about how much fun even the simplest things can be when you’re doing them with your friends. To celebrate all the progress we took the car for a wash and then out to a cool location to shoot some photos and final footage for the video.