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Lauren

Lauren's GT86 100K miles and onwards

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I don't think it's going to make a significant difference on track Keith. I think the real benefit is general road driving. Though the increased throttle respones will help with balance. 

Ross, we are thinking of going out for a meal Saturday night in a pub near-ish Alrtrincham way. See the TD thread. 

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I've not yet seen anyone who's been disappointed with the EcuTek remap and racerom - just don't understand why everyone (NA) doesn't go for it. I had mine done by Adrian at Fensport almost two years ago but can still remember how flat it felt 'before', post re-map IYSWIM.

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54 minutes ago, daidaiiro said:

I've not yet seen anyone who's been disappointed with the EcuTek remap and racerom - just don't understand why everyone (NA) doesn't go for it. I had mine done by Adrian at Fensport almost two years ago but can still remember how flat it felt 'before', post re-map IYSWIM.

Because of the ratio of cost to improvement. On my last car (Octy vRS) I paid around £300 for a stage 1 remap that netted an extra 40bhp and a massive improvement due to the turbo/map factor. To remap on the NA 86 with Ecutek it would cost more than £500 (and probably nearer £600 with the licence) for what, 10-12 bhp perhaps? The issue is not that it makes things better (it clearly does), it is the large cost of that still limited improvement. That said, I am still tempted myself although mainly due to the need to get rid of the sonic starting boom from my non-res that does not endear me to my neighbours.

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Surely anyone chasing numbers has bought the wrong car anyway? :lol:

It's the 'area under the graph' which is important. Even distribution of torque is way more noticeable in daily driving than a big jump in numbers down the pub. ;)

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Can beat that - in the Saab community there's a very well regarded remapper who's effectively a hobbyist and will do your car for little more than the cost of a tank of fuel... . I don't think there are many Saabs left in the UK he hasn't done... I kind of miss 280bhp and a wall of torque

The other way of looking at the cost on the GT86 is whether it's a stepping stone. Eventually I would plan to go FI, so money invested in an Ecutek license and manifold now isn't wasted later even if it only nets marginal improvements now.

I couldn't care less about bhp at 7000rpm. Just want something usable between 4 and 5k

Plus - £600 in the grand scheme of things on a twenty grand car isn't so bad. Look what manufacturers charge for a better model that's essentially just chipped...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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11 hours ago, Captain Duff said:

Because of the ratio of cost to improvement. On my last car (Octy vRS) I paid around £300 for a stage 1 remap that netted an extra 40bhp and a massive improvement due to the turbo/map factor. To remap on the NA 86 with Ecutek it would cost more than £500 (and probably nearer £600 with the licence) for what, 10-12 bhp perhaps? The issue is not that it makes things better (it clearly does), it is the large cost of that still limited improvement. That said, I am still tempted myself although mainly due to the need to get rid of the sonic starting boom from my non-res that does not endear me to my neighbours.

What's interesting is that I ummed and ah'd about it for three years! I too knew I wouldn't see a mega horsepower improvement and I've never believed Cosworth's claims of 230bhp or when people say you're going to get 220bhp. So I weighed it up and thought, well, it's just not worth it really. After a lot of thinking about it for a while longer, I thought I'd give it a go. Obviously I did it and in terms of extra power there isn't a huge amount. But, having said that the throttle response is just totally different from before. I never had an inkling that it would feel so flat going back to a map with stock throttle response, but blimey does it feel bad! I wanted to post up a big review of my experiences since the remap, but in the three days since I've had it done, I've done 2 miles to work and back each day. However, today I had a funeral to go to in Chorley which is a 70 mile round trip. 

I think Mark summed it up well from the passenger seat. He felt it was just so much smoother and whilst the increase in power doesn't make you go wow, the increased mid range where there's a 20lb/ft torque increase is certainly noticeable. I really think it would be hard to drive the car now on a stock map as the difference is far more marked than I initially believed it would be. So effectively, I'm suprised by the difference it has made. Sure it's £530, which is not an insubstantial amount of money, but I'm glad I've done it if that makes sense. 

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F1's are for people that don't really push and are I guess well suited to that. Sidewalls like jelly though. I've tried the Conti 5's on the rear of my car. They were fine through the winter. Nice and progressive. Again a tyre suited to somebody that doesn't push too hard I think as I don't think they have the lateral grip of the Yokos. But the Conti is better off the line, but that's all really. Prefer the feel of the Yoko's. I took off the rear Conti 5's before the start of the TSS to replace them with Yoko V105's. I may use the Conti's come next winter to use them up, but I wasn't interested in trying them on track. 

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Thanks Lauren. 

I kind of like the way the Primacies feel when pushed in the dry and are near their limit but want to try something with more lateral grip. Sounds like the Yokos might be worth try. 

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Is it really April, since I udpated this thread? It seems it is. 

Well since then, I had my 90K service over the summer. No problems at all with this, just a standard intermediate service at RRG Macc' of course. 

I'd noticed over the summer that there was a bit of rattle in the front suspension that you could really notice at slow speeds over rough urban roads. I'd been meaning to get in touch with Yukiko from Tein, and well, I eventually got round to it. Yukiko responded and said that she could service my Tein Street Flex. The way that Tein do their servicing is you send it down to them, they service it and send it back. 

When my coilovers were dismantled, it was found that the top mount bushing which screws into the top mount had pulled it's thread. There is only a very short thread on these and through discussing it, we came to the conclusion that when the suspension is running near full soft, it may have allowed for that movement putting stress on the thread. But really, we have to accept that this car has done 70K miles on that suspension and it regularly gets a pummelling on poorly surfaced residential streets when I do my rounds as a duty social worker. The top mounts and bushings were replaced. It was impressive to hear, that the dampers measured correctly on their damping settings after 70K miles and there were no leaks either. So pretty straightforward and an alignment at RRG. 

One thing to note is that the stock droplinks are fit once or twice if you're lucky, but not three times. The poor design of needing an allen key to stop the balljoint spinning means the allen key bolt hole tends to get messed up everytime you do it, so it doesn't take long till you need a grinder and a hacksaw to get them off. Tein kindly supplied adjustable drop links with a better design that won't have this problem. Mark and I took the suspension off and put it back on. Save for the PITA droplinks, it all came off easy enough. Putting it back on was even easier. Must have taken about an hour and half. If you're thinking of fitting this suspension yourself buy some new droplinks and that aside, it really couldn't be easier. 

Last week I was driving around for work and I noted a slight rattle. I immediately thought it was the drop links coming loose. So I jacked the car up yesterday. Drop links were nice and tight, but the nut that sets the ride height on the coilover had come loose, allowing the spring to fall slightly out of it's seat on full droop. I duly got my Tein spanners out and tightened it up and pre-loaded the spring slightly, like the other side. I think it's great that I could still spin the nut on the thread after the mileage my car has done by hand. I also managed to do it without taking the wheels off, so I now know I can adjust ride height with the wheels on, it really is that easy. 

The car is back to it's quiet comfortable self and more importantly no rattles! :)

One thing I've been thinking about getting is adjustable to rear lower arms, as poor Gareth at RRG had a right nightmare adjusting the camber to take out half a degree which meant getting the bush out and ever so slightly turning it, before putting it back in. Question is, which ones to get? 

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I have the Eibach/SPC lower control arms, they are a no frills, inexpensive option. The reason I went for them is that they use a bush on the subframe end and the camber is adjusted by an eccentric bolt at the other end, there are no rose joints and threaded stud to corrode and wear (I dont like fitting exposed rose joints to a road car, they simply don't last)

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On 20/11/2016 at 10:15 AM, Lauren said:

Last week I was driving around for work and I noted a slight rattle. I immediately thought it was the drop links coming loose. So I jacked the car up yesterday. Drop links were nice and tight, but the nut that sets the ride height on the coilover had come loose, allowing the spring to fall slightly out of it's seat on full droop. I duly got my Tein spanners out and tightened it up and pre-loaded the spring slightly, like the other side. I think it's great that I could still spin the nut on the thread after the mileage my car has done by hand. I also managed to do it without taking the wheels off, so I now know I can adjust ride height with the wheels on, it really is that easy. 

I assume the ability to adjust ride height with wheels on is only for the front?

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Car went into RRG for warranty work on the 20th December. I had been smelling oil on occasion for around the last month so figured it was the cam plate leaking. It's got to 93K miles, so not bad going but I wonder if this is an issue which will affect pretty much everyone at some point. 

31670798502_f4cdc8cbbb_z.jpgCam plate oil leak by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

All fixed now and ready for collection the next day and valeted too. :)

31780495226_1a44853ac7_c.jpgGT86 21 Dec 2016 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr

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