Bill Sherwood's AE-86 mods done page

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My AE-86 Sprinter - Mods done page

7-7-99
- Finally got around to adding the Cusco front end bits, and the Cashiew front struts.

In the above pictures, you can see the adjustable length lower control arms, radius rods, and spring platforms. You can also see that there is no anti-roll bar - This is because I have made the front track about 50mm wider, and so I can't quite make the roll bar connectors line up well enough. The car feels very nice to drive without the bar, so I'll just leave it off.
I also added the ventilated front brake discs at this point. I hoped for a big improvement in the braking power, but this wasn't the case. After a lot of thought, I now reckon it's because the rear brake proportioning valve is limiting the pressure to the rear brakes, and so the brake balance is way too far towards the front of the car. I plan to do some work on the proportioning valve to reduce its effect, thus making the rear brakes work better.

Here is the picture of the strut top camber adjusters. The is the left hand one, and as viewed from the front of the car it looks like I've got a heap of positive camber dialled into the car. Not so! Because the front track is about 50mm wider than standard, I have to have the strut tops in that position to get 1.5° negative camber. I'd like to run a little less camber though, so I'll have to shorten up the lower control arms to reduce the camber.
Also note the blue-grey colour of the paint - This is sort-of the original colour of the car, before I painted it white. It was actually more of a sky-blue, but under the bonnet the paint is an odd colour. I'll be painting the engine bay when the new engine goes in.

Here is a view of the front of the engine bay - You can see the radius rod support brackets, the back of the electricfan for the radiator, and the front of the engine, sans belt cover. You can't see the front anti-roll bar, of course.

Since these pictures have been taken, the car has been fitted with 205/40-17" Falken tyres, and 17" x 7" wheels. It's also got a Cusco strut tower brace, and to be fitted a TRD rear spoiler. There's also a set of stainless-steel braided brakes lines to go on. I'll be adding pictures of these when I get some good ones of it, and I have the time.

8-10-99

I've added the strut tower brace and brake master cylinder brace as well. I also gutted the proportioning valve to the rear brakes, and the car stops a lot better than it did before.

I've also picked up some new bits for the new 4GE engine - The 'shim-under' type cam buckets, and the special valve spring retainers needed to hold the new, smaller sized shim under the bucket, instead of the larger shim-over type.

Mid October, 1999 -
- As well as the new 17" wheels & tyres, a short-shift gearstick, and the RS*R exhaust have been fitted. Here's a picture of the car as it is now -

Left hand pic shows the new exhaust & wheels, middle & right pics wheels only. Note that the front end still has to be lowered in all these pics - Have to remove the inner plastic guard first.

... And here's the exhaust by itself.

Early May, 2000 -
I've finally aquired nearly all the internals for the 'grunter' 4AGE! (* The majority of these bits are now going to end up in the Starlet's 4AGE instead)

Here's a picture of the super-strong bits. From left to right -
- A forged steel Formula Atlantic 40mm crankshaft, considered 'unbreakeable' ... (debateable, but nevertheless a good sign)
- Forged Formula Atlantic TRD/Carillo con-rods. Used, but in excellent condition.
- Forged Formula Atlantic TRD/Mahle pistons.
- High RPM Speco valve springs
- 'Shim-under' type valve spring retainers.
- 'Shim-under' type cam buckets.
- 'Big valve' kit; 2mm oversize inlet & exhaust valves.
- A large puddle of drool around the parts. (optional!)
All the parts are new & unused, except for the con-rods.

The car has now been fitted with the close ratio T-50 gearbox and alloy flywheel. If I spin the old engine to 8,000rpm, I can do about 80kph in 1st gear. It's fun, but the car is very slow below about 40kph in any gear and hill-starts with traffic lights, etc, and a bit of a pain. That's okay though, as I never intented to be driving the car around on the road much more. The gearbox has also been fitted with a short-shifter, which is a gadget that reduces the amount of gearstick travel between the selected gears.
The alloy flywheel is also a ball of fun, as it lets the engine rev much more freely than it did before. The 'old' engine that's in the car now is a very sad old thing, but with the lightweight flywheel it still goes quite well. Here's a couple of pictures of the flywheel -

Here's a good view of the steel insert that the clutch plate rubs on. As you can see, there's not a lot of excess metal in it! It was fabricated by John Barbeiri, of Alloy Race Components in Melbourne, Australia.

April 2002 -

The new engine is finally in!
It makes about 185hp, and if I drive carefully it'll get 42mpg on the highway. If you look carefully at the photo you can see the 4AGZE coil packs, crank angle sensor & cam covers, the 20v inlet manifold, and the NEVO under-drive pulleys.

November 2002 -

Finally got around to putting the new wheels on the car. They're 16 x 7.5" ones, and they need thick spacers because they're FWD wheels. The spacers are not just thick chunks of alloy, rather are carefully machined up on a lathe so they support & centralise the wheel on the hub. This is so the wheel studs don't have to support the wheel, only clamp it to the hub. Also fitted is the large TRD rear spoiler. (Although yeah, it's just held on with some race-tape at the moment! :) )

Better late than never, are the photos of the coil-over rear end that was fitted some time ago. The rear dampers are too long, so in the fullness of time I'll have to fit shorter ones. In the photo on the right you can see that that lower damper mount has been braced up with two small triangles of metal, and this is to stop the lower mount from ripping off under load.

Just to be hugely geeky, I've got a Toshiba Libretto that I use to program & tune the Motec M4Pro in the car whilst driving along. As you can see, the Libretto is quite small and so is easy to carry around.
On the right is an old fuel map, with the later ones having a lot less bumps as I tune the mixtures more accurately.

June 2003

The car is getting an Altezza 3SGE & 5-speed automatic gearbox conversion. The Sprinter will be more of a cruiser, and if I want to go fast I have the Starlet to do that in.

Here is the Altezza engine sitting in the AE-86's engine bay, and it's a bit of a tight squeeze. But it'll fit, one way or another! It will hopefully be a runner in a few months.

November 2005

It's taken a long time but the conversion is almost completely finished. The engine is in and working just fine, the only remaining items to do are to get the speedo working, a general clean-up all round, and to fit the larger rear discs. The pics above are of the larger front discs as they went on. On the far left you can see how much larger the Toyota RAV4 discs are than the standard AE-86 discs - They're 308mm diameter, 19mm thick, and ventilated. Next is the milled alloy bracket we made to mount the four-spot Wilwood calipers to the AE-86 struts.

The next three photos are of the kit fitted to the car, and they fill the 16" wheels quite nicely. We lost the splash guard that normally covers the inside of the disc so I have to be a little careful when going through deep puddles. The rear discs have been purchased but not yet fitted. They're a DBA unit and 311mm diameter 9.6mm thick. I picked those because I can keep the standard AE-86 rear caliper and so keep the standard cable handbrake system. Using a different caliper was very tempting but the problem of making the handbrake work was a major concern. The big BDA discs are about 27% larger than the AE-86 ones so that will give me a lot more braking power on the rear, hopefully enough.

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