Okay ;-D. But that kind of aligns with my point - the same things you quote above as differences are arguably the things that make the GT86 better to drive than a comparably powerful and practical hot hatch. They also make it heavier...
So weight isn't the be all and end all...
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Sorry I missed this.
I obviously have the TD UEL, downpipe etc. then basically a 2.5" pipe from downpipe back, with a fairly large backbox. It was all custom made, so quite difficult to compare to an aftermarket premade system.
It is remarkably quiet though, especially considering it was on the louder side of most GT86s pre-turbo.
My first car was a 1966 VW. RWD and the engine in the back AND crossplies AND unservoed drum brakes.
It's a wonder I'm still here... :-/
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A quick update, car is still running strong and we're mostly using 5psi currently with the current weather we've got. We've also got the catalogue of SPL arms waiting to be installed onto our car, which will be happening hopefully very shortly now that we have this installed and operating
3D 4 Wheel Alignment system, flush mounted alignment scissor lift with front turnplates and rear skid plates. Complete with jacking beam and also scissor, within a scissor which makes lifting our particular car up much easier than our 2 posters
Quick shot of the rear camber arms from SPL, quality really is excellent. Looking forward to getting everything installed Pricing will be confirmed and added online once we've test fitted the set.
Well yes - very nice. But you could perhaps use a slightly larger parking space ;-)
Kudos for the 86 being your 'sensible' car though :-D.
Reminds me of the lady I saw on a forum with a Lotus Elise. She got pregnant. Sell the car? Noooo. She just found a pushchair small enough to cram into the luggage bay. Respect
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Woohoo. Just remembered the Shell station in Tytherington, just the other side of RRG.
Nice full tank of VPower. That's better... and relax...
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I suppose 'low' is relative... 'lower' perhaps! Felt very similar in delivery to other turboed cars I've driven - and the 86 is lighter of course which will help...
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Nah - stand your ground. Providing you're prepared to walk away.
I would, for what it's worth. If they won't take their mistake on the chin for the sake of customer service not sure I'd want to deal with them...
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Yep - that's what I thought. Usual received wisdom is that offset affects the steering geometry. Mine certainly tramlines a little more than stock under braking but it's nothing to write home about and more than offset by the overall handling benefits of the new suspension/stickier tyres and it no longer looking like a pram...
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I've been wanting to sort out the AE86 suspension since I bought the car, but making the decision in regard to what way to go with it has been difficult. This is in part due to the lack of choice to a point. It's also the issue that most of them seem to be slammed to the floor with very high spring rates. I remember following the AE86 guys on track in my GT86 round Castle Combe at Japfest in 2015 and how stiff they looked on track. The irony was that they bounced around too much in the corners and I could just drive round them in the GT86.
Now my thinking is, if the GT86 weighs in at 1250kg and has a spring rate of 5kg front 6kg rear, that an AE86 must be way too stiff with the popular spring rate of 8kg front 6kg rear. My AE86 is not a track car, it's a car to be enjoyed on a fast B road. So I really wanted a setup that wasn't going to bounce around on the road. Also we have to remember that the AE86 has a live axle on the rear and mid corner bumps are much more of an issue than they are with the GT86's double wishbone which is far, far superior.
The AE86 has an old school fairly crude setup with MacPherson Struts up front, live axle rear with four links and a Panhard rod.
When it came to suspension, I didn't want Taiwanese parts on my car, so the off the shelf options like BC coilovers were not in the running, even though I know they work alright and are fairly good pricewise. There is also the CS2's from Driftworks which are HSD's from what I can work out. These are not cheap but are based on a budget brand and again are Taiwanese. I want Japanese parts on my car and I wanted something different. My AE86 now has an agreed value of £10K and it's only going to go in one direction. My thinking was that whatever I do needs to add value to the car and to be careful not to detract from it.
I've been having a long chat with my friend Yukiko who is the UK and Europe manager for TEIN UK. I became friends with her when I worked with her on the development of a UK setup of TEIN's streetflex coilovers and EDFC Active Pro on my GT86. I had custom spring rates specified which have now become known as the 'Lauren spring rate'. That's what they tell me anyway! So, following a number of conversations with Yukiko, I asked if they could do me a custom setup for the AE86. TEIN do not do an off the shelf setup for the AE86, but they do have a 'Specialised damper programme'. This is good. But what is not so good is that they do not supply (like BC and the CS2's) the complete front strut/leg with the spindle on the bottom. The AE86 suspension is very 1970's in it's design!
This meant that TEIN would need a pair of front legs and they would cut them off and weld on their struts. This is not the work of a moment. It also meant that if I didn't want to lose the front legs already on my car, I'd have to source another pair. I managed to get a pair off a friend and got him to ship it over to Yukiko, just in time for one of her trips over to TEIN in Yokohama. She took them on as luggage on her flight!
This was one of them. Though these have had collars welded on, the leg would be cut near the spindle and the rest thrown away!
AE86 chassis legs by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Here’s what OEM legs look like, but given it was only the spindles at the bottom of the leg that were needed it doesn't matter:
Old AE86 front legs by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
I was asked to measure the ride heights as they were on the car so that TEIN had a datum point.
Front:
Measuring ride heights AE86 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
The problem I had was that the rears were measuring 25mm lower than the front. I've always thought that there needs to be a bit of rake in the opposite direction as the car has always understeered. Now this is in part due to there being no camber adjustment on the AE86, which is never going to help, but with those crazy wheels I have with their low offsets of zero on the front and -5 on the rear, I needed to lift the rear a bit anyway. My thinking also was that the suspension needs to be able to move in order to work and whilst it may be cool to have an AE86 dropped on the floor with only the possibility of inserting a silver Rizzla between the tyre and wheel arch, I just couldn’t cope with any more wheel arch rubbing, so up it had to go!
After some discussion and bear in mind that having suspension made to your specification does increase the price, I opted for TEIN Street Advance with a 6kg front and 5kg rear spring rate. In my experience I don’t like that much variation in spring rates front to rear. I had been suggested an 8/6kg and 5/3.5kg spring rate, but I felt something in the middle would be more what I was looking for. I also specified adjustable pillow ball mounts on the fronts to get some camber adjustment which the car so desperately needed.
Four months after those old front legs went off to Yokohama, look what arrived by air freight:
TEIN AE86 Suspension by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Mark went off to see a friend to get them fitted and they were inspected by TEIN UK at their base in Milton Keynes.
So this is what happened with the ride height
Before
FR:301mm
FL:305mm
RR:285mm
RL:280mm
After
FR:298mm
FL:299mm
RR:305mm
RL:305mm
Here’s how the car looked before:
AE86 old suspension by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
AE86 old suspension by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
If you look carefully, you can see how low the rear is. The front though, was about where I wanted it.
Here’s what the suspension looks like on the car;
Here’s the front left. If you look carefully you can see the ‘specialised damper’ branding:
Measuring ride heights AE86 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
The rear:
Measuring ride heights AE86 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Whilst we were there we fitted a Techno Toy Tuning adjustable Panhard rod which makes it nice and easy to get the rear axle aligned as any change in ride height from stock puts it way out:
Techno Toy Tuning Panhard Road AE86 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
And on the car:
Measuring ride heights AE86 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Adjustable top mounts:
Measuring ride heights AE86 by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
Camber here is maxed out at 1.75 degrees. We think the adjustment is limited as my car has roll centre adjusters on the bottom of the legs. Still, it should be enough for the road.
We also took the opportunity to fit Techno Toy Tuning tension rods on the front as I picked these up nearly a year ago from a friend.
AE86 TEIN suspension by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
The other thing I really wanted to change was the tyres. The Work Meister S1 wheels that I had bought a year previously had Direzza Z2’s on and these are a track orientated tyre and very grippy indeed. But, for me I wanted to balance the grip with the level of power the car has and 122bhp is not a lot, so with the Direzzas it felt like you just had too much grip and couldn’t move the car around in the corners.
With a 15” wheel there is not much choice when it comes to tyres. I took the best option I could for a road tyre which was a Michelin Pilot Sport 3. These were put on at the same time as the geo setup was done as RRG Macclesfield Toyota who did the geometry setup for me. I really wanted to get the front toe back to parallel and importantly square up that rear end. The irony was, is that it wasn’t far off as it turned out, but never mind!
Old tyres off:
Old Direzza by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
New tyres on:
AE86 new tyres by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
We had to replace the rear spring seats and this was done after we installed the suspension. This had the effect of lifting the rear a little making the front look a bit lower compared to the front. So we had the front raised by 5mm to get the rake right which is a 5mm drop from rear to front. Here’s how it looks:
AE86 suspension testing by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
AE86 suspension testing by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr
In the above photos I was on a testing run with the new setup. The first thing I noticed after changing out the old Direzzas to the Pilot Sport 3’s was how much better the ride was. Those Direzzas must have very stiff sidewalls. The difference in respect of the handling between the old suspension and the new is dramatic.
It feels obviously stiffer as a spring rate of 5/6kg is still quite high on a car that weighs 970kg and in comparison to the GT86, the ride is noticeably firmer, but it no longer rubs the wheels in the arches and at last the damping matches the spring rate. For the first time in the five odd years I’ve owned the car it actually handles. It was always a disappointment to me previously as it was over damped and under sprung with the mishmash of suspension that it came over with from Japan. I also have a very well sorted GT86 and that just served to make it feel worse. But now, it’s a car that can at least try to keep up with the admittedly much quicker GT86 and it finally does the legend proud.
What I found through testing is that the understeer at the front end is now banished thanks to now having some negative camber on the front. The rear end though, rolls too much and whilst it is good that it grips, I’d rather it grips a little less. With the low power of the car there is no possibility of pushing the rear end wide on the exit of corners, so I will be fitting a bigger rear anti-roll bar and I hope that will address the issue. In terms of the ride, it’s not bad, no longer does it wallow around, but it is actually reasonably comfortable and far improved on how it was before, feeling far more agile. The suspension is adjustable in terms of damping force which alters the bump and rebound together. I may in the future fit EDFC, but I really want to get the balance of the car right first.
It’s good after so long to have the car I wanted it to be in the first place and I must say it’s really close now to being that car I can just hoon down a country road and get a very big smile on my face.
Great day out, and some nice things to see including a few Japanese highlights. Their GT86s were out doing (very sideways) passenger rides too. A 240z won the 70s road sports race too. I mainly fell in love with that s800 though...
Great day out, and some nice things to see including a few Japanese highlights. Their GT86s were out doing (very sideways) passenger rides too. A 240z won the 70s road sports race too. I mainly fell in love with that s800 though...
You're a forgiving lot. I think it's admirable that you take responsibility for your own cars, but we're paying through the nose for dealership (and indeed specialist service). Which is fine if you get what you pay for. This isn't the guy down the arches who'll service it for a tenner...
Anyway there are conscientious dealers around, and not so good. Takes a while to figure out which.
At least these guys took some responsibility in the end (kind of). I'd still look for another dealer though. I've been lied to by main dealers too. They only get to do it the once...
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I can't agree with some of the comments on here. Whilst I've been instructed by tyre fitters to return after 50 miles for retorquing (and it needs to be retorquing - a tyre brace doesn't cut it) I've never been asked by a dealer to do so.
The average motorist doesn't possess a torque wrench anyway. Plus the standard 'fifty miles' advice presumably gives some margin - I.e the wheel might need retorquing so that it doesn't loosen over the next x thousand miles, not that it'll be dangerously loose like the OPs at that point.
This is a safety issue. That wheel clearly wasn't secured at all and if there'd been an accident they should have been looking at charges for criminal negligence.
Depending on their response to the OP when he complains (mistakes happen, even serious ones and they may hold their hands up and respond accordingly) I wouldn't consider using this workshop.
I've had garages get things wrong, but the good ones agree with the customer and put it right. If they go the extra mile with the OP, it'll show that this is an unusual slip in standards, if they fob him off then it indicates they probably don't care
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