Ghost XI

Got a brilliant idea to use a luggage scale to weigh rims and tires 🙂

My BBS RN010 15×7 +43 (bit more than 8,6kg – messed with the scale)

Widric’s Toyo Proxes T1R 195/50R15 (6,64kg)

Widric’s TE37 with Toyo Proxes R888 (50% rubber left) – (12,50kg)

I also made a static page of various rim and tire weights – its here

Edit 5.10.2017 it’s actually here now

Heh, should have guessed this… I used a heat gun to stretch the wrapping around the gauge pod and what happens when the car stays outside of my apartment for couple of days?

Wrapping unwraps itself 😀

Well looks good doesn’t it? 😀

It’s a fake. The gauge pod on top of the dash is a major fuckup and the panel under the head unit is just hanging there.

But it looks nice 🙂

I’m going to redo the gauge pod. This one was a (failed) prototype which at least did give me some valuable experience. The fiberwork is a mess, I didnt have a good plan, I got bored and then I tried to save whatever I had and hide everything under 3M carbon fiber wrapping vinyl.

Something new!

I hotglued the “bezels” to my frp contraption and testfitted the gauges.

This is how it is supposed to look from the drivers side:

The “bezels” have slightly different angles.

Now I just need to wrap the thing with old t-shirts and glass fiber mat 😀

Started to build the gauge pod for the center console. This is my second time ever messing with epoxy/resin and glass fiber mat. Wonder how this will turn out 🙂

Didn’t find the alignment paper. I think I need to ask J0nio to help me with the info, he’s the tire/alignment master 🙂

Drove around a bit and man the car is pulling into every direction! Now when I’m thinking it and just making notes how the car handles, it feels stronger than before. There is nothing wrong with the car (except a weird clanking noise from the passenger side) but somehow I seem to find all the bumps and stuff to make car feel extremely twitchy.

While at the garage, I noticed the total kilometres: 108108 😀

I didn’t plan to do anything special, so I started to look for the AT transmission drive shafts. I have one slightly bent CVJ cover in the car and that could add some unwanted vibrations. I checked that the transmission end CVJs are the same in both AT and MT, which meant I could just order the cover from Toyota and I would get the right one.

Then I found out something weird… in the box where I had the CVJs and driveshafts, I had the bent CVJ in a bag. I took it out and cleaned it and then I started to look the second CVJ if it would be in better shape. Now, I cant understand this: I remember having three bent CVJ covers and one thats ok. But the second one I had in the box was in perfect shape! I cleaned both and took a picture to compare them:

The one on the left is a AT CVJ and the one on the right is MT. Only difference is the color. Just add a CVJ seal 🙂

I’ve always wanted to swap the heater controls and radio and this time I just started doing it. Here I have already taken the heater controls off. SW20 has the heater controls and radio already swapped so why not do it in AW11 as well. Obiviously I fiddle with the radio a lot more than with the heater. 🙂

…and here swapped, but not attached yet:

I need to build a new bezel around the center console, the one I had was in bad condition. With some cutting it might have worked. The extra gauges I have will be built into center console and I think I’m going to mold them into the bezel.

I complaint some time ago that the car felt heavy. Well, I got it fixed with Widric’s wheels 😀 I dont know what the real reason was, maybe unsprung weight? Or the steering angle inclination/kingpin inclination/scrub radius? Wheel offset? Something else?

Whatever it was, I decided to look more into suspension and steering and I found out something more or less shocking: AW11 suspension is really easy to fuck up. Some ancient web page had some info how to set up a AW11 with TRD parts, but it wasnt complete by any means. Did they even have camber plates back then? \;)

My point is that someone at the car’s design phase has been thinking for quite long time how to set up the suspension to get it both enjoyable and comfortable. Maybe some track time and nice evenings testing the car while doing heavy thinking. Finally, a good compromise setup is found where 99% of the time the suspension does a great job. Then some miserable bastard comes over and buys a coilover kit with red springs and huge wheels with low offsets and all that hard work is flushed away.

Maybe the car doesn’t need to be so low? The wheels can do with bigger offsets and the suspension is actually nicer when it is soft (and feeling the body movement is crucial to the driver). Car that is easy to drive is also a quick car.

Had to upload a pic of the car with TE37’s again… Widric just got a set of Toyo R1R’s and I had to give the wheels back. 🙁