Almost since I first v6 swapped on my car, I have been reading about the performance benefits of a true dual exhaust with an x-pipe compared to the y-pipe I have been running. But I was skeptical. How much difference could it really make? Would I even be able to fit two pipes over the cross member? Finally I decided to give it a try.
Toyota rates the 2GR at 269hp (at the flywheel), give or take a bit depending on the application. My swapped MR2 initially dyno'd 280hp (at the wheels). Assuming 17% drive train loss, that's 337hp at the flywheel, or a gain of 68hp vs stock and a specific output of 96hp per liter. Not bad for a stock motor with intake / headers / exhaust, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement!
Building a (functional) rear diffuser has been on my list of things I wanted to do for a while, but getting it to fit nicely around the exhaust was always a problem. My new center exit exhaust solved that, so on to the diffuser build!
A few months ago I posted about a new exhaust that I built for my 2GR swapped MR2. It sounds great, it looks awesome (especially in combination with the rear diffuser that I built around it, write-up on that coming soon), but I very quickly found that it had one major drawback. TERRIBLE drone at about 2500rpm. This wouldn't be a big deal if I never drove my car on the street, but I do, and so something had to be done!
Have you found the electronic throttle on your 2GR swapped MR2 to be a little too sensitive? It turns out, there is a reason for that, and also a $15 solution!
For a while now I have been wanting to build a new muffler section for my car, mostly to replace the 27lb Berk Technology muffler with something a bit lighter weight. From there the project evolved into a low profile, center exit design to better accommodate a rear diffuser that I would like to build some day. Having something unique is of course a plus as well.
While building a set of my custom coilover housings recently, I thought that maybe people would like to see what the process of taking these from a pile of parts to a finished set of housings looks like. So here we go!
For quite a few years now I have been tempted by the idea of ditching my 3S-GTE turbo 4-cylinder and swapping in one of Toyota's newer v6 motors, namely the 3.5L 2GR-FE. But my 3S was still running great, and I had too much time, money, and effort invested in it over the years to drop it without a good reason. That is, until a little over a year ago when the head gasket failed on the way home from the track, as described here: Tres Duro 2016 - My Lucky Streak is Broken. That motor had also been burning a fair amount of oil, and since I had to tear it apart anyway to fix the head gasket I was tempted to rebuild the whole thing to fix the oil burning. I almost went down that road of rebuilding it. Again. Fortunately I remembered that I had been telling myself for years that I would go v6 before doing that, so here we go.
For a number of reasons, I have long resisted the idea of trailering my car to events. But, that doesn't mean I have been content to run street tires on the track or at an out-of-town autocross. The solution, of course, is a tire trailer!
For quite some time now I have been wanting to build my own control arms for my car, and I finally did. I had three main goals here. Add some adjustability, improve the suspension geometry by lengthening the control arms, and hopefully drop some weight. Spoiler alert: two out of three isn't too bad! It all started with a design in SolidWorks (well several designs actually), and extensive stress analysis.
