* FC meets AE *

I collected up the few bits required to convert the Trueno brakes to uprated 4pot calipers. Thanks to a mate in Waterford , I have some larger diameter machined disks and a pair of caliper brackets to make the conversion an easy bolt on job.I also sourced a pair of 2nd hand  Mazda FC RX7 calipers,
now I just need a fc chassis number and I can order a rebuild kit  from Mazda so the old calipers will be as good as new!!

Rack Rebuild, on the way*

Ive gathered together the parts needed to rebuild a fresh rack for the new Trueno Drift Project.
As well as the obvious bearings , Ive fitted a new metal rack bush.
I'll be adding the battle version 2 spacers (in picture) later, after I pre-load the bearings and rack guide.
The BV2 kit on a manual rack with the p/s arms should allow for mega lock and massive angle hopefully !!!!

metal rack bush half fitted....

The Daily Levin on the other hand is getting a long overdue vvt pulley and timing belt kit this week. The vvt pulley has been chattering away for some time now, I'm looking forward to having it back running well again.

I'm waiting on a new sst from Toyota so I can set up the bearing pre-load and rack guide in the rack, but just last week I added this new sst to my collection in the tool chest.

It's the Toyota special service tool for setting the pinion bearing pre-load . We'll need this soon enough as Ive to setup Dave's Cusco mz with his cwp and also I will need to set up a cwp for the new Trueno!!

Thats it for now ,

so many little projects on the go ha,
I Havta get going on the hks head build too ......

Keeping the 86 alive in FD

I'm following Formula Drift like crazy this season and was disappointed to see taka go out early with his big Smash last weekend in rd 1 , but just came across a recap of his '09 adventures in FD, enjoy..........

Taka Aono 2009 Formula D video from Ross Fairfield on Vimeo.

** light goes on, light goes off..

The people at Toyota are so thoughtful, they invented these little courtesy switches that AUTOMATICALLY turn your interior light on when you open the door! Mine rarely worked.. ;)




€18~ for the pair from Toyota, tidy job! Access the cable through the b-pillar vent and the connections are located under the rear bench. Do yours now for the ultimate VIP style mod...

** brake upgrade part 2 **

It was nice to get back to working on the car on Saturday, with the NCT looming we had a few things to do. Soon after we last worked on the brakes we discovered one caliper was binding, as the seal was in pretty bad shape due to a torn dust cover. Braking balance was affected as a result, which would be a test fail not to mention feeling crap on the road. One wheel lock up is no fun at all! There was also a slight leak of fluid so this had to be sorted asap. A caliper rebuild kit was ordered from Toyota, reasonable enough at around €47 for both calipers.



We removed and stripped down the calipers, and the even the "good" one was clearly showing signs of age too so the rebuild was going to be that little bit more rewarding.



Here is Kev power washing the calipers after giving them a good clean with strong degreaser.



The pistons were also cleaned down and sanded to give the new seals a fresh surface to work against. I thought a new pair would make an interesting set of shot glasses?!

Of course no rebuild of anything is complete without a lick of paint, so the stripped and cleaned parts were left to bake in the sun after a few coast of high temp black via rattle can. (No exciting colours for me please, they are only stock brake calipers lol). When I am next working on the back end I will give the brake drums a matching coat of paint just to keep things neat.



Once they were dry (and a couple of whopper Subways were consumed) the new piston seals, dust seals, and slider boots were put in and the calipers were rebuilt and installed. A quick bleed of the brakes later and I was out testing the finished set up.



The final result of fully rebuilt front back brakes, uprated pads, braided lines, and a master cylinder stopper is some really nice pedal feel with predictable powerful braking, especially when the pads are warmed up. I'm very happy with the whole set up now, though Kev will soon unveil some blingy new braking goodies that make me a bit jealous haha..

custom centre console

It has been a quiet few weeks here at GH, Kevs new shell is still being painted, and lack of money for me after Skiing 2.0 has slowed progress on things a little lol. However things are still ticking over behind the scenes.

I had two very nice sPa Design DG series dual gauges left over from my old project, and for a while now I have been wanting to install them in the Trueno so I could keep an eye on the temps and pressures of my trusty 4age.

First of all I spent a day making a new custom radio surround (it is my daily after all so the tunes are staying!) to fit the centre console. I measured and cut out a cardboard template first and then cut this shape out of the huge sheet of 0.85mm carbon fibre we have. Once this was done I roughly measured out a 1 DIN slot for my headunit faceplate, although I did have to extend this a bit to take into account the cd flip down. This was secured to the centre console from with some nice Toyota interior screws that I stole found in Kev's tool drawer, and we trimmed the edges neatly with some rubber beading trying to get it as tidy looking as possible. Not that Carbon Fibre will ever look stock in a hachi but hey...


I left it like this for a couple of days until I had the time to install my senders. The oil temp. sender lives in a nice adaptor that has replaced the sump plug, and the water temp. is located in the factory gauge sender location in the water outlet housing at the front of the engine. The oil pressure sender will replace the factory one in the same location, I say will because I will install the last piece at the weekend. Of course, the threads for the temp senders are 1/8 NPT and the sump and water temp ones are different, so adaptors were needed. I had bad luck with brass adaptors being weak due to small wall thickness, so I had a friend in a machine shop make me some high quality items from steel. You can guess where that little piece of broken brass ended up...


Anyway, the temp senders went in fine, the wires were neatly ran through from the engine bay into the dashboard via a grommet in the bulkhead, with everything being hidden/cabletied/insulated along the way. I tapped into the radio power lead which conveniently already had a terminal on it, and an unused earth I found in some random block connector buried back there.... and soon after the gauges blinked to life! Now that everything was working, it was out with the 52mm holesaw bit (thanks Kev) and some more itchy carbon dust was created. A few minutes later my new centre console & gauges were installed. I am very happy with how it looks now. Believe it or not that is the nonshiny side of the carbon (it is single layer) but the camera flash makes it look brighter than it is. I have purposely offset the gauges to the right so I can see them both no matter what gear I am in, and also I can fit a third gauge in there if I ever needed to. Brake bias gauge anyone? lol..



And here is the night time view. I can set the gauges to backlit red or green, and adjust the brightness, here they are only at setting 4 of 15. I chose green because for some reason I cant read black on red too easily and it is a little more subtle.


Oil pressure will keep reading a fault and flashing at me until I connect the sender, the warning light is very bright though which is a good thing should the worst ever happen. Finally the factory oil pressure and water temp gauges doing nothing now and me being me that will bug me big time, so in a few weeks I will run some external warning LEDs (another cool feature they have) from the gauges up to that spot to replace them. Thats it for now, hopefully we will get some more work done this weekend and have some news for the blog.

NCT for the Trueno next week so fingers crossed!!

Dave