- There's no doubt that the Toyota 86 has become a very popular chassis for all
sorts of motorsport.
But there's only a limited number of 86s that are competing at the upper end
of Time Attack.
We're here with Josh Coote from MCA suspension with his Toyota 86
that's running in the open class.
Now it's pretty wild, it's fairly far removed from the stock FA20 and the stock 200
horsepower that that engine produced.
We're here to find out exactly what makes it go.
So Josh obviously when you want to go fast around a racetrack, the 200 horsepower
from the FA20's not really gonna cut it.
But you've been down a fairly long and elaborate development path with the
86 chassis.
Can you talk us through your first range of modifications when you started
circuit racing?
- Yeah so to start with this car was completely stock.
Just did the usual things, suspension and tires, exhaust and a tune and away we went.
And it was an excellent car and it was really fun to drive.
And then I started thinking about doing some World Time Attack stuff with it.
I went down the turbo path with the FA20 and I wasn't a massive fan of the lack of
drivability that I was getting from it, coming from the NA setup.
So I ended up putting a VQ37 into it, a naturally aspirated VQ37 from a 370z.
And I really really liked that setup, that was an incredibly fun car to drive.
It just had a nice boost in horsepower but still naturally aspirated.
The reason I chose the VQ37 was I'd actually wanted to put an engine like
that into one of these for a while because it's three cylinders long so it's not overly
long, you're not completely ruining the weight balance of the car, putting in an
inline six or something like that.
- So like one of the common options we do see there is the Toyota 2JZ,
that's been done to death and particularly in Formula D in The States.
So the length of that inline six compared to the VQ37 and even the FA20,
just upsets the weight balance.
- Well I mean yeah anything's going to upset the weight balance, even the VQs
going to but it's just about minimising that upset in the search for proper
horsepower.
- So in terms of the VQ37 when you were running that, obviously you've moved well
above that now, so what sort of power level was that producing?
- The VQ?
The VQ37 to be honest I'm not 100% sure, I think it was around about 300 horsepower
at the wheels or so.
And yeah and for the lap times it was doing at the time, it was incredible, it was
pretty light, it weighed about 1170 I think it was.
And yeah it was an excellent car to drive.
But I saw the lap times and I saw the potential and I thought OK maybe let's
go to the next step and having already put the VQ in there, the VR38 was an
obvious choice because very very similar physical dimensions, so we knew it
would fit in there easily.
And the performance potential of that motor is almost limitless in a way.
So yeah it was a no brainer to go down the VR38 path.
- So is this just simply because of the development we've seen in the R35
GT-R community with that VR38, gives you more options and it's cheaper
and easier to develop than the VQ37?
- Yeah so the VQ37 isn't made for turbos and when you're wanting to make
1000 horsepower, the block yeah just isn't really strong enough in my opinion.
I also like to build cars quite reliably, strong and reliable, I don't like having
to repair things and rebuild engines all the time and all that sort of stuff so I
kind of wanted just to do it right, do it once and yeah the VR38 was the
obvious choice for that.
- OK so you've mentioned 1000 horsepower there, I'm guessing that is the power mark
you're at, can you let us know what you needed to do to that VR38 to get that
sort of power.
Obviously again in the GT-R community, we're talking street car numbers here so
not a big stretch.
- Yeah look it was pretty straightforward.
I just did a really basic engine build, just put, CP and Carrillo helped me out a bit
on some rods and pistons.
We got head gaskets in there and some head studs.
Kelford from New Zealand gave us a hand with some cams and valve springs.
And then BorgWarner helped us out with some turbos.
So I can't remember the exact model of it, relatively small, about 500 horsepower
each turbo.
And yeah together with the MoTeC and it just sort of worked and it was easy and it's
made 1067 I think it is at the rear hubs.
And yeah it's a nice amount, I could definitely do with some more.
It seems strange to think that but yeah there's definitely room for more so.
But I don't, like I said, I want to keep it reliable and so I feel like that's sort of
the sweet spot for maximum horsepower while keeping the reliability.
In the future I'd like to consider a billet block path and then go pretty crazy with it,
look for 1200, 1500 horsepower or so.
I think you could still keep it reasonably reliable and also drivable.
So yeah something for the future perhaps but happy with how it is now.
- With those turbos that you're running, the smaller BorgWarner EFR, they're known
for their great response anyway.
Can you give us some idea on what the power band is, when are you seeing full
boost on it and for that matter, what sort of boost pressure are you running?
- I should probably know some of those things.
The boost, I think the peak boost is maybe just under 30 psi.
But yeah as far as when the power comes in, it does come in relatively early.
I'd say probably around about the four mark you're starting to see a fair bit
of the power.
And it carries it through reasonably well, it does start to taper off a little bit towards
the top but yeah it works well for the gearing and for the track and like I said,
the main thing is I wanted to try and keep it drivable.
'Cause when you've got rear wheel drive, drivability of the motor is key.
And we've actually spent a fair bit of time in tuning the way the boost works.
We are running full boost in fourth, fifth and sixth.
But in first, second and third we've dialled the boost back a fair bit to try and help
put the power down because at those speeds we don't have the aero helping us
quite so much and so getting the power down can be a bit of a trick.
- Now obviously in terms of World Time Attack competition, the power's only a small
part of the package and aero is really another key aspect.
You've got a fairly wild looking aero package on the car, how have you gone about
developing that and how critical has it been in the times you're getting out of
the car now?
- Yeah obviously aero's a massively important area.
Last year we did a little bit of aero with Andrew Brilliant and for what it was I
think that worked really well.
But this year they've changed the rules a fair bit, opened up the rules and we can
do a lot more with the aero.
So I wanted to go from real head to toe and redo the aero package.
So for that we've brought in Barry Lock.
He's a local guy to us up in Queensland and so I think it was a bit easier to work closely
with him to develop the package and he could also oversee the implementation
of the parts, make sure it was all fitted up properly, strong enough, that sort of thing.
So yeah we've got a whole new front undertray, we've got some hammerhead
style winglets there now, we've got some side skirts which have got some diffusers
built into them as well and we've carried that through to a rear diffuser also.
So on top of that we've been able to raise the rear wing up which is still an
Andrew Brilliant rear wing.
And the overall package is working exceptionally well this weekend.
Obviously we're up seconds over last year.
I think the track's probably not as good as it was last year as well.
And it's just incredible now going into turn one, it's really just a game of how
brave I am.
- Now in terms of getting some data on that, have you done anything around
validation or is it really just a case of seat of the pants feel that the car's
better or worse with changes in the aero?
- So we did have some potentiometers on there, we do have some data on that.
To be honest we haven't really had the time to look and study that.
We do have it there when we do get a chance to.
But for now it's just been a case of, some of the aero parts only went on
a few days before we left Brisbane for here.
So a lot of it's just been seat of the pants testing, just seeing, trying
different spring raise, different valving just to get the setup right.
- Well ultimately you're running in second place in the open class now so whatever
you're doing is clearly working.
There's one more session to go so best of luck with that session and hopefully
you might be able to knock a little bit more off your lap time.
Thanks for the chat there and we look forward to seeing your progress.
- Yeah thanks very much.
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