Techno Pro Spirit Coil-over Conversion

In this video the owner of Techno Pro Spirit shows us what is involved in converting a standard strut into a height adjustable unit with a short stroke damper,

TPS are my favorite '86 tuning garage in japan, they turn out some serious n/a 4ag's and have an awesome n2 spec Levin (pictured below)

TPS website link--------> http://www.tp-spirit.co.jp/

I love lamp.

For a while now I'd been meaning to get the corner lamps working in my Trueno. On some pics I had seen they seemed to be an extra set of side lamps, and most Truenos seem to have them disconnected, but when I swapped out the bulbs for some working ones I found out that they are cool corner illuminators that come on when you indicate (with headlights on) to light up where you are going. Sarahs Levin also has this feature though her corner lamps are always on and then brighten up when she indicates. An interesting little courtesy feature from Mr.Toyota, but I thought it would be cooler to continue the orange theme from the little side lights and indicators into the corner lamps. Some amber 21w bulbs later and now I have the worlds coolest turn signals.





I have a bit of a thing for lights on cars so expect another post when I track down my sacred 2 door redlines from the motherland auctions!

nom nom

Random Snap

At long last I dusted off my proper digital camera, camera phone pics are just not going to cut it anymore on the new blog! After a nice day cruising around in a freshly detailed Trueno, I found a nice quiet bit of road sitting in the last few minutes of sunset for that almost jdm option style shot..

That Runfree Alpha style front bumper may do a great job of cooling a track hachi (you can nearly see my whole radiator!) but it has definitely seen better days and I am just dying to put the OEM bumper + lip on after it gets sprayed..

My Hachi!

Over the last year alot of work had gone into my car it got a full respray and freshly built lightened and balanced engine. The car was stripped down to a bare shell and sprayed in march '09. When I got it back the engine was dropped in, but not before it got my touch!

I ordered a Marteluis exhaust manifold from MCN Sport, it was a neat and tidy fit and looks the part in the freshly sprayed engine bay. A tincy bit loud though!

Next on the list was a poly bush kit from Techno Toy Tuning, which went in over a weekend along with front wheel bearings and inner and outer track rods. I also fitted a T3 short shifter and rose-jointed Panhard rod.

The 15" SSR reverse meshes that i got my hands on were sold as they did not suit the car, I visited a notorious wheel hoare and got myself a lend of a set of clean te37s.

"Lend". . . . . !!



This is the car as it is now, I've a few more little jobs to get done before the summer! But it's come a long way!

Sarah x

AJPS

Aka , All Japanese panels and spares . Are deffo worth a mention here.

They have a good line up of performance ae86 parts,

just one example are these caliper brackets to upgrade

the ae86 with Mazda fd/fc calipers

link........http://www.ajps.com.au/parts_ajps.asp

"Be a Hero"

We got the new Go Pro HD Motorsport hero cam, so hopefully over the summer we can keep the blog up to date with the new drift car antics on track and also edit up some nice streeto when i get the hang of editing ............

http://www.goprocamera.com/index.php?area=2&productid=30

** brake upgrade **

When most people see upgrade and drum brake in the same sentence, it usually has the words from, to, and discs in it as well. Well not for me! My 2-door Trueno GT is the lowest level on the specification tree, below GTV and GT Apex, and apart from its very lightweight cloth AE85 interior, it also sports a retro cool drum brake set up on the back axle. Interestingly the 2 door Trueno GT is also the lightest AE86 from the factory, listed at a supple 905kg, having no silly electrical gadgets or heavy seats to weigh it down. Manhandle windows for the win!
But back to the brakes... the rears had been performing poorly for the past few weeks, either braking weakly or else locking on, and an inspection revealed that some leaky brake cylinders were partly to blame. I had also seen some cool uprated brake shoes made by a company called RIGID in one of Kev's Japanese Levin/Trueno books, No other info was available on them other than that they were uprated brake shoes for AE86. Sounded good to me, so a mail was sent to RHDJapan to see if they were still in production and could be sourced. I was in luck and the company was found, and they made me a set to order. 3 months later, a cool set of brake shoes arrived in the post. Some brand new Toyota brake cylinders were also ordered from the friendly local dealer.




So this weekend I cruised up to GH once again and we commenced the strip down. Seeing as the brakes had not really been working 100%, the drums were actually in very good shape, and only required a quick sand down and a clean to give a fresh surface for the new shoes to bed in on. (Ill paint them high temp black some day to finish the job). Everything went in straightforwardly, with all the parts cleaned and adjusted back to spec. The whole system was bled thoroughly as well and the pedal feel is perfect now. Big thanks to Kev for doing pretty much all of it, his work is 110%. I was having a bit of a non functioning weekend not helped much by a suprise nasty hangover on Sunday morning too haha.

Here is the old dirty set up, (the other side was worse, leaking really badly)



And here are the nice new cylinder and shoes with everything cleaned and adjusted properly


The front brakes have obviously not been forgotten, and also received the GH Treatment. The Trueno already had fresh standard discs, and a few months back we installed some very nice street sports pads by Project Mu:
www.project-mu.co.jp/e/product/hc-plus.html



I spent quite a while researching all of the different pads available, and this set seemed to have the widest operating temperature range as well as a good friction coefficient for a nice bite. Being my daily car it was just as important to have pads that work well from cold on commute to work as well as taking a roasting when driving hard.

No brake upgrade is complete without braided lines, and the extremely high quality offerings from APP were also installed to give that solid pedal feel. There is also a braided line between the axle and body of the car, and everything else is hardline.



Having drums on the rear I didnt need the rear set so they were donated to Sarah's Levin which just happened to need rear lines at the time. Nothing goes to waste in GarageHachi!

As with any Hachi work, nothing goes to plan, or if it does, another little problem or upgrade in waiting reveals itself, so of course we discovered a leaky seal on one of my calipers this weekend. Cue another call to Mr Toyota tomorrow for yet more OEM parts! But aside from that, the braking set up is now pretty much perfect, it all works well cold for normal commuting and once warmed up you can really dive hard into corners. So before you go thinking of a big brake upgrade for your hachi consider giving the factory set up a little TLC, you will be suprised :)

Dave

parts:
Toyota brake cylinders 47550-12060

Random Snap,

another weekend at the garage.............

Some Comfort !!?!

One the first jobs I tackled on my Levin was the interior. When I got it first it had a bolt in cage, a cracked red dash top, no rear seats, mismatched front seats and was missing some interior plastics. This wasn't gonna cut it for my new daily slider!!

The first thing I picked up was a black GT-Apex grade interior minus the front seats.

After I had that all cleaned up and fitted, I decided to get a good dash top flocked, just to be different and to stop any glare on the screen on the off chance of a sunny day lol..

Next up was a pair of Recaros from a DC2 Integra Type R. I had been riding shotgun in my mates Integra alot and I got used to his seats, so I couldn't say no to these ones when I saw them up for sale. With thanks to my mate Roj, and

Ronan from ROCO, we made up some custom adjustable rails and in they went!!

After that I just fitted my TRD knob to the TRD short shifter, and fitted my brand new 350x80mm "deep cone" Nardi Torino wheel.

Roj andI also made up a back shelf to take a pair of decent speakers and covered it with black material.

The white SK engineering dials read up to 200km/h and came in the car from the motherland!!!

Other than a set of black floormats and a spin turn knob on the handbrake, thats about all the mods I've done so far on the inside!!!!!!!!!

*redline resto !!*

My Redlines were getting cloudy and nothing did the job of keeping them clean, until I got my hand on Meguiar's Plast-RX. I spent about 15mins on each lamp today and they are looking much better already.

custom dash pt 1

I'm making up my own instrument panel for the dash of the new drift project, here's a pic of the ingredients so far,

Stack wideband a/f ratio gauge,

Stack oil pressure,

Stack water temp,

Pivot tachometer and shift lamp controller ,

Carbon fiber panel

now.... time for the holesaw.....

Wheel Whores!!!

Dave's te's and my mk2's during a tyre changing season, weight wise the te's win hand's down!!

Motorway=1 , Trueno=0

After a nice extended fast motorway run this morning to get to work on time, I treated the filthy little commuter Trueno to a session at the local jet wash. I discovered that somewhere along its journey my car had decided it no longer wanted its windscreen trim strip, which is now probably somewhere on the road between Dublin and Cork, in many many little pieces! Cue another call to Mr. Toyota parts man.. The front number plate was also barely hanging on by one screw (yet again!) so I think that fibreglass Run Free bumper has its days finally numbered. Kouki OEM bumper with Zenki lip here we come :)

dave

nom nom

Saturo Works 20v set up

my corolla run's this

Saturo Works 20v swap kit.

it includes S.W. velocity stacks,

water relocation pipe's and distributor relocation kit,

this blacktop is internally standard and at the moment I'm still running it on the standard ae111 ecu and loom,which is the way it came in from japan,

bolt on mods include Fujitsubo 4-1 ex manifold and

Toda 200mm lightweight flywheel,

long term plans for it would be to run it on a standalone ecu , similar to my 16v 4ag when funds allow.

Links to Saturo Works :

http://www.interq.or.jp/world/satoru-w/index.html

http://www.interq.or.jp/world/satoru-w/sub1.htm

Kev

Random Snap, cruse'n

The New Trueno Shell !

This is the newest edition to garage hachi lol, it replaces my old trusty rusty shell which I sold a couple of months ago...

It's rust free and stiffened up with a full weld in cage and major points seam welded,

I have Big plans for this new car , of course it will be getting my 16v engine, but first it must go for paint, sooooo freshly painted pic's soon.......

Kev

fitment yo!** part 2

For the laugh we tried on the 9Js on my Trueno. Although it has nicely rolled in standard arches, it was no match for the offset! Maybe someday...
And yes I know the car needs dropping, story of my life!

dave

new pipes

powercraft tornado spec

this is the new power craft manifold i got threw rhdjapan , i had to wait a while caz they are made to order, but it was worth the wait, this is going on my tunned 16v along with another couple of changes before the omex 600 gets mapped for it again

kev

bye bye bad shell !!

the old trueno shell which was my road car and eventually made its way to track car over the 4 years was totally stripped down and sold off,

it had gotten very bad rust wise , sills, back panel, arched etc

I wanted the best for my new track/drift project so ill get pic's up of my new shell soon

kev

fitment yo!**

trying 9j wat's with -19 offset on my levin

Drifting '08

Drifting in '08 was great fun with the new 16v 4age, I got more experience sliding on different tracks and got through to a lot of the twin battles in PD and d-rift.

The engine ran flawlessly and the only mishap was in Ennis where I blew 2nd gear in the t50 box and that put me out of the finals.

Sadly '08 was the year we lost Rosegreen as a drift track.

As for '09 , I didn't get out on track, mainly due to buying my Levin and wanting to tune it up but also because I wanted to start from scratch with the Trueno and start a full car build (more on this later), which had turned into a track only car when I put the new engine in.

my 4age 16v

Well, this is my baby, built at the start of '08 and dyno'd at 180 hp, its still a work in progress, I'm greedy to see how much more power is left to pull out of of it....

some spec:

Bottom end: 4age 16v (red top) as a base engine.
toda .25 overbore high comp pistons
lightened and balanced crank and rods,
arp up-rated big end ,main and flywheel bolts
acl race bearings,
orc lightened flywheel (+clutch)
hks oil pump shim kit

Head: small port head with stage 4, full race, port and swirl work, uprated valve guides etc
Ferrera ( Atlantic spec) oversized inlet and exhaust valves,
Toda 288 (8.5) and 272 (7.9) cams with
Toda valve springs, cam gears and .8 high comp head gasket..
ae101 throttle bodies
techno-toy-tuning intake manifold and velocity stacks.

its running on an omex 600 standalone ecu which I wired up to it, more spec will be added to this engine soon as well as further mapping so expect more updates on its progress soon!!!!!!!!!

On Bike Carbs

this lump is a small port 4age that I recently rebuild

its running ss works bike carb kit, the carbs are flatside's kehin off an old race bike, and they make some noise,

the rest of the spec includes

je pistons(81mm)

toda 304 8.5mm cams with uprated springs and adj cam gears,

it's also held together thanks to arp bolts and is running on acl bearings,

its running a standard crank and rods,

its sitting up and hasn't been started since it was rebuilt, more on this when its fitted, hopefully with some figure's from the RR......

Drifting ' 07

I got allot of drifting done in '07 with my old road/track 3 door Trueno. Back then I used a standard tvis that I rebuilt, it was basically standard except for the bottom end lightened and balanced. it was very reliable, I drove to and competed in every round of the novice D-rift and Prodrift competitions!! The engine is still firing perfectly, its now living in Sarah's Levin.

The other AE86 also pictured is another garagehachi maintained car, Neil's Levin, which is in storage at the moment.