LDz Project Car - 89 Turbo

[LordDigital]

Having a little over 1GB of picz of my Supra Project ,I decided that I can post some here

1.The Beginning:

Looking for a MR2 Turbo, I found the Supra by doing turbo search on CraigzList. The car was just parked for a little over 4 years.Knowing that ,I still decided that it will be a Phun project car so I paid $300 and it was all mine:

2.BaseLine

As a step one I wanted to restore some critical mechanical/electric stuff before I even drive it.

Generally speaking the car was quite neglected ,even before the 4 years park time... There was a small fire in the engine compartment (Due to Failed Alternator) so the harness was a mess.
After I redid the harness ,I've replaced all vacuum and coolant hoses mostly with Toyota parts from my local dealer ,accordion hose ,timing belt ,all seals (rear main and some diff seals were left for later) ,belts ,etc etc.

Started the car ,found that it could not rev pass 2000rpm. Luckily I've spend the time to read the latest Engine Control Systems PDF set (sourced From Toyota University ,use WinRar ,pass: toyotaturbo) and I immediately knew what the problem was. 2 Hours later the TPS was rebuild and calibrated. Then I drove the car for one block just to find out that I had vacuum leak ,blown turbo seals ,etc.

Knowing that the bloody colour of the interior is something that I can live with but I can't drive a car with a 3-spoke Chrome rims ,and the turbo seals ... I started looking for low mileage parts car. I few weeks later I found a treasure ,7xK Miles 87T at a local IAA auction.

Needles to say the Partz car was Extremely well taken care of ,truly collectors MKIII (if such thing exists:icon_conf ) with one owner that kept every single record from the vehicle sticker ... $900 rust repairs Invoice from the dealership ... all the way to the $700 that he Paid for a rebuild turbo from Parts.com:nono: Unfortunately the car was damaged beyond repair and it was only good for Donor Car...

I took the exhaust system ,Turbo ,Brake Calipers ,Rims from the Donor so finally the car was almost ready to hit the road. The only problem was the suspension ,neither of the Supras had good shocks (that is the reason the black one was totaled btw). So I went with Eibach/Koni combo - the first real upgrade...

 

[mattgo]

wow good buy, that's a great color, good luck with the build.

 

[LordDigital]

3.First Wave of Modz:
(Sorry I don't want to dig pictures of the trivial stuff)

My first major investment was a complete ZT2 ,including Boost Sensor ,EGT ,etc. To connect it I got Field Harness.

Then the usual:
AVC-R + SAFC
WallBro 2xx
,M-R DownPipe (2.5" Flex:icon_evil )
Brembo Blank Rotors
NGK Silicone Spark Plug Wires + NGK 3330

After mapping it correctly the car ran fine. I did notice however that the EGTs were high ,easily over 850 degrees Celsius towards the end of 3th gear. It is not that I did not attempt fixing the problem ,adjusted the timing ,added more fuel but still nothing seemed to make difference. I was sure that it must've been an extreme back pressure so installed my firs unique mod:

"Custom" Dump Valve:

(on a side note the cost with parts ,welding ,etc was well over $300 ... Iff I knew that I would’ve purchased a complete exhaust system...)



Anyways ,knowing that there was Zerro Back pressure ,I was still getting high EGTs. Sure enough the inevitable happened ,when rIcing my buddy's 350Z I hit almost 1000 degrees Celsius EGT:

This immediately led to BHG ,but I believe that the reason for the high EGT was a combination of the limit for the stock CT26 AND the restrictive stock IC and IC Piping.



So here comes the BHG repair (All PicZ Available Here and Here)


Here is the Interesting stuff tough: First the sad part. The honing on 5 and 6 was gone ,I did not have time to fix that so ... the engine is still in the same condition today:

I got my head gasket rebuild ,at highly trusted machine shop (New seals ,3angle ,etc):

I used stock Head Gasket with ARPs ,torqued at 72 ft.

Now to avoid further EGT problems ,I've send my turbo to PT for an upgrade ,60-1. Here is a nice Pic of upgraded CT26 next to my first choice Garrett BB turbo:

Finally to be 101% sure that there is no more EGT issues I got the SS ElBlow:

More Picz of Turbo and ElBlow stuff here

 

[LordDigital]

4.More Modz:

After the BHG ,Turbo-Upgrade ,etc - the car did not improve as much as I expected ,not even cllose ... EGTs were a little lower but still going over 850C at 4th. I knew that I had to upgrade the IC ,so I did it together with the IC pipes:

I've used 2.5" pipes off of ebay and a ebays Intercooler (460mm X 160mm X 90mm) (3.5" think). Also I replaced the 3000 Pipe with some 2.75 pieace that came from some dirty cheap Pipe kit for RX7:

After the IC related modz ,the car felt really fast for the first time.

At this point I had the car Dynoed at Sound-Performance Dyno. There are very many reasons why I could not "get" the 300+RWHP that I went there for ,but the main one was that due to boost spikes I had to kill the boost down to around 9psi - I'm not sure if it is my AVC-R or the trim for the housing is waaaaay too big ,but I aways spike at transients... Anyways the result was 290rwhp and 354rwtq ,log file here
,movie here


With that much torque I killed 2 oldish DriveShafts fairly quickly ,so I had to get the SS one piece DS

I started AutoX-ing so I got some more susp modz ,like ST SwayBars ,BIC adjustable end links ,but still the car seemed to be very slow on low speed autoX events. One reason was me of course ,but I've driven ancient cars with Semi-Trailing arms suspension and I was still faster than heavily moded double wishes cars with good drivers behind the wheel. After the Eibach/Koni ,Sways ,EndLinks ,the main problem is that the car is unpredictable - it is obvious to me that the suspension does not work they it is suppose to - thus I'm currently undergoing major upgrade including all available A1 arms ,all poly bushings and of course BICs Nylon spacers. I'll post picz soon

As a final mod at the end of 2006 ,I went with MaftPro resulting in AFM elimination ,aka as AFM relocation. I still have some transient issues with the Pro ,but their support so far has been great and I'm sure once the car is back on track we will figure it out.

I guess that there is a bunch of stuff that I forgot ,like when at 10psi I spun the 225 tires a few times thus I decided that it is time to get new rims and tires. SSR Professors were the logical choice ,ZX and Prelude fitment from TireRack was the source:

That is all that I can remember for now ,10z for reading and I'll try tol keep this thread updated :icon_wink:

 

[LordDigital]

wow good buy, that's a great color, good luck with the build.

10x. The color is OK ,but with the new rims I'm sure that now I want it "Porsche" Black - so one day it will get painted

 

[SupraDreamPDR]

looking good. so, do you have an exhaust system on there, or just the cut-out and MR dp?

 

[LordDigital]

looking good. so, do you have an exhaust system on there, or just the cut-out and MR dp?

MR DP ,(Cut-out) to (Stock CatBack) split pipe instead of TestPipe, and stock catBack all the way to the back.

When I was at the SPs Dyno I actually did do a Cut-Out vs. StockCatBack pull. Same A/R and Boost settings (9 to 9.5), the difference was just 20rwhp - looks like the stock cat back is not so bad AfterAll :aigo:

 

[LordDigital]

A few of the latest suspension parts.

First 10z again BIC Performance for getting us one more cool product - Nylon SubFrame Bushing - so far they look pretty good ,will post more after I install them:

and more:

So now I've got a complete Bushings set ,minus the 4 for the hub and for the steering rack I guess...:

All new HardWAre from Toyota :

And now the intresting stuff ,full set of A1racing goodies (DGT010 ,DGT011 and DGT018) next to the stock:

New ToyoBushings for the hubs:

Getting the Freezer and the oven ready ,and the A-Arms too:icon_bigg

And Finally a Supra in "Ready to Fly Low State" ,due to inAbility do roll :wink :

 

[LordDigital]

Car is back on the Road again after major Suspension Modz.

For good BaseLine I got 92 Auto from Copart ,removed the subframe that looked like this:

After a few weeks of SandBlasting (Took me some time to find the right abrasive/gun/etc.) ,and Some R&D and 30LBS of steel:

Stage 1 (Good for 2000 lb/ft )

Stage 2: (Good for 4000 lb/ft )

More pics - low res here:
http://supra.stalx.com/Project/RearSubFrame%203/Gallery/pages/IMG_5387.htm

High Res:
http://supra.stalx.com/index.asp?path=/Project/RearSubFrame%203/FullSize


P.S. Tomorrow Supra goes to Dr.Hunter :icon_evil ,and I'll take more pics of the rear subframe with all the A1 Racing ,Spacers and other goodies - looks pretty good

 

[TurboFreak]

Nice!!!! You know how to please the SM crowd with your pictures!! Awesome build. Subscribed.

 

[LordDigital]

Nice!!!! You know how to please the SM crowd with your pictures!! Awesome build. Subscribed.

10z Will try to keep the picturez flowing

 

[LordDigital]

A Few more Hard-Dev picz:

ProZ style Primer:

And final coat was of courz wUrt ,can't find the picz right now...

 

[LordDigital]

Here are some picz of the "final product":

OverAll the Suspension project was THE HARDEST of what I did so far - BHG or changing engines is like a Joke compared to cutting seized toy0da bolts ,SandBlasting ,etc etc.

 

[LordDigital]

A few notes.

A1 rIcing (a1 racing) (a1racing) products - If I was to rate their products I would rate them with 2/10 ,2 because this is the only available ARMS for our cars otherwise they deserve 0. Some of the arms were too short, NONE of the arms had correct ends and to put the Toyota bolts I had to bring them to my machine shop, etc etc.

The car handles aalot better, it is like a G0-Cart to be more exact. The progressive springs still helps keep the car 100% street able ,we took it for a 500Miles trip ,with 3 ppl and I was the only one complaining from the suspension stiffness Of course the rear hub bearing went south, but I guess they will all go eventually ... should’ve replaced them when I had the hub in the shop :icon_conf

 

[speed]

Wow, awesome build.


Too bad about the A1 susp. stuff, but thanks for the rating

 

[LordDigital]

I’ve been a little too lazy to update my project recently.

Since I did the all of the suspension work myself I decided that I could finish it up by aligning the car. It should not be that hard, considering all the HELL I went true for 8 weeks to rebuilding the suspension... I do not have an Alignment Rack at my shop, so 10x to my buddy (ALTEZZA) I got a time block to use their Hunter DSP 400:

It took me some time to figure the mystery in constantly changing TOE and Camber at the rear. With A1 racing it is very very easy to change them independently (by changing the length of the traction arm and the camber arm). It is a little brute force approach, considering the fact that the Caster goes way off, but who cares about Caster at the rear anyways
So the rear was the EZ part, I moved to the front and guess what – I screwed up the subFrame trying to move the brand new camber bolts. Both size (3 of the 4 alignment studs were … gone). The rack is at a Toyota dealership after all but no one had immediate Idea why the arms would not move. And I know for a fact that they are not seized since I installed those 3 weeks earlier. The block to use the Hunter was over, so I had to go home. Next day an experienced mechanic told us that Supras and t4rs are the ONLY Toyota that you can’t adjust the front camber when the wheels are on the alignment rack ,w0w… I wish that I knew that.


So I fixed my front subFrame, this time I DID preset a maximum camber while the car was in my shop and the front tires were in the air. I went back to the Hunter with a 25min time block, and here is the result:

If I had more time, the settings were going to be more even. Not that I care, since this is pretty much Max camber for the front. For more - drilling the subFrame Might be an option BUT getting JUN goodies is the ultimate solution. Looking at some 89 Group A videos ,track MK3s did have lots of camber in the front ,that is -3 or even more negative … so the next suspension component will be the JUN adjustable upper A-Arms…

 

[LordDigital]

Now it was time go for some events to get some real impression of the suspension.

On the street, the car is still quite street able. This is mostly due to the progressive springs. There is some road noise, but it is acceptable. Now going over 100MPH … road noise and extreme vibrations – but how often do I go there?

On the track, it is totally different car. I went to 3 low speed AutoX events already and needless to say I’m quite impressed. Last year we were at 6-7 events, always with my buddie's BMW 330. He was always much faster than me, in 60sec courses he was able to constantly beat me with 3 to 4 seconds. His car is an AutoX preped BMW (Suspension, and BPU on the engine).
This year he was not able to beat me with more than 1sec, considering the fact that he added to his mods that clearly shows how better the Supra is with all new bushings. I’m sure that he would not stand a chance on mid to high Speed courses

Here is a few vidz and picz.


SCCA TireRack ,South Bend ,IN:

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWJKYAz_Qy0

And picz:
http://celica.toyotabg.net/USA%20Chicago%202007/TireRack%20Autocross%2005.08.2007/




MayWood AutoX:

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG6BNQ5-U_Y

More picz:
http://supra.stalx.com/Project/AutoX%20MayWood%20VWChicago%2007/Gallery/pages/DSC01224.htm

 

[s383mmber1]

Sick!

 

[Supraholics]

Nice Build! Was that drift in the video intentional or just lost it for a second?

 

[LordDigital]

Nice Build! Was that drift in the video intentional or just lost it for a second?

10x

The fastest way around this turn (considering the low speed and the 180°+) is probably with modest understeer. On this run I just floored it at the 90° and it slit quite a bit had to let it go too early to call it a Drift ,because of the stupid cones…