How I wanted to buy an AE86 in 2017, 2020 and finally ended up buying and importing one from Japan to Germany in 2022 and make it road legal.【3】
In the begin of February the day finally came and I got a call from the truck driver, that he had unloaded the vehicle on my property. When I first saw my AE86 in real, I was absolutely astonished about the vehicle. I never had seen a car such old but feeling rather modern in any aspect. It was only a quick check up because the driver needed to go on, and I had to fill out forms that no damages were done and so, but it felt like a dream I had so many years, finally became true. To see the vehicle in person, that was sitting in Hokkaido just a few months ago was hard to believe for me.
Good thing I used the January to order some parts from the best platform for AE86 parts YahooAuctions. Even if the parts itself were quite cheap the shipping is pretty hefty. Especially the original exhaust cost me close to 500 Euro for air transport because it is one piece that is around 2,2 meters long and weights about 12kg without the packaging.
February: I used the time to replace the RHD headlights with LHD ones from the AW11, which I got cheap from national ebay and the citylight lenses with clear ones (those where imported from Japan) to be legal in Germany. It is actually really easy to do and doesn’t take long to get done.
Also I ordered OEM springs from Japan and replaced those only to find out it had rare TRD lowering springs and shocks installed. Replacing those TRD ones with the old OEMs felt like a sin to do but it needs to be done to make it road legal in Germany. The replacement is really easy. Just unbolt the top nuts of the shocks from the body, lift the chassis and lower the rear axle and there you go. And don’t forget to unbolt the lower bolt of the panhard bar, otherwise you wont be able to lower the axle to its limit.
With the axle down, I took off the aftermarket exhaust (after I found out, that it is pretty much impossible to remove the bolts from the catalyst flange, if the pipe isn’t preheated by running the engine before). Taking the old one off was rather easy because it is made of two parts. But installing the long single OEM piece is rather complicated. The best way is to get some help of someone else to hold the rear silencer and slowly rotate it clockwise to 3 clock, while shoving it over the rear axle. Once you manage to pass the drive shaft with the cat end, the worst is over.
March: Next piece was the front struts. Those also had lowering springs that needed to be removed and replaced by OE ones. Taking out the brake calipers or even the bolts of the knuckle arm is impossible without a torque wrench. There is so confined space, that you are no able to get some breaker bar in between or such. I had to learn that too because I didn’t had one until then. The front struts are simple to take out too. There is just one thing the manual doesn’t state, and that is the issue you get when you try to reinstall the strut into the knuckle sleeves. You need to press down the whole control arm, but with the stabilizer still fixed you probably wont have a chance to do it without a second person and raw violence. So I found out, that you just need to undo the nut and release the stabilizer from the knuckle arm and there is no problem of pushing it down with a lever (I used some wooden stick) to reinstall it. After you let the car down from the jack stands you can still redo that nut without any force. Interesting that the manual doesn’t tell you, making it nearly impossible to do.
After this step my Trueno AE86 is now ready for TUV (german inspection for road worthyness) inspection.