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nerdstrike

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Everything posted by nerdstrike

  1. nerdstrike

    JW191 Custom Audio Build

    Yay! Mids! The boot setup looks great.
  2. nerdstrike

    Upgrading Headunit for sound quality?

    Based on our collective efforts to deal with the weak ICE, I consider items in the following priority. 1) The speakers themselves are crap. The Focal Toyota fit set are drop-in, and easy-peasy. They upgrade you from rubbish to reasonably good for very little money. If you have deeper pockets you can get a lot more sound quality for say, £500, but then there's wiring to do, mountings and more trim to remove. 2) The woofer performance can be improved by sticking some mass-loading onto the door skin. You don't have to coat every surface with the stuff. A bit in the doors gets you precision on the bass for fairly little weight. I also put absorbing foam in my doors and arches to reduce noise on the motorway, it helped but only a couple of dB. I wouldn't call it Mercedes. 3) Only now should you consider the head unit for sound quality. If step 1 took you to dedicated amps, then the headunit doesn't have much to do anyway. Basically, I'm saying replace the headunit because you don't like it, not because you're expecting perceptible improvements in sound quality into the bargain. A replacement might have legroom for much better components, but the standard one is fine at low to medium volumes. I don't normally run the stereo very loud, I'll see if I can notice the distortion on the Focals. Getting the door cards off is dead easy, and the water-proofing plastic layer can be reattached by its sticky black goo if it peels away.
  3. Wow, that's not a community cross-over I expected to see.
  4. nerdstrike

    Newbie from Sussex

    Looks super! I wanted an aero, but they were brand-spanking new at my time of purchase and out of budget.
  5. nerdstrike

    Widebody Queries...

    I put it to you that people who want a widebody car are probably more inclined to build it to their own spec, rather than buy a pre-built one from someone else. It also makes the insurance side of things a lot more sketchy, especially for younger drivers. By all means fulfil your widebody dreams, but don't be under any illusions about how many thousands of pounds it'll cost you in parts, labour and eventual resale. Throwing a tenner on the fireplace every night would be more cost-effective!
  6. nerdstrike

    Newbie from Sussex.

    FYI, I don't think you'll get a harp into the boot.
  7. nerdstrike

    Terrible drone between 2500-4200~ rpm

    Yes, exactly like Nimz says. Loosely, a helmholtz resonator is akin to an acoustic guitar body, and the shape of the body dictates what frequencies it resonates with. Unlike a guitar, you can use them to quieten noise instead of amplifying.
  8. nerdstrike

    Terrible drone between 2500-4200~ rpm

    Drones are resonant frequencies. There are several ways to get there, but one of them could be a crack or poor fitment which changes the acoustics. Otherwise, a helmholtz resonator is your primary option, to damp only those frequencies, but leave everything else at full volume. I have seen a chap fashion his own by computing the appropriate dimensions from an analysis of the exhaust noise and some good guesses of the gas temperature, but it's a technical bit of work. No idea if your typical exhaust shop is able to do that sort of thing, as opposed to just bunging a standard silencer on.
  9. nerdstrike

    Alps road trip

    Car holiday aside, you've got some cojones climbing some of those routes on bicycles! Proper respect for that. Any clown can pay his fee and crash on the ring, but it takes a lot of commitment to pedal up those neverending slopes. I have visions of the rear window glass lifting off and sailing away with your bicycles, but it can probably handle the drag.
  10. nerdstrike

    Observations from my first day of ownership

    Congratulations on your Giallo! Not many are willing to commit to that bold a colour. The gearbox responds better once you have some heat in the oil. That can take 15 minutes of driving at this time of year, at which point it is very satisfying to use. However, the synchros need some help - I think they're a bit slippy when cold, but diligent rev matching will make it much easier. Throttle blips are essential when coming down the box. Give it a week or two, then see if you still think it's problematic. The headunit volume knob does loosen off a bit once it has been worked for a while, but yes, the headunit is a bit sucky. Sat Nav is quite bad, and loves to navigate down stupid roads, bluetooth connectivity is ok, and the standard speakers are a really poor use of cardboard. You will likely have to search long and hard for a headunit if you don't want to use inserts. Toyota's units overlap the sides of the double din mount, whereas most aftermarket ones don't have the oversize fascia. Cruise control won't engage below 28/29 mph, and cuts out if you change gear. You push the stalk button to get the cruise control light on the dash, and push the stalk down to set it at the speed you are moving. After that you nudge speed up and down, or cancel by pulling the stalk toward you. Up on the stalk is to resume the last set speed. If you understand that and it doesn't work, the somebody needs to look at the electrics. The boot lid has quite short and stubby hinges to rotate around and it's not particularly heavy, so it does need a bit of a bang to lock. If you're used to German cars, I'm not surprised you feel odd about it - Toyota has saved weight everywhere, so all the body panels are unweighted/flimsy. It's 150kg lighter than the equivalent Z4! Enjoy your car!
  11. nerdstrike

    OBDII Based Apps/Utilities?

    There is a limit to what you can infer from the car's own sensors, but there are quite a few of them. It can help for diagnosing modest faults, but only if you put the car through its paces, and know what the graphs should look like. Some examples: MAF vs RPM can show air restriction, if a variable intake sticks. It can also show a badly behaving sensor on a nasty aftermarket induction kit The '86 has an Oil temperature readout, which is not reported on the dash Excessive LTFT can indicate a fuelling issue if all else is in order What we'd really benefit from is if we could add additional sensors to the canbus, but that's prohibitively expensive, hence the abundance of boost gauge pods and other such things which usually get hard-wired into the sensors. Speaking as a software dev myself, I think the most useful thing you could add to the OBDII software readers would be better data logging and processing. Torque pro will log many sensors but it's hard work to get it to do anything with that data. Last time I did some logging, I had to take out the raw data and work with it in R to make any interesting plots. It would have been handy to be able to facet on full throttle condition. I have also learned from poking around how Torque computes its display values that the sensor data is a hot mess when it comes to scaling/fudge factors and units. The car does have inlet pressure sensors, but it's not clear to me whether that would give nice boost readouts with FI.
  12. nerdstrike

    Idle Rpm rise after Ecutek Remap

    With lots of ancillaries engaged I've seen just under 2k even on standard map. The car might still be adjusting its idle trims if you had it done recently.
  13. That would be because you're not dealing with Steven Eagell.
  14. Oh boy, look at this Pullitzer winning entry: "I confirm that a full explanat,We have carried out a complime,Replaced internal mirror,Carry out complimentary Vehicl,Your Technician today was Bria,Your service advisor today was, " And the site doesn't work in Chrome.
  15. Last time I looked at the online record of what was done to the car, the text was truncated and not presented in a useful form at all. I sense this is going to be a pain in future.
  16. Nooooo! It'll swallow all your time keeping it working! They're also disturbingly expensive considering the rust/metal ratio. I second the notion of spare standard 17" rims plus some wintersport rubber. However a full Scottish snow-off will probably make your life very difficult. It is still a RWD car with not that much weight over the driven wheels. Only you can judge whether the conditions get bad enough that they're just not suitable for a sporty motor. It doesn't sound like your commute involves much other than main roads that would be cleared/gritted.
  17. nerdstrike

    Standard HU gremlins

    I see the odd glitch, but not usually enough to break the usage, particularly it will sometimes fail to negotiate bluetooth audio with my phone, and sometimes fail to start music on the phone. I don't make enough in-car calls to have tested it thoroughly. I've not yet seen my headunit reboot. It could be software, it could be hardware, it could be a voltage drop... lotsa ways to freeze computer hardware!
  18. nerdstrike

    Odd behaviour this morning

    A cabin-dim is inevitable when the car tries to fire the starter motor, but not if nothing happens! If the battery is healthy/new enough, then what about electrical shorts or a declining starter motor/starter solenoid? Personally I think it's a bit young to have a clapped out starter. Have you had anything done to the wiring?
  19. nerdstrike

    Car covers for Aero models?

    Car covers can sometimes cause as much trouble as they solve... I've heard some horror-stories of rubbing and paint damage if the car is out in the wind.
  20. nerdstrike

    Thinking of a project car

    @Lucas@PartBox - the Internet is littered with abandoned RX8 engine conversions! Loved driving mine, but not a lot you could do without spending good money and making it more robust for track days. Also not a lot of value in getting one working :/
  21. nerdstrike

    Tyre Choice(s)

    Grip is sorta the enemy of play. My car is absolutely hilarious on Dunlop Wintersports, and is also largely immune to standing water. Loads of wheelspin and tail wagging available. That said, the amount of grip available is only varied by degrees. A car with the '86's tight rear diff and setup will always like to wag its tail, and +/-10% grip or whatever isn't going to banish that, just require a bit more commitment to access... If worried about too much grip, I'd consider something like the Contisport 5s and other mid-range performance tyres - ones that aren't too hard.
  22. nerdstrike

    What to look for when buying a used GT86/BRZ

    One of the keys should have a metal tag on it with the code for the alarm control box Old Primacy HP tyres that just won't die, and are past their best
  23. nerdstrike

    Battery and key fob issues

    All this stuff puts me in mind to have a replacement battery in the shed on standby... My original battery is coming up on 4 years old now. FWIW, the battery is a consumable, but I'd hope that the original fitted item would survive the warranty period, and perhaps more importantly fail gracefully. After two weeks on the drive, the starter definitely cranks slowly, makes me wonder about leaving it any longer than that.
  24. nerdstrike

    Cold feet.

    Do a few full throttle pulls and the footwell will warm right up!
  25. nerdstrike

    1st track day

    Last (and only) novice day I went to was a total mess. I nearly missed the sighting laps due to enormous queues to sign on, and I had two out of four sessions red flagged after some goons wiped out. I was generally nervous by the amount of idiocy on display.
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