1026 GT-Four Normal Body

Corey

Active member
I wish there were more all season options available, but 225/45/17 is the smallest I can still find them in. 235/40/17 are all summer or track tires and those tires don't make much sense in Canada.


Good news, Amayama has most of the parts I need to do the 205 rear brake conversion. Main parts missing are the parking brake plate / dust shield. Not a deal breaker since most people just bend back the standard shield, maybe ill try to have a larger one welded on.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Why don't summer tires make sense in Canada? I much prefer the grip of proper summer tires to all seasons, and it can get just as hot up here.
 

Corey

Active member
BC is one thing, but anything east of there and we get 3 months of summer, 2 weeks of spring and fall, and the rest is winter lol. Quebec also has a mandatory winter tire period. Where I live in QC, you'll find snow on the ground well into May, with the odd snow fall thrown in.

I tend to drive my car in those 2 weeks of spring/fall where the day time temp might be 10 and the overnight low could be -10, so well outside the range for a summer tire. I also like the flexibility of a good all season. No where near as good as a proper winter in -30, but its good enough to get me around if I need to.

In the past I've gone on road trips where I start in -30, drive south into the mountains with snow and ice covered roads, then hit +15 in California, then north to BC with +5 and heavy rain, and return to eastern canada with -30. A summer tire couldnt handle that.

I miss the west coast where it was +0 all year round.
 

Corey

Active member
My parts are on the way!

Just waiting on BC Coilovers and new rear knuckles.

New stuff going into the car:
-Brand new OEM ST205 rear calipers with a beautiful factory coating on them (Amayama), Toyota ST205 Rotors (pre-coated also!) with Stop tech pads (Fensport)
-Goodrich Steel Brake lines for the rear (Goodrich UK)
-ST205 Rear hubs to match the rotors without the need for a spacer (Amayama)
-New Rear wheel bearings (Amayama)
-BC Coilovers with 6/6 kg/mm springs (Klue XIII motorsports)
-New OEM rear diff mount (Amayama)
-New Rear knuckles with spherical bushings pre-installed (sadly the non-abs versions are no longer available anywhere so I'll have to get the abs ones and block the hole) (Amayama)

Will be away working for a month so the install will have to wait, will post pics when I get back.
 

Corey

Active member
Thanks, yea doing good bud. Haven't been home much the last 2 years because of work so work on the car has sorta come to a halt, but I hope to get this suspension stuff sorted this fall.

Wish I was still out west to be able to join you guys on those meets. Doesn't seem like there is as large a GT4 community out here.
 

Corey

Active member
I don't want my car to feel like a shopping cart. I looked through the spring rates of all the discontinued options and what the alleged TTE spring rates were and decided I would just go double the stock rate which is about 3 on the early GT4 and RCs. Also, all the spring rates are nearly = front:rear so I decided to keep the same ratio as to not upset the car.

Looking forward to seeing how it works out :)
 

Corey

Active member
So I installed the front BC coilovers with 6kg/mm spring rates and went for a test drive on some aweful roads around town.

Very happy with my decision. The car feels so much better, but not so stiff as to feel like a shopping cart on these roads.

Will be installing the rear coilovers and rear brakes later this week.

The front install was pretty painless. I used a sawsall to cut open the brake line bracket on the oem strut to free my stainless brake lines, and like others have mentioned, I had to bend both brake line brackets forward and away from the inner wall of the wheel well to clear it, but not a big deal.


Sadly, Left-Rear knuckles are all discontinued :( I've looked everywhere. So I'm going to be refurbishing my current one with new bushings and wheel bearing. I was able to find a new Right-Rear knuckle with new bushings already installed.

Also ordered ARP extended wheel studs for the rear so I can run a spacer down the road.

Will post pictures soon.
 

Corey

Active member
All the work is done!

Cleaned up both original knuckles with new paint, had new wheels bearings installed with the ST205 hubs and replaced the spherical bushings with oem and replaced the trailing arm bushings with superpro. Very happy with the BC coilovers thus far. I just went on a 300km test drive on a mix of brand new pavement and old rough back roads. The car feels brand new, my friend was driving behind me and noted it looks very flat in the corners, even though that car is still sitting at the original ride height. I still need to measure the ride height to see how it compares to the BGB stock value.

The front tires no longer rub on the plastic fender liner which is great. At present I've set the dampers to 10 clicks from full soft. I might go a bit softer in the future.

6kg/mm is about as stiff as I'd be willing to go I think. If I were to order the swift spring upgrade for these in the future, I might opt for 5kg/mm instead of 6.

A side effect of these coilovers unfortunately is that when I try to jack up only one front corner, the back corner also gets raised up off the ground! The suspension travel on these isn't as long as OEM, and as a result it puts massive strain on the pinch rail. Its basically forced me to only jack the car up from the engine subframe.

The ST205 rear brakes look awesome. I had to use a cutting wheel to cut off the lip on the rear brake dust shield for the new rotors to clear. I've read people have been able to just bend it back, but I couldnt get it to clear and it started to look aweful. So i just cut 4mm off and repainted it.

I purchased ARP wheel studs with the intent of installing them before pressing the new hub in, but they only just arrived and I couldn't wait. I doubt I'll be able to install them now that the hub is on the car.

I think I'll instead go for a bolt on hub-centric spacer but I need to get one made because I can't find a 55mm hub centric spacer for an ST205.

Pictures as soon as I figure out which site to upload them to

Cheers
 

Corey

Active member
Not bad, very little surface rust up there.
IMG_20170812_2043074.jpg


Here is the back tower. Decided to apply more rubber rock guard and some zine rust proof paint before installing the rears.
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Had to bend open these brake line brackets. Too tight and didn't allow my BF stainless lines to fit.
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Here are the ST185 brake shields with the rolled lip cut off.
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And here is a shot of the same shields, before I cut the lip off. I tried bending, but I couldn't get it to bend evenly around the circumference.
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Old diff mount: A few small cracks but not bad for a 28 year old bushing
IMG_20170815_2043378.jpg
 

Corey

Active member
Thanks :)

Both front and rear needed to be lengthened to match the original strut length, but the rears needed to be lengthened a lot.

With the bottom end of the knuckle-bracket threaded-opening originally flush with the shock tub base, I lengthened the front 5.5cm and the back 12cm to get my current ride height.
 

underscore

Well-known member
Sounds about the same as mine, I'm not sure why they set the rears so short as I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even be able to move if you put them on the way they come. It makes getting your fingers in there to adjust the dampening a bit of a pain too.
 

Corey

Active member
Just got back from a week long, 5400 Km road trip from Quebec, to Halifax/PEI, then down to DC via Boston and New York before driving back up to Quebec.

Car now has 176600 km on it, still running great. The new suspension and rear 205 brakes held up really well.

One thing I would change on the suspension after having driven in the car for basically 60 hours straight is an even weaker spring rate than the 6kg/mm I've got now.

While the 6kg/mm provides a very well performing car in the turns, even with my ridiculously high ride height, it is quite stiff on back roads and shitty highways.

In the future, if I choose to upgrade to the SWIFT springs, I'll request 5kg/mm and maybe have the front dampers re-valved to accommodate the lower spring rate.

I've also noticed that the suspension travel is far less than stock, and this is very apparently when traveling over a sharp bump in the road - you can feel the wheels almost lose contact with the road surface.

Does anyone know if its possible to increase the suspension travel? Is this a function of spring length, or is it a limit of the dampers?

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