Lauren

Unfortunately it dents rather easily. It's a car where there is obvious evidence of weight saving. Be careful with leaning on the bonnet, it's aluminium. 
 
Once you've got a few dinks you worry about it less.

Love watching your in car stuff Lauren

Welcome aboard Dave. Here we have no sides, really we just like to get out and about as much as possible and have some fun with our cars.

If only I needed more power.

Hi Phil, was good to meet you last Thursday. There's plenty going on so hope to catch up with you soon. Woodbridge for the TSS this Sunday then as Keith says Blyton Park for a Toyota trackday on the 19th July. Blyton is a good track which is actually more technical than it looks, but there's plenty of room, so an ideal place to come and have a play I think.

Happy 86 Day indeed! Wicked time at the EVO Triangle, I just love those roads!
 

Excellent speakers. 

Don't worry, Mark will be filming with his Go Pro and camcorder and I will be taking lots of pics if I can get my new camera by then. We are staying within a five minute walk of the peace memorial in Hiroshima. It looks like there is a whole park dedicated to all that happened on that day as well as other stuff. From what I gather it will take us all afternoon to get round it.
 
I'm also going to add Carland to the Kyoto stopover as it's a very famous AE86 garage. 
 

 
I would like to go see some GT86 tuners though as well, but need to work out who. 

If only you hadn't gambled you might have been able to afford the fuel for tomorrow!* 
 
 
 
 
*To be fair it is a bit of a trek! 

Hi Carla, welcome aboard! It was great to meet you on Thursday, hope to see you at some more meets. Summer is here so there is a lot going on.

Well done you two!
 
I'll wing some money your way tomorrow. 

Welcome aboard, Mark. I've just spoken to Alec (Keelerad) and he's been telling me that it was an interesting day out. Some topics for discussion there I reckon!

Sunday? 
 
I can price it up for you if you want? 

I might give you a passenger ride in my NA.

Deeside is where they make 1.6 and 1.8 ZR engines for the hybrids.    We were taken into the PR room and given a briefing about Toyota, what the plant produces and where the engines are sent. Some are even sent to Japan, but they go all over the world. The hybrid part is not made here, but comes from Japan.    Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr   Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr   Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr   The 1.8ZR engine made at the plant: Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr   A few others in reception: Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr   A cut out A series. Always cool to see the workings: Untitled by Lauren Blighton, on Flickr   We then had to don safety specs, hard hat, reflective vest and safety shoes and so the tour began. I should add that we weren't allowed to take any pictures or videos on the tour but our guide should have some photos for us soon.    Firstly we went to the casting building where the engine blocks and heads are made. We were talked through the sand casting method used for hte low pressure items such as engine heads.    We then got to see the furnace, they even opened the door. at 750C it was quite warm to be fair. We were then able to see the robots installing the liners into the cylinder block. Quite some noise going on for this bit. We had to constantly watch out for the robots named after an employee's twin children which kept coming round picking up head castings and moving them on to the next process.    We were then taken into the testing room. Every 50 engines get a hot test which means running for sustained periods. This on a fast run is at 6500rpm for 180hours straight! We were able to see an engine in testing in the dyno cells. Think there were 6 dyno cells in all. Afterwards the engine is stripped down, all torque settings are checked and the engine is dismantled to examine for any signs of wear. These are scrapped afterwards. There is an impressive amount of recycling going on with even swarf being recycled.    We were then talked through a warranty claim. This turned out to be an engine that had thrown a conrod through the block. Our guide talked us through their process of elimination in order that they could determine the cause of the failure. In this case were shown the block cut in two longitudinally. What we could see was that on the cylinder that had failed the piston had moved lower than the other three in the bore. It was also noted that 4 and 9 months previously that there had been error codes on the catalyst.    The cause turned out to be that the owner had put a small amount of diesel in the petrol tank and the non combustion of the diesel when it had got into the cylinders via the fuel rail had caused the rod to slightly bend thus essentially hydrolocking the engine. It was explained to us that as diesel is denser than petrol it will tend to sit in the fuel rail and then get fed in to the cylinder when cornering. This explains why it was one conrod that failed rather than multiple ones.    The engine had then run for another four months before suffering catastrophic failure. Really interesting stuff and we were all able to examine all the parts and understand the signs that caused it. Brilliant!    Then we went to see the production line where all the parts we had seen being made earlier were being put together. There is a fair amount of automation and it was definitely cool watching the huge robots picking up heads and going through the process of drilling them, the camshafts being added and then the bolts being torqued up all at once as they were fed through on a conveyor.    Quite a lot of stuff is still done by hand though and our guide talked us through the training process and how people are taught to get up to speed on the production line. For example to do put in and do up the sump bolts you have a time schedule of 13 seconds. Everything has to work like a well oiled machine. They train you by getting you to put on and take off wheel nuts for two hours to see if you can handle repetitive work. It's not for everyone.    Then whilst the workers were on lunch we were able to get close up to the production line as nothing was moving. Here you could just walk along and follow the process of the engine coming together. Very cool. We were told about what happens if there is a problem that production of engines today was set at 510 and because there had been 23 minutes of stopped time so far, that the workers would be doing around half an hour of overtime to meet targets.    Then when the production line started again we were able to watch it in motion. Very cool and I think we had about half an hour to take it all in. Its one of those scenarios where you may have seen similar things on the telly but this was seeing it for real, a very different experience.   After this we got out of all the safety gear and were presented with a lovely lunch by Toyota before a final briefing and then photos of our cars for Toyota.    All in all it was just a brilliant day and just so interesing. Rob and Dave our tour guides were simply excellent and were there to answer any questions that we had. Also an absolutely huge thanks to Richard and Gary at RRG Macclesfield for organising an excellent day out and a rare view of how Toyota make their engines.

Yep, absolutely, but if you get an aftermarket front bumper you will need to fit the headlamp washers. That's what I meant really.

Welcome, Jean Luc. We do have a Belgian member (Johnny) who is around on occasion. Do keep us updated. Last year when I drove over to Germany I met up with Johnny and Dennis from Belgium. Was a good little meet.

To be fair we won't have time. I've got to drive down from Manchester, sprint the next day, then drive home! 
 
Always nice to take in the scenic routes, but I'll be trying to do it in as little distance as possible. 

Went out with the NWOC (North West Owners Collective) today for a drive out over North Wales. We took in some of the EVO triangle too.
 
Mark made a vid:
 

 
Unfortunately there was an incident whereby a Civic rear ended a Skyline in a hard stop. This is why the vid doesn't really have an end as such as we stopped filming at that point. Otherwise it was a beautiful day with some great roads. We were a little hampered by traffic, but at one stop a friendly copper pulled up for a chat. 
 
I probably should have posted this up here, as it was a good alternative to those of us in the north. 

Okay booked for £35 + brekkie too.

Went out with the NWOC (North West Owners Collective) today for a drive out over North Wales. We took in some of the EVO triangle too.
 
Mark made a vid:
 

 
Unfortunately there was an incident whereby a Civic rear ended a Skyline in a hard stop. This is why the vid doesn't really have an end as such as we stopped filming at that point. Otherwise it was a beautiful day with some great roads. We were a little hampered by traffic, but at one stop a friendly copper pulled up for a chat. 
 
I probably should have posted this up here, as it was a good alternative to those of us in the north. 

Cheers. It's a great fun little track which was quite sliperry as we followed the drifters session. That made it perfect for having a play though and I must say I did quite enjoy myself. I haven't driven this track before so I wasn't trying to set a lap record or anything, I just wanted to get around nice and safe, but it was great fun having a bit of a play.
 
I setup my suspension a little too stiff (totally my fault for not thinking the maths through properly) which I think didn't help in places but it didn't cause any big issues and the car just handled so well, it was really easy to balance on the throttle. 
 
I'm  a bit concerned about the stickier tyres going on next month, but we'll see.

Sideways is the way forward.

That's been driving me nuts for days. Now corrected!

Well proportionately the difference between 235 and 245 in regard to profile is relatively little so you should be fine. 
 
It shouldn't be a problem for your rim width. 235 will be fine on an 8.5" rim I would have thought. 
 
You've already got 245 is going to be fine on a 9.5" rim as you're already running them.