nerdstrike

I knew someone about 10 years ago who encountered an unmarked Cayman S patrolling it... or whatever seized drug dealer mobile is flavour of the month. It's a fine place to cruise at speed, but perhaps not the Fury Road it sometimes appears to be. Given the thread theme, I'll also point out that you might be on boost for a lot longer than normal, so it might be a good place to expose any flaws...

Congratulations on your acquisition. Winter tyres can make it even more hilarious to drive!

As an example, the MSDS for Starbrite screen de-icer is comprised of methanol and isopropanol. I have no reason to believe that rubber seals will suffer from fleeting exposure to these light alcohols. My only thought was the initial fun of getting a well-frozen door open before you can even start the engine, or perhaps unsticking some windscreen wipers. Either way, the general consensus is that elbow grease is generally better in all respects - it makes refreezing less likely.

I'm not a big fan but there are aerosols and spray-bottles of "de-icer" that would do for loosening off the windows against the seals. Good ol' engine heat and scraping can take care of the rest. Might save you when unlocking a car with a dead battery too.

Don't worry, the con rods will explode through the block before the bolts holding the block together stretch. The point still stands though - peak boost must be carefully managed particularly at the low end.

A spare in the cat? With keyless entry it wouldn't matter mostly, but the cat might be traumatised by what could be daily vet visits. You'll be the luckier one if thieves get the better of Toyota's keyless encryption. I'm hoping their engineers have done a good job on it, but I fear the worst.

I think the car makes an unexpected beep when you turn off the ignition when the battery is critical... but I might be imagining it.

I imagine these things have to be sweat-proofed what with them being jammed into clothing crevices... you got lucky!

Could it be a mis-tightened/loose or cross threaded spark plug? Has your car had the plugs changed?

w.r.t. the speed-related squeal, you could try regreasing your pad carriers and checking whether the relevant shims are present. We are at the damp 'n' dirty part of the year, so these kinds of issues get more pronounced on top of the already squeaky OEM pads. It's unlikely you'd get a speed-related cyclic noise that's not in the wheel arches. @Mike - it's called surface dressing, and I'm on my third windscreen now.

I'm convinced everyone on here is a total bass junky. I know the tyre noise raises the noise floor of the lows a huge amount, but some upgraded woofers have more oomph than the door cards can manage... they really thrum if you push it!

I wish you could take a car into a Subaru shop for the recall. I'm certain not, but at least they have practice with boxers. Either that or mandatory Mighty Car Mods for the Toyota mechanics...

I know the press cars get caned, especially sports models, so it is conceivable that they might do a tear down on a couple of them to see what wear has occurred. Otherwise I see no reason why they wouldn't salvage some of the value by selling it at a hefty discount. In this instance either they transferred the plates, or there is indeed some funny colour balance going on. I can believe that the "hot hatches" video above has the wrong white balance, but the Rory video looks like actual red. How mysterious!

Often. Even so, I can see how a small mid-range torque bump would improve general usage.

Jeez, it sounds like you must have driven through one of those Icelandic volcanic dust storms. This time of year is terrible for showing up the imperfections. @KAS Thanks for the pointer. I know I'm doomed. I'm sure I can count on road debris to take out my third windscreen - I've been averaging one repair a year as it is. Cambridgeshire in winter is like driving in a slate mine.

Autoglym screen polish didn't so much as touch my scratch. I guess I'll have to up the ante or get a new windscreen after winter.

Do you always fill from one particular station? Mine can be mildly irritating on odd occasions. I find there's quite some variance in the sensitivity of the cut-offs at different stations. The last time I had any irritations like this was a MK7 Celica, something of a Toyota trend for me!

I sense many bald tyres in your future!

Are they held in by interference? Also, you should have gone for polished walnut, so you could have some Jaguar style in your life.

It gets even gnarlier in USB sound output. I connected my phone to a Chord Mojo to audition it. I couldn't get Google Music to play via USB, but files on the device could be played back through another app. The "offline" music from Google Music is not visible in the file system, so I was unable to meaningfully audition the Mojo, because all I had were alarm clock noises... I then tried a Audioquest Dragonfly, and that could play from Google Music. However, the Dragonfly defaulted to very low volume (patched in later firmware...) so while it would work, the volume was quiet at most. Google assistant can control Spotify, as can Alexa, but Apple doesn't seem to be playing along. So I can voice-control playlists via bluetooth, but I strongly suspect it won't work if did the same via USB... the whole thing is a bloody mess!

I presume it's treating it like an iPod, i.e. the device is a file system. Spotify is just an audio streamer with no file system presence so the head unit can't see anything. Even if you download the Spotify tracks, they're probably walled in and not visible as traditional files. Unless Spotify develop their app to listen for media controls or accept Siri commands, you're stuck. I guess that's what carplay and android auto are trying to resolve, but not on this headunit!

I'm not convinced it follows that more piston area must give more pedal travel. The pads are already skimming the disks, so any movement is limited to compression of the pads, deflection of the disk, and squidge in the brake lines. If the brake lines have seen a lot of miles, I can see how the oblig. replacement braided lines with the new calipers might undo some of the squidge you'd grown accustomed to, resulting in similar feel despite greater displacement. It also depends on the channels inside the pistons - it wouldn't surprise me if the modest BBKs were deliberately keeping the volume close-ish to OEM to avoid having to fit new master cylinders. A bigger evenly compressed pad should give you more braking with less pressure after all. Then there's mass transfer to consider with the brake bias... goodness me it's complex if you want it to be!

I hadn't considered doing it in wood... would you be so kind as to share the proportions? I have a notion of 3d printing inserts, what with not having a wood workshop or tools... I guess I could dremel it, but it would be uneven as anything.

I think you'd struggle to get fire out of the exhaust pipes on these - the burn is lot cleaner than a Wankel, so there's less fuel vapour blowing around, but that might change after the application of a turbo. The rods are known to be vulnerable under high boost though, so reliability is inversely related to boost pressure. Blow-off /recirc is your choice, and a UEL manifold will give you the boxer burble you're after. My impression is that a loud muffler and decats and manifold change will give a very loud car. Keep a modest muffler on and the rest should be liveable. Keep one of the cats and you can still scrape the MOT, but you might not want to do that with a turbo.

The standard cat is specified for 200 bhp of exhaust gas flow (and headroom - we know you can gain 10-15% just be derestricting the exhaust). You can try to pump 300 bhp through it, but it'll choke it down and get crazy hot. I recall the Cosworth stage 2 claimed 260 bhp without a change of exhaust, but 280 if you took the matching exhaust. I can only imagine you'd have to get custom piping done and get a bigger/higher flow cat fitted, but you'd have to find the space to mount it, and would it pass the MOT? Perhaps a cat the last Impreza or another higher power boxer would suit? It all sounds time-consuming...