S18 RSG

As said above, great meeting you all, nice to see so many people out braving the weather. On that subject, I may suggest the next meet be held somewhere a little warmer, like the North Pole or something.

Yep, that's exactly what I mean. Once you get the hang of taking the door card off, it's easy. I swapped out the passenger side speaker (after doing the drivers' side) in less than 10 minutes, by asking a friend to hold the door card while I swapped the speaker, rather than disconnecting all the ball joints and electrical cables. Connectors are exactly the same. Here are the exact speakers I bought: http://www.crutchfield.com/S-bBY3THZuOAJ/p_091IS165TY/Focal-IS-165TOY.html When looking at head units, it's best to decide what features you consider a requirement, and what you can do without, then choose the best/cheapest/nicest looking one that fits your requirements. My requirements were: navigation, Toyota specific fitment, phone connectivity and an OEM style. Because of these requirements, I went with a well tested Android unit (one that multiple owners on the US forum use and recommend). Bonus was, it cost half the price of the unit you linked, provides a great improvement in sound (along with all my requirements of course) and looks basically OEM. In terms of subs, you have lots of options also. One tidy option, which a few on here have gone with, is a wheel well sub, one that fits under the carpet in your boot. That way it's out of sight, but still doing a job. There are also plenty of options for under seat subs. Both of these don't encroach on boot space, but maybe won't be as powerful as a full size sub, so it really is down to your own choice.

Oh, lol, my bad.

You should swing by Cwmbran one evening before you leave. Would love to have a butchers at your car

Why? Because it's a "sports" car, so it should be driven "fast"? Nothing wrong with a sports car that can do over 45mpg on a run. I'd have loved to have seen stories like this when I was looking to buy mine.

Hi Jake, I'm by no means an expert, however I have played around with the audio in this particular car. In my honest opinion, the easiest and cheapest way to improve the sound quality is with a good set of front door speakers and some sound proofing behind the door cards. Made a world of difference in my car. I paid a little more than some people would be willing to pay (£170ish) for Focal speakers, but as they're plug & play, and come with plug & play tweeters also, I figured they were decent value. Made a big difference to sound quality though. As for a sub, I believe you would have to buy some adaptors for the standard head unit and splice into the existing harness. The easier way would be to wire in an active sub (a sub with an amp attached), or a separate amp/sub combo, and use an RCA converter to run the sub off the front/rear speakers (as there are no pre-outs on the standard head unit). Of course, you can get around a load of problems by simply changing the head unit. Just changing the head unit itself will almost certainly improve sound quality by itself, and will then provide you with all the pre-outs you need for sub, amp etc. The sub you've seen is likely the OEM+ audio system. I know @rob275 has it for one example, and I'm sure there are a few others. This system will run you around £600 I believe (over $1,000, exclusing delivery and any customs charges). Hope this all helps in some way. Ross

I make regular journeys back and forth to London (usually central London too) which is around a 350 mile round trip, and similar to you Lauren, I refuse to fill up anywhere but Shell. On my past few journeys I've made the entire trip easily in 1 tank, and manage to get back to my local Shell garage for a refill within a few miles of the light coming on. If it's later, or I'm in a rush the light occasionally comes on in England, but I always manage to get back to that same Shell garage. Only time I've ever seen numbers like yours Will, are when I'm seriously concentrating on driving well. Such as this, over around 60 miles of motorway driving, and yes, the passenger took the photo before anyone asks.

The level of how much I want this is unfortunately only matched by how poor I am right now If I happen to find £1000 down the back of my sofa, I'll be in touch, but in the more likely scenario that doesn't happen, I wish you good luck with the sale.

Before I get into this, let me preface by saying that I do not intend to purchase anything from the supplier I am going to be mentioning here. Also, if you have the opinion of "It's cheap, therefore it's crap" without any proof to back that up, then we share the same view, but I still think this is worth discussing. So, like I'm sure many before me, I too have stumbled across this "Top Gear" exhaust supplier on eBay, selling manifolds/exhausts for all sorts of cars for really low prices. Like many before, I have ignored them, because in general, cheap is crap. However, to get some proof to back my opinion up, I spent an hour or so researching the company yesterday, and despite my initial expectations, I was surprised as to what I found. The majority of first hand experiences of this company came back as remarkably positive, and unlike my expectations, this wasn't from the Corsa forum, or the Nova forum, all these experiences came from the Audi R8 forum, Ferrari owners club, Porsche owners club and Corvette owners club. Furthermore, looking deeper into their pricing structure, a full cat back exhaust system for a GT86 costs the same amount of money I paid for my custom system, and they are in partnership with Longlife, which, while not an A+ company, have been around for long enough to show that they're not cowboys. Just wondered if anyone here had any first hand experience with the company, or had anything to add. It seems unlikely that they make poor quality parts if an hour or so of research found very little criticism for them. Interested to hear opinions/experiences. Edit: An example of one of their GT86 products http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/Toyota-GT86-Manifold-with-200-Cell-Sports-Cats-Also-fits-Subaru-BRZ/201493821358?hlpht=true&ops=true&viphx=1&_trksid=p5197.c100068.m2280&_trkparms=ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140211125758%26meid%3D2442dd2a87374f8eb371ab8f5200158b%26pid%3D100068%26clkid%3D3172230598460401446&_qi=RTM2108002

Perhaps your idea of classic differs slightly from what I mean. I don't mean they're destined to be fetching 6 figures, I'm talking more in terms of "classic" BMW M3's, Mercedes 190E Cosworth, the original AE86 etc. None of those cars were bad when they were new, but they all spawned a following. The GT86 is the first cheap, rear drive sports car in a long time (discounting the MX5, which is a classic in it's own right), and being the "first" of something, means it will always have its place in history. I have no expectations for them to take off in value or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if they become something of a collector's item some time in the future.

At a little over 15,000 sales up to the end of 2015 (GT86 figures only), which is fairly low for 4 years of sales, there's a good chance that these will be classic sometime in the future. I for one will be keeping hold of mine for a long time, mostly because I love the car, but I look forward to seeing if it does get valuable down the line.

I spent 6 months learning the basics of Korean toward the back end of 2015, and have yet to run into a single scenario in which that's been a useful skill. Meanwhile, I've found maybe 20 situations in which learning Japanese would have been useful. Never lucky.

Can't imagine this will change much, but just for clarification, I'm actually at Abbey at 8:30am now, as requested by Mark, so will be around any time after then, probably until sometime in the early evening.

Yessir, I am. Cwmbran if that's any help.

Yeah, that's something I'm unfortunately going to have to absorb, although I'm sure I read somewhere that extra mapping time at the same stage is charged at hourly rate, rather than full price (need to confirm this however). I'm not sure I'll even want the manifold after the remap, will need to judge how much more drivable the car is after it's done.

If you end up bringing your car along to the TD open day, do yourself a favour and hide the keys from me. I'm from the valleys, I have no problem stealing something from right under the owners' nose. You've been warned

Interesting. There's no way would I order one from eBay, there's no controlling what product you end up getting, but I may be tempted to head to their offices and see what's up. The only reason I stumbled across that product is I was looking for online prices for manifolds, and that one obviously stood out. According to their website, their premade systems are Longlife approved, and they do custom work at their workshop. At least going there you get to have a face to face and be sure you're getting what's advertised. I'm in for a remap at the end of the month, if it doesn't satisfy me, I'll be looking at replacing the manifold soon after. Maybe I'll pay them a visit. On the subject of guitars, I too bought a cheap knock off, a replica of a Fender Strat. A few years down the line I dropped a significant amount of money on a real one, and honestly, the quality difference is far less than the price difference.

I honestly wouldn't trust that particular manifold. Like you say, £320 is too cheap. Some catalytic converters are worth that much money alone. That being said, I've read a few reviews on their catted manifolds, and am yet to find any horror stories. One particular story was a catted manifold for a Ferrari F430...

I'm around 6ft (maybe a little under, but I'm sticking with 6ft), and I occasionally find the lumbar support to be lacking also, so I don't think it's necessarily a height issue. I did find a link on (I believe) the Aus FT86 forum to a lumbar pillow sold on Amazon which was not only the perfect size for the seat, but the same material too (black alcantara). Let me see if I can find it. Edit: From memory, I'm fairly sure this was it http://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-McKenzie-Lumbar-Roll-Packaging/dp/B003WGIE9S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1454925761&sr=8-3&keywords=lumbar+pillow

There's no performance advantage (other than a small weight different) to getting a non res system compared to a resonated system, so you could just get a 2nd cat delete and a resonated system. Surely that's the best of both worlds. Still loud, but won't drone, and you get rid of the restriction from the second cat.

This is all very interesting. My car came with the drivers' side strap broke when I first bought it, and when I went to my local dealer, they said there was no fix for it. Now you guys are making some headway, I think it's about time I went back armed with this new information and get this fixed. Good work everyone.

Agreed. If it was less hassle, I'd sell mine as standard, buy this and fit my suspension/wheels etc. to yours, but it's just far too much work. Great price for a car with this spec though.

Honestly, as daunting as it seems at first, it's nowhere near as bad as you may think. Unlike Mark, I did it as instructed, took about 20 minutes using the template. Wasn't particularly accurate with markings either, and it went together with ease.

Count me in. Only a few hours up the road (as is everywhere else )

That sounds like a challenge Mark