Whilst getting the engine and gearbox ready to go in for first fit, another job on the list was to see how the dash was going to work in the new cage setup.
Stripped the dash of everything but the dash itself
Took some measurements between my car and a stock supra we had here in the workshop. Very quickly it looked like the dash was not going to fit very well at all, at least in stock form. Definitely going to require a lot of cutting to get around the new bars.
Spent about 30 minutes debating with myself if I should molest the dash or try and sell it. This dash was in reasonable condition, but it was far from perfect, so I think if I tried to sell it I wouldn't get crazy money for it due to some imperfections. In the end, I tossed a coin and I landed on heads. Time to cut this baby up.
The requirements of the dash going forward are:
- Once mounted, it needs to be able to removed from the car as easily/quickly as possible. With everything bolted in, there is very little room inside to remove big bulky items, especially once the windscreen is back in. It's bad enough on a stock car, but now I have even less room due to cage and very time-consuming to remove everything that can get in its way on the way out. Dash needs to come out with a few bolts being removed and minimal fuss.
- The dash needs to be rigid enough to support the Motec C1212 display and a few panels, but otherwise will serve no other purpose, other than keeping the interior feeling vaguely like a Supra still. As cool as the car is stripped out, I would miss the factory dash sweeping down in front of the driver position.
So after a bit of head scratching and a chat with another Supra owner who has a similar cage setup, I decided to cut the dash into two pieces.
Not going to lie, I cried a little cutting it like this, haha.
The passenger side of the interior will house all the electronics, heater core, fluid reservoirs and whatever else I can cram in there. Driver side will just hold a few panels and the motec digital dash, so if I need to mess around with anything it will likely be on the passenger side most of the time so will useful if I can just remove that half of the dash and leave driver side alone where It's difficult to remove steering columns, pedal box, seat etc.
After lots of cutting, the left side of the dash fits in something like this. Still needs a bit more shaved off in places in the future, but it clips into OEM clip mounts at the top.
Next up was the driver side. Unfortunately, my cage front support bar goes right in place of where all the stock dash frames to mount the panels and combination meter. So after a lot of chopping that now also goes in
So with a quick test of everything loosely in place, we are left with something like this.
Next up for the dash is to make some custom brackets in various places that will support the dash pieces in the correct place. Once that's done, I might flock the dash or do something along those lines, just so the cut line between both sides of the dash is a little less obvious. Then I'll move onto the panels, will either run the factory panels and modify to work with the above, or build some custom panels out of ally to fit into the above. Haven't decided which way to go yet, but will figure it out as I go.
I figured the dash was going to take some work, but this has quickly grown into a project of itself. Be interesting to see how this turns out.
After all that trauma, it was time to move onto something a little more light-hearted.
Yay! Shiny new parts
First up is the PHR brushless fan kit. Although the viscous has served me well for years, I wanted better accessibility to the front of the engine with enough fan power to keep this car as cool as possible. Had seen some good results on another car with these, so figured I'd give them a go. They are PWM controlled brushless fans, so maximum amperage per fan is 25amps which is decent and likely wont need them running anywhere near maximum output most of the time. ECU control will let me ramp these on/off, so no massive jumps to the charging system when they kick on.
These are quite chunky fans, and PHR have done a nice job with the shroud with built in flaps to allow excess air at high vehicle speeds to bypass the shroud like on many modern OEM cars.
Next from PHR is this cool oil temperature/crank case pressure fitting that goes into the oil level port on the sump. I like the idea of the temperature probe sitting in the oil in the sump rather than somewhere further upstream on the oil system that could be prone to heat soak depending on where it's mounted. Between this sensor and another temperature sensor mounted on the outlet of the oil cooler I should have decent visibility on the overall engines oil temperature and cooling performance.
Quickly slapped some sumps on the engine and threw the engine into the car for the first time.
For a quick test fit I'm happy so far. Obviously missing the turbo side currently, but overall looks nice and simple. Other than having to get creative with mounted a powersteering pump somewhere, the bay should look very similar to this when all is said and done. Lots of room for activities!
Test fitting some new OEM VVTI GTE cam covers and they look alright, but by the time I modify them to fit what I need I think it will be better to go with a billet valve cover. Unless Plazmaman get some VVTI covers going soon, then I'll probably end up going with some hypertune valve covers.
Not sure on a colour scheme either yet. I normally just make everything black on the engine, which will probably look ok but feel like trying something new this time round.
Well, it has been a year and not much progress has been made on the car itself. Between enjoying summer, travelling abroad and the SRD workshop being the busiest it’s ever been there hasn’t been many occasions where I could get the car out of storage to get any worthwhile progress on it.
Goodwood 2023
The good news is that the extra time has given me time to save some pennies and allowed for a few extra features and some much needed project creep to set in. There been plenty of head scratching and changes to the plan, but as of writing this I have a fairly focused plan on how to get this project to the finish line, so hoping I can stick to it now. I have a few days over the Christmas break to make some progress on the car and get some updates written down again.
So strap in and pickup from where we left off
First off, let’s start with everyone’s favorite subject. Garrett G40-1150, sold.
In its place is a Garrett G45-1500. Jumping up a turbo family to the G45.
Although capable of 1500hp worth of flow, my aim with this turbo is to make 1000whp as consistently and with as little boost as possible.
G40-1150 can just about do, 1000whp, but you have to run the bloody thing hard.
As my engine package isn’t all that sexy, I am going to focus on having less boost pressure but more airflow from a bigger compressor/turbine to get the power I need and hopefully keep engine stress levels as low as possible. I'll be happy if I can get around 1000whp with 23-26psi of boost on ethanol.
The keen eyed amount you will have noted that Ashley the fabricator wizard started a SRD tubular manifold, using a T4 billet twin scroll collector.
He has moved as much of the pipework on the manifold out of the way of the downpipe, so we have a bit more room for activities for the turbo smart straight gate and downpipe combo.
But what about the lag from a larger turbo, I hear you ask?
Let me introduce my next secret weapon.
The newly refresh R154 and associated parts have all been sold much to my dismay. In its place is an 8HP75 gearbox from a G series BMW. What sacrilege is this? Putting BMW parts in a Toyota? Oh yeah Toyota already beat me to that one.
(Take note of the bits of the gearbox that need some cutting a shaving if you are wanting to put one of these into your supra)
Having said that, I honestly think that the 8HP gearbox is one of the key elements to making the new MK5 supra and similar cars boogie in a straight line as much as they do. Once you are on boost, you don’t drop it on any boost on gear changes, changes are fast, ratio spread over 6 gears is useful, launching is fairly consistent due to torque converter and here in the UK parts & boxes are cheap and plentiful.
Having fitted a number of 8HP variants to customer’s cars this year I was impressed with the results. I couldn’t find anyone brave/stupid enough to try and run 1000whp through a stock box to see exactly how many minutes it lasts, so I have volunteered myself as sacrifice on this endeavor. Will build box and converter accordingly as required in future if needed.
Running this gearbox through a domiworks JZA80 adapter kit, which makes all of this a breeze to install, as plug and play as it gets.
For gearbox control I was tied up between either using CANTCU or Turbolamik controllers. Both work well, but deliver in slightly different areas. As I'm trying to make the car fast, reliable and as OEM like as possible, the CANTCU will be a better fit. Having used CANTCU recently on customer builds and really love it, digging the OEM level drivability and should help keep box alive a bit longer as I can run an "intelligent" torque management strategy using the OEM gearbox trans controller to dictate what it needs from ECU on gear changes and any other instances where box needs less torque than what the engine is currently producing.
Either way, should be interesting as there isn't much data out there on the 8HP75 boxes yet, so will share my experiences soon, hopefully.
Michael Yazgic @ 0x33