Racecar: TRD USA built ITA AE86

[oldeskewltoy]

The rainy season is coming to Portland...... so before the winter comes, I wanted to get the car up and give it a simple inspection.

Took her to Jesse's, his shop is about 3 min from PIR......




Got her up....





...and we found...



pretty significant "heat checking" in the front brakes. David mentioned this happens a lot (race car). Front rotors will need replacement. The rear rotors are not checking, and still have some meat on them(measured 9.7mm)



In addition, we checked the lights, as you can see, there is yellow duct tape on the lenses, this is there to keep plastic shards off the track when(not if) contact occurs (race car). Since her use will be a bit less aggressive, and other sanctioning bodies keep the lights to help indicate to other drivers... we managed to get both head lamps, and both tail lamps working. We did find that there were no bulbs in the indicator lamps in the back (on shopping list), AND the driver side (left) turn signal assembly is broken .




I mentioned this to one of my younger friends here in Portland - he has a right hand drive coupe he rebuilt. Anyway, I mentioned to him that I needed one, and he directed me to an ad on Club4AG's facebook page he had seen a day before..... I messaged the person (Jason McInerney -
AE86IRL member) selling them and I bought my first parts for Racecar. I bought both front lamp assemblies, they are coming from Ireland!





more to come......

[MIGGZFSU]

Subscribed..... Really going to enjoy this one. Congrats again on this sir

Sent from my F3111 using Tapatalk

[oldeskewltoy]

from another forum Wrote:Nice find, I'm loving it. Goals!! What's the wheel/tire setup in the current picture?

Car came with 2 tire/wheel combos.

Currently on the car it appears they are Revolution RFX wheels, with BFG Comp T/A R1 tires in 205/55/14. The second set are Panasport racing wheels, with Hoosier R6 tires, also in 205/55/14

[oldeskewltoy]

from another forum Wrote:I personally prefer the current livery, but you gotta do what makes you happy

There is nothing wrong with it's current livery, and I do plan on keeping the back alone - leaving "Spinnetti" on the right rear of the hatch... but it's lineage goes back to early 1988, when a few TRD USA employees built an ITA race car... that won it's first 6 times out!

Grassroots Motorsports magazine - October 1989













Being a bit of a historian ( I have a B.A. in History), my thinking is such to bring it back to it's roots....



More to come......

[banpei]

Wow! Lovely read!

[Dave W]

NICE!!!!
Thanx Dan.
DaveW

[oldeskewltoy]

oldeskewltoy Wrote:

Spinnett - previous owner Wrote:Wow, nice to see the "build thread" here(@ C4AG).... Bitter sweet for me of course, but glad to see it go to a good home I poured many, many hundreds of hours into making it what I considered to be the "Ultimate" AE86 for its race class - important to note that I built it for the specifiec class, not for anything else, so those rules defined what I could and could not do. I was close to the class track record in my first SCCA driving school in it at Blackhawk farms never having driven on track before and I won the first road race I ever entered at IRP. Leaving out the bulbs was just me saving grams lol. Most interesting to me, is I bought this car 25+ years ago, and I now work for Toyota's corporate HQ in TX. Our chief Akio Toyota did a drift demo at work last Saturday in the Modern "GT86". I should have brought this car to the party <sad face>. Was hoping he'd do it in the original instead, but it was sort of a historic closure for my 25 year AE86 experience


PS, the car has ZERO blow by... Catch can is required by rules, but has never had anything in it... The red cap on the intake is to block that off so it doesn't suck hot gasses from the block into the intake, reducing HP....

I hope you will continue to follow along.......

Figured I'd add this here as well...


more to come.......

[oldeskewltoy]

Spinnett Wrote:I now work for Toyota's corporate HQ in TX. Our chief Akio Toyota did a drift demo at work last Saturday in the Modern "GT86". I should have brought this car to the party <sad face>. Was hoping he'd do it in the original instead, but it was sort of a historic closure for my 25 year AE86 experience

If I had known..... ....it would have added a bit of additional cool to the history


I will be getting back to the history, but for now some repairs, and maintenance...



After having it up 2 weeks ago, I've gotten some of the parts ordered, and did a bit further research into the lights. First, I need to find something the removes dried on duct tape residue...




...... WITHOUT harming the plastic!!

Initial research shows this product...



but there are other methods I've heard, or read about - Vaseline, is one, WD40 is another - problem is I need them to work without distorting the lenses, so if you have actual experience with cleaning tape residue and not harming the lenses... I'm all


Part of what I found when the car was up was the left side front lamp was broken - the socket was missing from the lamp assembly. As I mentioned, I quickly found a pair, and they were sent to me - arriving unbroken




but here is the problem.... this is a race car... I learned after I bought the above lamps that the car had modified MR2 lamps instead (note the added brackets in photo below)




So... do I look for a replacement MR2 lamp... or go with the original zenki type (on right)




Additionally, the car has had a wonky (official term ) temp gauge for a long time. Shortly after start up (less then 3 minutes) the engine temp gauge "buries" itself to full HOT

Did the diag - the sender works along the lines of the FSM test procedure..... The gauge, on the other hand, I've not yet tried to diag it....



...as removal from the cluster may require some creativity?????


That(wonky temp gauge), along with the fact that there is no engine fan, mechanical driven or electric, has made me a bit uncomfortable. David (previous owner) said it wasn't a problem, after all this is a race car, it is used on track........

As this car's purpose has changed somewhat, besides the bits I've already mentioned, I'll be adding a thermo-switched electric fan to keep temps under control in less then perfect racing conditions.




More to come.......

[Bean]

I like the Zenki type, suites it well.
WD40 works for removing residues but it's very labour intensive.

[krullibull]

You could try heating it very gently to see if it softens back to a sticky state. Then it should be quite easy to take some new duct tape and dab it on the old residue to remove it.