AE115 Sprinter Carib Z Touring

[atlex]

New clutch is in and new allseasons are here, to be mounted on .. old new wheels ;-) looking forward to seeing this combo.

the Allseasons are Michelin Crossclimate 2s which I have heard rave reviews about.

I couldn't find the MC2s in 195/50r15 so ended up getting a set of 195/60r15 ones.

Given this is a 4wd family car that's already lifted 40mm and has mahoosive arches (for the period, and relative to an MX5), another 40mm of rubber diameter should give slightly nicer ride comfort and also suit the nature of the car better.

[atlex]

Old clutch was down to rivets as expected - but it was still working, just not holding full torque/throttle

And interestingly enough, the worn out clutch appeared to be the _original_ factory clutch. Rubber dampers had hardened to plastic. Original toyota/aisin markings on both the old clutch and cover. 1996 car with 221679KM on the clock. That's the legendary reliability we hear about, made manifest.

New clutch combo is super light. Given how cheap AISIN (the toyota OEM) parts are to buy, I'd buy nothing else for a toyota when it comes to spares. Massive kudos to Toyota for running a company like they do.

I've now got a 33 euro spare clutch should I ever need it.

[atlex]

Can't wait for these wheels to be mounted

http://instagram.com/p/CVlI7kHMjxe

[atlex]

Dem Reeems is AWN.

http://instagram.com/p/CV3iKzYruL-

[atlex]

I've done 2000 Kms on them now and I can say Michelin's Crossclimate 2 tyres are amazing and Michelin have outdone themselves.

_so_ quiet compared with the goodyear vectors we had before. And apparently also quieter than the previous version of the Crossclimate tyres.

Looking forward to getting them onto some snow now, or, if not that then a little offroad or sand.

[atlex]

Done another 2K KMs, with slightly higher pressures (30psi instead of 27). Still excellent. Slightly noisier. We were loaded up so I'll drop the PSI down the 25 now once I've unloaded the car.

Loaded up on the uphill with the roofbox it wasn't holding 120 KM/h in 5th, had to shift to 4th and rev it out

But with the 200KGs of ship/kuntundu/luggarge and the aerodynamic brick thule roofbox removed performance should be restored.

But you know how it is..

This car needs a turbo :-)

What I really want is the cast manifold from the sportivo corolla 7afe, which was only sold in oz.

The rest is just details lol.

[atlex]

Swapped this car onto my Apache2s this morning and took it off to the ITV.

Failed on the Apache2s (despite correct wheel size, the 'enginers' were unimpressed by the -25 8" poke at the front)

Also failed, more seriously, on emissions.

idle co was 0.10%.. perfect. accelerated was more like 2% and the lamba was way off - 0.95. so I need that to get to 1 to clean up the 2% .. time to go back to closed loop.

I suspect an air leak increasing the MAP, but also I've had this car on open loop with the stock lambda sensor since the ECU didn't seem to play well with the stock sensor a year ago.

I'm going to try a spare ECU, and I've got a PLX wideband kit that can feed a narrowband signal into the stock ecu, which means some rewiring but that's probably a solution since I expect something is off with the existing narrowband signal wiring anyhoo.

I have prepared myself with the ordeal of getting to the ECU by watching.. this..



yes, it really is all behind the centre console. oh fun.

[atlex]

So, I wired in the narrowband, swapped in the new ECU and.. fitted regular wheels (you know, just ssr type C 15x7 et30) and it passed.

New ECU and the NB simulated signal seem to work perfectly well, it puts the fuel under control easily enough and goes stoich pretty much everywhere you'd expect.

in the test it took a while to get the accelerated CO under the limit, but the idle CO was perfect.

I need some way to subtly lean out the fueling to 15.1 AFR if I'm to make my life easier.

A Wire-In ECU might be on the birthday list.