GJD

Hi All I'm looking for a set of stock 17 inch wheels - jspec if it makes a difference (I think UK wheels were the same weren't they?). Ideally facelift ones, but as it's only the centre caps that are different I'd be interested in pre-facelift too. Not too bothered what tyres/how much tread are on them. Can collect if you're close enough to Cambridge (couple of hours, maybe a little bit more?), or some sort of postage from further away. Gavin

I didn't think I would, but I certainly noticed. After I finished a tank of 95 and filled up with 99 I could tell the difference before I'd got off the petrol station forecourt. Throttle was much more responsive. Ignition timing I guess - maybe a VVTI thing? I've not run on 95 enough to see if there's a difference in fuel consumption. Back to the OP - I don't know about VPower, but there doesn't seem to be any problem getting Tesco 99 round Cambridge.

The other thing to think about - did it the tyre go down to flat while you were driving, or did it leak slowly so you found it flat later, say the next morning? If you've driven any distance at all on it completely flat, that can damage and weaken the sidewall. If it was just parked while the tyre leaked to flat and you get it off the car (or jack the car up so the weight is off the tyre), it could well be repairable. Certainly worth taking it along to a friendly tyre place to try a repair. As Supranature said, if it's not safe they won't do it.

Apparently what matters is whether you have the VVTI engine (I think there are facelifts that don't have the VVTI engine?) I've recently done exactly the same as you - been looking for one or other cat for my jspec VVTI TT. Sorted it with Whifbitz in the end - thanks Paul - but one thing I did learn is that the first cat is different on the VVTI engine.

No hassle at all Chris. Saw all of your and dandan's posts at the same time . Thanks very much. So is everything forward of the second cat all one part? As I understand it, I can run with just the one cat (the second) as long as I still have a restrictor ring fitted so that might be the way to go. Gavin

Hi all Is there any reason why the stock exhaust and cats from a 1995 J-spec RZ might not fit a 2000 J-spec RZ-S? Over in general chat Ganty is looking to sell his stock exhaust and cats and I might be interested. But 5 years is plenty of time for Mr Toyota to have introduced some incompatibility between models, and it's pre-facelift vs post-facelift. Also, both cars are J-spec TT, but one's manual and one's auto. Could that imply a difference? I want to be confident the parts could be useful to me before getting a potential seller all excited. Thanks Gavin

I might be interested Ganty. One thing I need to check is whether the exhaust off your 1995 RZ will be compatible with my 2000 RZ-S (also J-spec). I don't know if anything significant changed in that time - maybe with the facelift - or if manual vs auto would make a difference. I'll look into it... I'm guessing the stock exhaust and cats aren't on your car now? I'd be interested to know how long they've been off, and when you last passed MoT emissions with them on. PM me if you like. Gavin

I see what you're getting at. Thanks for the advice - I see this thread has got a few people thinking. I guess second cat is the way to go. Probably easier to fit too.

Presumably, in terms of temperature the first cat on its own wouldn't be worse than both cats (i.e. as Mr Toyota intended) so the issue is one of higher temp reducing power rather than actually damaging turbos or the engine or anything?

That's what I'm after - a one cat solution that avoids overboost. Just want to be confident that the first cat on its own gives me that solution before I spend the money.

I've heard both ways on this question so I'm seeking any more opinions that might be out there: J-spec TT. Currently both cats removed. Question is, if I put one cat back in, do I still need the restrictor ring? I get the impression the answer might be: Front cat only fitted = probably no need for restrictor ring - does the answer depend on the size of decat pipe in place of the second cat? Second cat only fitted = maybe no need for restrictor ring. Thanks Gavin

Hi all I've had a 2000 Jap import VVTI tiptronic for slightly less than a year. Unfortunately, after Saturday I won't have an MoT: emissions- Lambda and hydrocarbons perfect, CO way over (0.75, limit is 0.3). I'm about to look in my wallet for a solution, but in the meantime I just want to check my understanding of the stock state - I believe there would have been one cat in the downpipe and a second cat in the middle section upstream of the point the exhaust splits in two directions. Is that right? Thanks Gavin

Nice pics Steve. Thanks for organising the day. It was good to meet people, and a fantastic amount of information from Chris to try not to forget. Pretty sure I'll be taking my car back to him soon. Gavin

Yes from me

Looks interesting. Count me in. GJD

Thanks Pete I know it's an old chestnut, but reading some of the old threads about it I wasn't clear exactly what the trigger is and what I should avoid doing. From what you're saying, it sounds like you think it's a case of pressing the right foot far and/or fast enough to trigger a kickdown from 4th to 3rd - is that right? I didn't buy the Supra for serious track use, but it would be a shame not to put it through it's paces so I'm considering taking it on a track. I can see in some of the other track day threads that people seem to survive it with Tiptronics (including yourself Pete?) but I wouldn't want to do it without being confident that I knew how to avoid this "feature" knackering the car.

Hi I can see this issue is being discussed in the "Advantages of VVTI thread" (and loads of other past threads), but I'm after confirming as best as possible the particular detail. There's lots of mention of the problem with speed delimited Tiptronics where at high speeds they can kick down from 4th to 3rd, redlining the engine (or even exceeding redline?) and presumably hammering the gearbox hard. But it's a bit vague what exactly causes this "feature" to happen. For people who've experienced this or know what's going on, does this only happen at FULL throttle, or is it triggered by reaching a certain speed? In other words, can I confidently drive as fast as I like in top gear as long as I don't push the load pedal ALL the way to the floor? Thanks

That's something the dealer says they can do, and I would quite like it done if I buy the car. But that then leaves the issue of the current odometer reading being in km and everything added afterwards being in miles, so you have to do a bit of arithmetic all the time to know the total mileage the car has done. I get the impression plenty of Supras are in that position. I'm sure I could live with it, but it would offend my eye a bit in my pride and joy I've seen some imports that had the odometer wound back at the same time as the kph to mph conversion, so e.g. 50,000 (km) gets set back to 30,000 (miles). Obviously this amounts to a genuine and legitimate version of clocking the car, so I wonder if only special people are allowed to do it, and only in certain circumstances. The dealer for the car I'm looking at wouldn't be able to do it apparently. I'd quite like the full monty: speed in mph and odo reset to miles. Does anyone know if that full conversion is a service that's available to the average bloke on the street? Thanks GJD

Wow!! Fantastically fast response. Thanks :-) It is both the speedo and the odometer that's in kph. I chatted to the guy for a while and amde sure he was clear. I had already guessed that the 112mph speed limiter would still apply, and that I'd need to do lots of multiplying by 1.6 in my head, but I think i can cope with that. The legal conundrum is interesting, but if there are plenty of you out there surviving then I expect I would survive too. Next conundrum is what exact model spec it is. It's advertised as 1996 N-reg. From the pictures I can see it's definitely a facelift, and the plate is N-reg. Inside, it has the grey five dial dashboard and, I think (and the ad says) a passenger airbag. My confusion is that the excellent model differentiation chart on the front page of this site gives the impression that facelift imports didn't start until 1997 and have VVTi engine. This car is a TT auto import so I guess that makes it RZ-S, but which spec on the chart should I be checking against? Are there facelift imports without the VVTi engine? Thanks again GJD

Hi people I'm looking round at imported Supras and I've come across one that ticks all my boxes, except for one thing. It's a 96 facelift auto TT, it was imported about a year ago and is UK registered with 1 previous owner, so presumably all the necessary UK conversions have happened (I will check import paperwork and MoT when I view the car), but the current owner says the speedo still reads in kph, not mph. I thought that converting the speedo to mph was one of the mandatory changes on importing to the UK (in fact, apart from adding a rear fog light, I thought converting to mph was the only other change). I'm worried there's something dodgy going on. Should I be worried? Or are there loads of perfectly legal Supras still reading speed in kph? Thanks in advance GJD

When I spoke to DVLA on this issue recently ('93 Supra, first registered in UK in 2002) they said that Road Tax would be based on CO2 emissions only if a figure had been given for CO2 emissions at the time of registration, otherwise the old flat rate would apply. In my case, it was flat rate £180 for 12 months. It wasn't clear whether, if a CO2 emissions figure was available from the manufacturer, you were required to provide it during the registration process, or if you were allowed to choose not to mention it, but since (I assume) the figure isn't available from Toyota anyway, that question doesn't matter and it's flat rate by default.

Hi Forum There are a lot of words in this post, but it all ends up in one simple question at the end. Having initially gone for an auto TT, I've decided to consider stretching the budget and look at manuals. I got some useful advice here last time around so I thought I'd pick your brains again. I guess I should mention that I'm looking at unmodified cars. There's a selection of imported manual TTs from the 1993-95 period, in the 60k to 80k miles range, but I'm a little surprised at what seems to happen to the price outside those brackets. Younger vehicle and/or lower mileage increases the price, naturally. I would expect an older vehicle with lower mileage to command a higher price than younger vehicle with higher mileage. After all, today a '93 car is 50% older than a '98 car - quite a difference, but in 5 years time the '93 car will only be 33% older - less of a difference. 5 years after that, the '93 car will only be 20% older, etc. On the other hand, regardless of the age of the car, if it has done higher than average mileage per year, the only way to reduce the average annual mileage is to not drive it for a couple of years, and who wants to do that! What this all means is that I would instinctively consider paying more for a '93 car with 55k miles than a '98 car with 75k miles. But the prices I see advertised don't agree with me - higher mileage doesn't seem necessarily to hurt the price of a younger car as much as I'd expect. Is there some other effect I'm missing? Perhaps the world reckons that, even with low mileage, a Supra won't do much more than 20 years, so a '93 car is nearing the end of its life? Or maybe Supras are good for 150k miles or more so 75k is still a baby? Or do the newer cars just have more bells and whistles - I think the VVT-i engine came in around '98. Maybe that sort of thing makes a difference. Those are my rambling thoughts. If you've made it this far, thanks for staying with me. Here's the simple question I promised: Everything else being equal (condition, service history, number of previous owners - all those other considerations), which unmodified, J-Spec (but fully converted and registered for UK), manual TT would you pay more for, and why: a) 1993 model with 55,000 miles, or b) 1998 model with 75,000 miles? Thanks in advance GJD

Just to close this thread off... I went back to see the car again. It started first time, from cold this time, with no hint of smoke. The owner had been driving the car more regularly over the intervening couple of weeks and I got the impression that that had reduced the steam output a little. So with no other worries about it, last night I handed over a chunk of cash and now I own it. 93 J-spec TT Auto GZ, Silver. Thanks again to everyone who answered my original question, and also thanks to whoever was involved in putting together the "What to Check on a Supra" guide and the model differentiation chart. Both very useful. Gavin Deane

There was no sign of water contaminating the oil or vice versa. On reflection I think it probably was steam - just didn't think of that at the time. To answer Sheefa's question, it did clear quite quickly after being emitted. I'm reassured by the responses here so I won't write the car off as a possibility. Thanks again for all the replies. Gavin Deane

The drive, the handling, the general condition were all good. Everything seemed to work. Other than this issue (which may be a non-issue if it's just steam to be expected) and some minor cosmetic damage I liked it. Gavin Deane