- Behind me is one of the most recognisable cars from the South Island Endurance Racing
Championship.
This car's been racing in a different guise here for around about 14 years and it's now been
reshelled as a GT86.
To get a bit of a history on this car, we're got Ryan here from 86 Enduro and Ryan actually
introduces himself as a kiwi backyard motorsport engineer and he's pretty much
jack of all trades so Ryan let's go back, before we talk about your jack of all
trades motorsport engineering kiwi back shed mentality, let's talk about the
development of this car because it actually started out as a front wheel
drive AE101 Toyota chassis so it's now rear wheel drive and it's got a 2JZ so
it's about as far from where it started as it could be.
Can you talk us through the thought process of developing this car to start with?
So originally it was developed to be the GT3 beater of its day which was probably
12 to 14 years ago when the car was developed.
So the idea was a light chassis which is the AE101 chassis and then put a Supra engine
directly up in the middle of that for perfect weight distribution.
That was a long time ago now and things have changed a lot since then but that
was the pick of the day.
- And back at that time, so 12 to 14 years ago when the car was developed from what
I understand talking to you off camera, it was there or thereabouts in terms of
being competitive with the Porsches of that era?
- Yeah it was very competitive.
Obviously any car has a development phase and it was very quick but obviously
teething issues and other things and then obviously the Porsches they get a new
car every year and they're not the same car each round.
- I mean I think it's important to understand there as well that it is difficult for a privateer
team to beat what is a factory workshop team with almost unlimited resources so fair to say
those Porsches in particular in the 12 or 14 years since the car was developed, they've
come a long way.
Now looking into the engine bay, the most obvious aspect is the location of that 2JZ.
So as you mentioned you're trying to get around a 50% weight balance.
I'd just say that I wouldn't be super keen on changing the spark plugs so tell us how
that goes.
- So number one you can definitely take out and you can get number two out.
Anything else basically engine related is an engine out job for anything.
So if you come to the track you've got to have it right, you're not doing a gasket
or a seal or a wire anywhere, everything has to be perfect.
- Now could you talk to us about the rules, are there anything around engine location
or are you literally allowed to do anything you like there?
- Luckily with this series it's pretty open, I'm pretty sure it's the number one spark
plug in front of the firewall, probably puts that right to the edge on this one.
But there is a whole bunch of different series with different regulations and this
is pretty open to basically do what you like.
- Now you're aiming for that 50% weight distribution so how close did you actually
get that?
- It's very close, it's at 49.9, depending on the day and the weight of the driver, it's as close
as you can get without redeveloping the rear of the car as well, just some better
weight distribution.
- Now you've also got, we'll talk a little bit out of order here but in terms of the weight
distribution, you've got the fuel cell sitting essentially at the rear of the car.
So of course that weight split, weight balance is going to change as the fuel load burns down?
- Yeah so that's not the ideal location but obviously a lot more engineering required
to put it in the middle of the car and that was the original location of it, that was
where they put them back then.
There wasn't mid mounted fuel tanks like the GT3 has now.
- Alright before we get into the engine specification and the rest of the running
gear, obviously the main thing is it is no longer an AE101 and I remember seeing this
car not long after the GT86 was released, sort of rolled out looking like a brand new
car but it's not quite, how did that all go down?
- So obviously everyone else is getting new cars and the owner of the car decided that
he wanted a freshen up and the way to do that was to put the shell of a GT86 basically
onto our original chassis and sub floor.
- So it's essentially still an AE101 front wheel drive chassis and you've got a GT86 body
stitched on top?
- Yeah it's still got the AE101 firewall, floor pan, a lot of the rear of the car's
still AE101 and it's literally just the outside skin that you see is the GT86.
- So how much challenge did that actually create doing that?
It sounds like a hell of a lot of work.
- So it looks simple when you wee it but there is actually a few panels that are not the
correct length.
Some panels were a direct fit, the whole side panel, door trim, up into the rear
pillar was a factory GT86 panel.
The roof is a GT86 item but there's some other items that are not the correct length,
guards and doors and other bits had to be trimmed.
- I guess the other thing, when you're building a racecar as well is best laid intents aside,
sometimes accidents happen so if you can be using factory components it's going to
make life a lot easier when it comes to replacing them?
- Exactly yeah so that was the idea, we try and keep it as factory as we could but
obviously once we started doing it, realised that wasn't always an option.
- Alright so let's talk about the engine, the 2JZ, obviously no slouch.
It's a well proven package and in drag applications there's guys pushing 2500,
3000 horsepower.
Obviously you want reliability here and you don't need anything like that so can you
talk us through what it's actually producing and the design mentality behind your power targets.
So originally we would import taxi engines out of Japan and bolt them directly in the car.
They were reliable, they would make around the 550 horsepower mark and that's how it sort of
started off.
Since then we've actually updated the car and made a few more changes to get it around
that 600 to 630 horsepower mark which is enough here and it is reliable which is the
key here is to finish races.
- Yeah absolutely, for endurance racing the power is definitely not the key element so
when you're talking about that 630 odd horsepower, are you talking flywheel or
is that at the wheels?
- That's at the wheels, hub dyno yep.
- Now again, not a big stretch for a 2JZ, the key to making that power though of
course is the turbo package and it's actually quite interesting what you've got going on
there compared to what we see now with the modern take on 2JZ turbocharged engines,
talk us through what you've got in the turbo package.
- So obviously the original package was literally a factory engine bolted in there.
So it's a factory twin turbo setup, we have developed it since then, it's got new
manifolds, it's had different turbos changed but it is still the twin turbo application which
sounds good on paper.
Obviously as time's gone on turbo technology has changed quite a lot.
But it's cool that it's still a twin turbo car, it sounds cool when you say it.
- And the specific turbos you're using?
- GT3871R and they've got to be replaced every two years.
- Replaced every two years, so why is that?
- They're completely stuffed, it's that hot in there.
- So I mean that's one of the downsides I guess with the packaging, you've got
everything mounted so far back that the turbos are actually behind the firewall
essentially so is this down to lack of airflow, basically it's an oven in there?
- It is an oven yeah the driver's clutch foot will melt if the driver rests his boot hard
onto the firewall, it's very hot in there.
- And you've got to appreciate it's an hour and a half stint for a driver and a three hour run time
for the car so the temperature you build, you just can't fathom how hot everything gets.
- So fair to say with the updates in technology, given that this selection was made 12 odd
years ago, if you were to do it again with another 2JZ turbo engine, single or twin?
- Yeah so the new car we are hopefully going to run next year will be a single turbo yeah.
Mainly for packaging and it's so much easier.
We did a boost loop test on this and it takes you a while.
- Yeah I think the thing that a lot of people overlook with the twin turbos is just the
complexity of working on the system, particularly when you've got it mid mounted
like this, there's a lot more moving parts and the difficulty of actually accessing parts
gets really frustrating.
- Yeah the wastegate's the same, the wastegates are a service item, they do a year.
Turbosmart gates, they're good but you put them where those ones are and they don't last.
So we are a yearly service item for a wastegate as well.
That's just the packaging, that's just how it is.
- Now the other aspect there, just going back to the original AE101, obviously it's a front
wheel drive chassis so clearly, it's converted to rear wheel drive and we'll talk about some
of the other elements but in terms of the front and rear suspension converting to
rear wheel drive, what did you choose there?
- So originally the car was fitted with an RX7 suspension package front and rear,
RX7 differential.
Had endless issues with the RX7 differential exploding so 2014, so six years ago now,
they redeveloped the car again and it's had a fully CAD drawn front and rear
suspension package, double wishbone, with RX7 front uprights and Supra rear
uprights.
So quite a substantial package underneath the car that probably no one actually sees.
- But again just all in the aid of being reliable at the power levels and for endurance racing?
- Exactly yeah so we knew we needed stronger wheel bearings, we knew we needed a stronger
diff and so we picked the items we wanted which was strong front wheel bearings and
strong Supra rear end, we knew was good.
- I think that's an area that again a lot of people easily overlook with modified street
cars or even the odd weekend warrior racecar, the load on the wheel bearings,
you've just got no idea what goes into it when you step up to endurance racing, particularly
with a wide slick and getting something that is reliable in there is really really critical.
Now let's talk about the rest of the drive train as well, so what have you got in the way of
a gearbox there?
- So it's a Hollinger RD6S gearbox, didn't have that originally, that was obviously installed
after the car was originally built.
It's probably a 14 year old, it's been there a long time, it's the original case, a lot of the
original gears, we replaced a couple of parts but to be fair it's been a very reliable gearbox.
- I think Hollinger have got a name as being one of the most reliable out there in the
industry, although pretty high ticket price to get in but again if you've got a gearbox
that's going to last 14 years, that starts to look pretty cheap.
The dog engagement six speed sequential gearbox like that, you've got the ability to
use flat shifting so are you incorporating that?
- Yep so we run the Hollinger gear knob on the top, flat shifted.
It still runs a cable throttle, that was just originally fitted, we can't change the
intake manifold.
Bit hard to get a throttle body on there that's electronic so we've just stuck with the flap
on the upshift and the blip on the downshift.
- So the driver still actually has to do the hard work on the downshift and match revs?
- Yeah and that's actually a cool thing as driver, the drivers of the car do enjoy,
being able to actually blip the throttle and it's an art you know.
- Yeah I mean there's definitely arguments both ways and there's no doubt that going
to the likes of paddle shifted gearboxes with auto blip, it does take away from some of
the driver skill for sure.
Electronics package in the car, what are you running there, what's controlling all of this?
- So it's a Link G4 Xtreme ECU, we've run Link ECUs, the owner of the car actually ran
originally in his jetboat, so for a very long time, we're talking back to the dial on the
jetboat days and so he's pretty true to being loyal to Link.
We've had a good run out of the package and yeah.
- Is there anything specific you're doing with the tuning of it because of the
endurance application in terms of fuel saving strategies, or for that matter,
engine protection strategies?
- So a lot of it is engine protection strategies.
Anyone that looked at the tune would say holy shit you're rich as you're not running
a lot of timing and why is it running so rich on the decel and that's all to try
and keep it going, try to cool the burn wherever we can.
To be fair, trusting someone to tune an endurance car, a lot of people don't
understand the complexities required, to do with the heat soak and we look over
the data after every race, there's a whole race worth of data that you've got to go
through and check and make sure everything is right because over the three hours things
can actually change.
It might be perfect on the dyno when you do it for two or three hours on the dyno but it's
completely different on the track.
- Yeah I think that's important to understand is even with a real good quality dyno, it's very
hard to replicate the temperatures and the airflow that we'll see out on the racetrack
and as you say, it's one thing even tuning a car for a sprint race but very different
matter holding it together for two, three hours in a row with that temperature management.
Look the car is amazing there Ryan and it's good to actually get a bit of an insight into
what actually goes on inside of it so thanks for the tour there and we wish the team
all the best for the weekend.
- Hope to see you at the end, thanks.
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