- Joined
- Oct 5, 2019
- Messages
- 389
Hi all,
I thought I'd finally start a project thread. I have two 185's:
A medium red pearl from '90 with a gen2 3s and gt2860rs turbo. This car isn't running at the moment and semi-supports the other car. I had the engine rebuilt after a bad run in with a major mr2oc vendor about 10 years ago and has unfortunately sat ever since. This car isn't too far gone, but it would need a fair amount of work to get back on the road.
A '91 superwhite 185 that was previously owned by a friend/board member here, and before that, owned by whiteline performance as it was their testbed/development car for 185 parts.
I've had the white car for about 3.5 years now and we have been through a lot together. I first rode in it in 2006, back when the only modifications were suspension and brakes. Later on, the car had a gen 3 3s swap performed and a gt3071r installed by a shop in tx that left it on factory electronics and fueling. Sometime after that, the previous owner moved overseas and gave the car to family members. The family didn't share the enthusiast gearhead love, so the car went through a weird period of having some patch-up maintenance done but not to the level needed by a 300 awhp modified alltrac.
The car reappeared running but in need of some work. Most things were relatively easy fixes and only required someone with more alltrac knowledge, but there was/is a weird "overheating" issue that I have yet to figure out. I'm hoping to finally sort that out in spring/summer of 2022.
Now that we're all caught up on the car's life story, I'll just go straight into the current status. No need to get super detailed with all of the research and issues I've resolved (and probably created) along the way.
91 superwhite alltrac. All factory body except cs front bumper and JDM front markers.
1998 gen3 3sgte
gtx2860r turbo w/ PTP turbo blanket (the old gt3071r ate itself on a silicon hose coupler shortly after I installed said hose coupler. Lessons were learned.)
unknown brand 3" downpipe. It and everything up to the cylinder head is ceramic coated
st205 water to air intercooler with uprated gt4play heat exchanger and 20 GPM meziere water pump
Gen4 SSQV BOV
4" intake w/ carbon fiber pipe
custom cold-feed airbox I made out of TIG'd boxsteel and ABS plastic. it runs from the left CS bumper foglight port and routes air directly up to the intake filter and also mounts the factory fuse box and a few extra relays
Racerx fuel rail, Deatschwerks 927cc injector, aeromotive fpr, and 6AN lines feeding it all.
255 LPH walbro fuel pump with 12 gauge wiring/relay in the hatch
Radium catch can
Mishimoto coolant res cans for wta ic and radiator overflow
southbend stage2 clutch and fidanza aluminum flywheel
Mishimotor radiator w/ spal fan, triggered by ecu
LOUD 3" motoria exhaust, which will be cut/modified shortly. I'm planning on swapping the bottle-style silencer with an oval one, or maybe just taking the aussie exhaust off of my red car and swapping it over.
Optima red in the boot, 0 gauge wiring all the way up to factory fuse box
Open differential with mario aluminum diff mount
ST205 rear rotors and 2-piston calipers w/ ebc redstuff
Whiteline rear and front swaybars and links
BC racing coilovers
NYX rear adjustable camber/toe/caster arms w/ poly bushings
wilwood 4piston front brakes w/ 325mm 2piece rotors and wilwood street pads.
stainless steel brake lines all around
OZ Superturismo white wheels w/ Falken Azenis 615k+
Haltech Elite 1500 with the following sensors/functions: wideband o2, fuel pressure, oil pressure/temp, air temp, GPS VSS, boost control, Bosch knock sensor, Haltech 4bar MAP sensor
carbon microsystem front cooling panel and abs brick cover (looks so much better than bare hardlines)
twm short shifter and knob
Speedhut GPS speedometer (I gave up in trying to get the electronic JDM speedo parts to talk to the USDM speedo parts)
1 gauge: CANbus GaugeART
new front seat leathers from katzskins
new floormats from stockinteriors
-still has AC hooked up, I'll get it working some day
I hopped on the Haltech train back when I had a friend who would tune it for the cost of a soutwhest ticket. Then the world went pear shaped, and I ended up wiring in the ECU myself and got it running with some remote help.
Immediately moving to the elite and getting more data helped determine what made the car run a bit.. off when on the Toyota ECU. The main culprits were bad FPR, voltage-starved fuel pump, and bad MAP sensor. Fixing these issues went a long way towards sorting out the driveability issues it had.
Since then, I've had a few tuners work on the car, both remote and local(ish) and I've started making modifications as needed. In Spring 2022, the car still doesn't run PERFECT, but it's a lot better than where it used to be. The fuel map is good, but the ignition table is all guess work and really needs some dyno time. The boost control is all over the place, and a lot of that is due to the super-quick spooling gen1 gt2860r turbine housing that also causes overboost. I bought a Nixspeed turbine housing over the winter w/ a berk 3" downpipe and am moving from a 7 to 14 psi wastegate solenoid. I'm hoping ths will let me used closed-loop boost control more effectively. It didn't seem to matter what I put in for PID values; even when doing boost duty cycle by gear, it just never was consistent and reliable.
2022 hard goals are:
Remove the cut-up front crash bar and replace it with a cs aluminum replica. I'm hoping this will get more airflow to the radiator and wta h/e, helping with higher coolant temps and lowering IAT.
Swap out the turbine housing to the Nixspeed unit/tial 14psi actuator and redo the boost control duty cycle table. The end of the peak efficiency range for this turbo is 22-23 PSI, so I want to be something close to that. Reliably hitting 17 is currently a challenge.
Fix coolant line on the back of the turbo. I've had a variety of coolant lines leak over my years of ownership and this one I hope is what's causing the temps to climb like they do.
Get the knock sensor tuned. Everyone seems to hate tuning knock sensors, but I think they are just used to the old way of doing things. The Haltech will suggest timing table changes as long as the knock sensor is configured correctly inside the software. I MAY have to do this myself.
Dyno the car and actually see what kind of power it makes. Last time I tried I still had 2-step turned on, which was configured to only engage when the VSS reads less than 10 mph. And how does the VSS get that reading? GPS... Which means the ECU thinks the speed is zero when the car's on the dyno. So the car made 40 whp and the coolant temps spiked up to like 225 due to all that timing retard! Maybe I should put 40 whp in my signature?
2022 soft goals:
Buy/install OMP CORSICA LISCIO OD/1956. I really like this wheel and I've seen it in a few 185 wrc pictures. I need to figure out what adapter to use and how to not need the accordian style bellow between the wheel and the rest of the steering column so it looks clean though.
Get some nice foot pedals.
Swap out midpipe/catback parts to stop waking the neighbor's baby after hours.
Move to direct fire coils and dump the distributor triggering. It's not that I really WANT to do coil on plug/direct fire, but the distributor is leaking a fair bit of oil, and it'll be easier for me to install and wire in new coils and triggering instead of trying to fix that dang dizzy.
2023/beyond
Switch to a drive by wire throttle. I miss cruise control and I hate that ugly throttle cable routing. Please don't talk to me about the pros/cons of cable vs DBW throttles. WHEN IMPLEMENTED PROPERLY, DBW performs better.
CS hood (I prefer steel but I might have to suck it up and get a CF one before the Russians take over Latvia again).
I thought I'd finally start a project thread. I have two 185's:
A medium red pearl from '90 with a gen2 3s and gt2860rs turbo. This car isn't running at the moment and semi-supports the other car. I had the engine rebuilt after a bad run in with a major mr2oc vendor about 10 years ago and has unfortunately sat ever since. This car isn't too far gone, but it would need a fair amount of work to get back on the road.
A '91 superwhite 185 that was previously owned by a friend/board member here, and before that, owned by whiteline performance as it was their testbed/development car for 185 parts.
I've had the white car for about 3.5 years now and we have been through a lot together. I first rode in it in 2006, back when the only modifications were suspension and brakes. Later on, the car had a gen 3 3s swap performed and a gt3071r installed by a shop in tx that left it on factory electronics and fueling. Sometime after that, the previous owner moved overseas and gave the car to family members. The family didn't share the enthusiast gearhead love, so the car went through a weird period of having some patch-up maintenance done but not to the level needed by a 300 awhp modified alltrac.
The car reappeared running but in need of some work. Most things were relatively easy fixes and only required someone with more alltrac knowledge, but there was/is a weird "overheating" issue that I have yet to figure out. I'm hoping to finally sort that out in spring/summer of 2022.
Now that we're all caught up on the car's life story, I'll just go straight into the current status. No need to get super detailed with all of the research and issues I've resolved (and probably created) along the way.
91 superwhite alltrac. All factory body except cs front bumper and JDM front markers.
1998 gen3 3sgte
gtx2860r turbo w/ PTP turbo blanket (the old gt3071r ate itself on a silicon hose coupler shortly after I installed said hose coupler. Lessons were learned.)
unknown brand 3" downpipe. It and everything up to the cylinder head is ceramic coated
st205 water to air intercooler with uprated gt4play heat exchanger and 20 GPM meziere water pump
Gen4 SSQV BOV
4" intake w/ carbon fiber pipe
custom cold-feed airbox I made out of TIG'd boxsteel and ABS plastic. it runs from the left CS bumper foglight port and routes air directly up to the intake filter and also mounts the factory fuse box and a few extra relays
Racerx fuel rail, Deatschwerks 927cc injector, aeromotive fpr, and 6AN lines feeding it all.
255 LPH walbro fuel pump with 12 gauge wiring/relay in the hatch
Radium catch can
Mishimoto coolant res cans for wta ic and radiator overflow
southbend stage2 clutch and fidanza aluminum flywheel
Mishimotor radiator w/ spal fan, triggered by ecu
LOUD 3" motoria exhaust, which will be cut/modified shortly. I'm planning on swapping the bottle-style silencer with an oval one, or maybe just taking the aussie exhaust off of my red car and swapping it over.
Optima red in the boot, 0 gauge wiring all the way up to factory fuse box
Open differential with mario aluminum diff mount
ST205 rear rotors and 2-piston calipers w/ ebc redstuff
Whiteline rear and front swaybars and links
BC racing coilovers
NYX rear adjustable camber/toe/caster arms w/ poly bushings
wilwood 4piston front brakes w/ 325mm 2piece rotors and wilwood street pads.
stainless steel brake lines all around
OZ Superturismo white wheels w/ Falken Azenis 615k+
Haltech Elite 1500 with the following sensors/functions: wideband o2, fuel pressure, oil pressure/temp, air temp, GPS VSS, boost control, Bosch knock sensor, Haltech 4bar MAP sensor
carbon microsystem front cooling panel and abs brick cover (looks so much better than bare hardlines)
twm short shifter and knob
Speedhut GPS speedometer (I gave up in trying to get the electronic JDM speedo parts to talk to the USDM speedo parts)
1 gauge: CANbus GaugeART
new front seat leathers from katzskins
new floormats from stockinteriors
-still has AC hooked up, I'll get it working some day
I hopped on the Haltech train back when I had a friend who would tune it for the cost of a soutwhest ticket. Then the world went pear shaped, and I ended up wiring in the ECU myself and got it running with some remote help.
Immediately moving to the elite and getting more data helped determine what made the car run a bit.. off when on the Toyota ECU. The main culprits were bad FPR, voltage-starved fuel pump, and bad MAP sensor. Fixing these issues went a long way towards sorting out the driveability issues it had.
Since then, I've had a few tuners work on the car, both remote and local(ish) and I've started making modifications as needed. In Spring 2022, the car still doesn't run PERFECT, but it's a lot better than where it used to be. The fuel map is good, but the ignition table is all guess work and really needs some dyno time. The boost control is all over the place, and a lot of that is due to the super-quick spooling gen1 gt2860r turbine housing that also causes overboost. I bought a Nixspeed turbine housing over the winter w/ a berk 3" downpipe and am moving from a 7 to 14 psi wastegate solenoid. I'm hoping ths will let me used closed-loop boost control more effectively. It didn't seem to matter what I put in for PID values; even when doing boost duty cycle by gear, it just never was consistent and reliable.
2022 hard goals are:
Remove the cut-up front crash bar and replace it with a cs aluminum replica. I'm hoping this will get more airflow to the radiator and wta h/e, helping with higher coolant temps and lowering IAT.
Swap out the turbine housing to the Nixspeed unit/tial 14psi actuator and redo the boost control duty cycle table. The end of the peak efficiency range for this turbo is 22-23 PSI, so I want to be something close to that. Reliably hitting 17 is currently a challenge.
Fix coolant line on the back of the turbo. I've had a variety of coolant lines leak over my years of ownership and this one I hope is what's causing the temps to climb like they do.
Get the knock sensor tuned. Everyone seems to hate tuning knock sensors, but I think they are just used to the old way of doing things. The Haltech will suggest timing table changes as long as the knock sensor is configured correctly inside the software. I MAY have to do this myself.
Dyno the car and actually see what kind of power it makes. Last time I tried I still had 2-step turned on, which was configured to only engage when the VSS reads less than 10 mph. And how does the VSS get that reading? GPS... Which means the ECU thinks the speed is zero when the car's on the dyno. So the car made 40 whp and the coolant temps spiked up to like 225 due to all that timing retard! Maybe I should put 40 whp in my signature?
2022 soft goals:
Buy/install OMP CORSICA LISCIO OD/1956. I really like this wheel and I've seen it in a few 185 wrc pictures. I need to figure out what adapter to use and how to not need the accordian style bellow between the wheel and the rest of the steering column so it looks clean though.
Get some nice foot pedals.
Swap out midpipe/catback parts to stop waking the neighbor's baby after hours.
Move to direct fire coils and dump the distributor triggering. It's not that I really WANT to do coil on plug/direct fire, but the distributor is leaking a fair bit of oil, and it'll be easier for me to install and wire in new coils and triggering instead of trying to fix that dang dizzy.
2023/beyond
Switch to a drive by wire throttle. I miss cruise control and I hate that ugly throttle cable routing. Please don't talk to me about the pros/cons of cable vs DBW throttles. WHEN IMPLEMENTED PROPERLY, DBW performs better.
CS hood (I prefer steel but I might have to suck it up and get a CF one before the Russians take over Latvia again).