Sloths Ae86 Project Car

[Kid-Ae]

400nm?!?!?!??!!

 

Holy Catfish Batman! That's diff-breakingly sweet :y:

 

Only 68kw? How mild was the tune?

 

Suppose you don't need oodles of power when you have bucketloads of torque, much more fun :fuzz:

 

Great build up mate, good luck with it :thumbsup:

[Sloth]

400nm?!?!?!??!!

 

Holy Catfish Batman! That's diff-breakingly sweet :thumbsup:

 

Yeah sounds pretty awesome. Those numbers might be wrong, I won't know for certain until I see the dyno charts myself (will post them online next week).

 

It's note a huge increase on my 7k KE55 (which put out 56rwkw), but it definatly revs harder, the 7k only went to about 5000.

[LukeAE71]

That power level is a bit low for the 20v...

 

Should be making more like 85 - 90kw with that motor. Does the dyno generally read lower figures for all cars or is something not right? What ECU are you using?

 

Mine made 93 rwkw standard so that's why I'm asking :thumbsup:

[Sloth]

That power level is a bit low for the 20v...

 

Should be making more like 85 - 90kw with that motor. Does the dyno generally read lower figures for all cars or is something not right? What ECU are you using?

 

Mine made 93 rwkw standard so that's why I'm asking :(

 

I'm running a Link ECU, not exactly sure which model though.

[Sloth]

Heading to pick up the Sprinter

 

On Friday night after work we started the trek down to Melbourne to pick up the Sprinter. We left Canberra around 6 (I think) and for the most part the drive was uneventful. Driving the KE55 for 8 hours in a fixed back Sparco racing seat wasn't completely comfortable, and while the car has decent low end power it wasn't great for sitting at 110 in 5th gear (the diff ratio is a little off). We decided to take a dodgy back road into Melbourne and about 30-45 minutes from our destination the 7k started making some pretty bad noises. It sounded very similar to a problem I'd had in the past where the rockers were hitting the cover (which ended up with one of the rods coming lose after 100kms or so and me losing a cylinder until it was repaired). I tried loosening off the rocker cover but that didn't seem to help, so I toughed it out and made it in the end.

 

Picking up the Sprinter

 

Bright and early Saturday morning (well after a little bit of a sleep in) I headed down to Tayell Automotive to pick up the finished Sprinter. When I got there my mechanic wasn't there and neither was the car, but another mechanic in the shop told me he was talking it for a final drive to check everything. I had a chat with the bloke there about the car and what had been done, and he said said it all looked and sounded pretty good and was a little rocket.

 

After a while my mechanic showed up and she sounded like a dream. It took around an hour for us to go over everything, as there had been a lot replaced.

 

He then said to take if for a spin and see what I thought.

 

First Drive

 

As I was just about to head off for my first spin in the 86 my mechanic yelled out "... give it some revs! And don't be afraid to lay down some rubber!". So I took of (relatively quickly before I could even get into 3rd gear I was already doing almost 80 on the little back street. I slowed down, got a bit of a slide round the corner and proceeded to fly around the block making quite a racket.

 

It was so much fun to drive and when I got back I was grinning from ear to ear. My mechanic stated that I hadn't really given it enough revs. After driving the car a bit more I can see what he means, as the engine loves revving nice and high (unlike my 7k which loses power just over 5000rpm).

 

The Bill

 

After a successful test drive we headed into the office, as we entered my mechanic said "you might wanna take a seat for this". He then began to apologize for the bill he was about to give me, ensuring me that he'd done his best to keep down costs, hadn't recorded a large portion of his hours and had even dropped his hourly rate. With all of that, the bill was still 6 pages long and was enough to make my heart stop for a second. I think I was in shock for about the next 24 hours as I didn't eat anything except a single piece of toast. That is all that I'm going to say about the bill and I'll move on....

 

Testing it out

 

Latter in the day I decided to test it out a little better and see what it could do. For the first did I don't think I got it out of third gear. When really pushing it first gear easily goes to 40-50km/h with 2nd almost reaching 90. The car absolutely hammers. The tires still need to be replaced and so it can loose traction quite easy at the back. It drives like a dream and the sound as it's accelerating is simply amazing. I still haven't done anything silly with it (saving that for the skid pan in 3 weeks, if I can last that long) but I do know that at very high speeds (almost as high as the speedo goes :bash: ) it still feels great.

 

Outstanding issues

 

• The only real problems still with the car is that the aircon doesn't work yet. The mechanic and auto-elec tracked this down to a faulty controller board behind the glovebox, so it's on my list of things to fix.
  
• The tacho also doesn't work, as it's not compatible with the new running gear, so I'll probably replace that soon.
  
• The headlights (which had been playing up in the beginning) were working when I first got them, but have now died again. When I turn them on the high beam indicator comes on though :yes:. It meant on the drive back from Melb to ACT I was using high beams.
  

 

Power

 

The power figures I qouted last week were a little off. The figures from the tune are:

 

Max Power: 68.7 rwkw @ 6986rpm

Max Torque: 343.3 nm @ 3155rpm

 

The power is a little lower than I was hoping, but the torque is higher than I expected. The tune was done with only 91 octane in the car, so I will probably get it retested when I have better tires and 98 in there (I've been running 98 in it since I got it).

 

 

What's Been Done

 

Here is a list of some of the things that have been replaced/done:

 

• Installation of 4AFE 20v Silvertop
  
• R1148N Clutch kit
  
• s/h Flywheel
  
• Custom 2 1/4 inch exhaust
  
• Extractors
  
• Front and rear shock absorbers
  
• Fixed/replaced heater core
  
• New radiator
  
• s/h Ignition coil pack and igniter (from an early 90s Subaru)
  
• EFI fuel pump
  
• Link G4 Storm aftermarket ECU
  
• s/h FTO seats
  
• Windscreen
  
• Uni Filter sock air filters
  
• s/h thermo fans
  
• Custom spark plug leads
  
• Dyno tune
  
• Re-gas airconditioner + various parts
  

 

What's next?

 

Once my bank account has recovered I'm going to look at:

 

• New tires and wheels
  
• Sound system
  
• Steering wheel
  

 

Then further down the track

 

• Bodykit
  
• Paint
  
• Interior
  

 

Pics

 

 

 

 

 

[TommyGun]

Wow man that looks amazing, you must be so happy, despite the bill =P I know i'd love to have something like this, goodluck and enjoy it man.

[LukeAE71]

Just out of curiosity what was the final bill? :bash:

 

PM me if you don't want it up here :yes:

[KENut]

Congrats mate! I think this calls for a celebratory cruise, so everyone can have a perve at the sweet looking engine bay. Thats heaps of torque too, no wonder it hauls. Must have felt great finally driving it home

[Sloth]

Headlight problems (solved.. sort of)

 

So last night I spent a bit of time staring at the wiring diagram for the sprinter (http://www.ae86rd.com/manuals/Diagrama_AE86_1983_eu_au.pdf) trying to work out why the lights were working. After pulling the dash out and reading over various forum posts I found that there is basically two issues that people have with the sprinter headlights.

 

Low-beams and high-beams don't work, but high-beam flash does

 

This is can be because the switch for the parkers/low-beams has connectivity problems. The contacts may need to be cleaned or re-connected.

 

Low-beams don't work, but high-beams do (and high-beam indicator might be on while low-beams are on)

 

This is can be because the dimmer switch is either broken, has dirty contacts, loose wires etc.

 

 

In my case the problem is a loose wire or dirty contact at the dimmer switch. Jiggling the wires that run up under the steering column makes it work. I still have to disconnect the wires properly and completely take the dimmer switch out to clean it up.

 

For some more information, check out some of these posts

http://www.ae86drivingclub.com.au/forums/s...switch-problems.

http://www.toymods.org.au/forums/showthread.php?t=38314

[Sloth]

Skid Pan

 

With the new Silvertop in and everything running smoothly it was time to see what the 86 was capable of. I managed to tag along with some of the guys from www.NissanSilvia.com and visit the skid pan at Sutton Road Driver Training Center (with Fifth Gear Motoring). After taking the KE55 out at Marulan Driver Training Center with Fifth Gear last year I knew I was going to have a ball in the 86... and I did!

 

Most of the NS guys had done a bit more work to their cars and had a little more experience but since I have an 86 I knew I'd be fine. I watched a couple of the other drivers go on first and saw some of the varying skill levels and got a sense of the track then after a while it was time for me and my ex-housemate (in his 228rwkw S13) to hit the pan.

 

For the first lap I just took it easy, got a feel for the track and how wet it was, where all the drains were and how much I needed to turn to get around the corners. As I can back to the main straight (if you can really call it that) I opened up the throttle, kicked the back out and unleashed the innate drifting ability of the sprinter.

 

Note: I think I forgot to mention in the previous posts, but when I picked it up the mechanic mentioned that it was very prone to understeer. I noticed this the first time I took a corner in the wet and when I tried to do some circles in an abandoned estate in the wet. Anyway... back to the story...

 

As I hit the turn and started to slide the understeer kicked in. The front shuddered like it was in the middle of an earthquake and the car started heading for the edge of the track. I tried a couple more corners the same way, with the same results, then began to unleash the handbrake (with the result of the Fifth Gear instructor).

 

Using the handbrake I was able to get a lot more control of the car and make it drive the way it was supposed to... sideways. By the end of the day I was getting quite good at it and started to build up some speed (I spent most of the day in 1st gear as it was only a small track, but managed to get a bit of time in second towards the end). By the end of the day my skill had improved dramatically (although since there was no one videoing me it's hard to see exactly how I was doing) but I think there is still a fair bit for me to learn :)

 

Since I was in my car the whole time it was on the skid pan (and I don't have a crap enough camera to mount on the car) I didn't get any photos of my car, but there were other people from NS taking photos, so I should be able to post up some of those as I get them.

 

I'll definitely have to hit the skidpan again... maybe with a couple of other toyotas :P

 

 

Here's some of the pics I've gotten so far.

[seabiscuit]

Whoah! Stock rims ;)

 

I've had my fun out at the skid pan. Pretty good fun, although if you went to Marulan it'd be a fair bit more

cost effective. Quite a hefty pice to slide on a slippery 50x50m slab of concrete.

[Sloth]

Whoah! Stock rims :D

 

I've had my fun out at the skid pan. Pretty good fun, although if you went to Marulan it'd be a fair bit more

cost effective. Quite a hefty pice to slide on a slippery 50x50m slab of concrete.

 

Yeah I took the KE55 out on Marulan last year. The AE86 isn't quite ready for Marulan or Wakie yet. Before I take it out there I want to put on a strut brace and new wheels and tyres (and probably a drift charm ;) )

[Sloth]

Tacho

 

Before hitting the skidpan I decided I should install a tacho. I thought that this would be pretty simple to install (only 4 wires and two holes to bolt it in) but as usual my terrible electrical/mechanical proved this was not the case.

 

After spending way to long installing it I took it for a test drive and everything looked good.... until I tried to use my indicators ;)

 

I returned home, and pulled the whole dash apart again (for about the third or forth time that day) trying to find the source of the broken indicators.

 

After searching for another 20 minutes I found what was wrong... The switch for the hazard lights is broken and when switched on shorts out the indicators, stopping them from working... but I guess that is a problem for another day :D

 

 

Tacho installed on the steering column

 

 

The mess of wires inside the steering column and behind the dash

[Sloth]

Bad Day :P - Broken Oil Pressure Switch

 

I checked the oil in the Silvtertop on Friday before work, it was low (not empty, but just above the low line) so I decided to ad a little more before heading to work. I topped the oil up (added maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of a liter) then headed off to work. The oil pressure gauge was a little high, but not really higher than normal. About 5 to 10 minutes down the road I noticed a little bit white smoke out the back, which suddenly turned into a massive plume behind the 86. I immediately pulled over and popped the hood in time to see all of the oil in the engine empty out onto the ground and the entire engine covered in oil.

 

I got the sprinter towed to a random mechanic who straight away diagnosed it as the oil pressure switch. He's ordered one in, but it will probably be a day or two before it comes in (and Monday is a public holiday).

 

To make matters worse:

• While waiting for the tow truck I rolled the car a little down the hill (so I could try and get a better look at the engine without standing in oil) and ended up rolling it right next to a stinky dead kangaroo
  
• I caught the wrong bus while heading home to get my gfs car then had to walk from the shops.
  
• I tripped over later in the day, landed on my phone and cracked the screen.
  
• Ended up having to work first thing on Saturday morning (with no overtime).
  

 

[67Rolla-Ken]

Damn that's one bad day. So the mechanic seems to think the engine will be all fine once the new pressure switch is in?

 

I hope you have a better day today :P