A Tale of two Soarer's

[PieRat]

After being inspired by my good friend Harry's (the bmw fanboy) build thread i decided its probably not a bad way to document all the things ive done to the cars over the years as i cant remember 90% of the stuff that weve done to any of the cars,

Anyways, i will start with a brief summary.
My name is Sam and to say the least im a Soarer enthusiast. ever since discovering drifting on the xbox with forza 3 and promptly switching to rFactor after getting my first steering wheel ive been obsessed with Soarers.
unfortunately there werent any insurance companies that would insure an 18 y/o on a 4L V8 Sports coupe so i settled with a poor mans mid engine 86, a 1989 AW11 which i equipped with some wheels ipinched of my Dads e30, painted them white and polished the lips.

I did a couple of trackdays at Bedford and Brands hatch before biting the bullet on some Yellowspeed Drift Coilovers, mk3 mr2 LSD, rack spacers and full polybush kit.

ended up slapping the wall at my first drit event at lydden but otherwise it went pretty well, did some santpod and norfolk days then ended up fitting some offset rack spacers off of Dmacs rotary 86 and done a couple more skid days and a brands hatch demo day where i met Yogi whos come on leaps and bounds since back then.

unfortunately that year me and some mates decided to go to angelsey to watch Drift Matsuri and i quickly realised that id reached the end of my journey with the mr2, so it was time to buy my 1st Soarer!

 

[PieRat]

It didnt take me long to find what i was looking for, a V8 1991 Toyota Soarer for a grand total of £250 plus another £100 to get it recovered home. i cant remember why it didnt have the propshaft fitted but it was included wih the car, so i refitted it took it for a drive to the mot station and came back with a certificate.

However on the first run down to the coast and back the factory airbag suspension exploded as i pulled onto the driveway lol, So i swiftly ordered some nice Yellowspeed Drift coilovers so rectify my issue, along with a hydro e brake and a harness to go with the seat that i orginally bought for the mr2 that didnt fit, at this point my memory is a bit hazy but i seem to remember buying a welded diff, braided brake hoses, some cut knuckles and a nardi wheel with boss along with some 16" FYK wheels. i also got hold of some japspeed front lower arms at some point and had them extended to get a stupid amount of camber on the front but it drove very very well.

 

[PieRat]

The soarer remained pretty much unchanged from there, I had some issues with the fuel pump module that i bypassed, made a full exhaust and fitted a cone filter for more noise and changed the spark plug leads and dizzy caps/rotors but the the car was bulletproof.

at this point my and a mate went halfsies on another drift car, a JZX100 Mark II with a few goodies on it. Only problem is that it was in japan, Ebisu to be more specific!

this trip was eventful to say the least, the japanese summer is very intense and we were pretty new to the level of driving needed at ebisu to survive. we had a close call with oil cooler pipes splitting whilst out on track, powersteering rack failing and engine mounts snapping - but it was an incredible time and inspired us to come back for some more!

on day 2 we had a decent crash on school course which was a relief to be honest as the car waas super clean and we were worried about scratching the most expensive car we had ever bought (a massive 4k GBP in 2016 lol). after the first crash we gave up caring and just drove as hard as we could.

During this trip i made a random post on the Z20 owners japan facebook group one night and a very friendly dude name Genki met up with us which was awesome.

we also did the stanard tourist stuff, visited fat five, hama garage, hey man, runfree (who were absolutely mindblown that we even knew who they were) and met up with rie shinmi in her restraunt

after that, Came back to the UK and did some more skid days in the v8 Soarer.
2017 comes round and I convinced myself that for some reason i needed another soarer so i broke my rusty mr2 for bits and put one on a boat

 

[PieRat]

Once again, ordered some Yellospeed Drift Coilovers for the z20. the steering rack bushes were completely non existent so stocle the mr2 onees and made them fit and the braes were absolutely terrible so fitted some mercedes AMG 4 pots under some period correct Rick Racing August Feroces.

used this as my daily until the headgasket failed, did some more drift days in the v8 soarer which i had manual swapped using Driftmoto bmw kit by this point

let a couple ofmy friends drive it for a day at santapod, then did a Huxley event st shakespear raceway where it broke a powersteering pump. replaced the pump, took some nice pictures and sold the car for 4.5K

then packed my bags and headed of to japan again for some more JZX skids, this time with Ian Blackett too!

Came back from this trip and didnt have much going on, the mr2 was broken for parts, v8 soarer sold and z20 soarer broken. so decided to head back to japan again this time for a short stint working at powervehicles where i would buy my next soarer, another z20...

 

[PieRat]

i was advised not to buy this car as it was in a bit of a state, but it wasa ridiculously cheap and i didnt really have much of a budget to play with. turned out it wasnt that bad of a decision as i discovered that it appeared to be an Ex Drag probably from the mid 90's, it had super old school 7m coil on plug conversion with a HKS stroked 2,4 liter "2GGTE" (which i unfortunately didnt know yet) the pipework was an abslute nightmare it had an OBX twin turbo manifold with Trust TD04 14b turbos that were squeezed into the engine bay. anyway i cleaned it up as best as i could and took it for some skids. it came with these super cool 16" volks but using 5x100 adapters so i ended up getting rid of them, also had a super sketchy big brake kit where the disc was spaced out with about 20 washers, so i sourced some original supra brakes and modifed the knuckles. i also deleted the powersteering at this point as it was leaking pretty bad and didnt want to pay to fix it.
i borrowed some wheels from the jzx and bought some cheap 15s to go give it a go skiding

turns out its really hard to steer with no powersteering, otherwise only issue i had was a boost pipe popping off.. and it was super laggy but i could drive around that.
so i took the steering rack out, dissassembled it and cut the centre seal out. now the steering was nicely weighted but not impossible to steer.
bought some more 15's and some used kei office coilovers and gave it another go.

the car drives awesome, sounds cool too. only issue is it kept overheating but i thought it was just because of the turbo kit setup. i later discovered it had a pretty severe water leak after melting a few pistons i did get enjoy a fair few days in it though aswell as driving the JZX.
after this, went back home for a bit. imported a jzs171w as a new daily and single turbo converted my other z20 soarer

did some minor mods like changing the backbox, apexi induction kit, fitting the minervas and braided brake hoses. also rewired the paddles so right is up and left is down.

did some skids in friends cars at santapod and went to a few shows but didnt really do much to the z20 as it was nice to cruise around and make gt3076 turbo flutters.

skid ahead till november 2018, back to ebisu this time i had sold my half of the jzx to my mate ed who i was sharing the car with so i could focus on the drifty z20, i did a lot less driving this trip which probably helped delay the inevitable demise of the engine before shipping the car back home.