Loomie's TT VVTi Project

So after taking receipt of my dream Supra imported from Japan by the guys at JM Imports, I've started to tweak to make it exactly how I want its. For those of you who haven't seen my "New Member" thread you can see the details here.

I wanted to document all the little bits i'm going to be doing over the next few months and years so thought I'd start a build thread. To begin with the changes will be mostly cosmetic and audio related while I make up my mind on whether i want to take the plunge and go single. I'll swing back and add some more information on plans and idea's - advice on how best to approach things and idea's for future mods are appreciated!

Quick few pics of the car as I got it from JM...

Hope you like it and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in and sharing experiences with everyone on the forum.

Lets get ready to rumble!!

So my first task was to fix the mismatched seats that came with the car.

I had a very productive day getting the seats in yesterday - what started out as just a discovery exercise to see what I'd need to achieve this turned into just getting the damn things in as the Blue bucket was killing my sides as I'm much too big for it. This is my first write up to document the process so go easy on me and any feedback would be great!

The original seats...

...and i picked up a pair of Recaro's from a Renault Megane Sport R26 which were the Trendlines I believe...

First things first I took the stock Megane rails off the Recaro's and got the Bride rails off the seats that came in the Supra. After offering up the rails to the Recaro's, as Jay said (thanks for the heads up) the base of the seat has a bit of a bulge so I got some metal inserts which I stacked up to provide the rails enough clearance to be able to slide...

Here's the rails offered up to the base of the seat...

So after putting in a little more thank 1 inch of inserts to provide the clearance I needed. I used three inserts of solid steel so hopefully they'll be rock solid - i also had to go grab some longer bolts to make sure they reached through into the bolt with the added clearance. Here's the rails fitted...

and finally... here's the first seat back in the car looking perfectly at home to make sure everything fitted and slid smoothly without any issues.

And now both where they belong...

I was a little worried about safety with the added clearance so I used high tensile steel bolts to give added strength and they're in completely solid but still a little unsure as I don't want them breaking or anything but i'll check everything after a week to make sure all is well.

Great work They are probably the nicest seats to put in a Supra imo, they look very OEM+

I think I'm going to get my dash panels trimmed in matching grey suede in mine

I can second that; they look absolutely great! I got handbrake and gear stick gaiters in the same suede which reminds me, i need to fit the handbrake gaiter properly as it wasnt on right before!!

Cheers for the advice Jay!

Nice seats.

I had mine fitted with spacers as you've done for a few years but finally plucked up the courage to cut the Bride frames so they fit flush. It feels so much better now sitting that bit lower.

They look great mate, nice motor

Nice seats.

I had mine fitted with spacers as you've done for a few years but finally plucked up the courage to cut the Bride frames so they fit flush. It feels so much better now sitting that bit lower.

That's what I did too, I cut the rear bar out with an angle grinder. The seat is in the carpet now, but like you say the driving position is perfect

Such a difference to the interior! Looks much better than the mismatch before! An I agree, it does look very OEM.

Thanks for all the comments guys, I did toy with the idea of cutting the rails but I thought this way I could get away with it but I may need to revisit and cut it anyway as I think the drivers side front cross bar is touching the seat slide release handle.

I had a go at carbon wrapping the spoiler blade last night... It was NOT easy! The top turned out perfect but the rear was full of wrinkles. I've left it on like that for now while I find a real CF blade for it.

Also, I refitted the handbrake and gear gaiters so they're on properly now. They're the same suede as the seats - sorry for bad pics, the flash makes the suede look funny.

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The handbrake handle needs changing and the gear reverse lift assembly needs tidying. Does anyone know if /how the reverse lift comes off?

Today, I'm hoping to take off one of the door cards and see how much clearance I have to put some decent speakers in. I'm hoping to drop some Focal K2's in an active front end. If there is enough space I'll go with some tight 8inch subs in the rear quarters but I doubt it'll have the volume.

Finally, dynamat EVERYWHERE!

So my my first "proper" write up on what i've done with the car so go easy on me. Now that i've got it all down on paper i've realised that i've forgotten to take pics of lots of stages but as its my first time, i'm sure you'll let me off.

The next piece of work i've focused on over the last two weeks was to bring the sound system up to spec. I've always been a bit of a audiophile and so the existing system simply had to go.

To start with i got all the pieces together for the install, which was...

- Pioneer AVH-X8700 7inch touchscreen headunit

- Focal K2 Power 6.5inch components

- Precision Power A10 10 inch subwoofer

- Diamond 2 channel amp for the comps

- Infinity 2 channel amp for the sub; i have a Pioneer monobloc amp currently in repair which I'll be swapping into the mix.

- 10 Gauge audison speaker wire

- 4 Gauge power cable

- Live and Ground Distribution block

- 3 packs of Silent Coat sound proofing (total of 12 meters squared)

- Reversing camera with built in LEDS - cheap Amazon jobbie

- Change footwell and door lights to an ice white (i'm not too keen on the neon blue that is there currently).

I'm big on car audio so i wanted a system which would sound amazing but would also not add too much weight to the car so I've gone with quite a minimal equipment list.

I wanted to reduce the road noise as well as making the system sound better so first on my list to do was to start stripping out the interior to start getting the sound proofing down onto all the metal panels. Had to get the carpet and all side panels out to get down to the body.

As you can see, there was a mass of wires that needed to be stripped out from the old system to give us a good starting point to work with.

Once done, i was ready to start cleaning the inside to get rid off the dust and wiped down all surfaces with white spirit to degrease

Finally, i started on the sound proofing. Working on small sections at a time with a heat gun and a 1 inch wide roller to heat and then make sure each section adhere's to each panel completely. Can be very time consuming with the smaller bits; making sure you cut out small pieces and fit them together to completely cover. This bit took me about 3 days to do properly...

Unfortunately, i got into a rhythm and managed to plough through it until... i ran out of Sound proofing, so i got as far back as the rear bench and both doors and ordered some more to finish off the boot and roof liner. Here's some pics of the inside practically complete with soundproofing done, and wiring laid with power and remote running down the outer passenger side, the RCA's through the middle with no other wires around them to ensure there was no interference, the speaker cables taken down each side with separate runs from to the mid and the tweeter to facilitate the move to an active front end system once all the bits i need arrive and finally the reversing camera down the drivers side to the headunit...

I didnt want any of the wires to be showing so we went to the effort of running the speaker cable into the door for the mids through the rubber boot which was not easy but in the end some oil, a coat hanger and some hard work got the job done.

The rubber boot...

The wire going in one side...

The wire coming out the other side...

and the speaker cable sitting pretty after being pulled through into the door...

A quick pic of the reversing camera...

Unfortunately, i totally forgot to take pics of the sound proofing on the doors however, next i started working on the door cards. I had a think about how best to mount the speakers and while everyone has gone with the speaker ring adaptors, i wanted to ensure that the doors were rock solid so i decided to go with a fibreglass install to completely reinforce the door card and seat the speaker directly into it.

First off, I got the door cards out and started to use fibreglass compound to fill all the little holes, tight corners and gaps to make the fibre glassing process much easier. At this point i also measured up the space i had to work with to make sure that the speakers would have enough clearance; they're 71mm deep and i had just over 90mm to work with...

Step 1- figure out what goes where on the card

Step 2- mix the fibre glass compound with enough activator to make sure you can get the mixture in. Best to work in small batches here...

Step 3- Start filling in the small gaps and holes so that there's no trapped air, or empty sections so when we start applying the fibreglass mat we dont have to struggle to get it into every nook and cranny.

Step 4- Start with the fibre glass mats to do the larger surfaces covering all sections of the door card completely, and using a brush to paint on the resit with the right mix of resin to hardner...

With the tighter bits, we used smaller cut sections to get into the small area's.

We carried on going until the whole of both door cards were totally covered.

In the interest of ease, i used some MDF rings to mount into the fibre glass to give the speakers something solid to screw into.

Step 5- ...and finally leave to dry. I left both with a heater on low to cure the fibreglass and left it overnight to harden.

Here's the final fibre glasses set of door cards. The key with this was that i didn't want to add any extra weight over what i'd need to secure the speakers in solidly, and stop any flex - For that reason the bits closest to the speaker are thicker than the furthest extremities.

Next was to mount the speakers onto the door cars themselves...

Finally, i added some sheets of sound proofing to the back of the door card to help provide a little more stiffness and deaden any remaining vibrations.

The final step was to start putting the car back together, carpet and centre console goes in...

Rear and front seats go in along with the remaining trim...

I got the door cards on which fitted back perfectly - the drivers side will need a bit of shaving of the fibre glass as I think the speaker magnet rubs slightly but only ever so slightly but im a bit banal about this so I'll need to get it back off to trim...

I wanted to keep the look on the inside as stock as possible without the leary logo's so i decided to keep the original stock speaker grills but simply drilled some new holes into the plastic to makes sure as much of the sounds went through as possible and without impediment...

Next i moved on to getting the stock tweeters out. Now i did some reading on this and everywhere i read it said that its a right PITA but i thought - it cant be that hard, right? WRONG. This took me th best part of two evenings. Eventually i had to take the whole dash out, squeeze my arm in and managed just about to get a screwdriver to the screw and get them off. The results were bleeding forearms, an almost threaded screw, a bad back from the awkward positions I had to take and a headache from the agro caused.

Ultimately, i was so frustrated by this bit that i totally forgot to take any proper pictures but here's the stock tweeters, the cable being run, soldered to the tweeters and the new tweeter in its new home...

Finally, got everything hooked up on the front end - connected the RCA's to the amps, the remote, reverse signal input for the reversing camera and got the head unit back in...

Finally, did the same at the other end and mounted and connected up both amps to the back of the rear seat...

Connected the subwoofer which for now is in a standard box - however, when i have more time ill be fibre-glassing a stealth box into the hole where the old subwoofer used to go to keep most of the space in the boot as there's obviously not a lot of it to begin...

Finally, as i had most of the car open, i decided to swap out the old neon blue lights that came with the car for some new Ice white LEDS along with swapping the bulbs in the dome lights. I forgot to document this bit as it was an addon but the below is the pic above which best shows the end product...

...and finally, i got a carbon fibre gear shift knob to replace the worn out fake TRD gear knob...

Next on my list of things to do for the system...

- Move to an active front end with a 4 channel amp with an individual channel powering each tweeter and each mid with an active crossover.

- A fibre glassed stealth subwoofer box in the hole where the original hole was. I want to take as little space as possible, while having a big enough volume and keeping the spare wheel.

- Build some grills for the tweeter to clean up the install here.

- A full tune on an RTA.

Wish me luck!!

Doh - looks like loads of the pics didnt come out right - not sure what i did wrong?

Finally finished the sound proofing in the boot last night... Now just gota put the trim back in and start on the sub box.

Very nice work there. Wow.

Yes very nice !

But why putting an handboxe instead of the passenger Facelift Airbag ? :/

Do you still have the genuine steering wheel ? I can buy you it if you sell it !!

Way better with the RECAROs, I think I'll buy me some, but prefer the Speed one.

Cheers - the car already sounds amazing with only half sound proofed.

The upper glove box and the Nardi steering wheels were there when i got the car so the previous owner must have enjoyed the additional space and i dont have the stock wheel unfortunately!

I didnt actually realize the facelift had an airbag instead of the upper box actually. :-s