Lee Burley

You shouldnt have asked that, you will just get depressed.... The life of ceramic turbos really do seem to be random. Some put up with huge amounts of boost and abuse, and just keep going, others fail at stock boost at 35000 miles - like mine Anyway, if they have gone, invest in a set of hybrids, you will be poorer, but you will not be disappointed After mine went, I invested in Boost+EGT guages first to check what was going on before I considered decatting etc.

In an attempt to bring the topic back on track... Check out all your piping, start with the big stuff down to the intercooler and back. Chances are one of these is off or split. If you cant see/feel anything wrong, get a cheapy boost guage from somewhere and plumb it in on a lengh of hose under the back of the bonnet and into the cabin. Go out for a run, and if the system stays in vacuum then you probably have turbo problems, if it goes up to 0psi and no more, then you probably have a hose off. Once you have the problem sorted, get a good boost guage and fit it! The number of times I have blown an intercooler pipe off, and avert the normal heart attack when I suddenly have no boost because I can usually tell whether its a pipe off or not. If the worst has happened and the turbos have gone (and mine did!) then talk to Leon about hybrids. Less than 2 grand all in I would expect. Good Luck!

This is a bit difficult to describe, and I havent got my camera with me. If you look between the rocker cover and the intake, there is a pipe going into the left hand side of the intake the same distance towards the back of the engine as the oil dipstick is on the right hand side. This is where mine is plumbed in. Instead of cutting the stock pipework, you should simply cut a 1" length from the end of the pipe you got with the guage and fit the tee piece in to the end of the guage pipe, and the 1" section. Then unplug the stock pipe going into the intake, replace with the 1" end, and plug the stock pipe back into the tee piece. All done, and no stock pipes cut. As far as where to put the guages, I have mine in an A Pillar pod, and so they are always within line of site. If the boost or EGT warning lights were to come on, I would spot them immediately and jump off the throttle. If they were in the passenger airback location I may not spot them so easily! Electronic guages give you more bells and whistles than mechanicals, but I bought electronic ones because wires are easier to route behind the dash than vacuum pipes, and they had a warning light function, simple as that.

On the subject of whether to upgrade the rears, I am with Mycroft on this one. I have braked very heavily down from way over 150 with no problems (apart from being almost hung from the seatbelts!), and have run at track days where I would be doing well over 100 down to 30-40 (mainly because of the daft track layout at Bentwaters) over 100 times in one day with no problems. The bias on a road car must be affected by how much your brakes are worn and what compound you are running, so I guess my UK front/Jap rear setup with decent pads all round must be about the same as a full UK setup with slightly degraded pads at the back. If you are in doubt, then stick a set of better pads in at the rear, but I wouldnt go spending another £800. Just my 2 penneth, or should that be just my 800 quiddeth?

Chaps, If you get a deal going, count me in. Lee

That rings a bell Adam... I think No6 (the back one) runs slightly hotter, so I guess if you have the manifold off then it would be better to plumb it in there, and you get a shorter cable run which is a bonus!

Ahh yes Alex. Good point well argued :-)

Best place IMHO is into the manifold, tight up to the cylinder head, on the front cylinder (is that No1 or No6? I can never remember). Thats where ChrisW fits them.

I guess around 50-100 degrees, although that is not from any scientific measurements, and there are so many other variables such as air temperature, humidity etc so it is difficult to compare like for like. All I know is my EGT warning used to come on at full throttle in third/top gear before the FMIC, and doing a similar thing with the FMIC fitted I am running 50 degrees or so below the threshold. Lee

Or have a look at the "Intercooler Throughput" thread started by Chris Wilson... looks very promising. You could have an intercooler and rad stacked on top of one another.... very sexy! I went for an S-Type from Justin, and fitted it myself. I am very happy with the lower EGTs and looks. If I ever went for anything bigger than hybrids the cost of the resulting work would probably be so much that swapping the intercooler for an R-type or bigger would be a drop in the ocean!

Look in the technical section on www.mkiv.com. It is all explained there.

I have one of the oldest TTs (very low chassis number) and it is now 4 years since it was imported into the UK. I have not touched the underseal, and there are no signs of rust under it at all, I had a good look round last time it was up on the ramps for its MOT. If yours is showing no rusting, I would be tempted not to bother with extra undersealing!

That bit is in Appendix A - "How to drive like an @rse". It also tells you how to do standing burnouts by powerbraking :-)

And for showing just how loud a Hiper without CATS is, the rumbling and popping on the over-run is so difficult to achieve in Drive mode!

Maybe you could sense that if speed>certain threshold and the output from the knock sensor goes off a certain number of times or EGT gets too high then you start cutting sparks or whatever. The temptation to stay on the throttle when the little red lights come on is too much for some people - like Justin for example..... :-)

When we did a rolling road session at powerstation in 2000, the stock J-Spec (non VVTi) and stock UK spec were both around 245rwhp, which equates to >280 at the crank.

Simple Question: I have got the NGK R plugs to put in. What should I gap them to, and what should I torque them up to?

The Gunsons easy bleed thingy doesnt come with a fitting for the Supra, so its a waste of a tenner. You are better off getting an assistant spanner monkey to pump the brake pedal whilst you do the bleed nipples. Get some 5mm clear tubing from B&Q and put the end of it in an empty beer can and away you go. Took me about 1/2 hour after swapping the front calipers.

My experience is that I should have done my brakes a long time ago. I have been trying to get a set of UK fronts ever since I put UK wheels on, but they are pretty rare second hand. I have just bought and fitted a new set of UK fronts, and even whilst running them in they feel better than the J-spec. I also suffered ridiculous pad wear at the last track day on the J-Spec. I put on a set of CW intermediates, bedded them in properly, and then went through the whole set at Bentwaters! The braking was good, but it still faded, and a set of pads lasting for an afternoon was not quite what I expected! IHMO the J-Spec could probably be made good with a decent overhaul and pads, but the UK spec new is less than a grand for the complete setup. I spent that on a FMIC to protect the engine, so you should see it as a bargain to spend a similar amount to protect your soft squishy body!

Stock UK wheels.... 8 inch front, 9 1/2 inch back if my memory serves me correctly

I just got an MOT for mine. I put the cats back on especially, and then he didnt even do a gas test. So I then spent another two hours refitting the downpipe. I guess that it is the luck of the draw. Mine is a 93K so by rights it should have cats. As to the performance difference - it is huge. My TT is quick with the cats on and mental without them. This is with a HKS Hiper. If you have a stock exhaust on it then decatting will not give such a dramatic increase. The stock system is very restrictive. The HKS is basically a very large pipe with no restrictions....