Roman

Widebody Starion wheels have to be one of the best factory wheels out of the 80s! If you swap them over for those narrowbody ones, Baby jesus is going to cry. Also I live not far from you now! Will come visit some time soon.

Some trackday pics came through... Okay I think this is some pretty good evidence that "Firmer front springs" needs to be put on the to-do list haha.

Sounds like the brake booster is working

I remember reading a thread on another forum, where a guy fed the rope in and it knotted itself while in the chamber... So stuck with rope in his motor hahaha

Mitsi KMs are like cat years. You have to multiply the number by 7.

This Friday just gone, I attended another Taupo trackday. It was an excellent success! Improved my laptime from a 1:55 down to 1.53.07. The Advan tyres were really great, and I learned a few new lines which were a bit of an improvement. I started the day on 30psi cold, found they bumped up to 37psi after first stint. Bled them back down to 32 which is where they stayed for the rest of the day. One thing though... Last time I was here I flat spotted two R888s, fitted to the front left wheel both times. This event as well... I had a few minor lockups but also a big one into the sweeper. When you have a lockup when you are going (for example) 150kph, if you lock up a wheel for 1/2 a second you've just slid for 20 meters. With no ABS its pretty easy to scrub a lot of tyre off! I was thinking "Shit there must be a bump or something that I'm going over that causes it" So I kept an eye out on my next lap around, to see if there was a bump in the track that I could avoid. What I found was interesting, there's actually a surface change in the track where they have resealed it... It's probably only a drop of 5mm or 10mm but when I'm braking right on the limit it's enough to upset it enough to lock up! As seen here: It's probably been there forever but I've just never noticed until I've had good enough tyres that I can brake right on the limit. Once I figured this out (and that I cant drive around it, I always have to cross the bump as the entire surface changes) I could start braking hard, off the brake over the bump then straight back on it. Which shortened up my braking zone by heaps. Unfortunately my laptop died in the afternoon so I have got no GPS data of the difference. Or laptimes for the afternoon either. My Dad also came along to this event, sometimes he'll drive the carina but he had his own toy there! Cutting some laps and baking some tyres in the JZX90, it was awesome: On the whole, apart from flat spotting a tyre it was a fairly uneventful trackday mechanically speaking which was awesome. Didnt need to use any tools what so ever. I almost gave an MX5 a bit of a nudge: Drove back home with cruise control turned on for 90% of the trip and it was just freaken sweet. Makes such a difference being able to stretch your legs a bit while driving. Still loving this gimmick haha. I've bought a full set of brand new R888s so will have these fitted for my next track event. Cant wait! Hopefully no flat spot issues anymore now that I know why!

haha wow what car is that fuel usage gauge from? I want it. haha

Using my eye-crometer I would suspect that the size of your throttle body is probably a restriction at the moment. If it is possible to datalog anything from the ECU though this will be the first step to figuring out what's next.

Hey so for starters what are some of the basics about the engine? -Displacement -Bore and stroke -Compression ratio -Valve lift / duration (if known) -RPM at which the engine makes peak torque and peak horsepower. When you know these things as a baseline, you can look at another similar displacement engine that acheives what you are wanting, and examine the differences. Like you might find that best place to start is a higher compression ratio, or more cam duration, or a bigger throttle body, or whatever. Or you might find that aftermarket common parts that will fit could help (like a hot cam from a 4k or whatever) If you have any datalogging capacity with your current ECU, then this will tell you some information about where the engine is currently at. By looking at MAP sensor pressure drop and a few other things. If you want to go down the ITB route I will donate a set of silvertop 4AGE throttle bodies to the project.

I've called the Japanese Prime Minister about your exhaust and he is not impressed. Love this car!

Sheeesh big difference!

keen

When mine had a horrid amount of end float, AKA no preload. My diff just got super crazy noisy. Inspecting the gearsets while apart and they seemed fine, still are 20,000kms later or whatever.

What duty cycle do your injectors get to at the moment? Maybe try go way bigger spray just on open valve period rather than back of valves? Staged injection + variable length runners? Methanol?? I reckon it would be interesting to setup a pressure sensor on an exhaust runner, and then find out if you see pressure peaks/troughs like you do on the intake side. You could find out the actual tuned length of the manifolds you've made. Then it might tell you a tale about needing to be a lot shorter or a lot longer. (or it might be sweet as is!) I remember somewhere seeing someone do this. They had a screw in fitting which then had a long hard line coming off it with a long coiled section in the airflow to dissipate the heat before it gets to the sensor. From memory if you're doing it right the exhaust pressure only goes up to 20psi or something like that. Can get an 80psi sensor cheap enough.

You can also weld them to your car, for a poor mans air jacks

True but why go to these lengths when you can just buy one brand new for 3 bucks or whatever. I paid one of the pro diff shops to sort mine out, and they fucked it up so bad. probably 5-6mm end float on the pinion because the splines were grabbing before the torque tube was reached. How could you not notice that??? They also hammered the torque tube back out instead of replacing it. Frustrating when you expect to get a good job done for paying $$$ and then have to do it yourself anyway.

Toyota manual says dont ever reuse torque tube, even if you back off the nut slightly its a throw away item. Also, I had a problem where even though the torque tube was torqued down to spec, I had a shitload of end float. Turns out that the splines were jamming before the torque tube squashed up, hence the float. So take the tube out and make sure splines move freely on one another. lold at the tyre valve!! Random.

That looks really good! I've been talking to Snoozin about taking these somewhere to get polished, but the thing is the wheels are pitted from lots of corosion from sitting so long. So I've been getting in there with an air powered random orbital sander with 240 grit stick on discs. Have managed to get most of the pitting out, with a brute force approach haha. Because of the shape of these wheels it's actually stupidly easy to do these with the power tools. My impul wheels I couldnt do the same as there are nooks and crannies you couldnt reach. Even just that so far and they're starting to look heaps better, will need to get some stick on sanding disc things in higher grades and see how that goes. May require some hand finishing but for the better part should be able to plow through it with the air tools / polishing pad / etc.

Dont stand in it though. You might get etchy feet.

It looks like they will be reasonably easy to get looking decent without too much hand sanding/polishing/etc.... The only issue looks to be that since these wheels were in especially crappy condition to start with, some of the existing corrosion/scratches on the lip of the wheel looks too deep to really sand out. Bummer. Should have started with a better set, lesson learned. I started using the rear of the car jacked up to polish the (tiny!) lip on one of the wheels so far and seems pretty good results on that. Because the faces of the spokes are flat, and there's nothing in the way, it will be super easy to use sanding pads/buffing pads/etc on the centre spokes to get most of the way there I think. However this is a seriously tedious job that is zero amount of fun, haha. I'm cringing at thinking how much time this is still going to take! There's zero chance of having these ready for putting tyres on by tomorrow for akl OS meet, which was my goal from a few weeks ago.

Not sure yet. The finish currently looks perfect for paint adhesion, so I'm considering options for painting first and polishing the polishy bits afterwards before they get dirty. The type of finish currently on the wheel, definitely isnt appropriate to roll as is. It looks like it would pick up a crazy amount of dirt/brake dust, and it's obviously a very dull looking finish. So it isnt a magic bullet that gives you a wheel thats ready to roll, but my opinion so far is that it's an option to consider if you dont want to spend a million hours cleaning wheels. It does look like it's etched away some amount of the surface of the wheel all over, as previously there were faint machining marks on the "polished" surface of the rim that are now gone. So keep this in mind if you have some wheels that have some racing legends signature hand engraved into a spoke or something like that, it may slightly deteriorate very fine details. When/if I buy some other wheels like starsharks or whatever, if they need restoring then I'd consider going down this path again. It's a good process for something that has a lot of detail (like mesh wheels) with complex patterns which are difficult to clean mechanically. I probably wouldnt try this on something like a Hoshino G5 or SSR Mk1, because you've got to polish up an absolute shitload of the centre of the wheel again. Something dishy like a starshark where you polish up the lips anyway, and only small details on the spokes are polished. Seem like a good contender for this process.

I have seen a few threads about people getting wheels sand blasted, or paint strippered, or oven cleanered, or whatever. I have had some MA61 celica/supra wheels which looked like absolute trash, they look like they had been under the ocean for the last 30 years. I took them to powerstrip in Penrose, $230 for 4 wheels to be stripped completely clean and I'm fairly impressed. It took about a week because they need to soak in a tank for ages for the process to work. The surface finish is now something like 800 or 1000 grit sandpaper, they certainly dont come out shiny. Considering that these were caked with dirt, and painted, and stained, and whatever else. I think it has been a worthwhile process. As it would take many hours of sand blasting/degreasing/etc to acheive the same thing. Will report back to this thread when I get them polished etc. Previously: Now:

Haha yeah maybe oldschool drags this year? 3AU showdown. I'll get an epic launch with the super boaty suspension. Could possibly even break traction. Maybe.

Start working on the repairs while at the meet, and we can all stand around nodding authoratively as though we know something about trumps

Hmmmmmmmm reading this makes me want to dig the yellow car out of the garage and take it for a spin. Words I never thought I'd ever utter, but the 3AU in the yellow car is actually really nice to drive. It possibly has the worlds smoothest T50 as well, because it's never had any power through it hahaha.