Whoa, I'm late to the party, but awesome thread!
Jeeze, sounds like you have been here awhile (2013), surprised we haven't crossed paths more, we have a very similar story and build direction with our cars. Did you ever see my build thread?
Welcome to my post-op build thread for my black 86 Celica Supra. I prefer to do my build threads when they're complete, so its finally time to post this one. I will try not to bore you with the same old progress pics every build thread has, so I’ll mostly be posting pics of the end product in...
www.celicasupra.com
Biggest difference is I built an NA 6m. So many things to talk about after reading your entire thread this morning....
- how do you find those 245s on the street? I've been awfully tempted to move to that size as 225/50-15 is pretty much dead, I just didn't care for the huge drop in diameter.
- you said your hood dropped 16lbs, so it weighs 26lbs? Stock hood is 42lbs. I had some carbon and FB ones built back in the 2000s.
- yeah, not surprised you went back to the outer hole on the T3 arms. I pioneered the Celica GTS steering arm swap back around 05 and people were having trouble finding them in yards so T3 developed theirs and set the distance for the outer hole to match the Celica arms, which was about an inch shorter then the stock mk2 ones. Without relocating the steering rack, you will have way too much angle and thus bump steer with the inner holes.
- yeah that crushed sheet metal is from people not paying attention and jacking the car up in the wrong spot, super common. There is some potential to pick up some rigidity by upgrading that piece there however.
Glad to see you are keeping the 1uz, looking at your runs you don't seem power limited at all and you have so much work into the setup you have. They really are great motors too if you can be happy with their output. Did you retune and redyno after the header conversion? A blower will certainly give you all the power you ever need. I got to race an sw20 with a 3.5 rav4 v6 swap last summer. I drove it after the swap was done years ago and it felt like the perfect power to weight ratio. Then when I raced it last summer, it had the Lotus supercharger on it and it really felt like too much power to be honest. It was a tight autox course mind you, not too many huge venus like you guys have in the Midwest. Anyways, I'm a firm believer that there is such thing as too much power when it comes to these cars and especially autox. I'm certainly not there yet, though my 6m is far from slow.
Did you do the rear camber mod when you had the subframe out? Whats your camber at the rear?
Love the subframe mod for the driveshaft! I've always planned to do the same if I ever had to go 1 piece driveshaft, I couldn't live with the alternative myself. I wouldn't say the subframe isn't structural though. Our cars are actually so flimsy in the back that people get a big bump in chassis rigidity when they go to poly bushings as the subframe actually starts to function as a chassis brace. But the way you did it is perfectly fine, I think it's probably just as strong.
Aw man, its too bad you live so far away. I've made it down for National events in Packwood WA (and raced with a few other mk2 folk from the west coast) but Kansas is serious long haul. Might make the pilgrimage one year just to cross it off the list. JCCS and SIV will happen first though.