Thanks everyone. I definitely need to hit JCCS and Supras in Vegas one of these years, but my work schedule is always a mess around that time with our own car projects.
I have been driving the car a good amount at the end of this season, and the new wheel and tire setup has been phenomenal. The fitment has been perfect dynamically so far with no rubbing or vibrations, and the Pilot Sport tires are amazing in all dirving conditions (no rain yet). I ended up raising the stance slightly before driving on the new setup since I put slightly stiffer springs in the rear and I was afraid they might settle a bit, and I was having a real hard time getting my jack(s) under the front of the car when I needed with the damn low side skirts these past years. I have the car with me in Northern Chicago, and I have been driving it on the nice days to work and back and to shows when they come up.
I also have been hitting up as many car shows as I can. It's always fun to bomb in on the mostly Domestic car shows with the car and listen to people try to figure out what the car actually is.
Lots of interest and respect from all corners of the car community, which is always great to hear and see. The new wheels really help show the car in the "finished" state I always wanted.
I have made some other changes to the car recently, mostly within the interior. My home brew lower bolster foam refurbishing on my Recaro seats worked great for a while, but it was never **perfect** and the hobby store foam I had used began to break down quickly over the past couple years. I finally just reached out to Capitol Seating in the UK and got new Recaro foams for all 4 lower bolsters, and now the seats are as close to perfect as they come.
My Innovate LM-1 wideband that I have had for the last 10 or so years finally bit the bullet, so I moved on to a newer Innovate LC-2 unit to monitor my AFR and send the reading to my ECU. I designed and 3D printed a simple little mount to place the LC-2 controller where my LM-1 unit use to sit in my glove box brain panel. I was able to snake the cables through the original holes in the panel also so it didn't look too much like an afterthought.
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Since I had the LM1's display unit remotely mounted to my custom center console, and I hate round AFR gauges, I decided to make a new center dash panel to house a digital readout for my AFR. I found a company on ebay selling simple small digital square displays to use with innovate widebands, and bought one with red characters. Since I also had a considerable amount of dead space to make up for with the new panel, I decided to get creative with my idle control for the 1UZ. I removed all the idle motor provisions when I first did the 1UZ swap since they were an eye sore on the intake, and have been living with no idle control for years. Long story short, it sucks. Its a pain when the motor is very cold, to the point I usually would put a shim under the throttle stop under the hood to get a bit more air in past the butterfly and let it idle stable when very cold. Being moronically stubborn and not wanting to rip out the entire harness to modify for a remote PWM idle valve (lol, sorry BillM and JohnB), I decided instead to make myself a hillariously over-elaborate remote idle air bypass valve to be controlled manually. I designed and 3d printed a new center panel to not only house the AFR display, but also capture and cleverly actuate a brass ball valve with a turn of a 3D-printed knob, allowing me to let in additional air directly to the intake chamber and bypass the throttle plate to kick up the engine speed when cold. (lol)
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I finished the panel in wrinkle black, which really helps hide any of the toolpath lines left from 3d printing the part, and then sanded the raised details to expose the silver plastic for some nice contrast. I was really happy with how it turned out:
I removed the blocking plate from the 1UZ intake that use to have an engine damper mount attached (no longer using the engine damper until I re-design the strut tower brace), and welded some large AN fitting bungs to run twin -10AN fittings and hose to the brass valve. I was worried that the amount of bypass air needed to raise the idle as much as I needed wouldn't be sufficient with a single hose and necked down fitting, so I used two to increase the inlet surface area into the intake. I still don't consider myself an amazing welder, but I have fun with the process and keep getting better with lots of practice.
I ran all the hose and installed the panel, and the interior looks pretty good with everything in its place currently. A damn mouse did feast on my Italian leather Nardi steering wheel while being stored over winter, which needs to be fixed.
The idle valve works amazing to control the idle when cold. I can get a solid 1000RPM idle bump when I open the brass valve completely, which lets the car warm up with no issues when really cold. Certainly not as smart as using a PWM valve like a normal human, but this was certainly a fun project!
-Mike
