Doughie

Speak to Graham Rudd and Phil Wall. they are the BBS resident experts with this stuff. Graham Rudd has written his own Windows-based application for use with the RLTC that is MUCH MUCH nicer and easier to use than the crap DOS-based products from Racelogic. He has also i believe included data-logging features. Last i heard there was one remaining problem with the "Rudd" data-logger. i'm sure it's been resolved now though. I myself am interested in doing some data-logging so ....Graham and Phil please can you stand up and let us know the latest on this one.

carbon disks are huge money, plus they won't work til they get up to huge temperatures, which are basically not attainable on the road. (I think F1 disks are about £10,000 for 4 ! something silly like that) Gordon Murray tried for a long time to use carbon disks on the McLaren F1 road car (as for one thing it would have helped hugely to meet his weight target for the car) but he gave up in the end and admitted defeat as they just could not get the carbon disks to work well at the sort of disk temperatures that you get on a road car. as far as metal-matrix disks go, i know that they DID use these on the first Lotus Elises. They were an aluminium compund i think. Advantages were lightweight and also the disks ran cooler under duress than steel. They sourced the disks from somewhere in Scandinavia i think. (they had problems...... I remember the documentary on "Making the Elise"). However they dropped these disks later on for more conventinal ones. not sure why. perhaps cracking problems ? supply problems ? cost problems ? one of the ex-Lotus bods on the BBS should know. (Edited by Doughie at 2:04 am on Feb. 5, 2002)

soupratt i'll try to dig out the receipt at home that should have that part number on it. in the UK the cost for the overhaul kit is about GBP28. (so that's about Aussie $ 78.) Otherwise one of the other chaps here (Martin F ??) has the Toyota parts CDROM i believe so he could find out. Tell you what - i'll buy the kit over here, and courier it personally to you in Oz, in exchange for you paying for the airticket and also entrance ticket to the Oz GP. sounds like a good deal. (for me...)

Front OE disks are £180 for the pair (includes VAT). (Bizarrely, one of the front disks is slightly more expensive than the other one !!!!!!!!!)

You say it helps emissions - will the car still be fine getting thru an MOT with one cat on and the EGR removed ? anyone know ? Gav - why do you think yours is leaking ? (and let us know what difference it makes when you have it removed). cheers

Can someone pls give a quick summary of what the EGR system is, and what the benefit of removing it is supposed to be. am i right in that EGR stands for Exhaust Gas Recirculation ? is it meant to keep boost pressure up ?? what are the symptoms of it leaking?

Folks They are splash-guards. i.e. prevent the disc getting wet when you pile through a big puddle. Chris Wilson strongly advises cutting them off if you do a lot of track days as they prevent brake cooling to quite a large degree. They're not essential (apparently) but like someone said, Toyota put them on there for a reason.

I can recommend the worthiness of doing the caliper overhaul kit thing. I got my '95 UK front calipers overhauled with the Toyota kit and it worked a treat. Several of the pistons were sticking and were not actually doing anything much at all and the overhaul kit seems to have sorted that and so the car stops great now.

keep us all informed on this one please. i.e. change nothing (except the fuel) and then after a month get someone to take a look at the plugs and then report back. If the only thing you've changed is the fuel and all is well now, then this could be serious cause for concern about mk4 owners using optimax. Formula Shell all over again ??

Got my UK front brakes overhauled yesterday and what can i say but it has made a HUGE difference in the braking power. This seems to be mainly due to the fact that we found out that several of the pistons in the front calipers were very very sticky and reluctant to move much at all. I was probably driving around with only about half of the front pistons working at all. There is a UK-spec front brake caliper overhaul kit available from Toyota at about £28 and it's very very worthwhile doing. So after : Front caliper overhaul kit New front disks New DOT 5.1 brake fluid new front brake hoses (braided) and a little time for the old pads to bed into the new disks, the braking on the car is vastly improved and i've found myself driving faster the last 24 hours as i'm so much more confident in the car stopping properly. (which probably explain why i got nicked for speeding today. ah well. swings and roundabouts.) So for anyone else who has UK brakes, get yourself one of these overhaul kits and do it. you'll be surprised. Many many thanks to Darrell Payne for the spannering.

I have NUR Spec on my UK car and in nearly 1 year with it on the car, have only scraped it once. And that's with Eibachs and bilsteins. "Blitz NUR Spec - It's the Real Deal " http://www.blitz-uk.co.uk/blitzexh.htm lol (Edited by Doughie at 9:32 pm on Jan. 14, 2002)

Andy Micheldever tyres will beat those prices by a mile. I would guess by about £50 on the bigger tyres and by about £40 on the smaller tyres.

I would like to say that Pristine did a damn fine job on my 17" alloys. they're better than Spit N'Polish. Eric Kasir had his 17" SpitNPolished and i had mine Pristined and i have to say that mine came up quite a bit better than his. Mine were a bit more expensive but happy to pay. (all in mine were £300 incl.VAT and wheel repair etc.) take a look at member 16 in the members area. there's a piccie of a rear wheel i think.

cheers guys

car being serviced at the mo. They say i need new front disks (which i knew) AND pads. pads are fairly new. Q. Is it necessary to always change pads when stocking new disks on or are Toyota just trying to flog me a set of their pads ? if i leave the current pads on there (Porterfield R4S), how long will it take before they are fully bedded in to the new disk ?

that's cheap!

Matt well Peter Howe's UK-spec car was sadly written off about 2 weeks ago or so. That had uk brakes(obviously) so i don't know if anyone can find out where it has ended up. Otherwise Justin Foden can get new UK-spec brakes for around £750 i think. something like that. Gareth ! bloody cheek !!!! :wink: i'm getting my own brakes overhauled in January with shiny new front disks, braided stainless-steel hoses all round, DOT 5.1 fluid, and the Toyota UK-brakes seal overhaul kit. I think that one of my pistons may not be working as the pads have been wearing unevenly. Probably cooked during the RAF BrakeWearer track day. Certainly the brakes don't feel as good as they were before the track day. The disks STILL have the remains of my pads smeared on them... one more thing (being a bit persnickety) how may different spellings of Porterfield can we get ??!? It's P-O-R-T-E-R-F-I-E-L-D. as in : http://www.porterfield-brakes.com/ not Portefield, Portafield, Portfield ... Paul Whiffin are you listening ?!?!!?!? (Edited by Doughie at 10:57 am on Dec. 5, 2001)

Dean None of the settings that you wrote in your post would explain why just one front tyre has huge wear on the outside edge. You're running quite a lot of negative camber on the front tyres, but this would have the effect of increased wear on the INSIDE edge of the tyre (not the outside). My advice is that it's just a possibility that one of the locking nuts for the suspension settings may have not been tightened properly and has worked loose, resulting in your right front tyre being way out of kilter. I suspect it's either running *positive* camber OR maybe big amount of toe-in. both of these would likely cause wear to the outside edge of a tyre. The only other thing i can think of is that you've got a bent or mislocated suspension wishbone. Have you clonked that wheel hard ? kerbed it hard ? run over some biggish debris at high speed? just a thought. Have your front suspension throughly re-checked to see if the readings are the same as they were last time. On a happier note, yesterday I went back to Northway tyres in Watford to get my suspension geometry re-set as the did not do a thorough job last time by any means (see my previous post for details). Wayne, the manager there, did it personally this time (at no charge given that it should have been right 1st time), spent a considerable amount of time on it (over 1.5hrs) and did an excellent job - setting everything exactly as i wanted. Wayne's a good guy IMHO. JB knows him too I believe. Just a slight shame the lazy sod who did it before (Darren i believe is the name on the sheet) didn't get it right. So I have revised my opinion of Northway upwards ! They can do a very good job, but my advice would be to be very specific about the settings that you want, write them down, and insist on seeing the "before" and "after" settings print-out to make sure that they've done everything that you wanted. Wayne is definitely the most knowledgeable bloke there when it comes to suspension so I'd advise that you insist he does it. Below are my final settings that i got done yesterday. Note that some of the settings (camber, principally) are a compromise between handling and tyre wear. More negative camber *could* give you a little more grip when cornering hard BUT it will wear the inside edges of your tyres. and they're S-02's so not cheap.... I went for slightly less negative front camber than Wayne would normally do as my last fronts wore badly on the inside edge and less camber should help ease that situation. Anyway here they are : (car lowered with Eibachs/Bilsteins) running 17" stock wheels with 255 rears and 235 fronts. Note that this is in degrees ( ° ) and minutes ( ' ), where 60 minutes = 1 degree : LEFT CASTER : 4°11' RIGHT CASTER : 4°02' FRONT LEFT CAMBER : -0°34' (i.e. about half a degree negative) FRONT RIGHT CAMBER : -0°32' FRONT LEFT TOE : -0°01' FRONT RIGHT TOE : -0°01' LEFT SAI (Steering Axis inclination) : 9°46' RIGHT SAI (Steering Axis inclination) : 9°34' INCLUDED ANGLE (not sure to be honest what this is !) : LEFT : 9°40' RIGHT : 9°42' REAR LEFT CAMBER : 1°16' REAR RIGHT CAMBER : 1°11' REAR LEFT TOE : 0°14' REAR RIGHT TOE : 0°09' THRUST ANGLE : 0°02' Car felt great on the drive home. definitely felt better than it was. I will report back on any handling / tyre wear consequences but i feel that this setup should hopefully be a good compromise on the handling / wear issue. (Edited by Doughie at 3:02 pm on Dec. 2, 2001)

Gav It might be a snake trapped in the engine bay. They do that in winter as they search for warmth. check it out. :wink:

Dean It sounds like tracking to me. Or maybe that wheel has got POSITIVE camber dialled in on it. Anyway, copied from another post, here is my opinion / experience of Northway tyres for anyone's benefit : **** With regards to Northway, I got my alignment done there in October immediately after having my suspension lowered. I gave them a printed spec sheet for them to set the values to (castor, camber, toe etc.) They said it would take an hour to an hour and a half. I timed them and they took 35 minutes for the whole thing and charged me £104 all in. I was in a rush to get home and did not look carefully at the "before" and "after" geometry sheet. When I did look carefully at it, i found that they had : 1) not done the front camber at all (was requested) 2) not done the castor at all (was requested) 3) Only changed one rear wheel's camber. neither of the rear wheels' camber was set anywhere near to the specified value. The only thing they did was the toe front and rear, and one rear wheel's camber. I have done 700 miles on my s-02 PP's and both front and rear have worn over 1mm in that time due to excessive negative camber. Tyres will be gone in 4000 miles. And i don't generally drive it that hard. SO, I rang up Northway and asked them (incognito) how much it would be the cost to have just the toe changed etc. (which they did) and they said "£76". so then i revealed my situation and said "ok why then have you charged me £104 then, and you didn't do half the things i wanted.?" I todl them about the ridicuous wear on my tyres and said "I am coming down this w/e to get it sorted and you are not going to charge me". The main bloke there put up no resistance and said he would do it himself personally at no cost. Conclusion: I went along on a late Sat. afternoon and they thought "here's a 'rich' Supra owner, so it's an easy 100quid in half an hour and we really can't be arsed to do all the changes but he'll probably never check". To give them their dues, this was probably jus the individual tyre monkey's attitude ("Darren") and is not necessarily indicate that Northway are dodgy or incompetent. Anyway I was not impressed. Micheldever tyres have a much better attitude IMO. they will only do ONE car a day (only week-days) and will spend whatever time on it to get it exactly right. The fact that they are now booked up solid for geometry re-alignment til January 2002 indicates that other people believe that they know their stuff. All IMHO and in my personal experience. ****

I can confirm now that the oil IS V160. Here is the part number : TOYOTA GEAR OIL V160 08885-01306 (info from www.supraforums.com) Apparently you'll need about 2 litres of it for a gearbox oil change.

ONLY use Toyota's own oil. I believe it's called V160 or similar. (certainly the code for the Getrag box is V160 as per the VIN plate). The only other possible oil that could be used is Dextron II (i think). This has been discussed before and apparently if you use different oil it messes with the seals etc. Chris Wilson i believe agrees with this too.

without doubt: 9/10 for technical knowledge (adds a lot of expert knowledge to the board) but......... 3/10 for personal issue resolution skills. regds.

Have to disagree here with regards to a SPACE issue. I do not believe that there is sufficient vertical room to install a big-block V8 in a Supra. 5ltr no probs i would imagine, but an 8 or 10ltr V8 just would not fit. Those Yank tanks had (have) HUGE engine bays that can take engines of this size. It's more a "vertical" space issue than a width or length issue I would think (though i may be wrong). in any event, it's totally out of keeping with the culture, history and raison d'etre of the car. but heck that never stopped anyone ! ps. BTW Ash, I guess it's good for your own personal well-being to know that there's still at least 1 person on this BBS who has some semblance of respect for you. The list of people on this BBS that you have alienated grows longer day by day. sad but true I am afraid to say. history seems to strongly indicate that you have a special talent for alientating genuine & decent people. nothing personal - just the sheer facts of the matter. not interested in any further discussion. (Edited by Doughie at 9:50 pm on Nov. 27, 2001)

Ash When you're doing 220mph in a Supra I'd like to be there to watch. that is, if any of your very detailed theory ever does actually results in becoming real actual tangible results. looking forward to the high speed run cheers (Edited by Doughie at 11:34 pm on Nov. 26, 2001)