Roman

More glacial progress My Dad has been doing more work on his Toyota Soarer, so he wanted to pinch one of my front struts to figure out how a brake upgrade is going to work. We're looking to fit Nissan 4 pots to the front of the soarer, and since the Carina has more or less the same struts we figured we'd do the same for that too. So I've been working on a CAD drawing for an adapter bracket. It took quite a few prototypes to find something that was going to fit behind the old style wheels though! Calipers are currently split apart and being sandblasted etc before a paint up and seal kit and reassembly. Apart from potential stopping power, the 4 pots are great because they are less than HALF the weight of the current caliper setup! You dont need to pull the caliper off to change the pads which is nice, and a good range of aftermarket brake pads by comparison. Less downtime if I nuke some brakepads at a trackday. I've also been thinking about how to make a consolidated GPS system, camera system, etc for trackdays. Bond and Bond had a sale where micro laptops were $299, 1.6ghz, 1 gig of ram and 320gb hard drive, so seemd a good deal, couldnt say no! I could justify it to myself partially because it's useful not just for car stuff, can use it the other 99% of the time for other things too. This has three USB ports, so current plan is: 1 port for 20hz GPS receiver, running race chrono on the PC 1 port for a high framerate webcam, that could be used for picture in picture on a trackday vid or something (so looking out rear window, or maybe at the pedals or something) And the third port for plugging in my main camera to switch it on and off. If we can figure out how to datalog the engines OBD output, this will come in on the same port as the GPS. So like so: Since the car is pretty much ready for cert, I thought I'd get some extra suspension goodies to chuck in there before that time, as obviously you cant legally fit them afterwards: Front castor arms - these are rediculously grunty compared to standard items, quite a bit heavier too! However I guess controlling castor changes etc is a lot more of an issue when you're running sticky tires, compared to... well, suspension that's designed for gripless 185 wide tires Roll Centre adjusters are really light and nicely made. Will be interesting to see if it makes any sort of noticable difference on the track. The GPS system is awesome, it can give you real time splits and laptimes as you go, as well as comparable data for later about which line is quickest, etc etc. I went for a bit of a test run in my daily driver, with the GPS system I haxed together something to give an overhead map view as you go:

Thanks for the info. I'll write up an email. Car is a 1982 soarer with the engine, gearbox, power steering/rack, ABS, traction control, aircon, etc all from a 1997 JZX100 Toyota Chaser. All wiring forward of the firewall is now chaser stuff. The only wiring required outside the engine bay for inclusion of ABS etc is the wheel speed sensors. That was an earlier revision of the drawing, so similar shape but the step is smaller than above and approx 3-4mm deep.

Love your work here Cletus. Quick question, I'm making some caliper brackets like so: So bolts to the strut, and to the caliper. Is it okay to make things like this out of Aluminium, come cert time? Any issues with needing to be a particular grade etc? There are no threaded holes in the Aluminium, and it's 12mm thick from memory. Will be using all 8.8 grade bolts with threads excluded from the shear plane, and machined that so there are no jagged edges which could cause cracks etc. Also, what are the specifics about fitting ABS and traction control to a car that never came with it? I think I read something about the entire system needing to come from one car. Does this mean the calipers etc all have to come from this vehicle? Current plan is to set the brake bias with a wilwood adjustor to what suits without the ABS, and then have the ABS enabled over the top. However my only concern is that the calipers will not be *exactly* what came out of the original car, even if the bias is corrected and the piston area ratios etc are similar. If that's not allowed, are cars that come factory with ABS allowed to cert different brake setups while retaining ABS, or no? Thanks.

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone here who knows a thing or three about Nissan stuff could help me ID these struts. They have stamped on them: NISSAN 54302 W200 ATSUGI And pics as per below. Any help appreciated

Hey there's a late model 'lean burn' 4AFE (or 7AFE?) engine which has a sensor in the combustion chamber that directly measures combustion pressure. Used it to safely run the engine really lean under some conditions, as the title would suggest

Sweet as. Hey, well OS has provided me many lols, events, etc that I havent really ever contributed much back to. I'll have a think about the best way I can perhaps help out some OS guys here. What's the most common application, perhaps I could do a youtube tutorial on how to sketch up an exhaust manifold from scratch? Or a vid on basic autocad etc functions. Or dont mind helping out some AKL people learn the ropes in person if anyone else hates learning things by wading through help files and tutorials.

If i had my time again id go torsen over current clutch type. (Cusco) too noisy and may as well be a locker. [Old man forums]

You might have the OSNAP turned on (true story) I can spend a night with you. Oh, I could teach you some CAD stz too, at cost of Cider

Haha, used to work for a structural steel company with a big BIG water jet cutter, more than once it it went smashing into a concrete wall because of a small spec of whatever on the drawing, 6 meters over to the left that it felt it needed to cut out. (Turns out it was a bug in the program, not a random piece in the model)

Installing tomorrow... downloading... downloading... 11 hours till download complete

Hey cheers for the input! Yeah thats a really good point about turbo engines, didnt think of that. And yep, with non roadcar transmissions where you can smash through the gears almost instantly, there's more of an advantage to chopping through a lot of gears up to a certain speed. A lot of aftermarket gearboxes have the 5th or 6th gear as 1:1 as well, so you've got a really tall 1st gear, then a crapload of them within a narrowish speed range. In which case a really high diff ratio might not suit anyway.

Just a few thoughts down on a page about final drive ratios, and what happens when you change it. The final drive ratio turns rotations of your driveshaft, into rotations of the wheels. It also turns power sent to the crankshaft, into power at the wheels obviously. As a general rule, depending on final drive ratio, for every 3-5 rotations of the driveshaft, the wheels will turn once. Which isnt too complicated, but what are the advantages of changing your final drive ratio? Some people say that changing to a higher ratio (say 3.5:1 to 4:1) increases the torque at the wheels. Although this is kinda true, it means that you are creating more torque, at less speed, which is the trade off. If you are going 100kph, you are going to have less torque available than 50kph, because it has to share the available torque between say 200 turns of the wheel rather than 100. This is one thing that the horsepower formula is for, it lets us figure out how much torque you can actually use at a particular speed. So forgetting gearboxes, final drive ratios, and all the rest of it for now. Lets say that we had a wheel, which has 200hp, 150hp, and 100hp available to spin it. How much torque is available, depends on the wheel speed. As per below, based on Torque = (5252*Horsepower) / RPM, and a 205/50/15 tire As you can see, when the wheel speed increases, you lose torque. Waah. Obviously no motor has 200hp through out the whole speed range, as when the motor goes through its own RPM range it picks up or loses power. Also, obviously the car changes gear as the speed increases. So the amount of torque actually available at the wheels looks more like a sawtooth pattern as we go through each gear: Some people say that changing the final drive ratio, increases the amount of torque available at the wheels. What it actually does though, is it changes the speed at which each of your gears work... it moves the sawtooth pattern up or down the graph. So although at some points on the graph you DO gain torque, you are also moving the dips as well. As per the blue line below: It's impossible to have more torque available at a given speed, without more horsepower. As you can see comparing the blue line to the black one, every time the blue line is higher than the black, more torque is available at that speed. However you also have LESS torque available, at other speeds when the blue line is lower than the black one. So, when IS it useful to change final drive ratio? In my opinion the biggest reason is to change the speed at which each gear in your car starts to work. If your car came with a motor which peaked out at 5000rpm, and now you've got a motor that goes to 9000rpm, 1st gear might have previously gone to 50kph and now goes to 90kph. So you can change the final drive ratio, so you are getting into the powerful part of the powerband earlier in the speed range again... So first gear might top out at 50kph still, but now at 9000rpm instead of 5000. Also, it can be useful to change the final drive ratio to suit particular corners of a track, for example if your car was getting unsettled because you had to change gear right before the exit of a corner, you could have a lower final drive ratio so you dont need to change gears until you're on the straight. Here are the pros and cons of going to a higher final drive ratio: (say from 3.9 to 4.5) Cons: -Engine RPM while cruising increases... 4500rpm at 100kph is not very comfortable for a daily car! -Potentially more gear changes to get to a particular speed, which makes you slower/the same -1st gear can become useless apart from doing skids, if you now have more torque in 1st gear than traction Pros: -1st gear can become handy for doing skids, if you now have more torque in 1st gear than traction -Reduce the speed range of each gear to suit a new motor or gearbox -Make use of higher gears that were previously only useful at a speed that you cant reach -Fine tuning speed at which each gear is useful to suit corners of a track Changing final drive ratio isnt a magical torque booster though! Better living everyone!

I dont think there's much of a performance loss to having the PCV etc setup correctly. If you're going full steam then the PCV valve is shut anyway, when you're cruising along it's cleaning rubbish/vapours/etc out of your engines crankcase and filling it with fresh air instead. I guess it depends on how likely it is that your engine spits oil out the breather lines, some motors have got a baffled rocker cover which works as a catch can anyway. My motor spits ZERO oil out of the breather lines. So cant see the advantage of not having them hooked up, and plumbing them into the intake seems less work than a catch can anyway.

Isnt the issue that you need a working odometer? What's the reason for GPS speedo not legal, I guess if you're out of range or going through a tunnel or something?

Yeah when temp creeps up, button off for half a lap or so then it's good to go again. That's why I'm looking for alternatives to another radiator... this one is only JUST on the verge of coming to its limit with continuous thrashing, will never be an issue with lack of cooling on the street. It wouldnt need to be constantly spraying, I could put it on an in cabin switch or use a radiator fan switch which engages at a higher temperature than the fan switch perhaps. Refilling a bottle in between runs on the track is no inconvenience at all, it would only need enough for 10-15-20 mins absolute max. If I only turned it on when it started to get hot, it wouldnt need to work for very long at all. It could just be completely turned off while not at trackdays, as not necessary.

Because the airflow meter needs a straight pipe before/after it so it doesnt get turbulence and what not causing incorrect readings. Pretty hard to stick it anywhere else with bends etc.

Yeah that's a good point, I have had 'simplicity where possible' as criteria for things so far. Yeah, I've done the opposite... I've specifically put a rubber seal at the rear of the bonnet line to stop air from coming back IN while travelling at speed, and building pressure in engine bay behind the radiator. Hmm this is true, if it was incapable of cooling the car in every day situations instead of just the track, I'd be almost immediately looking at this option. But since it's just the track where it's the issue, I'm more inclined to see if I can come up with an easier/cheaper way to sort it. If I had to refill a water spray tank after every stint its no big deal... and it would never be required on the road, so no big deal if it stops working.

Rebuilt motor and brand new radiator, so no probs there. Not sure what thermostat options there are. Cheers Nic might give them a buzz at some stage if I go down that route. Only thing is that it needs to be narrow enough so I can still fit my intake out the front, so most radiators are too wide.

Yep that's the ideal scenario I think? The heat energy used to turn the water into steam is removed from the radiator/hot air, and then passed out the back as a gas rather than droplets etc. Although any form of spraying water on to an 80s Toyota is probably asking for rust problems Nah it go out under the car, not over the top. I'd imagine it would only be practical to have a reasonably small amount of water being sprayed. The colder the water is to start with, the more heat energy is sapped from the radiator etc when it turns into steam? I can run a slightly wider radiator, but it would need to be custom made therefore $$$, and the only place it's required is on the track as I'd never see continuous WOT for several minutes while driving on the street. So looking for alternatives. Woops, will get the link fixed.

Mikuni, my thoughts were that if the water spray was a fine mist, it would be drawing heat away but without the massive thermal shock like it would be if you ran a hose on it. Currently the front of my car behind the grill etc looks like this: The cut out to the top left is where the engine air intake comes out, so two main places that the air can go are to there, and through the radiator. Still a few gaps I could probably try seal up though. I think I'll try the water wetter first, as it's the cheapest and easiest possible solution... And it will be beneficial to have it, even if other modifications are required also. I've already got everything required to run an oil cooler as well, and I could mount it in the spare space underneat the air intake in the blanking panel... Could just blank it off for when not at trackdays, so I'm not overcooling the oil during normal driving etc.

Okay, basically the issue I've got is that my radiator is JUST on the verge of not being adequate for track days. After 6-7 laps of Taupo, the temperature starts to creep up slightly... then if I back off for say, 1/2 a lap or a lap, I can go for another 6-7 laps without issue. I've admittedly got a tiny radiator, with only a small coolant volume. Although I realise that moving to a larger radiator is an obvious solution, there are packaging issues which make this difficult, hence small one in the first place. So I've been thinking that a possible solution, (given that this issue only arises at trackdays, and it wouldnt be a constant hassle) could be to run an intercooler sprayer type setup onto the radiator to increase its efficiency, that perhaps switches on at a certain temperature. Is this likely to do acheive meaningful, seeing as how you're using water, onto air, to cool hot water? If it works for an intercooler, should work for a radiator too? Other possible solutions: -Slightly wider radiator for better cooling and more volume. would need to be custom made and therefore $$$ -fit air cooled oil cooler, less work for the factory oil cooler, than runs from the coolant system - already have remote filter kit and lines for this. -Upgrade my heater core to something grunty, turn on while on the track and enjoy the tropical in car climate -water wetter stuff? Does this work? Any thoughts? I think I could rig up a second windscreen washer bottle with a power source easy enough, and try it out.

Hey, Just something else about your diff etc. and getting sorted with discs on the rear. For the brakes on mine, this is what the bracket/caliper looks like: So uses facelift SW20 MR2 rear caliper and bracket, Front disc from a P11 primera wagon, and the bracket that doubles as the bearing holder thing. However if you want all of the above to fit under a 14" wheel (and have better front/rear brake bias) You can use prefacelift SW20 MR2 caliper and bracket, and then you'll need a 263mm x 17mm disc instead of 280mm x 20. If you guys flick me an email address I'll send you that CAD drawing for the caliper bracket.

Perhaps that lower strip was a decal for the sake of being a stone gaurd of sorts.

Except for the roof wing! Cant stand those.

Agree about fibreglass heat wrap being the most useless stuff in the universe, I hate it! Dont think it's anything to do with the quality/cost, more than it's got a short lifespan and is a crappy alternative to alternative shielding. And yeah, 80s Toyotas are always going to have rust somewhere You can never get rid of it all... And even if you did, you'd be buying time, not a permenant solution to the problem of the crappy metal that these cars were made from during that era.