Doughie

I would advise getting a full suspension geometry check on your car ASAP. if you've lowered the car a lot, then unless you change the camber, castor and toe settings the tyres will wear very fast indeed. Which sounds like exactly what you've got. You may have lowered it so much that to it's not possible to correct the toe / camber settings as the range of adjustment might not be sufficient to bring it back within spec. Chris Wilson's specialism is in suspension, so he may able to offer his 2p worth on this.

I would advise getting a full suspension geometry check on your car ASAP. if you've lowered the car a lot, then unless you change the camber, castor and toe settings the tyres will wear very fast indeed. Which sounds like exactly what you've got. You may have lowered it so much that to it's not possible to correct the toe / camber settings as the range of adjustment might not be sufficient to bring it back within spec. Chris Wilson's specialism is in suspension, so he may able to offer his 2p worth on this.

I think it's basically because there is a releasing agent on the surface to get the tyre out of the mould easily and this needs to be scrubbed off which can take up to 100 miles, depending on use. Tyre will definitely not give max. grip until this has been done. even without scrubbing off this release agent, the surface of the tyre will be almost shiny smooth and this isn't good for grip either, so the rubber needs roughening up so it's not shiny. something like that. same goes for motorbike tyres (prolly even more so)

150 ot 0 in a 1.6tonne car is a pretty extreme test of he brakes, but having said that, since Toyota *built* a 1.6 tonne 150+mph car then it damn well ought to be able to brake v hard to 0mph without fade. German Autobahn, quiet morning, serious 150mph speed, and see an accident a few hundred metres ahead ......... you're going to do the 150-0 thing. Surprised Toyota didn't put better higher friction / higher temp. tolerant pads in as stock. There's plenty of Porterfield and other pads available that Toyota could have sub-licensed or something. adds to the cost, yes, but if it stops the car in time without fade then they should be on there. Bound to be pad fade due to exccessive temperature reducing coefficient of friction of pads to low levels. Fluid wouldn't boil in such a short space of time. (and if it did boil that really *IS* disastrous. Happened to me at RAF Elvington)

OK I worked it out on that basis and 60mph to 0mph in 110ft = 1.1g average negative g braking, which is really quite impressive. (assuming it was actually only 110ft). Assuming the same rate of deceleration from 180mph gives distance to stop from 180mph to 0mph of 301metres. It will probavbly be a bit shorter than this as, (as Bobbeh mentioned) the air drag at 180mph will be very large and will contribute greatly to braking. effectively the whole bodyshell of the car acts as an air-brake at this speed. But this is assuming that you REALLY nail the brakes all the way down to 0mph, i.e. ABS cutting in, or just abut to cut in the whole way down. Remember to have your seat-belt on .........

180mph - zero. err, longer than you think is about as helpful as i can be i'm afraid. you cover ground at over 100mph very very quickly. If someone can give me the average deceleration of a Supra braking at the max. (in negative g) then i can give you an exact figure mate. anyone want to have a stab ? Negative 0.5g from 180mph ??

Martin fitted RLTC to my UK spec Soop a year or so ago and i can highly recommend him. He's very thorough and careful and does a proper job as if it was his own car. The whole kit worked perfectly 1st time out. Plus he's inexpensive ! cheers ps. Martin - chuck us a fiver next time m8...

Er, try under the bonnet, near the battery. Black lid, unclips. loadsa fuses in there.

Just one thing here to add : - If you get ONE black line then i agree that this indicates no LSD on the car. - If you get TWO black lines then surely this indicates that you *MAY* have an LSD on the car (but not *necessarily* so). Reasoning: If both rear tyres are on a smooth flat surface then they should get equal grip/traction with the surface and therefore both spin if enough power is applied (even with no LSD). The "one black line" scenario should only happen when one rear tyre has a bit less grip than the other and then it will spin up and keep spinning away the power, therefore resulting in only 1 black line. comments ?

yep i think the Japanese basically up-specced the car because of the Germans hammering down the Autobahn. I think most of the Euro (and therefore UK) mods were based on the German Autobahn thing. brakes, diff cooler, turbos, bits and pieces like that.

And the filter itself from Toyota is about £30. (or maybe a bit more) (It comes in it's own plastic grid holder thingy.). you can't get just the paper filter, you need to buy the whole £30 thingy and then it basically just slots into the filter housing.

Only Mobil 1 in my local shop is 0W 40. 0W is too thin and can leak past some seals so people tend to go for 10W30 or 10W40 or so.

Branners - what you wrote above almost exactly mirrors what my UK-spec car was like. The big kick came in about 4500-4800rpm when 2nd turbo came on-line properly. below that level it accelerated, but like you, it didn't feel that much different to stock performance below 4000rpm-ish. Also on the power-band thing, i know what you mean too, because at Silverstone at Trax 2001, the car used to just fall out of the power-band on change-ups, (say the next gear engaged at about 4500rpm on red-line upchanges), which meant a small delay before the next big surge. So I would say your car is entirely typical of a UK-spec manual with the level of mods you have. The only difference really between your car and my old UK-spec being that i had a bleed valve on mine and you have an EBC. are you doing any more mods to it ? RLTC ? FMIC ? cheers

70aH = 70 Amp-hours, which means that the battery can supply 70 Amps for 1 hour or 1 amp for 70 hours. etc.etc. not sure why it also says "500 amps" or whatever. maybe that's the absolute max that it can instantly deliver but that's a HELL of a lot of amps. The key one is the Ah rating. Higher means it's heavier-duty, got more in reserve and less likely to flatten quickly especially in the cold weather.

Yep that would certainly not be advisable, especially on a Supra. don't mix tyre treads / makes on one axle. It's probably not even a good idea to have different tyres on front to back, but definitely don't mix them on the same axle.

[slightly non-Supra off-topic, but interesting brake fluidy type stuff all the same] As part of the race prep for the Dubai 24hr kart race, one of our team members (who was a McLaren F1 mechanic for 17 years) brought along a litre of the full monty brake fluid that McLaren use in the F1 race cars. It had a nice label on it saying "Mobil 1" (for sponsorship reasons..) , and I said to our F1 mechanic "bet it's SRF". He didn't actually know if it was or not, so we peeled the Mobil 1 cover label off and sure enough, underneath it was ......... Castrol SRF !! So there you go - bog-standard SRF is used by McLaren for Kimi and David, so that's a pretty good endorsement for the stuff in my view. Anyway, when we got our kart for the 24 kart race, it had DOT 5 Silicone fluid already in it for it's Kelgate brakes. Bit of a shame as we were intending to bleed all the fluid off and use SRF instead, but I know that you can't mix glycol-based fluids like SRF with Silicone fluid DOT 5. Does anyone actually know why ?? Is it just that the 2 fluids simply won't mix at all ? Or is it that it will knacker the brake caliper piston seals ? Chris Wilson are you out there ? Our McLaren bloke reckoned that the SRF would have been fine as long as we flushed plenty of it through to get rid of the silicone fluid, and if it did knacker the seals, it only had to last 24 hours anyway. We never tried it though, but it would have been interesting to try it as it may have avoided some brake issues. In the end, we did have brake problems, including the pistons pushing the pads onto the disc of their own accord in the extreme 95degree heat of the day. The Kelgate brakes have self-adjusting calipers i think, and the silicone fluid either expanded slightly or something and we got pad/disk contact with foot totally off the brake pedal. Solution to this rather annoying problem is very simply that every time we came in to re-fuel / driver change, everyone simply pours litres and litres of water all over the brake assembly. - everything, disk, pads, caliper - the lot. It steams like hell, but makes the brakes feel like new for at least 5 laps or so.... ps. I have this unopened litre bottle of SRF now, so if anyone wants a litre of genuine ex-McLaren Castrol SRF then drop me a PM. Obviously for a few notes. pps. Kimi and David have signed the bottle, tripling it's market value.

Kevin 1) At standstill, in neutral, will the engine rev above 4000rpm? If not, then i suspect that it's something to do with launch control. The factory rev limit for launch control is about 4000rpm. Maybe the "little green button" is jammed on ? If the engine WILL rev freely when stationary, then i suspect that you may have got either the front or rear wheel sizes dramatically wrong in the DAT file. Or, perhaps, it is the 3276% thing as noted above. There is a "straight line slip over-ride" field that allows you to state how much additional slip (over and above the slip level dialled-in) you want when the car is going straight.

In Japan, there is an agreement that manufacturers cannot *claim* more than 280bhp for any of their cars, as sold in Japan. this is the main reason for the 280bhp stated for the J-spec Supra. In reality it will be much closer to the UK-spec. It will actually feel a little quicker (as stock) due to the fact that it is a little more torquey, which is what makes a car "feel" fast. Also most jap-specs are a bit lighter than UK-specs.

I used the OE Toyota Pads, and also later on I tried Porterfield R4 pads and, quite honestly, I didn't think the Porterfields felt much better. I think that says a lot about the stock pads to be honest. They're really quite good. Gavin Loughton used them on his car at RAF Bentwaters and they survived fairly well. As for the Porterfields on my car that day .... basically they melted in two sessions. completely gone. but they were only rated as "fast road" i guess. apparently the R4S Porterfields ar the proper race pads and should be good on a track.

You could try a breakers yard? Or get some other shocks that will be just as good as stock shocks but cheaper. Try contacting someone like Chris Wilson or Leon Greene. others have their numbers. Toyota OE parts will always cost a million bucks. you can honestly get parts that are just as good or better from other sources.

Eibachs lower the rear about 1 inch over UK-spec stock, and about 1.5 inches at the front compared to UK-spec stock. The Bilsteins you've got in your motor Keef are factory-option Toyota Bilsteins. very hard to track down believe me !! (but i got a rather good deal on those particular ones...)

I used Pristine to refurb my UK 17" alloys and they did a very good job. The wheels looked BETTER than new. You can choose the exact finish you want. They also machine out an kerbing etc. not cheap but a blinding job, and IMHO, better than Spit N' Polish (although they're not bad).

yep as eyefi said, what a fuel-cut defencer does is allow your car to boost over 14 psi or so. It doesn't (on it's own) give any performance increase, but what it does do is let your other performance mods have a full effect. Yes, get a boost guage - if you boost too high the engine may run lean and that's bad. About 17 or 18psi (i.e. about 1.25bar) is the recommended limit. Like I said, i doubt your car, being a UK-spec, will be in any danger of getting that much boost. but you should still get a guage. Chris Wilson can supply and fit, as can Leon Greene etc. Chris is in Shropshire somewhere or other, and is very knowledgable and experienced. someone should have his email address or phone number to hand.

"re-programable" probably only in the sense that you can adjust what boost level the fuel-cut happens. Hardly programmable. £511 is the old story of people making undue profits by relying on people's ignorance ! As per others above, you can do it for less than hundred quid by getting a TRL device, and a bleed valve is cheap and easy to fit.

in a stock car on a dry road it won't actually spin wheels much (if at all). - The tyres have enough traction. I had a UK-spec TT manual, and even with full throttle in 1st gear it would still hold traction. Obviously you can always just dump the clutch .. On a wet road it's a different matter. Do be very careful on a wet road, especially in an automatic, cos if it kicks down a gear in the wet then you're going to get big wheelspin and if you're cornering at the time, you might find yourself embedded in a ditch or hedge. A lot of people have crashed Supras on a wet road. At least with a manual gearbox, you can leave it in 5th or 6th and this will keep the torque down but in an auto, you have a bigger risk of getting into trouble. By all means experiment on a wet day when it's safe(ish) to do so - maybe a large and deserted roundabout. At least then you'll see what happens with too much power in the rain. don't say we didn't warn you if you end up stationary facing the wrong way though ! To disable traction control completely, pull out the TRAC fuse in the fuse box (near the battery). There's a diagram on the inside of the black lid so you can see which the TRAC fuse is.