Project: Send It

[Mike2JZ]

It's been a few years since I've written a build log unfortunately, but time to make up for lost time and get back on this. 

The last iteration of the build had me running a rather tasty 1.5JZ setup. For a bit of an oddball build it performed well, earning the title of fastest 100-200KPH (4.1s) street Supra in the UK (at the time). I could and probably should have left the car as is, but as always I am interested in trying new parts in order to progress my own learning and understanding of the JZA80, JZ platform & tuning in general. So here we go again, and this time round its going to get fairly hardcore, the days of the being a somewhat pleasurable street supra will be few now I think. 

Here is how the car sat a few months ago after some time sitting idle. Other than potentially some wider front wings to give better clearance around front wheels, I'm content with the look of the car so I don't think I'll make any major changes to the exterior. Main focus will be on the interior, safety systems, electronics, powertrain and drivetrain. 

Some interior photos to record what it looked like before the coming transformations. The focus with this setup was to keep it fairly civil inside, but with a few added extra's like the rollbar, bucket seats and harnesses to help with safety as the car never came with airbags!

Haven't run a radio or speaker system in a few years, and will continue that way. I enjoyed the touchscreen toucan as I could make changes on the fly, but as I'm a shortie with proportionally longer legs, it was always slightly unconfortable to make changes to the toucan whilst strapped in with the harnesses as it was just out of natural reach for my little arms :3 So the toucan is now sold and will be replaced with a CAN based steering wheel button system. 

Moving forward, I decided to ditch basically all of the interior, other than the dash so an intricate cage could be installed. A rendering of the design of the cage done by JP Cages. 

 

Really nice cage, but interior will have to be sacrificed for the pleasure. Between this cage, a seat upgrade, 6 point harnesses, Hans Device & other safety equipment I will have some confidence for the future usage of the car (more details in future!)

So a few months ago I took her back into the workshop, assumed my fighting stance and got to work on removing the engine and gearbox. 

Goodbye 1.5JZ!

 

Engine on the stand looking a bit more naked

 

Luckily have a friend in Finland with a cool Chaser who wanted to go a bit mental on a build, and we struck a deal for him to buy my built head, turbo & intake setup so he could transplant onto his. Leaving me with my old shortblock to put towards a new setup that I can use for some testing. 

My weapon of choice this time round was a 2JZGE VVTi head. Sometime last year I purchased a number of 2JZGE engines whilst they were still somewhat cheap, so I could use towards this build and have a surplus of spare parts that I can use for development or replacement on this new setup. Here we have my new GE head and old 1J head heading off to machinist. 1J for a quick skim, checkover & clean. 2J head going off to get skimmed, cleaned and have head machined for Kelford 202D VVTi cams & valves set. 

I'll go into the details of the engine & associated parts in future posts, but the initial engine setup will be somewhat "basic". We have had some fantastic results using relatively basic setups on the 2JZGE VVTi head as it flows so damn well in stock form. So in the name of science I will start with a setup similar to this and push it as hard as I can to gain a baseline of data in terms of performance. From there I'll advance the development of the head and shortblock and record changes relative to the baseline at each stage. 

With the world getting turned on it's head over the last few year years, the supplychain for parts in the aftermarket has taken quite a bit hit and delivery time for parts are sometimes painful. I had hoped to get most of my parts in by August this year, and whilst I have a nice stash of new parts to go, I have been waiting over 6 months for some, likely to need to wait until the new year for delivery. So the project has been delayed considerable, which has allowed for some signficant project creep to set in. 

But as we all like photos and shiney parts, here is one of newest parts that I can't wait to test. 

Garrett G40-1150 is garrett's newest offering to replace the GTX4088, and going off compressor/turbine sizings put it in competing range of a precision 6870-7275. Although the turbo is offered in a vband housing, I opted for a T4 housing just in case the turbo is a bit of a flop and I want to change to something else that uses T4, otherwise my new exhaust manifold would be locked into a garrett vband which only runs a few garrett turbo's. I opted for a 1.06 A/R housing and bought the larger 1.19 housing to do some back to back testing to see what would suit my new high revving 2J head better. 

Sending off my 1JZ parts to my friend in Finland, which also happens to be the home of PGS transmissions who built my R154 dog engagement box. On a rather vigerous night of testing I managed to damage the dogteeth on my 4th gear dogring with a horrible shift my side, so box will be returning to PGS. PGS have also kindly offered to beef up my input shaft and a few gears with an uprated design after I told them the kind of power and abuse I plan to give this thing. I am enjoying how ridiculous it is to run an R154 based gearbox at these levels, and will keep going till I split this box in half or similar catastrophic failure, then maybe I'll re-evaluate. 

So fast foward to today, my wiring room at SRD is nearly overflowing with parts ready for the new setup, but until its all ready to go in I need to prepare the car to get its cage installed. 

The stripdown has begun. Have a few more days remove all the sound deadening, remove the glass and prepare the engine bay. 

More soon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by Mike2JZ (see edit history)

[welshbuddy]

looks to be a good build incoming ! 

[bradleyh_15]

Mate you had plenty of time to write that up looking fantastic and can’t wait to see it in person keep us posted and get some videos up to

[Suprakeith]

Wow can't wait to this beast all finished.

[evinX]

Yes Mike! Following 

[Peter P]

Exciting times Mike, look forward to following this epic build mate, always good to see a major project get underway and knowing you this won’t disappoint!

Best of luck and look forward to seeing the updates as and when.

Cheers.

 

Pete  

[Swampy442]

Nice!

[Mike2JZ]

Managed to strip most of the sound deadening, stripped the engine bay and had the windows removed in the later part of this week. 

Had a 200 mile journey north to JP Cages, so with the help of @Wheelynutzstarted early this morning to get the supra transported from SRD HQ. 

 

Few hours later landed at our destination.

This is how the engine bay sits currently. 

Using my poor photoshop skills, the rough plan for the engine bay will look something like this. 

The rear firewall will be welded and blanked off from the interior. Moving to a pedal box system to get the master cylinders & brake lines away from the hot exhaust side. Looking forward to this new setup as it will be aethetically very simple and servicing parts on the engine will be a little easier compared to before. 

Wiring loom will be moved to near where the factory slave cylinder sits with the use of some bulkhead connectors. I will continue to run a heater inside the car, but will be running some bulkhead AN fittings instead as factory HVAC will be deleted, so no further need for the factory heater line / AC line ports on the bulkhead. 

The front part of the new cage will run through the firewall onto the strut towers, with triangulation running to a different section of the cage. As shown by the white lines above. Once the cage is in the firewall will be welded up, and after some further modifications will need a new lick of paint, but that will be a future job once everything is in place. 

Left a few bits on the interior for mockup so cage builder can get an idea on seating position and location of a few bits that I need clearance on. Will be changing to a different seat and seat mount setup, but positioning of current setup is ideal for how I sit in the car. 

The instrument panel reinforcement bar is going to get ditched completely as there will be a horizontal hoop support bar that goes in its place and the steering column will be mounted to that instead. My challenge to him was to get the door bars to fit around the factory door cards, looks quite tight but if its possible then that will be great, if not will ditch the door cards completely, so will see what he can conjure up. 

Also adding in some anchor points for anti-submarining section of 6 point harness and cleaning up some previous welding in some places. For now have decieded to retain factory steering column, indictators and associated electronics as the interior section of the car will be running factory electronics for the time being as I can't afford to switch to a complete PDM based solution just yet, so will save for the future. 

Apparently cage is estimated to be done within 3 weeks, so have some time to sift through my old parts and get them sold and start piecing together the engine whilst I wait. 

[Mike2JZ]

Had a few quiet hours today to start putting together a high level overview of the electronics and wiring locations for the front half of the car.

I have quite a few new toys that will require looms to be scratchbuilt that integrate with themselves and the remaining OEM looms, which all leave the interior via different places so thought I'd make myself a map so I can keep track of whats what. 

Not as exciting as new parts being installed, but a needed part of the planning process now so I can attack this as efficiently as possible. 

 

This is more or less the idea moving forward although I'm sure ill make a few adjustments. Next step after this is to start planning out exactly where each individual wire for every component will go and create a giant spreadsheet that will map everything out in great detail. From there I can start speccing which bulkhead connectors and other materials I will need to implement the above. It's as fun as it sounds, very time consuming!

Edited November 6, 2022 by Mike2JZ (see edit history)

[Swampy442]

As you do......

 

[Annabella]

Not daft is he ...

[The Raven]

Lmao your crazy.

but then wasn’t your first ever job changing a heater matrix on a drive? 
 

Watching with interest 

[mattdavies]

Looking forward to this, an how you get on with all the pressure and temperature sensors around the Turbo. 

I see that you plan to run an Electronic Wastegate ? Which one will this be ? 

[Mike2JZ]

Turbosmart 60mm Electronic Gate, although the new 50mm straightgate from them looks rather nice so hoping I can jump on that instead. 

[Trix143]

Like the direction your going Mike, looking forward to seeing it done. Get some practice in with that electronic gate. I have two for you to set up soon . Maybe one of mine will be ready before yours but lets see. Really looking forward to having a play with the e-gates.

[Mike2JZ]

Well I had heard JP cages had a good reputation for turning around work in good time, but they really lived up to it. Cage is done and ready for pickup, wasnt expecting it so quick so dont even have a transport ready but will work on that now. 

Here is the finished article

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had to lose the door cards as they were going to foul on the door bars. Josh didnt want to run the door bar inwards to clear the doorcards as thats a nono with cage building. So will probably move to a different style door card or replace the doors entirely with some sort of carbon replacement that dosent use door cards. 

Need to make some brackets to hold the OEM interior fuseboxes in slightly different locations to normal, but most of the wiring will fit as intended for the interior which is good. 

Next stop will be to see @TheTurtleshead & Kane @ Retro Road Sports to get the firewall sorted and get some paint on the interior and whatever other small jobs we can find to do. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Mike2JZ (see edit history)

[Swampy442]

Thats a monster cage, looks like BTCC spec! Nice work. You could probably go with GRP or carbon doors now as theyre only filling a hole.

[bradleyh_15]

3 hours ago, Mike2JZ said:

Well I had heard JP cages had a good reputation for turning around work in good time, but they really lived up to it. Cage is done and ready for pickup, wasnt expecting it so quick so dont even have a transport ready but will work on that now. 

Here is the finished article

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had to lose the door cards as they were going to foul on the door bars. Josh didnt want to run the door bar inwards to clear the doorcards as thats a nono with cage building. So will probably move to a different style door card or replace the doors entirely with some sort of carbon replacement that dosent use door cards. 

Need to make some brackets to hold the OEM interior fuseboxes in slightly different locations to normal, but most of the wiring will fit as intended for the interior which is good. 

Next stop will be to see @TheTurtleshead & Kane @ Retro Road Sports to get the firewall sorted and get some paint on the interior and whatever other small jobs we can find to do. 

Looks absolutely beautiful

[Mike2JZ]

Nothing too exciting this weekend, have just spent a long time staring at excel and visio progressing the loom design & planning documentation. I'm probably like 20% through this, so few more sessions before I can start using it to help me start building the looms. Will have to upload the design file once all is said and done. 

Otherwise car is organized to get collected at the end of next week. 

[Mike2JZ]

Got an exciting package from Australia this week. Just finished piecing it together for a mock up to be mounted in the car shortly. 

PE Racing Billet Pedalbox Kit. Nice looking bit of kit, and supports a DBW throttle using an "electronic" pedal setup. 

Before ordering went over the specification of the car, along with details on brake calipers, pad type etc with PE Racing and they were able to spec me some master cylinders that would be a good starting point to suit the pedal ratio of the kit. 

Can't wait to play with it but I'm sure it will take some time to setup and optimize as there is a lot of possible adjustments that can be made on various points on the pedalbox, brake bias ratios and master cylinder sizes. Haven't really done a pedalbox setup in a Supra before, so looking forward to seeing how it goes. Remind self, go to Gym and get some leg days in, gonna need it with no brake booster

 

[Noz]

Why no brake booster?

[Mike2JZ]

9 hours ago, Noz said:

Why no brake booster?

Not running one due to pedal box. Could technically still attatch one, but not with the OEM firewall mounted booster. Will try without first and see how I get on

[Noz]

Got ya.

What's the benefit to this. Racing application so harder wearing?

[Mike2JZ]

I explain in one of the opening posts

[Mike2JZ]

Up at the crack of dawn again to head north to get the car from JP Cages. Thanks to Mr @Wheelynutz towing in true 90's fashion.

Covered 550miles round trip, and I was a useful passenger only falling asleep a few times throughout the long haul. 

(This is my excited face)

Landed and ready for the next bout of work at Retro Road Sports

 

Josh at JP Cages was interesting in making some front/rear strut braces for the JZA80. So after showing a few popular designs and features that they included he came up with some test pieces for me to take back to SRD HQ and fit on various Supra's to see what fitment is like. 

This front strut is just tacked together for testing, but is based on the TRD style that we all know and love. Only this one has adjustable height for the strut beam, so might be able to clear a big single and has a brake master support bracket.

Here is the TRD style rear strut brace which I think is very cool, never seen one for the rear before. This also has some height adjustment available and access to suspension dampeners. 

Will see how these fit on a supra hasnt been gutted and maybe after a few revisions will be available soon. Cool to get some simple but new parts available for the platform. 

Didn't have much time to test the pedal positioning properly, but threw them quickly into where they should be going and grab a quick photo. Need to adjust the pedals further back slightly, maybe mount the base slightly higher up the firewall and maybe move the seat back another inch and should be onto a winner. Will be back to RRS in the next week to continue with this. In the meantime need to get a new driverseat sent to them so we can dial this in finally before the rest of the fab work on the firewall begins. 

Finally, managed to get a sweet deal on a Motec PDM15 that I couldnt resist

This PDM hasn't got enough I/O to take over all the functions of the vehicle, but is large enough to control all the new & non oem electronics that are going into the car. So rather than having to integrate my new systems into the OEM fusebox and wiring, I can now leave all that largely stock and run everything else from the PDM15 which is a relief as it will simplify my wiring a tad and make future additions/removals from the wiring system easier as I wont have to touch the stock wiring every time. I smell a large session in front of my wiring diagrams tomorrow as I integrate this little guy into it.