Ghost XI

“Can I go in there? Can I? Can I?”

“Yeah”

“Can I try the other one too?”

“Yeah sure”

“Just leave a bit of your hair out, so everyone knows you’re in there”

“Ok”

I haven’t laughed this hard for a long time 😀

AW11 with P1’s would look pretty good 🙂

I got some used but brightly coloured spark plug wires with the new engine/gearbox, which looked like they were for another 4A-series engine. I haven’t done much here into this blog lately, but today I, for some reason, got inspired and went to garage check out if I could do something easy, like fixing the spark plug wires 🙂 The actual process to shorten the shaft was easy. Quite flimsy plastic, which I sawed with ease. Here is my first test. Original length on the left and slightly shortened (and cleaned) on the right:

The whole set, shortened and ready for installation:

Freshly installed:

And old wires:

Easy, nice project, which still gets your hands dirty \;) Took approximately two hours to do, and there was absolutely no change in engine sound or anything else. 😀

Some nice cars had to wait outside, while Ricardo from Ferrari helped me with the suspension align.

The system was overprecise optical computer system, which immediately told us that the whole car was heavily out of spec. This wasn’t news, because the car had been really nervous and twitchy to drive, almost to dangerous levels. For measuring, we had to attach plates with reflective patterns to rims, so the computer could find the car.

We underestimated the time to adjust the suspension, and easy one-hour trip to the shop turned into mad three-hour wrench battle, when we went through all possible adjustments. Once again, I was really pleased to find almost everything still working as they should be, only passenger side rear toe adjust was stuck. We adjusted the car to these values: Front camber: -1degrees06′ Front toe-in: 0.9degrees Caster: 6degrees45′ Rear camber: -1degrees06′ Rear toe-in: 1.7degrees After the adjustment, while printing the aligment report, Ricardo told me that not even Ferraris needed to be this well aligned.

This is the famous TOM’S/Chowini’s 10krpm tachometer for AW11. I also have the original box with the part number. I have to find new location for the supercharger led, because I’m not going to drill the 10krpm at all 🙂

 Kinda lame, both carbon parts are mostly made out of metal 🙂 (Bit cool to have such parts!) The LSD is carbon street version. The carbon race version is way too hardcore for my car, but there is possibility to upgrade it either to metal or race carbon versions just by swapping the disks. The clutch should be nearly normal, except ATS said it should be able to cope up to 400hp without any problems. I think the model was CT23H182 for the clutch, with 1600kg clamping force and easy pedal effort. Carbon fibre seems to have strange effect on Maladar. Looked like my sisters cat with catnip.

 Still in wraps here, but bright yellow spark plug wires can be seen. Sadly, those spark plug wires were meant to another 4A engine, presumably either early 4AGE or 20V 4AGE. Some pictures of the shipment: (the shift knob was a surprise from Maladar to me) 🙂

AW11 with track day tires isn’t very agile on this kind of surface. I’ve been driving around with new tires and everything seems to be ok. Some valve problems with tires but thats nothing.

Mostly, my driving has been divided between city and smaller highways and oh boy and brothers in arms, it feels good! (well, it’s still bumpy in city) 🙂 Maladar has a fender rolling tool and I rolled the rear fenders so the tires can move as they want. I still haven’t done that for front fenders and I get nasty scraping sounds every now and then.

What I have bought for the car, is something I’d love to install right now. I bought a manual gearbox! Actually, the gearbox was still attached to exactly the same kind of 4A-GZE what I have in AW11 right now and we’re thinking of doing something for the spare engine. 🙂 While at it, I also bought a carbon clutch & LSD from ATS & ACROSS and those lovelies are just waiting for the manual trans, and a second hand clutch reservoir and some pedals for the manual. What I’m still missing, is some smaller bits (probably I can get ’em from Toyota) and some clutch line, but those aren’t in any kind of hurry.

Success! I went to the MOT inspection and got through it without problems! I had a lot of new, shiny metal in every corner, but for some reason the inspector didn’t ask about those. The suspension setting was also bit of mix-and-match, because I had to order new springs for the front end. (More about that later) I had Toda/Fightex coilovers at the back, Toda/Fightex adjustable everything at the front + Eibach springs and new swaybar end links from Hawkley Inc./TwosRus, and only thing the inspector asked me, was about tires getting in contact with the fenders 😀

On the way to the inspection, I noticed that I had a blue ghost following me. First thought was that I had an oil leak, but it was just the oil from the spill when I changed the oil. Nothing serious, but it probably looked pretty weird. 103555 on the odo

I’m having some trouble with these end links. Seems that the protective rubber seal has been broken, and as far as I know, this is going to fail me in the MOT inspection. Luckily, twosRus offers new, better ones to AW11. (Toyota replacements are _really_ expensive)