08885-80606

The funniest AW11 story for a while:

I mentioned earlier how I tried to order some supercharger oil from Toyota, because the oil level was full 2mm above the low marker.

I contacted Toyota Tsusho Nordic and gave both part numbers for supercharger oil I had at hand. Both part numbers redirected to 5W-40 oil inside the Toyota EPC, which I thought was wrong. The parts guy at Toyota came up with the same conclusion and told me that he would contact someone at somewhere about this "might-be" error.

I waited for two weeks frustrated, after the guy from Toyota called me and told, that he got a recommendation from TTE (Toyota Team Europe) to use 75W-90 gear oil, because the original supercharger oil was not available anymore. I was both disappointed and happy. Now there was need to drain the old oil from the supercharger and I had no tools to fill up afterwards. The good part was the price. Only 22 euros for one liter, compared to 40-something euros for 50ml of original oil.

I ordered the oil without any hesitation.

Now it's official. This is the recommendation for alternate supercharger oil from TTE. Toyota part number for the oil is 08885-80606.

Why to trust TTE? Well, they have built Toyota WRC rally championship cars for ages. They built and raced the only Toyota GT1 car and now they are in charge of building the Toyota F1 car. They still have a selection of superchargers for different Toyota models, so I do believe that they know what they are doing.

(Edit: TTE is now known as Toyota Motorsports GmbH)

I had these part numbers for the original oil:

50ml, 08885-80108
500ml, 08885-09007

Thanks! Excellent service from Toyota.

Parts and service - part 3

Draining fluids from radiator.

Testing email blog entries

Awright! This is what you get with Nokia E51. Lousy camera :)

Parts and service - part 2

Front lip removed and car is standing on the jacks.

Crank pulley looks bit dirty.

Parts and service - part 1

I think I was already gone at this point... thanks Maladar for the pictures!

The garage is originally built for some kind of bulldozer or something, its bit tricky to use the jacks.

Parts and service

I had to persuade Maladar to work with my car, but right now, I'm thrilled!

I've been doing something else and haven't had any time to work with the AW11, but Maladar has been busy with the car and sending pictures of his progress to me.

I got my first free night in ten days and we hurried to the garage, where Maladar had taken the thermostat housing apart, drained the coolant and gotten the crank pulley off.

I was amazed. Pulley had come off with little effort and some teflon grease, coolant was little smudgy but still looked fairly good. The old timing belt was showing marks of aging, but generally it was in better shape than I had imagined.

I took some pictures while we tried to remove the water pump, but I have to upload those later. For now, a picture of installed HKS timing belt.

License plate holder

Maladar built me a license plate holder!

I bought some aluminium and Maladar (using magic, I don't think there is any other way) put together a really beautiful plate holder.

We had to saw my license plate slightly, it was full 2cm too tall to fit nicely in the right spot, so now I have a modified (modified = illegal => I will get 2 years of electric chair if I get caught) license plate (letters and numbers still intact) and constant fear of police figuring out what we have done. The point in the modifying was to make it look like the lower part is behind some plastic, and I think we succeeded well, because I did a random blind test with a friend of mine. He thought it really was behind the plastic thingy, until I showed him.

Consequences are easy to get around. I just need to tell the police, that I didn't know it was illegal to modify the plate and promise to get a new one, it costs something like 20 euros.

We saw some hares. :)

Suspension, bushings, swaybars and motor mounts

Took some pictures from the underside. My biggest suspect this time was the front motor bushing which looks a bit tired. It might be the source of this weird boiling kind of noise I've had for some time. (It might be the exhaust seal between header and downpipe, but I'm not a automotive engineer...)

While at it, I took some measures of the sway bars. Rear one was 14,5mm and front sway bar was 18mm. Measures taken, because I saw thicker ones on Whiteline's web page. Whiteline has 20mm front and 18mm rear.

I think I need to replace every bushing in the car. The AW11 has about three bushings in the whole car, so its not that expensive. (actually, its more like 12 bushings in the whole car... now, on the other hand, Nissan Silvia S13 has something like two thousand) :D

Also, I took pictures of suspension links and everything, even catalysator and that mystery connector, which I think is the catalysator warning light wire. Its on the second picture from the top, the green connector near the sway bar.

I ordered brake rebuild kits and some supercharger oil directly from Toyota, but haven't heard anything from that direction since, and it was TWO WEEKS AGO!

Waaaah, do I need to call them again?

AEM EMS

I got the AEM EMS. The connectors are exactly as they should be.

Also, I've been checking the wiring and it seems that I only need to move 3 wires to get this work with AW11.

Random pictures

Nighttime excursion to the old oil harbour and a beauty shot of MR2

Installing Pivot Gauges

I was looking the wires behind the gauge cluster when I suddenly realized that the wires behind cd player had everything for the Pivot gauges.

I took the cd player off the console and removed the car <-> iso adapter. Then I cut the wires and soldered the first Pivot "server" to the adapter wires and daisychained the second "server".

Electricity part worked, but what about the pressure tube? The package had a short tube, but obiviously it was for a car with front engine. I had some old rubber tube in the engine compartment from the previous Defi installation, and I managed to connect the old tubing to the Pivot's.

The water temp sensor was bit harder one. Maladar suggested that we should take a part (I forgot which one) to the metal works shop and get it drilled and threaded. I'm still looking for a blocked hole or something from the engine, but it is starting to look that there isn't any.

Drilling the coolant tubing (the idiot install) is out of the question, but I'm considering one of these

Oil Change

Oil change at 96848km.

This time, Maladar recommended using some engine flush, so I bought a bottle of STP's. I had no idea whatsoever what to expect of this stuff, so I read the instructions through multiple times before pouring the liquid in.

Instructions were very specific that the engine flush stayed only 15 minutes inside the engine, so I was looking my watch just about every other minute.

Seconds before the 15 minutes was full, the engine made a squealing sound, exactly like supercharger belt slipping. Maladar said that I should check the belt tension and tighten everything.

Well, after I got the new oil in the engine (Valvoline MAX LIFE 10W-40), everything ran smoothly. No belt noise or anything. No idea where the noise came. Later I tried to push the car a bit, but nothing.

Yeah, now I'm running one of those MagPower oil filters. The old Blitz one I had, was stuck. Oil filter key set to the rescue!

Maladar's picture

Pretty nice picture, taken with cell phone!

Maladar took this while we were checking out the old oil harbour area.

My (so called) vacation - nothing to do with MR2

Pic is taken somewhere between Gap and Sisteron in France... my (so called) vacation was about 1900km of driving through western europe.

Some highlights were the viaducts before Geneve and hilarious "Your route is being recalculated due to traffic problems" from navigator, about five times in row.

The scenery in the alps where we ended with the "avoid toll roads" settings is also worth of mention, and the hailstorm with +6C temperature just few kilometers outside Nice (Saint-Martin-du-Var, I think) was something I wouldn't have expected...

A small hint: if you're going to drive from Nice to San Remo, TAKE THE TOLL ROAD! The locals drive like assholes on the Italian side and roundabouts are obiviously too complicated for them.

Otherwise, the scenery again... wouah. Cote d'Azur, truely.

Thanks to my co-driver Thoron!

96666km - 11. April 2009

I have a thing for symmetric numbers :)

Plugs -result

Honestly, this picture is bit useless. New plugs are there somewhere, under the cover. Everything else is in order. Runs smoothly.

Wires are dirty.

Plugs

The first picture: old Honda plugs installed (they actually performed well enough)

Second one: one old plug removed. The color is ok and the model number is BKR6E. Funny how nicely the Honda plugs fitted to Toyota engine, even the heat range was correct. Nice!

Third: all plugs removed, everything looks ok. Color is nice and there is nothing unusual.

Fourth: new plugs installed, still without the correct torque

Plugs -beginning

Nardi day was followed with removal and reinstall of plugs

Nardi Day! -result

Ready in one hour!

I think it feels just great, the looks are WAY better and the whole thing feels like it was made for this car.