AE92 Corolla SR5 - GTS goodies swap-in mini-build-thread

I'm invested way too deep to give up. I've put the cost of a basic new car into this thing - that's 2 basic new cars to you Americans!

As soon as the studs sheared off, a spectator offered to change them if I could get parts and tools, so I got a ride home to pick up replacement lugs which were conveniently all in a bag after gathering them from the car the night before. Came back to the track with my mom's 116i to try to set a decent time, but that's when I found out that that changing cars in the middle of the event would be against the rules. So later I drove the 'rolla very gingerly home and arranged for a shop to change all the remaining lugs and take care of the failing CV joint boots at the same time. The car should be ready to pick up this evening, and I've just heard that the new front brake discs are finally out of customs.

The problem with all that is that I'm now even deeper in the hole I decided I didn't want to go any deeper into, this project is now strictly budget-limited. I don't think I can afford to do anything more with the car before the next autocross unless it's 100% DIY with parts I already have...same goes for my Samurai and the offroad rally now, in fact.

Wow! I wasn't expecting to see the car finally running and moving. Sounded pretty good too! When is the next autocross?

Next one is in early April. What I'd like to get done before then is:

• Remaining electrical fixes (easy)

• Adjust handbrake, hopefully making it sharp enough to lock up the rear wheels with some regularity. It would've helped at this last event. I should get a hydraulic handbrake but I can't afford one any time soon.

• Install poly bushings on rear suspension (maybe DIY this)

• Install new rear brake discs if they make it out of customs (definitely DIY this)

• Install GTZ steering rack with poly bushings, and get an alignment.

That's right, yesterday I picked up a rare AE92 GTZ steering rack I bought from Patrieck of http://corollaae92gts.nl

This is one of the parts I've wanted most for this car. It's a "ran when parked" situation in terms of condition, but this rack is worth rebuilding if needed, it's the best one that will bolt into this chassis - fastest and constant ratio. I'm thinking maybe I'll mask off the hydraulic bits and sand & paint the center body light gray.

GameboyRMH wrote: - Adjust handbrake, hopefully making it sharp enough to lock up the rear wheels with some regularity. It would've helped at this last event. I should get a hydraulic handbrake but I can't afford one any time soon.

have you looked into homemade hydro e brakes? doesnt look that hard or expensive (ive never done it so i could be wrong)

That may be a good idea, is that a clutch MC there?

Edit: Yep, looks like that's how it's done. I do have a spare GTS clutch MC...

http://charmant4age.blogspot.com/2012/05/diy-hydraulic-hand-brake.html

Just found out there's a track day on March 19th, dunno if I'll make it to that one. There was one on the same day as the autocross and the electrician was encouraging me to go to it, but I didn't want to put those ratty old brake discs to the test. Of course I wasn't expecting sheared wheel studs....nooooobody expects sheared wheel studs!

If I get the new rear discs in time and can DIY a decent alignment I'd go.

Found out yesterday that the hub and possibly also the upright are damaged. I have a spare set (I'm pretty sure the front hubs & uprights are the same between the GTS & SR5, although the rears are different), just have to pull one off the donor car. Wanted to do it last night but I was way too exhausted, so sadly a day has been wasted.

OK well the good news is that there's no additional damage from the stud shearing incident. The bad news is that I spent a lot of time and money to figure that out.

After changing hubs and uprights and brake caliper brackets, the problem was that the disc still wasn't centered in the bracket. Then I thought, maybe these are the wrong discs.

Sure enough, the dimensions didn't match, overall and hat height were less. Swapped to the old discs and finally had the car ready to roll on late Saturday night. Took apart a corner of the donor car's suspension and bought a new wheel bearing and 3 more Land Cruiser wheel studs before I found this out. Definitely can't afford to do this month's track day now.

On Sunday morning I took the car back to the electrician, in just a few hours he had the tach driver circuit put together and working and the OP sensor fixed, and I sent him a little wiring to do on the data logger. Didn't hear back from him last night but I'm in no hurry, I'll probably just park the car until late March when I can afford to do some more on it.

Also found out on Sunday morning that the reason the discs are wrong is that RockAuto apparently sent the wrong ones. Previous mechanic ordered vented discs and they sent solid discs, so those have to go back, and in an attempt to help out he gave me some Brembo discs he had for a RWD Corolla. However these won't fit without some spacing on either the disc itself or the brake caliper bracket. He knew this the whole time and never said anything...coulda saved a couple days and a lot of dollars.

Edit: Also found out that the death rattles from the camber plates was caused by a very slight loosening of the top bolts...tightened them back down and they're quiet again. I'm thinking about adding some lock nuts to the top nuts to keep this from happening again.

Didn't have time for much anything other than offroad rally this weekend but I did get a chance to check out the progress on the Corolla. The tach and low OP light are working again, and setting the ignition timing properly fixed the pinging completely, so I should be able to leave the compression ratio where it is - I just have to burn off this tank of race gas and fill up with pump gas to be sure.

Did a little engine bay cleanup today, including fixing the CoP deck for hopefully the last time by running bolts up through the bottom, here's a fresh engine bay pic:

Also just updated the specs in my rides.

Looking goI'd. I hope this is the end of your 'adventures.'

Samurai had a clutch failure, so now the only mods the Corolla's getting before the next event are things I can install myself that are already paid for.

Project's basically frozen for budgetary reasons until late April. Being able to do this is one of the advantages of a project car though - try that with a new car payment!

Been doing minor fix-ups on the Corolla, and I painted the new steering rack body on the weekend:

Overspray on the lines was intentional, I noticed that some of the coating had rubbed off there, but if I was a real stickler for looks I would've done the lines in a different shade. I'm happy to put a little contrast into the factory "murdered-out" engine bay. Unfortunately while painting that I found the first possible evidence of leakage. Just bolting this rack in at the last minute would definitely be risky now. I'm thinking the smartest choice would be to do a pre-emptive rebuild before installing it, but there's no way that can happen before the next event.

I've decided what I'm going to do to get the sway bar mounting tabs on the coilovers away from the tires - moving them above the tire entirely will require an extremely short spring with very little travel that I'm not sure even exists, so I'm going to eliminate the tabs and use custom brackets that mount to the lower shock bolts instead (these will have to be extended, they're already a bit short). This will probably end up increasing unsprung weight a bit, but my plan is to move the sway bar mounting points inboard of the shock bodies entirely, meaning the shock body itself will be the only thing the wheel & tire have to avoid rubbing on, so there should be room for 15x8s and 225 wide tires. I'm actually not sure whether the sway bar links will connect above or below the wheel center yet, above will probably require some compromise in sway bar geometry while below could allow for improved geometry with longer links, it there's space.

Forgot to mention - I got those wheel studs refunded. After showing the guy the video, he was super-apologetic and told me that he'd sold thousands of them, many to ZR drivers (hard to explain...but they drive vans overloaded with people like total asshats for a living) and he'd never heard of a broken one before. However, at the same time he said that if he knew I was going to put them on a "rally car" he would've told me to get something different that doesn't scream "product confidence."

Next event is this weekend, I've done a lot of minor fixes and got a string alignment, including equalizing the front camber. I'm gonna take the car to the electrician this evening to see if there's anything he can do tuning-wise to stabilize the idle, I don't want the engine to cut out if I put the clutch in at low revs.

I've decided the new sway bar mounting tabs will fit inside the diameter of a 15" wheel and will use the stock sway bar links attaching above the wheel center. 15x8s with 225s are still going to be a very tight fit on the rear.

The event didn't go so well. The track we've been using recently is supposed to be like the local roads, and it definitely is, right down to the fact that most of the track's surface is total garbage. We'd been using the smooth section before but this time we didn't. This part not only had areas littered with gravel like the rest of the track, but was also quite bumpy and had a surface texture like the top of a lego brick. This didn't work well with my hard suspension...at all.

On the first run I went out and got lucky in terms of grip, blissfully unaware of how close to the limits I was, I was blazing fast but DNF'ed the run, going around a cone on the turnaround that I should've been inside of.

On the second run I drove just as fast and spun. I knew I had to dial it back after that. On the third run the track was slightly damp so I decided to do a conservative "fallback" run and try to set a good one on run 4, but I locked up the brakes on the turnaround (the most rubble-strewn part of the course) and had to reverse. Also a horrific noise started shortly into the run that turned out to be a slipped sway bar link tab grinding on the wheel, so I had to fix that after the run. Another reason for custom tabs connected to the lower shock bolts.

The 4th run turned out to be my last chance at a respectable time, so I couldn't drive fast enough to risk any trouble.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/NxU5TbndKr4

The time wasn't great but it was 1/100th faster than a Toyobaru that all the spectators were amazed at the speed of. Only got data from the built-in sensors of the data logger because the other sensors were un-wired in the process of re-wiring the car, I'll get the throttle, brake and OP warning wired back in, and leave the rest to be sent over CANbus from the MS3X when I upgrade to an RCPv2.

Also Race Render needs more time in the oven. On Win7 all the graphics in the interface are blank unless you run it as admin (didn't work in WINE), it doesn't pick up data channels if there isn't data in the first row (had to copy some in manually), and it introduced an audio/video sync problem that I had to fix with avconv.

Edit: Results just came out, if I hadn't plowed over the last cone at the end of the stop box, I'd be 3 positions higher up

Really strange track layout...

The track itself is British-style rallycross-oriented and is often used as a "super special stage" in stage rallies, and we'd done a bunch of similar course layouts on the smooth section about 4 times before so we had to do something different to mix it up.

I'm so bummed about the result. I can't help but think my ratty old brake discs contributed to me plowing over that last cone and costing me 3 whole positions If I'd been 5th instead of 8th, 3 out of 4 of the people ahead of me would've been elite rally drivers so at least I'd feel less crappy about it...

Well I drove the car on the street a bit yesterday morning, after I showed it off to a friend who was really impressed I was very careful about pulling back onto the street at a turn into fast-moving traffic with poor visibility. Getting into a huge wreck there would be so horrible that it was very likely to happen. Got out of there safe though.

Later I'd almost reached home and had forgotten about all of that, cruising up to the the 2nd to last turn I thought I heard an odd sound from the engine...gave it a little rev and yes, that was knocking. Still had oil pressure, gauge readings all looked good. Made the turn, put it in neutral and the engine stalled. Luckily it was all downhill to the driveway from there.

After a deadstick parking job I fired up the engine again and the knock was still there. This was it, the catastrophe I'd been dreading the whole time, but especially after finally feeling a little success with the car. Sent the guy who rebuilt the engine a text to let him know that his flawless engine build record was now flawed. I got in the Samurai and drove around to see if any mechanics in the area had time to come and take a look at it.

Got an appointment with the mechanic who owns the property where the engine builder works, we tried cutting spark to each cylinder - no meaningful difference but it seemed to be very slightly quieter with spark cut to #3. He said it's hard to tell if it's a top end or bottom end problem, but whatever it is, it's serious, and he'd try to convince the builder to take some responsibility for it.

Got a text from him this morning and he said he'll look at it this afternoon.

Guy who built it had a listen with an automotive stethoscope and says it's coming from the top end, and it most likely spat out a lifter shim. If that's the case I might as well go to 1SZ shimless lifters now. He says he'll open it up later this week.

Might as well post this here as well, this is the noise the engine is making now:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/neBRS0Ned0M

The frequency matches up with what the speed of the cams should be.

Engine's berkeleyed and so am I:

Sub-thread on this topic

With the engine down, just about all work that isn't necessary to keep the car running will have to be postponed - steering rack rebuild & install, AFR tuning, custom rear sway bar tabs, all that stuff I might get back to around the end of the year at best. The one thing I'm going ahead with is oil pan mods, because they're almost entirely paid for already, and not having them could lead to the engine's (re)destruction on track. So in mid-May the oil pan's going to get:

• TwosRus baffle kit (thanks to trucke for helping me get around the site's very 3rd-world-unfriendly payment policies)

• Gold Plug magnetic drain plug

• Aluminum tape over the area the exhaust runs past

• Oil temp sensor, probably via an adapter block thermal-glued to the outside

Arr mateys, a timely delivery!

I've saved up just enough money that I could tow the car to another shop and, at the cost of guaranteeing that I'll have to pay for all rebuild expenses, get the car running again far sooner than I would under engine builder's style of "time management." It's really tempting.

But, that's not the smart thing to do in the long term. Instead I'll send the GTZ rack to the local restoration shop, and if the shaft is in good enough shape that it just needs a polish, I'll have them do a pre-emptive rebuild so that it can be put in while the engine's out, it'll be vastly easier that way. If not, then I'll know that sending the rack to Trinidad for rechroming is another thing I'll have to save up for.