flying_wedge's 2zzge AW11

[flying_wedge]

Build thread for AW11.

Had for a few years now.
Bought as a *rough* hack intended to see some track time, and as a noble stallion to get me to uni and back, with a part time job delivering pizzas. Oh yea. 16 pizza boxes in an AW never looked so funny.

Humble-ish beginnings:

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Bit of history with the car, particularly with Toyspeed users Mr Revhead and Redmist.
Went really well, great upgrade from the stock 4age I had previous.

... will keep updating later.


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[JackRipper]

Pretty tidy for a track hack, sweet mr2, im diggin the suby intercooler

[jako21]

pretty much a different car now to what it was in the pics!

[flying_wedge]

... will keep updating later.

... over a year on, thought it was time to carry on updating
Tis going to be a bit of a pic dump update. Hope you don't mind


When I picked it up, it had a good portion of the interior stripped, had facelift AW seats which lacked the side support of prefacelift seats.
A good dose of general cleaning up was needed. Fitted prefacelift seats, and gave the interior a lot of elbow grease to completely remove the sound deadening and clean to the point of giving a few brush coats of hammerite.
Made room for some ICE too, whilst I no longer have all of this it was good while it was there. The 8" subs in boxes I made really did give your back a massaging while driving
Note the steering wheel spacer - custom made by Wayne aka vvega puts the steering wheel in just the best driving position

Prefacelift front lip made way for facelift lip, side vent swapped for facelift vent and the peashooter rust rotted exhaust was swapped out for a "different" exhaust.
Yes, yes its a dumpy muffler off a FD3 Was a bit droney and not my cup of tea now, but was fine for the time. Pretty sure this exhaust now features on Simon's white AW now though ha.
Conversation with your passenger is overrated anyway.

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[flying_wedge]

Next on the cards were some better fitting wheels than the white 15x6.5 with +38 offset WedsSports TC05 I had.
I opted for Superlite in 15x7 with staggered offsets, +25 up front and +12 on the rear. These made pretty good fitment and I loved the older style of wheel

A subtle change that fits the AW cabin really well is putting a gauge in the drivers side vent pod. Not a lot of airflow comes out of it, and as long as the defogger works I wasn’t bothered about airflow to my face.
Moved the boost gauge from the inside of the instrument cluster to the vent pod

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The warrant failing 100db+ dumpy muffler exited side stage in replacement for some angled ‘boso’ styled stainless pipes with another resonator. Just squeaked in with 94db. I could now have at least half a conversation with my wife in the passenger seat. The conversation mostly consisted of how awkward this AW was coming for daily driving needs

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[flying_wedge]

Goodridge braided brake lines along with a Cusco brake master cyl brace improved brake feel no end.
Monza buckets fitted to a combo of Hilux rails and AW ‘feet’ improved stability in the seat, although they were pretty slim in the middle making a tight fit for the waist and shoulders. Ups to Gary Whitehead for the fabrication to get these to fit

New genuine Momo wheel is fantastic – I still have this today. Recommended wheel choice that’s for sure and very very nicely made.

Found out about local Chch company Aerotech who make a pretty cool front lip for the AW. Picked one up

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[flying_wedge]

Made a duckbill style rear bootlid and spoiler by moulding a cut angle of the stock spoiler directly to the bootlid. Not really for aerodynamics, but then really with what you read out there neither was the stock spoiler.
Bout this time I swapped out the rear rims for a 15 x 8 and used the ‘old’ rear rims up front giving a staggered fitment of 15x8 +8 rear and 15x7 +12 up front. Street rims only, mind you, the Wedssports were for track duties

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[flying_wedge]

Started to get into some mild track events, first with Playday events at Ruapuna but moreso with Motosoc club from Canty university who ran full days for only $60.
The bug bit pretty hard, and soon I was doing as many track days as came my way.
Was encouraging to learn the AW at more extremes than everyday driving, and in seeing seconds come off my lap times as I became more competent.
Great to see how the AW compared with many other cars and surprising many evo/skyline/silvia/wrx/…/etc. drivers with just how fast it is and how competitive in performance it can be

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Needless to say, the quest for speed and lap times drove a different path of modifications, which at a cursory glance included BC Gold coilovers, lsd, camber adjustment, cooler intake air, semislicks, better drivers bucket seat, celica brakes and many many more

Couple random shots

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[flying_wedge]

Joining the Canterbury Car Club and getting motorsport nz license allowed me to enter monthly speed events with dual and 6 car mulit car sprints which was great.
Had one close call with a shorted battery lead on the exhaust manifold – I am very fortunate this didn’t go worse than a melted starter motor/battery lead …

Clutch was taking a hammering and later found out it had given way a while back and had worn through the friction material down to the bolts and made a bit of a mess of the flywheel

Motosoc days were still a mainstay …

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Regular track events were the norm, until oddly one speed event toward the end of the day I lost all boost pressure…

..... To be continued.....


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[Benckj]

Good write-up Mark.

Those Motosoc days are great and cheap too. Wish I was closer and could participate more especially when the 'dipper' is opened up.

[mickeyduck]

Good write-up Mark.

+ 1

[flying_wedge]

The AW sat in the garage for a few months, driven only as needed because there was no boost pressure at all. Checked all the normal stuff that this could be at a glance – fuses, wiring, plugs, vacuum, etc. Didn’t seem mechanical as the supercharger pulley still spun freely, but something electrical.

Was considering swapping this out for the blacktop 4age I had sitting in the garage that I had swapped 6 months earlier for my old TRD suspension made up of TRD springs, shocks and top hats that I no longer needed when going for the BC coilovers. I was looking into a mild build of the blacktop 4age to get this up to around 190hp and was researching what components I needed to achieve this power - some pretty similar build threads for this on Toyspeed/Oldschool/Maxpower etc.

Bit of the reasoning process here in swapping out the 4age+z for a blacktop 4age:

As the racing got a bit more serious, and the risk of potential problems (aka crashing and death) when racing door to door with no rollcage or harnesses, I was looking at addressing safety with a full cage and seats/harnesses. The “street car” class I was in at with Canterbury Car Club had few regulations to meet outside of current wof, except you could not enter a full race car into this class. It was restricted this way by not allowing a car to run with a full rollcage, slicks, and interior had to be more or less in tact; as this was intended for an easy entry-level step into motor sport with your street legal car.
This is all well and good, except the race classes weren’t kept separate when on the track! When you are on the track and competitively racing against the clock with other fully kitted out race cars which are trailered to and from the track with standard racing safety features, it can feel unsafe and a little unnerving when heading 3 cars wide into turn 1 at Ruapuna after the kink at >180km/h.
If going ahead with a full rollcage, this would put me into a normal ranked race class based on engine cc. With the supercharger being forced induction, a multiplication factor of 1.7 is applied to you engine capacity, therefore making the 1.6 litre supercharged 4age an assumed capacity of a 2.7 litre engine, and placed in that race class accordingly! While the 4agze was competitive with other 1.6 litre engines, there was no way this would be anywhere close to competive when facing off against (up to) 3 litre powered race cars.

This drove the decision to look for decent n/a power, hence looking at a mild build on the blacktop 4age. I would have to build a car/engine that would not only be fun, but have the chance to be competitive too at speed events and club days.

It just so happened that a mate Nick or ‘Psychoham’ as he was on this forum had more or less completed a 2zzge transplant from a 2003 Celica into his AW, but was moving to Australia so had to sell up…
What better way to reach a target of around 190hp then the 2zzge that is rated with that power output from factory? Competing with up to 2000cc engines could be a goer!

[flying_wedge]

A deal was struck, and last February 2012 I then had 2 AW’s in my driveway

Plan from the outset was to swap the 2zz into my white AW which was just so much better sorted in many all other areas – body condition, suspension, interior, etc etc and it just felt much ‘tighter’ then the higher body kilometre grey AW Nick had. There certainly was a history with this grey AW, that’s for sure, I know of the 3 before Nick who owned it and it certainly had a lot of ‘spirited’ use … and this showed in it's overall condition.
The blacktop that I had originally been planning to build up for my AW would be left stock and mated to an open c52 gearbox and put in place of the 2zz in the donor grey AW, and onsold to recover the cost of the initial purchase. The idea was in hopefully netting a 2zzge in my white AW for next to no overall cost.

Pretty much that weekend I then had 2 engine-less AW’s and 3 engines and 3 gearboxes to be found spread around my very tight one-car garage and workspace. Work had begun and I was committed to the outcome – with a baby due in August 2012 I had a timeframe from the wife to have everything done and dusted with grey AW sold within 3 months which you would think would be more than enough time…

Enough text, pics tell a better story

4age+z engine as it was, only moments before being pulled in preparation for ZZ POWA!!

Out in a jiffy

Work in progress

2zz mounted and in place. Just needs plumbing and wiring sorted – 2 minute job there? <insert Tui billboard> Note the wiring diagrams on hand … yes there was a lot of consulting these…

A Pic here of Nick with his AW at an early shakedown at Ruapuna. Was a day plagued with teething issues for him not long after he completed the conversion.

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[flying_wedge]

With issues getting the 2zz to started in my white AW and getting nowhere fast going over and over the wiring, I turned my attention to getting the blacktop to the grey AW, so I at least had one AW to drive for motivation to work on the other

This blacktop swap actually ended up being easier than the 2zz swap, even though this was from scratch with a new untouched blacktop loom that needed to be spliced to the AW loom and plumbing sorted from nothing; and the 2zz had both of these mostly sorted!
A thanks here to John Sterling (fevil) for his blacktop swap loom diagram he compiled from a lot of conflicting resources out there on the internet, and to local MR2 guru Allan for identifying I needed the second 12v feed to the injectors and the COR wired in to get the blacktop to start. Hey, wiring isn’t my strong point haha

All said and done, this AW went really well. It ended up with a new owner, Simonaszakra from these forums. Pity due to unknown factors the blacktop in it ran a bottom end at a Ruapuna trackday 3 months on

Wiring did need a final going over and wrapping

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[flying_wedge]

Was great to be driving an AW again though, after a month and a bit of not!
The 20v blacktop is a good fit for an AW, with good gains over a 16v in power and torque, making it more responsive with a bit more grunt in the higher rev range

Coming back to the 2zz, after a few painstaking days I found I had a few compounding issues – the immobilizer built into the NZ model ECU’s was incorrectly wired by me as all the wiring diagrams were jap models that didn’t have the immobilizer in the ECU (which was a NZ new only feature), but also one of the 2 keys I had for this immobilizer didn’t have the transponder in it to un-immobilize the ECU!! Guess this explained the no fuel, but spark and cranking when trying to start

Finally hearing this start up for the first time in my white AW was a sound to behold, I couldn’t wait to get out there and drive it.

As well as flogging the engine from the grey AW, I also flogged the brakes and swapped these to my AW. A winning combination of the twin pot st185 Celica GT4 calipers up front, and SW20 rear calipers with vented Renault Clio disks in the rear – I think this combination and swap was first done by Malcolm?? It is documented elsewhere, and everthing is a direct bolt up except for a 3mm spigot spacer between the brake disk and hub to make everything sit tight.

The larger rear calipers interestingly fouled on my rear wheels, so had to attack the caliper bracket with a grinding disk… only after they had gouged the inside of the wheel spokes after.
Maiden voyage was only 10m down the driveway in reverse wondering what the grinding noise was. Why I didn't pause to try and figure this out after only 2m I do not know

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