Denmark

[Jan Pedersen]

I thought it was about time I told a little about me and my car Im 24 years old and Ive had my '86 Levin hatchback for 3½. The car has costed me about 6k € in total - all spares included. That isnt too bad when thinking of the fun Ive had

The car is pretty much standard all around. The only exciting mod Ive done to it is TRD competition shocks and springs. It has 340 kkm on the clock - with the original engine :o But it wouldnt hurt to have a new gearbox and engine!

Ive got some rather great plans for the next year, as Im gonna rebuilt it from A - Z. It will probably cost 4k € to fix all the rust and give it a fresh paint but its gonna be worth it!

When it comes to the engine, I havent decided yet what to put in it. But I know that I whant more power See WWW

[Mux213]

Hey Jan,

WWW is in DK man Mind clueing us in I'm far away from serious engine tuning/replacement myself but I already find myself wondering with either going turbo/supercharger or going for the full n/a treatment and making this thing a high reving engine.

4k for a whole rust and paint job? Damn what do you plan to do to it? All the welding work on my RX7 has only put me back a couple of hundred and the repaint for my AE is gonne be round 800 euros so, although that is only an exteriour paintjob. Or are you going for the full sandblast, zink coating, etc process?

If you're anywhere near Randers one of my RX7 mates might be able to help you out with welding work if you dont have anyone for it. This guy welded his whole RX7 back together, that car was rusted beyond a point anyone would seriously think fixing it up. Then again with prices for cars in DK being what they are, it does pay to fix up cars even if it costs yah

[Jan Pedersen]

mux213 Wrote:Hey Jan,

WWW is in DK man Mind clueing us in I'm far away from serious engine tuning/replacement myself but I already find myself wondering with either going turbo/supercharger or going for the full n/a treatment and making this thing a high reving engine.

4k for a whole rust and paint job? Damn what do you plan to do to it? All the welding work on my RX7 has only put me back a couple of hundred and the repaint for my AE is gonne be round 800 euros so, although that is only an exteriour paintjob. Or are you going for the full sandblast, zink coating, etc process?

If you're anywhere near Randers one of my RX7 mates might be able to help you out with welding work if you dont have anyone for it. This guy welded his whole RX7 back together, that car was rusted beyond a point anyone would seriously think fixing it up. Then again with prices for cars in DK being what they are, it does pay to fix up cars even if it costs yah

First of all: It probably wont cost more than 3k - the excange rate was a bit higher than I thought This includes a total stripdown and four new wings (~1000) might be able to save one though. The paint job isnt cheap either (~1500 ) - thats the problem when it has to be perfect. My dad and I will do most of the work.

I cant make up my mind about the engine. I would love to hear the sweet music from a 4AGE 20V, but the power of a 4AGTE wouldnt be bad either

[Mux213]

Well a GTE can sounds pretty good to, especially with a nice BOV

I'm not sure what the 20V sounds like, I love the sound of the stock twin cam and tuning wise 16V can be better then 20V, 20V is cool for low end power and economy, not necesairly high end power.

[NoHachi]

Wow Mux! That are some low prices! Mind clueing me in as to where to look?
To anyone with enough funds (and a rust problem) I would highly recommend the sandblasting/zincprimer. You'll be surprised how much rust there remains lurking under the paint. It would be annoying to do a complete rebuild and having the rust return only in a couple of years. Especially mini coopers are renowned for this fact. They need a complete strip and paint every 8 years (to keep'm rust free).

I should warn everyone here in advance on my attitude towards engine modifications. If you already have a lively responsive engine, you don't need MEGAZILLION horsepower. You seriously compromise engine life, theres no way a highly tuned 4A-GE is going to give you even near the 340k km's that the current engine has given you. You put serious strain on the complete driveline and chassis. Anything above 200whp is in effect slaughtering your hachi.
Then there is the addiction problem. EVERYONE needs more horsepower, ALWAYS! Thats because of one of the other problems of HP, nothing gets boring as fast as a couple dozen of extra HP. The reality is usually that you can't safely release the horsepower in city streets without quickly getting buddies with your local law enforcement officer. At the track the car is outperforming you as a driver even in stock form. Adding more Hp only makes for more potential danger and encourages sloppy driving.

If I had the money (and this month I do- see the other thread) I'd invest in things that ad to the character of the AE86. To me that would be a nice paintjob, some serious body weight reduction (GRP/Carbon hatch, wings, doors and hood). A decent pair of brakes (rebiult stock or better). And some SERIOUS suspensionmods that drop the car lower without ruining performance (gotta love that look, must be the fanboi side of me). The lighter car will probably outperform cars with 40-60 more horsepower and it will be a hell of a lot more fun at legal speeds.

Now if you still want to continue on the more HP route, don't be affraid to ask. I have some experience in building engines and boosting them and i'll help where I can.

EDIT: please insert some smilies at your own leasure..its not meant to be TO much of serious message.

[robokill]

The silvertop sounds more like a engine from a motercycly i was in the passenger seat of a AE101 with a silvertop. It revs wonderfully much nicer then the 16v.

altough some bad points on the 20v

- hard to get and expensive
- na tuning is expensive

Good points

- with a programmable ecu etc you can get more horsepower caus the standard ecu is set for low gas stuff etc for enviorment etc.
- Sounds great
- more power

I don't like turbo's or superchargers

the 4agze is an expensive little engine which can easily give 200hp

bad things

- find a good one
- get it working perfect
- be able to control it good
- expensive

Good things

- more power
- easy much more power
- sounds cool

The 4a-gte would be a good an probaly the cheapest and easiest solution.

what do you need

a turbo (garrent or something not to big)
turbo manifold
some hoses and stuff
bigger gas pump (i recommend that at any tuning)
ecu or piggyback

negative

- costs of time and money
- to much power will kill the engine(the lower part isn't build for more than around 200hp)
- Other extra expensis
- hard to drift caus of the boost

Postive

- more power
- nice for sprinting
- cheaper than anything else

[Mux213]

NoHachi,

Contacts dude A full sandblast and zink coating I don't have contacts for that, so that will be as expensive as the next guy

A paintjob is more a special price for me personally A good friend of mine works at an accident repair shop and he can use the equipment there in his spare time. So I end up paying for material costs and a small fee for his troubles.

As you say, the downside of just treating the rust effected parts of the car and for the rest just going down to the original primer and repainting is that you run the risk of hidden rust becoming a problem. Then again, painting only the outside of the car and not the underside or inside still gives us that problem. I am slightly worried about some rust at the door hinges, need to solve that eventually aswell

I do totally agree with you on the HP hunt. HP is only part of the equasion and with a car this light you really have to wonder how much HP is to much. Putting 500 horses in a 900kg car may get you accelerating from 0-100 in 2 seconds, but it will also make the car as undrivable as can be. Also one has to wonder when you race tune a car like that, it will probably idle at 2000 rpm and be totally worthless for normal street driving. Not to mention the wear on the car.
For drag racing these things are fun but when handling is an issue, balance is the key word. You have to balance everything out, HP v.s. Weight, Suspention setup v.s. comfort, downforce v.s. drag. Etc.etc.etc.

In fear of being flamed here, there is a fragment in Initial D that highlites this better then anything. At the end of Stage 1 Keisuke is talking to Ryousuke about his cars setup when he is going to battle Takumi. Ryousuko tells Keisuke he has changed his setup to 250hp. Keisuke is confused, why downtune the car back to 250bhp when it normally runs 350?!?! Ryousuke simply states that this allows him to keep a higher overal speed because he doesn't have to slow down after accelerating on the straights. (it is said that this is lost in the Toykopop translation because of fair that Americans would get boored with this stuff, the japanese version is much more technical and usually pretty accurate due to the help they got from proffesional racedrivers)

That said, another prime example I find within the Dutch drifting group. They all talk about how they want 100% LSD and weld their diffs. Welding your diff doesn't give you a 100% LSD, it gives you no diff. The wheels will turn equally when you hit power giving you max acceleration. But when steering there is no speed difference in the rear wheels and your car will want to go straight ahead making turning very hard indeed (drifters dont care,they want to loose traction at this point but basically all you can do well with this setup are powerdrifts).
An open diff offcourse is wonderfull in bends but in acceleration it gives max power to the wheel with the least amount of grip, when grip is broken that wheel will spin and the other wheel will not get any power killing acceleration.
LSD gives you best of both worlds and will attempt to give max power to the wheel with the most grip. One type of LSD does this more effectively then another though and all have their drawbacks.

Anyways, the point I am simply trying to make, focussing on one part of your car and making it the most powerfull does not work. More HP means less handling, so you need to better the handling of the car but at a certain point that will mean you can't use the HP you got. It's a balance. You can improve a certain part of your car up to the point where it starts to negatively influence another part of the car. Then you need to upgrade those parts, but they in turn may influence other parts, or work on eachother, there is just so far you can go with a certain concept.

[NoHachi]

A turbo setup is NEVER cheap if you don't know exactly what you are doing. Feel free to disagree.
None of these options save a 3S-GTE engine wil make you competative in sprints. These are ruled by the little turbo'd B16 CRX's. These things run 12.5sec 1/4 miles at just 6Psi boost. They are good for around 9Psi of boost on the stock bottom end (with proper intercooling). then There are alwys the 300+ hp impreza's to worry about.

[Mux213]

Who cares about sprints, going straight is booring!

[NoHachi]

Yeah! Sprints are not a car or skill sport. It's mainly money orientated.