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6 minute(s) of a 52 minute read
9-16-2013
Test fitting the spark plug wires to the ignition coils, to make sure it's all kosher:
The valve covers will be powder coated silver and repainted with the stock bluetop colours. I much prefer this look to any other (including my own black valve covers). The ones on the engine in these pics are in rough shape, but give me an idea of how it will look. I love it:
Ordered myself a new smallport 4A-GE spark plug wire cover. It fits with quite a bit of room over top of the coils and wires I've installed:
In this shot you can see the TRD header, which was installed to get positioning for the O2 sensor on the wiring harness. Also apparent is the vacuum valve on top of the power steering pump. On the AE86 this valve is mounted on the power steering pump itself, on the AE92, it is mounted on the steering rack. While using the AE92 PS pump with an AE86 rack, I had nowhere to mount the valve, so I ordered a banjo bolt for the power steering pressure line on a 1MZ-FE. It allows me to mount the valve on the top of the PS pump, retaining factory idle-up on the 4A-GZE. It later turned out that this probably wouldn't work, as the lines won't quite reach. I have since ordered the 1JZ-GTE factory setup from Japan. Don't have any pics of it right now though.
Coolant piping modified to mount the remote thermostat housing on the side of the engine. In the AE92, this housing sits on top of the transmission. That won't work for a RWD mounting setup. In this first picture, you can see the two pipes bolted to the water pump and water neck, they used to extend to the back of the block:
Holding the thermostat housing in place you can see where it will sit. The heater core pipe was modified so that stock AE86 heater hoses can be used without modification. I had new ones installed a while back, there was no way I wasn't using them, haha:
You can see in this picture the nice welding my brother did to get these pipes to fit properly. Mad props
Hoses in place on the piping going to the heater core and the ISV (idle speed valve). Need to make sure everything works like from the factory
Now came the (what I thought was going to be) hard part: modifying the wiring harness to fit the AE86. I expected to spend at least a couple of weeks on this, however when actually diving into it, I realized it would probably be easier than I thought. Spent a couple nights mapping the connectors on the AE86 harness and removing extra connectors from the GZE harness (battery terminal, alternator wiring, etc). I came up with this abortion as the staring point for the GZE harness:
Positioning things on the engine and so on, I organized the new harness into this:
Finally, I loomed everything up and extended a couple wires going to the starter and body harness power source near the battery:
For suspension, I've gone with TRD Japan sport springs, shocks, struts, front sway bar, and the complete bushing set. I have only installed the front sway bar so far, but will be installing the rest soon.
For the rear end, I've gone with a TRD 2-way Limited Slip Differential, as well as a TRD solid pinion spacer.
I am keeping cruise control, so I needed to find a throttle cable that would work for that (from the cruise bracket to the throttle body - stock AE86 is too long). I found that the SV21 and VZV21 cables seem to work not too badly. The SV21 is about 28-inches or so, while the VZV21 is about 29-30'ish. I grabbed the VZV21 one, but I think the SV21 would be fine as well.
