Lauren

Best mod ever if you track your car. 👍

I collected the rest of the brake upgrade today
I've gone with the Reyland AP BBK with curved internal vein J hook discs. These should hopefully work very nicely with the PFC.11 pads and Motul RBF660 fluid.
Discs are 330mm

Update on the matter: I now have my car back from Fensport, after they did an amazing job at fixing it(and upgrading)!

They looked at the above videos and I told them what was happening, so they advised it needs stripping and proper looking at to see what exactly is broken. They had a good second hand engine available that had done 45000 miles if I just wanted to do a quick swap and save some money - but I wanted to upgrade some parts and kept that as a fallback option.

So initially we got to the following items:
New genuine crankshaft Genuine conrod and main bearings ARP head studs Cosworth headgaskets Brian crower forged conrods Kelford valve springs All fluids for running in and final 2x oil filters Toyota genuine coolant Oil system improvements to dramatically improve oil pressure Fensport custom oil pickup pipe Remap We went down the route of forged rods only as Tom is running this on his GT86 and he is hitting 460bhp on his daily very comfortably, though the advice is to not go higher than 500bhp.
They removed the engine and got majority of it stripped down and find that it is worse than anticipated. The insides had nasty charred black coating and the oil smelled burned.
The bearing on cylinder 1 conrod had somehow welded itself to the other bearing causing heavy crankshaft damage. It looked like the engine has been running like this for quite a while like this and remnants of bearing material can be found throughout the engine. Piston oil scraper rings have been blocked by burned oil and carbon preventing it from reaching the sump.  They needed to strip and clean the engine considerably more than expected and also inspect the heads to see if there is more damage to the camshafts or carriers.



 
Next step was to actually see what was salvageable from the engine and what is not. Depending if the damage is beyond usability with stock pistons, we potentially have to look at getting a brand new shortblock from Toyota which would be cheaper and less time consuming.
Luckily the cylinder heads were decent apart from light scoring on the camshafts and journals, but that seems to be very common in these engines and is no cause for concern. Unfortunately the block and pistons are no good at all and can not be re-used. I could have gone for more forged internals but as I'm not planning to go beyond 500bhp I opted for the brand new short block. Whilst we were waiting for that to come in, they built the custom oil pickup ready for the new setup.

 
Once the shortblock came in it was quickly getting rebuild with the new interals. You can definitely see which part of the engine here is nice and shiny!



 
I've had her back for a week now and runs like an absolute dream, I am happy I went down this route and looking forward to many more miles and future upgrades with Fensport.
 
Big shoutout to the team at Fensport for the amount of updates and pictures I received during the process including invaluable amounts of information on parts/upgrades/issues etc. Not to mention the few saturdays they came in to work on it due to having more issues than expected.

Happy to say I will definitely going back to them for anything else.

To be honest the Corolla purchase in 2005 was never intended to be a long term affair.  It just never broke down, ever! So I became attached. Ironically it was still running fine, but someone in a 19 plate Golf R drove into it outside a supermarket whilst I was shopping and it became an instant write off.  I felt I needed to stay with Toyota and here I am (albeit Toyota with a Subaru engine).
Thanks, it's really so nice and tactile to drive.  I have zero regrets.
That's what I keep telling everyone, I'm just full-on embracing it! 😂

Nothing like a mid life crisis eh? 🤣
Welcome and enjoy.
 

I'm 40, Have owned 4 cars total since 1997 when I passed my test.  My last one, a 53 plate 1.4ltr Corolla lasted me over 15 years since I purchased it in October 2005.  Always loved the look of the GT86 but never owned a car more powerful than a ride on lawnmower.  Picked my 66 plate up on Sunday and I've been grinning ever since!  Better late than never.

ETA 18th November gulp! It's all very exciting, it's starting to feel real. 👍

ETA 18th November gulp! It's all very exciting, it's starting to feel real. 👍

ETA 18th November gulp! It's all very exciting, it's starting to feel real. 👍

ETA 18th November gulp! It's all very exciting, it's starting to feel real. 👍

They are rubbish. Better not to use them. You don't need rear speakers in such a small cabin. I had all my ICE replaced just after I bought my car. Rear speakers were disconnected. Best thing for them. 

It's now left the factory. No messing! 
 

It's now left the factory. No messing! 
 

It's now left the factory. No messing! 
 

I wasn't this excited about my wife's Yaris

It's now left the factory. No messing! 
 

It's now left the factory. No messing! 
 

What fun with spellchecker. MacRae to Marie..
Keep us posted!

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I received a notification on Friday night telling me my car is being built! 
I'm just a little bit excited.
In other news, got an email from RRG telling me they will have a demo car in for the beginning of November, so I will be first behind the wheel. I really hope it's as good as it looks! 
 

Circuit Pack of course.
It's nothing to do with Xmas really, hoping for end of November for delivery. Whilst I was at the Subaru factory in Maebashi, they had Richard Burn's Prodrive WRX WRC car there. I pointed out that it was built in England, which they found funny.
 

Yep, a prefecture is basically a region really. I have been to the GT86/BRZ Subaru factory in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture for a tour back in 2014. 
My GR Yaris is a Toyota only affair which is a very good thing in my mind, built in Motomachi Factory, Toyota City. What is interesting is that there is a lot of hand assembly with the GR Yaris apparently taking 10 days to complete compared with around 15 hours start to finish including testing etcetera for a regular car.  Some engine parts being hand finished as well as the Takumi (Japanese for master) technician who puts their name to it. The forged carbon roof is hand fitted and the 200 extra weld points are done by hand for extra chassis stiffening. 
This vid is an interesting watch showing much CEO 'Morizo' has been involved with the car: 
 

This is because they discounted the first 1000 by 10K AUS dollars! I wish they'd done that here! 

Lovely to see Lauren. There is something special and a bit of an unknown in buying a car based on spec sheets and adverts. This is what makes it exciting. Coupled with the fact that you might be one of the first few to have the production car, is a delight.

I remember Subaru make in Gunma Prefecture. Is Prefecture a factory or something in Japanese?

Sent from my SM-G970F using Tapatalk

I received a notification on Friday night telling me my car is being built! 
I'm just a little bit excited.
In other news, got an email from RRG telling me they will have a demo car in for the beginning of November, so I will be first behind the wheel. I really hope it's as good as it looks! 
 

I received a notification on Friday night telling me my car is being built! 
I'm just a little bit excited.
In other news, got an email from RRG telling me they will have a demo car in for the beginning of November, so I will be first behind the wheel. I really hope it's as good as it looks!