New bits for hachi

[Ian.G]

Well,

big big thankyou to my brother for helping carry out the following work on my car this weekend.

Fit TRD solid engine mounts (A pain in the ass job)
Fit TRD solid gearbox mount (A slightly less paint in the ass job)

Strip from suspension struts - remove old TRD damper inserts, clean up the bodies and replace with brand new Tokico HTS adjustable inserts.

Interestingly the yellow TRD inserts that I removed had exactly the same body lengths as the HTS we put in so no new spacers needed to be fabricated. Also - it was interesting to find there is NOTHING wrong with the old yellow inserts - it was just one of the spacers was slightly short making the cartridge move about in the body. Packing the new Tokicos out with a washer has stopped this movement.

Clean and grease the spherical bearings in the Cusco front camber plates - they were not very well greased at all - now they are much smoother.

Remove TRD rear dampers and replace with Tokico HTS 45-way adjustables. Interestingly I'd figured we'd need to jack the car to do this - but my brother simply left the car on the ground and removed them LOL. It took a total of 10 mins. The springs themselves supported the car just fine.

Fit new Mintex 1144 rear pads. This should give me a more ballanced feel to the brakes as I have 1144 in the front too. I am going to have to take the pads out again as the edges need shaving a little as they make some nasty as hell noises on the rusty center sections of the disks (remember they are larger diameter s13 disks).

Engine mounts and gearbox mounts have made things SOLID - you don't really feel the engine or transmission moving under accelleration or decelleration now. makes the car feel a bit more positive which is good - things obviously vibrate a bit at tickover as there is no soft rubber to absorb any slight inbalance in the engine as it rotates.

New dampers are very very nice - Car feels so different right now that I couldn't find the sideways sweet spot on sunday night - I need to experiment with the settings at the 2 drift days we are doing next sunday and monday. My brother just jumped in and could slide it perfectly straight away - so its probably just me LOL. The slight vibration I had in the steering has now all but gone so I think I just need an inner track control arm for the rack as it has a little play in it.

Whilst the car was up on the stands we noticed a fair amount of surface rust appearing on the underside of the car so we painted most of the underneath of corolla with rust protector. Hopefully this will keep the nastyness in check until the car is garaged as winter comes.

I have some pictures showing what we did but they will have to wait until later.

I am knackered and its now monday again - LOL - time for work.