Hello from Western Australia

Hi all,

I'm Jordan or JD from Western Australia. Been a member of this site for a while. Andre and Ben do a great job with the courses but haven't been involved in the forum as I tend not to like internet forums.

I got interested in tuning after several bad experiences with tuners on my own car. I have a highly modified turbo Toyota GT86 which was first tuned remotely by someone in the states, and then someone here in Perth had a go at it. Both tuners reflashed the car with ECUtek multiple times. However I kept having issues with overboosting, idle issues, lean or rich spots and all sorts of other issues. I found that I couldn't explain the issues very well to the tuners and so the issues weren't getting fixed. After spending more on others doing tuning of my car then I had on adding a turbo to it I decided to educate myself a little further which is when I stumbled upon this place. Actually I found it after watching Andre review the Motec M150 plug and play kit for the 86s which I subsequently bought.

For those that are interested in the car...

2013 Toyota GT86

I bought the base spec here in Aus as this was always going to be a project car predominantly for track use. I'd looked seriously at buying a 35GTR or one of the new BMW M3/4s but decided I would find it more rewarding to build something quick than buying something fast and have people tell me it was the car doing the work.

Engine

Custom AVO turbo kit (same as the HPA boys but I definitely got mine first :-p ) Started life as an AVO stage 1 kit, now it has an AVO stage 4 billet turbo, hypertune intercooler, nameless performance bypass valve.

To keep this breathing efficiently I run a mishimoto 3 inch intake and custom 3 inch turbo to cat back with a powerhouse amuse R1 titan catback.

System is cooled with Koyo radiator and a Mocal 19 row oil cooler.

ECU

This is all run by a motec M1 kit for Toyota 86 complete with LTC lambda control, EGT and Oil pressure sensors and Motec boost control. All the function of the ecu are now being displayed through a Motec C127 digital dash (still sorting this one out, I only picked it up yesterday)... Did I happen to mention I have the oldest Motec Dealer in the world down the road from my office?

I'm running a conservative 10psi at the moment with about 240hp at the wheels.

Suspension and Wheels

18x9.5 Advan GTs with Advan AD08Rs in 255x35. For competitive track work I run Enkei RPF1s in 17x9.5 with Advan A050 in 265x45.

KWV3 Coilovers with Vorshlag camber hats keep it nicely planted and pointed in the right direction.

There's all sorts of fun stuff stashed in there like sway and strut bars and hardened mounts that I won't bore you with. But I've been working with a racing suspension specialist to get it dialed in nicely for about the last year. Currently it's handling amazingly well at the three local tracks.

Brakes

2013 STI Brembo calipers, with project Mu rotors and HC+ pads. These pull up nicely and quite honestly I haven't been able to push them to their limits yet.

Misc and Aesthetics

I run a mixed C-West/Varis body kit with some great TRD aero goodies on there as well.

Seats have been swapped out with the Recaro CS Sportsters from the Japanes STI model.

I have a trackart custom harness bar with takata 4 point harnesses for the track.

Oh and the car is wrapped in yellow... Mostly for fun but it was also to protect the paint from the stone flecks and rubber stripes I seem to pick up at the track.

There's a bunch of other little bits and pieces done to it... But that's the crux of it all. Happy to answer any questions I can. Have a fair amount of experience with the mechanical side of these cars... Only just now learning the tuning side.

At present I'm having a pro comp FA20 race motor built for it... But that and a hollinger sequential gear box are the last things to go into it for the foreseeable future. Right at the moment the aims are to get the tuning right and the car dialed in nicely.

Side bar... My other track toy is a 2015 Ricciardo Kart care of Daniel Ricciardo's karting team here in WA. Much simpler tuning on that though ;-)

Hi JD,

Welcome to the forum, have to admit I'm starting to really warm to the 86, their just about becoming affordable here in the UK for a project car

Hi Chris,

Thanks for that!

They're a great little project car. I'm amazed at how easily they become quite a quick track car with very little work. What's more they're so cheap. There's been cars coming up for auction out of japan in perfect condition with sub 20k kms for around the $15-$17k aud mark. We couldn't register them here but they would be perfect for a targa car or a competition track car.

I was looking at building one for the 86 Race series here, and I think I had it priced up at $40k AUD for a compliant car (they're mostly stock, no real power upgrades, but handlng/braking and roll cage etc). Unfortunately for me most of the races are being held on the far side of the country so transport fees completely blew my budget otherwise I'd be in it.

I strongly recommend them as a track toy though. A good set of coils, some brakes and track rubber and suddenly you're hunting down much more powerful cars through the windy bits...

For example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gilZ5YXf9Y

Welcome along JD86!

How have you found the reliability of the AVO manifold given that you're tracking the car? I couldn't keep the damn thing together and ended up modifying a replacement AVO manifold with double slip joints to allow some expansion at operating temp.

I also find it difficult to keep the car cool on the track. I have a Mishimoto radiator and a 25 row oil cooler but I can still easily see 100+ deg water temp on the track after just 4-5 laps. Keeping a turbo 86 cool is the source of endless threads on the FT86 forum but that's hardly much consolation. How is yours performing?

Thanks Andre,

I'll be brutally honest in my review of the AVO kit and say the quality hasn't been great. Oddly though I haven't had the problems everyone else had with the headers. I was fortunate (unfortunate?) enough to receive the first production kit AVO made after their shop prototypes for Japan/Aus/America. As such I've been a bit of guinea pig customer for them and had a bunch of quality issues. I've had the kit on my car for a bit more than two years now and in that time I've had to replace most every part of it.

My headers were swapped almost immediately as they had a leak on one of the welds. The only delay in this was AVO shipping me a new set which took two weeks. So my second set of headers have now been going strong for over two years. Although the ceramic coating is long gone.

My wastegate actuator went next as that only held 3psi of boost, so we swapped that for the 8psi unit when that became available.

The turbo went next, we're still not sure why it failed but the compressor wheel started grinding against the housing after less than 1500kms (although there was 3 track days and it failed at 1 of those). AVO believes it has to do with me running 5-30 oil during summer as opposed to 0-20 but we never got a firm answer.

Dump pipe was next to go, that cracked at a track day (admittedly I didn't have much flex in my exhaust system at that point)... Turbo gasket next... Exhaust gaskets after that... Intake hoses after that... The story goes on. It seems like I can't get through a track day without a gasket failing, but thankfully I haven't had any major parts fail in a while. Of the original kit only the throttle body side of the intercooler pipe work and my BOV are left. Everything else has been replaced.

All that aside AVO has been excellent with their support. I think the only part I paid for a replacement for was the dump pipe as the exhaust I was running on that particular day didn't have a flex joint anywhere (plus me paying for the replacement meant I could get their 3 inch dump pipe/overpipe combo). Everything else has been replaced under warranty. My mechanics do have a good working relationship with AVO, but Lee has been amazingly helpful and just a phonecall away.

I have the car up on a lift today and am slightly concerned about the shape the headers are in. There's no leaks but they are showing signs of heavy use and were never the best of fabrications. I've been contemplating taking the car out of service for a couple of weeks and fabricating a set of replacement headers out of higher quality steel using the avo ones as a base. I think I'll see how much longer these ones hold up for now.

As to cooling you're right, there's endless threads on FT86 but no real help. The track events that I do thankfully don't allow the cars to do endless laps. They're mostly sprint series style events so a warm up lap, 3 hot timed laps and a cool down lap. The No-limits events are held mostly at night and the cams/mc motorsport sprint days have all been in the wet or cold thus far this year.

I have done sprint days on 40 deg c days and the car definitely did not enjoy those. I was having to park up in the shade for half an hour at a time to allow it to cool down.

The koyo radiator definitely helps, from memory it's over twice as thick as the stock one (which looks like an air-con cooler). I have some of the kansai. Also the oil cooler is currently on my 2nd revision. The first was only a 9 row setrab core and that was far too small. The 19 is better, it's tucked behind where the drivers foglight used to be and I have some carbon ducts which help direct air from the mouth over it. Rev 3 is a work in progress and involves wiring a couple of suction 5 inch fans into the spare motec outputs and making a custom shroud. over the back of the oil cooler. This is more for aiding in cooling it down in the pits though as I'll set them to shut off at WOT or above a 75kph when the airflow from speed should do the same trick. I know there's a lot of people using the factory wrx style air/water cooler. I don't see the point in running both an air to air and an air to water cooler when the coolant temps are getting up to boiling point anyway.

Beyond this I'm not sure where to go. A vented hood will help, but most of the carbon ones are wet carbon and seem to be for aesthetics more than genuine cooling. Plus they weigh more than the aluminium stock hood. Or in the case of the Powerhouse Amuse dry carbon hood they are stupidly expensive. I was thinking of finding a wreck with an intact bonnet and making a custom louvered piece similar to the old school TRD car from the scion tuner challenge at last year's sema.

End goal would be a V mount set up with a ram air scoop similar to the what the TRD griffon car is currently running. However whilst the car is still road registered I'm not allowed to mess with the crash bar here in WA so that's currently not an option.

If you've been relying so far on the stock instrument cluster to indicate temps then you might be in for a surprise once you have the car at a track day with the Motec dash! The stock analogue temp gauge is next to useless and sits roughly in the middle between about 60 deg and about 110.

I started with a front mounted oil cooler (I think 13 row) when the car was N/A. Worked perfectly until I went turbo and then I was back to getting 130+ deg oil temp. My current oil cooler is mounted in the drivers side inner guard and vents out through the wheel well. This works well for the oil temp but hasn't fixed the water temp. I even went to the trouble of making a separate water cooling system for the EFR turbo with its own mini radiator and pump.

I had the turbo leak between the header and turbo and then the drivers side head flange warp twice. I couldn't see the thing working without some room for flex so decided to modify a new set with double slip joints. Lee has been very helpful and supplied a new manifold at no cost. I believe the kit is perfect for the street but not so great for those intending on serious track use.

I'm considering a vented bonnet as i feel that's the only true fix.

What temperature thermostats are the 86's running? It sounds like a common theme for modern cars as I have been dealing a lot with 350/370Z's and they are suffering on track and once charged fast road.

I also had a new shape fiesta turbo that the coolant seemed very happy at ~95degrees C