lofreq's x100 garage slipway chaser

[lofreq]

so heres some more.

you know how sometimes you see average-as looking dudes with average-as hair and average-as face and average-as tshirts and average-as pants… but then they walk past with some dope as baller as fuck kicks?

yea so i thought why cant i be like that guy. so i got some new shoes.

dot .com racing 17×9 +15 all round

ok so i hated the way the Rezax’s looked on the 100. i took a risk, it didnt pay off. without a kit, the 18s looked too big on the car. it looked like when you have 17s on a starlet – the wheel arches are full, the car is “lowered”, but the whole thing looks like its standing up off the ground. like a rollerskate. add to that the pretty poor offset and it became clear to me that sticking with them would just eat away at me and leave me quite dissatisfied.

so after some long hard thinking i decided to go back to a 17″ size, and shelled out on the credit card on the .com’s

i am stoked!

anyway, so thats not the only thing that was done – with evans help carting me all over auckland i sorted out picking up a bunch of parts, and got more stuff done tonite

thanks to michael from BNT – whole box of goodies from BNT including shockproof redline gearbox oil, fuchs LSD oil, full set of new brake pads for the new tourer V brakes; and thanks to Mark and Nick- new waterpump, cambelt, idler, seals, rah rah rah

thanks to mike: motor has been stripped a bit further, waterpump etc out… needs a ton of degreaser and a good cleanup, this bitch is dirty

thanks to evan: gearbox now sports new clutch, arm, release bearing, clutch/fly/ringgear is next to go on

and the whole new jzx90 subframe, lsd, bigger swaybar, bigger axles etc, is more or less ready to bolt in

but yadda yadda yadda. who really cares when u got cool new shoes

front offset is now aggressive as

i used some 9″ bolt on spacers for the rear for a bit of that ‘offset king’ stance

so yes. more progress this weekend. meanwhile… anyone interested in some 17×8, 17×9 +38 5×114 rims? ;D for you special price.

[Anpanman]

Like those wheels a lot. was checking out the same ones on trademe just a few days ago.

Pretty good progress here I think.

[NicT]

Could be keen on the old wheels for the misses crown. What offset are they and how much are you wanting?

[lofreq]

+38 front and rear. i thought crowns were 4x114 not 5x114? $500 for the wheels anyway

also got those Work Rezax for sale too, if mike doesnt take em for his qualis wagon first... $700 with tires for those

[lofreq]

so we've been busy.

cambelt done

clutch slave drilled tapped and fitted

ring gear cut off auto fly, baked and fitted to new flywheel. clutch assembled centered and fitted. engine mounts swapped from aristo mounts to jzx90. intake piping reassembled. cut vac lines reattached. water hoses rerouted. power steering high pressure line swapped for jzx90 item. internal wiring loom cut spliced and labelled. engine loom spliced and labelled. new drivebelt, flywheel spigot bearing, waterpump, thermostat, idler, starter motor wiring, alternator wiring.

oh and turbo #1 prespool boost mod ready to go.

2jz test fitted - perfect fit. gearbox mounts bolt up factory, shifter in factory position, clutch steel line bent out of way but otherwise perfect fit. without all the actual hard work, once in it looks easy, and stock.

next up - wiring, fluids, first crank!

[lofreq]

just a quick update on the ”jzx102″ swap. the last two weeks have been a true test of patience and acceptance of things one cannot control – as well as realising the full impact of trying to be a “car nut” while working on a car that isnt where you live. getting a car working entails more than just knowing what plugs in where – first you have to actually be there where the plugs are.

anyway heres whats been happening:

a ton of wiring has been traced and sorted by with the fuel pump prime trigger hard wired to the ignition, 2 batteries daisychained by jumper leads, and the engine earthed to the body by more jumper leads popping and crackling all over the show, the motor was cranked…

and after a cough of black smoke she fired up beautifully and settled to a purr! sounds fuckin awesome… as most motors do with open headers

mike noticed a fair bit of oil spit out the turbo outlets upon revving the motor a bit, enough to form a small puddle under the car. concerned, we shut it off thinking it might be blown turbo seals or something worse??? but after the initial panic we decided to fire it again and rev it hard to blow the oil out. sure enough, it all blew out and stopped spitting oil. relief!

so with the motor ready to go, all that was left was to tie everything up – all fluids, cables, wires, mounts and bolts….. all was going well until at the end of the day i thought to straighten up the steering wheel. the wheel deflected about 10degrees, and stopped with a dead thunk – making the motor shake in the process. now why would turning the steering wheel move the engine??

when your cast factory dump pipe is jammed up against the steering knuckle, of course. FCK. day ended there on a downer.

however a followup crack at the problem saw that the cast Y pipe was a seperate piece to the factory manifold! thought it was all one piece. lifting the motor up a bit allowed it to be unbolted and removed. Evan came to the rescue again here and got a custom Y pipe made up of parts of his old 1UZ extractors, that curved the 2nd turbo outlet away and around the steering arm.

this also resulted in a 2.25″inch into 3inch collector, instead of a 2inch into 2.5inch factory restriction. win, and win. and all without having to pull the motor right out again – win3. how sweet is this thing:

all wiring has been nailed and the dash operates like factory – all except the tacho. as usual with these toyotas, the tacho always seems to be the troublesom one. will have to leave this for now unless someone has some tips to share on how to get the tach working (output from ignitor directly into the tach perhaps?????)

next up, intercooler. this was reasonably fun

finally settled on running aircon in the factory location, an MA70 supra twin core radiator, electric fans, and my 70mm scarles low height intercooler – fits perfectly under the front bumper support with nothing needing to be cut…much.

finished off with figuring out the IC piping, i really wanted to run some kind of Vmount but given the space constraints and issues with aircon heat exchanger, i was forced to go down the conventional route. this meant more runs to TubeBenders for more ali piping and bends but in the end its been sussed, simple 2.5″ all round into 3″ at the throttle body.

got this tied up just as Waz and Dave returned from meremere manji day – dramas abound. wondering why the above pic is so hazy – its cus someone with a jzx81 ripped a 3rd gear burnout on the carport 23 seconds earlier, slicing thru the garden hose in the process, and lending the garage with that underground nightclub look.

- tomorrow im taking a half day off and hope to spend the whole afternoon on the car and get things tidyed up. hoping to finish the wiring and interior, mount the dump pipe, and sort out power steering lines, radiator lines and whatnot. lots more little things before she rolls on her own power. but so close!

can not wait to drive this thing…

[FLAWLES]

awsome work nigel

coming to gether nicely,

[thegreatestben]

Agree in regards to wiring being dreamy apart from tacho.

Mine just doesn't want to play along

[Stu]

Original Tacho fed from coils? Easy enough to make an interface if needed.

[lofreq]

progress on the 2j swap - its down to the small nitty gritty stuff that takes the longest to do.

...but to cut a long story short:

i reckon that sounds pretty sick! and how quiet is that idle with no exhaust??

since last post, a couple of things have happened.

radiator+elec fans+shroud fitted and plumbed; camry throttle cable fitted; engine mount bolts finally done up after adding oil filter sandwich plate and oil pressure sender for new gauges (oil filter was in the way of the mount bolt); boost sender mounted; new air filter pipe and IC piping beaded by mike and installed; evan's exhaust downpipe fitted, oxy sensor extended; broken IACV VSV valve sourced and replaced, brake booster vacuum hose connected; heater lines connected; gearbox topped up with Redline Shockproof; powersteering connected and filled; clutch bled; plugs sanded, coils cleaned up...

lovin the IC work - simple and sweet

still a couple of things to do - there is a pesky water leak from the firewall heater hose (of course in the most inaccessible place) and my boost taps need to be tee'd and plumbed in, and the electric fans need to be connected to the thermo switch and relayed up - otherwise all underbonnet work is more or less completed

heres some earlier pics before the radiator/intake work etc

last on the list - exhaust to be made up, rear subframe swapped in, front brakes swapped over, reassemble interior with new gauges (have decided to run an 80mm tacho instead of f34king around with pulling the dash apart to rewire the tach - what is this "interface" thats easy to make? id love for the factory tach to work with the new distributorless setup??) and then she should be ready for certification and WOF.

gettin' there!

(bit o' fun with the vinylcutter)

[Mr dori]

this thing goes mean as. Stoked

[Stu]

Interface is very easy to make. How was the original tacho setup? Single coil/dizzy? Wasted spark?

[lofreq]

ok so, havent updated this for a lil while, been busy etc. so heres whats happened.

after a flurry of work from my mate evan, the chaser saw its exhaust completed finally – and i set about swapping the tourer V front brakes on. i also finalised the gauges and tacho layout, plumbed the turbo1 prespool controller, sorted the electric fans thermoswitch, just all the last few bits and pieces. FINALLY it was time to get her off those blasted jack stands and back on its four feet again. here she is once again at ground level, suddenly it looks rearing to go

all looking pretty stock in there! unfortunately after getting her down and firing her up, we realised nothing was going to happen – it had been pissing down and the garage exit was a mud swamp, the chaser was stuck behind davy’s head-less R32, and Waz’s beast that was locked and Waz not home! all we could do was chuck her into reverse and 1st and roll up and down about 3 feet. god dammit! but she was running and as far as we could tell all seemed ok.

also found that the rear tucks sweet and has heaps of travel after rejacking the front to roll the fenders a bit more lol

this was on friday night and i was off to Sydney (another story) for a week the very next morning so i couldnt make any more progress myself, but whilst wandering around Darling Harbour i got a txt from Mike going on about how loose the car was! obviously it was out and about on the road terrorising mt wellington - hence this photo cropping up on our blog a lil while later:

awesome. the news sounded good, and i was itching to get home to take her out.

my chance finally came the saturday after when i was back in aucks and managed to get back to the garage – the boys informed me that, while it was performing great for the most part, the clutch seemed to slip under load once the motor was getting down to business… and just recently it seemed to stop boosting properly – somethign was wrong. a quick testdrive found a simple problem – the turbo2 IACV controller vac line had popped off and was no longer opening the airstream from turbo2 – i was only running off 1 turbo at 10psi max. reconnecting this line brought us back to full power and the car was all over the road at the touch of the throttle – totally crazy in the greasy conditions. it also randomly hits boostcut, and after about 15mins of starting up, the engine check light mysteriously comes on. teething problems that will be worked on nonetheless.

either way, that was it for now, and the machine was baby’d home in the wet, back to my apartment block basement where it used to live

yes, it is also time to stop using my goddamn cellphone for these grainy as fuck pics – i dont own a proper camera so once this thing is legal i will be keen on a proper hard parker fatlace parkup shoot somewhere… ;>

so i think that concludes “Stage One” of this project!!! next up on the list is certification, and then WOF and REG and officially its out and on the prowl. not the end of the project by any means, i have yet to give it a full wheel alignment, and complete the necessary mods for cert – but as a more interesting teaser i have an SAFC lined up to install, then its off to the dyno for some baseline runs and fine tuning! i hope this setup is making about 220wkw stock, and perhaps 250wkw with a tune, if the fuel pump allows. (safe limit on stock twins is 265wkw, so im not gonna push it – there is bucketloads of torque already – u can putt around town at 50kmh in 5th at just above idle, drives brilliantly!) the LSD is tame enough around carparks but a blip on the gas just off the mark will kick the arse out and get you goin... so it seems to have the makings of a killer streeter. i am stoaked! 2jz? no shit.

next up - cert mods, SAFC, clean up the guards and fix paint, and some proper pics...

[corrupt]

This things so sweet, love how low-key it all looks at this point. I can just imagine how loose this is when its greasy, my 1j is dangerous enough.

What are your plans for it body wise? just tucked rims under guards, or are you looking at slapping on some form of body kit?

[lofreq]

thanx man. ima just stance it out stockbody for now, i quite like how it looks now tbh just wheels and stance - simple and honest and tough. but down the line if necessary, ill get a kit.

my first choice is of course the aimgain kit.

but failing that it will be the car modify wonder kit because its not as overly agressive as the BN kit, and its more readily available. and for $790 landed its even affordable!.

but to tell the truth im really not too fussed right now maybe ill wait till i spin off into an armco, then ill have an excuse

[NVMY R]

Tinted windows would look nice

[lofreq]

finally:

now i can finally roll legit. still feel like im rolling against the law on my way back from the post office - not used to it! feel like im gonna get pulled over any second hah. will take a bit of time to get used to driving round now.

so next up :

- swap proper wheels back on and stance it out proper

- give it a proper clean!!! and some proper photos

- contemplating stealthing out the IC and piping gunmetal or flat black

- need to trace the problem with the engine check light coming on after 15mins of driving

- need to test clutch to ensure its not slipping on motorway under boost in 3rd/4th as it FEELS like it...

- LED bulbs swap

- install my sounds that ive been sitting on since forever

- ROADTRIP!!!

nige

[EURON8]

Bottom left success?

Whats the deal with these and certs?

Certain ages only?

[HighLUX]

engine check light could be speed sensor for gearbox not connected? Have a similar problem with the townace, ECU packs a sad because it doesnt get a speed sensor reading and throws on the check light after bout 15min driving too

[lofreq]

thanks for the tip on speed sensor - will def hunt that down and connect - very likely that hasnt been connected. cheers bro

as for emissions - yes im told that any engine repower/swap/induction change (even if swapping the same motor back in) is now subject to emissions test - i guess because anything other than original needs to show it is not super polluting. emissions test is extra $50 on cert, involves certifier hooking up wideband etc to cigarette powered suitcase sized monitoring unit that he drives round with in the passenger seat.

amazingly mine passed with flying colours despite no cat and straight thru exhaust - he says this is largely due to quality of the factory ECU. assume an aftermarket unit would be quite alot worse if just tuned for on-boost power..