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Complete Corolla and AE86 Performance.
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After looking at the Soarer on the weekend and deciding it was the car for me, she finally arrived at my house this morning just before I left for work. This was kind of a bad thing, because I only had around five minutes to look at the beast before I had to leave for work! It was a long day, but was all worth it when I arrived home to get better acquainted with my latest acquisition.
This particular Soarer is a 1988 model and has only just become eligible for importation under the fifteen year rule. I'm going to be doing the work for compliance myself, so that should keep me busy for a while, though apparently it's quite straight forward for the Soarer.
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I knew the Soarer was pretty well loaded with goodies of the electronic type, but for a car built in the (late) eighties this thing is just amazing! Here's a quick run down of the electronic gizmos the beast features: Power steering, windows, mirrors, seats, sunroof, and an auto retracting steering wheel. It also has electronically adjustable suspension, full digital dash, central locking, 'micro-processed' climate control air-conditioning, CD player, leather seats, cruise control, and even an air purifier in the boot!
But forget about all that nonsense, it's no good if it doesn't move! No problems there thankfully, with a three litre twin cam 24 valve fuel injected intercooled turbo six cylinder, driving through a five speed manual to a four pinion limited slip diff. And yes it is rear wheel drive in case you were wondering. Suspension wise it runs fully independent double wishbones at each corner, braking is taken care of by four wheel vented discs with ABS. Nice.
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So what are the plans from here? Well the first step is to give it a good clean up this weekend, and that's about it for now. I still have just over seven months to go until I get my license back though, so there's plenty of time to do some work to the car. Currently the only things not standard are the Trust three inch exhaust and suspected lowered springs. Inside it has a GReddy boost gauge and FET turbo timer, along with an antique Japanese radar detector!
The standard alloys are pretty daggy, so they'll probably be the first thing to be changed. A set of standard seventeens from a late model Supra would be nice, even a set of sixteens from the earlier model would do at the right price. If I can't source something like that it shouldn't be too hard to track down some nice aftermarket rims. Whatever I do, I have to get rid of the crappy snow tyres on there at the moment!
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Engine wise there's a lot I'd like to do, but the first step will be to sort out the head gasket problems common with the 7MGTE. Since the head and gasket are fine on mine at the moment I could just re-torque the bolts down, or I could go one step further and fit a set of ARP head studs. Since I have a bit of time available I may well fit the ARP studs along with a HKS metal head gasket to cope with further boost increases in the future.
I better leave it at that for now, next instalment I'll talk about further work I have planned for the car and also what's required to have the beast complied.
* 7 months and 13 days to go...
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