Lauren
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Posts posted by Lauren
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3 hours ago, gavin_t said:I was reading on pistonheads that Litchfield have their tuning options unveiled.
Might divide opinion but I think it looks mega on the new ride height running on the coilovers
Please don't say that, trying to leave mine stock. 🤣
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On 1/10/2021 at 7:37 AM, Church said:Hmm, my thoughts on mudguards ..
Stock are cheap and look good on car, but i'm slightly worried, that such plastic mudguards can be easily brake. Should be easy to buy at any toyota/subaru dealership, or if you find part numbers, order online wherever cheapest.
I ordered mudguards with my car 8 years ago. I can tell you the stock mudguards are super tough and have lasted very well despite being caught on kerbs etcetera.
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20 hours ago, BRZ-123 said:I am also happy to support part time as a mod. Lauren , do not leave our forum and go to the GR Yaris one. 🙂
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Thank you. I'm already a mod on the GR Yaris forum. 🤣
BRZ-123 reacted to this -
Thank you all, have added you as mods, hopefully it will all work okay. Any questions please let me know.
Test Drives Unlimited reacted to this -
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6 minutes ago, Test Drives Unlimited said:We have 8 Moderators and then there are 7 Committee Members who deal with the influx of New Members attempting to join the club, but if they have suspect IP's then they get no where near the Forum
Thats very good for you, but we've had no such interest when we have asked previously. Problem is longer term I don't want to be tied to it forever.
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For fucks sake. That's 30 reports I've had to go through today. You're right, Nigel, I need some volunteers to help me with this. So many duplicates with a lot of people reporting the same five users or so.
Any volunteers?
It's mainly a thankless task I'm afraid.
Stutopia and Test Drives Unlimited reacted to this -
4 hours ago, Test Drives Unlimited said:This is what your Moderators should be doing Lauren, why aren't they on top of this ?
I too received a message from someone called Slendor !!I am the only one who moderates on here unfortunately. I do not have any moderators!
Test Drives Unlimited reacted to this -
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@gavin_t that's a good point, though it is a similar thing with the GR Yaris. The limits are so high I will need to wait till the government allows me to do a track day in the GR Yaris before I can fully assess it's handling. I guess that's progress and to a point I do miss the much lower speed playability that you get with the GT86, as after all, any greasy roundabout can provide all the fun you need at 20mph. I tried that in the Yaris today and whilst there was a little slip, it just pulled true and shot off like a missile! 😂Mind you, snow provides a whole newfound entertainment, just need more of it!
Still, I wanted something different from the GT and this is most certainly it.
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I'm glad you worked it out.
Can you please put a price up as per forum rules. 👍
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I put it in the for sale section because it's an item that is for sale, you just haven't worked out what it is yet, so it's not appropriate for general chat. I'm sure Ian will know, but he's given you a price of what it was new. 5 seconds on Google says it looks a lot like the Torqen one, but spending a bit longer looking into it, I would say you have a good chance of working it out.
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It would help your sale if you put up what make the steering wheel is and also a price in the title which you can do by editing. Forum rules are that you put a price up. If it was £400+ new and looks to be in excellent condition then really it's a matter for you take punt on what you think it's worth.
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I'd concur with what @Shad says. If you are trying to push on through high speed corners, you can expect understeer. This is always going to happen if you try and accelerate through long corners. Trimming the throttle or holding a balanced throttle is what you need to do. Either will quell understeer. I think this is more a technique issue and I would say it's better to change your technique, because I don't think changing ARBs will help here.
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20 minutes ago, gavin_t said:I was thinking either stiffer roll bar on the rear or stiffer rear springs would be the answer.
I had heard some positive things about after market roll bars from Will and Jeff at the last club trackday the other week which was why I was researching that avenue plus some been offered for sale in the for sale section.
@Lauren have you heard bad press about the Lichfield items?
Thanks
GavinI've been in a car that had the 'Litchfield Handling Kit'. It was awful and confirmed that they do not know what they are doing. It really is terrible. I had 5/6kg springs on TEIN (streetflex - precursor to Flex A). Try a 6kg spring on the front and add negative camber. Or go 5/6kg on the springs. Personally and I can only go on my experience, increasing the ARB size is not the way forward. I like my car to dip under braking and I like to move the weight around. Anything that reduces that is not helping me. You need a little bit of roll to achieve that. The answer for you is to reduce your front spring rate in proportion to the rear. I thought Flex A shipped with 6/6kg post 2014 after we did the development work on it? 7/7kg was only what the earlier kit shipped with and that precedes Flex A. We thought it was too much.
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The Litchfield handling kit will make you cry. I would not advise upping the anti-roll bar diameter. Better to add negative camber. A decent enough set of coil overs is a better option. You will reduce traction with the bigger ARB's, and weight transfer. This is the opposite of what you want to achieve.
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2 hours ago, BRZ-123 said:Very interesting and two clean white cars for the pictures. Bliss.
If you add a Turbo'd or Supercharged GT86 to the mix to compare, it will be even more fun. FWD , VS RWD vs AWD, all forced induction.
If you have a friend with a Yaris GRMN again a great shootout against yours, turbo vs SC FWD vs AWD
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Well, if you can round those cars up, we'll give it a go!
I think you'd need better conditions to give a GT86 a chance though, even if it is supercharged, but yes, would be very interesting to see. I guess the FK8 and GR Yaris are the closest in performance, at least on paper, though I admit, I love the diversity of these two cars. They have similar performance but get the job done in very different ways. The Civic is a precision tool, whereas the Yaris just monsters whatever you throw at it, it is just so devastatingly competent. I've just taken my car up the Cat and Fiddle in wet, cold and greasy conditions. The speed which you can carry is immense and the traction is just astonishing. I honestly doubt that anything else could have kept up in those conditions. It's every inch the rally car.
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Civic Type-R (FK8) and GR Yaris.
Yesterday I met up with my old friend, Ross for a comparison of our cars. We’ve known each other for a fair few years now through both having GT86’s. He has had his Championship White, FK8 Civic Type-R for 18 months. I’ve had my GR Yaris for two weeks and a thousand miles. In my mind, I still feel like I’m learning my car as it is such a departure from driving a GT86 which I have done for eight years. Still, you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks eh, so I am on a big learning curve with this one. This was my main reason for holding off reviewing it, as I don’t feel I’ve got my head round it yet. However, Ross typically forced my hand, and I couldn’t resist the chance to have some serious car talk and try out his Civic Type-R.
The Civic, I am obviously well aware of and I’ve been in Ross’s car before. I have to admit, it is a car that intrigued me as I’ve owned a DC2 back in the noughties. In fact if the GR Yaris hadn’t been announced I was seriously considering one. Starting with the FK8, I’ve always struggled a bit with it’s looks, though I’m all for function over form, but I guess looking at the standard Civic, it was always going to be a difficult task to make it look pretty. Ross is running 19” forged wheels on his FK8 with PS4S tyres, so matching those of the Yaris.
The first and immediate thought once you’ve got past the exterior and sit in the car, is how good the seats are. Again, they are not pretty looking seats, but they work and feel excellent. The driving position too, is excellent and the controls feel well to hand. I love a titanium gear knob and it’s positioning is spot on. Likewise the steering wheel, feels great and is a nice size. The main touch points are great, though the cheapness of the steering wheel buttons is just awful. Then there is the dash which is okay, though perhaps a little low res for what we expect today, but it works perfectly well. I wasn’t sure about the ‘boost’ gauge which looks a bit like a pint being filled with Red Bull, but these are details that matter far less. The Civic has three driving modes, comfort, sport and R+ mode for which the dash gets progressively redder and the dampers get firmer. Throttle response and steering weight also changes. Unless you are in cruise control and therefore not on the throttle I wouldn’t use comfort mode unless you wish to punish yourself, it’s horrible with over light steering and a lack of any throttle response.
On the road in the Civic, the immediate thing that hits you is the feel of this car. It just feels like a racing car on the road. It’s so sharp and that sharpness comes from an absolutely nailed down front end. Steering feel is excellent and it feels a special place to be, even sitting in traffic. Ross told me had had changed the map to make it feel more standard though slightly increased at around 335bhp. My first thought was how is it going to manage this through the front wheels and true to form, as I exited a junction and pushed my foot to the floor, the car scrabbled for grip, sending me towards the limiter. I’d better grab second then. The gearbox has a lovely mechanical feel to it and is of the type that rewards precision. Second gear in and traction is not a problem. In the wet I can see how this would be an issue, but it is the limitation of pushing so much power through the front wheels. That said, it copes with it very well and the engine is very linear in its response. Considering this, it needs to be as compared to the more punchy delivery of the Yaris it’d be breaking traction a lot more otherwise.
Ross demonstrated the manner in which his car piles on the speed and it is impressive that it just doesn’t let up right up to the speed limit. The over riding feeling in the Honda is all about the front end. as I push the car into a fast right hander where the camber falls away and edge my foot to the floor, I can feel the diff pulling me round. Any worries about understeer, are unfounded because if I want to tighten my line, the diff just does this with aplomb. When Ross demonstrated it to me, I thought he was having a few stabs at turn in and mocked him for it, but wow, that aggressive front differential is everything that makes the Civic what it is. This car does inspire confidence and it feels properly special as a Type-R should. Whilst driving it, it conjured up visions of thinking I’d kicked Matt Neal out of his seat for the next BTCC race.
Now onto my car. My interest in the GR Yaris was first piqued by two words. ‘Homologation Special’, undoubtedly the holy grail for a petrolhead worth their salt. After seeing the specification I was even more intrigued and whilst I wasn’t sure I believed the shock with which it was a bit lukewarmly received in the prototype reviews Estoril a year ago now, I took a punt and put in a pre-order at the earliest opportunity. For the next 9 months I did feel some anxiety, as what if it’s no good people would ask me, what if the reviews come out and it’s awful, what would I do? My answer was that I’d probably cancel and buy an FK8 Type-R, but obviously I so wanted the GR Yaris to be good, it has to be, I thought. When the reviews came out on the 10th November, I breathed a sigh of relief and then a whole load of anticipation as the press adored it. Part of my reasoning for the Yaris is that I wanted to try 4WD too and the rear bias in Sport Mode excited me as I’m such a rear-wheel-drive stalwart. To me it was the ability to have handling characteristics of three cars in one, depending on how my mood took me.
In many ways all the GR Yaris and Civic Type-R share are similar performance figures and a similar price. the Civic is the racing car, that feels like it should be on the BTCC grid, the Yaris, feels like it’s emerged from a special stage. This is no bad thing as it provides the cars with different characteristics.
Getting in the Yaris, the driving position is high, I explained to Ross, it’s something you have to accept and it’s almost like Gazoo Racing want you to sit over the wheel and adopt an Elfyn Evans style posture. It feels wrong at first, but you adapt quickly. Vision due to the massive infotainment screen and the rear mirror position has been obsessively debated to the point of nauseam on the internet. The reality is, you don’t notice once on the move. It’s a bit like you don’t worry about how the Civic looks, once you’re behind the wheel. The touch points in the Yaris are excellent. The steering wheel is lovely and has a thinner rim and is better for it. The gearstick has been raised 5cm which places it closer to the wheel. This is good and looking at the GR Yaris you have to love it’s specification for homologation reasons. Carbon polymer rood, aluminium bonnet, boot and doors and those beautiful bulging rear arches that fill the mirror. There is a ton of other detail to pour over and it feels every bit the rally refugee. You notice this even down to the unpadded Alcantara door panels, which save weight of course.
The dash in the Yaris is analogue which may disappoint some, but on the other hand, its clarity is obvious with two big dials for tachometer and speedometer with various displays that can be selected in the 4” TFT display between the clocks. The boost gauge with oil pressure and temperature are an obvious favourite.
Pulling away in the Yaris, traction is absolute as one would expect. In normal mode it runs a 60:40 torque split and gives more of a front wheel drive feel. It’s a very safe way to drive the car as going into fast into a corner will tend towards understeer and you lift and it comes back. However, normal mode does not allow a more relaxed stability control and really on the road, unless you disable it completely. I tend to favour sport mode with its rear wheel drive bias with a 30:70 torque split, it lightens the steering and corrupts it less. Feel is good and it does weight up with speed. Toyota run this torque split on tarmac in their WRC cars and I like it how it gives more of a feel of the car being pushed from the rear. I favour track mode with a 50:50 split for wet, muddy B roads where you can use the front diff to pull you out of corners. Ross directed me down what could have been an actual rally stage! Wet, muddy and single track with plenty of crests. I launched my car at it and even with a poor surface to the road, it just flew down there giving me absolute confidence and pulling me out of every turn. I doubt anything really could have kept up with the Yaris on this sort of terrain and it would have taken the Civic way out of its comfort zone. Steering feel in the Yaris is good, though it does not exhibit the singularity of purpose of the Civic, but then the Civic’s front end typifies and defines that car.
We did some testing through some wide sweeping corners and the Yaris is surprising with how it is simply not fazed. Body roll is well controlled and the development that comes from having a World Rally Team and the likes of Tommi Makkinen setting up the chassis from the ground up, hugely pays off. This car is immensely capable. The punch of that tiny 1.6 litre three cylinder turbo engine is more punchy than the Civic, so it feels faster, but it has the traction to exploit this. My problem is that I know I will have to take my car on track to learn what it can really do as I suppose the public road in the middle of December is perhaps not the place.
In Summary:
We are comparing two very different cars here, their similarities really only centre on price and on paper performance, but they give two very different options. Firstly the Civic, a race car for the road, great steering, love how it feels special on any occasion behind the wheel just like my DC2 did. A true Type-R and all the better for it. It has great bite and the manner in which that limited slip differential work is truly beguiling. It’s a practical car too and I can see how it would be epic on track. The Yaris is a rally car. In the same way the Civic feels like a refugee that took a wrong turn on the way to the BTCC, the Yaris, feels like it should throwing itself down a gravel stage in Myhren or perhaps Clocaenog. This makes it so special. Perhaps driving the car on my daily commute it does not evoke the special feeling that was so apparent in the Civic, but oh my when you wake it up, that comes in spades. Another consideration when comparing these two cars is that the GR Yaris has in effect nothing to compare itself to as it is the only homologation special car you can buy. Would I want to have a Civic Type-R instead? My answer is no, though I love it may need to borrow Ross’s car on occasion. For me, I’ve done the Type-R thing when I had my DC2 and have learnt that front wheel drive does not have to equal boring and it is anything but. However, I wanted to try something different. The GR Yaris is my first turbo and four wheel drive car. It clearly has many layers to peel and I can already feel that is of the type that gives more the deeper you delve. This is always the sign of a good car. Ultimately between the two cars it simply comes down to what your preference is, do you want a road racer or a rally car? What is in no doubt is that they are absolutely both brilliant cars. Enjoy them whilst you still can I say.
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I think I must be going mad, but it was reassuring to know I was not the only one when my 6am alarm went off this morning. Time for another Sunday drive. This time I had Richard from RRG Macc' out with me in their black GR Yaris demonstrator, Mark in my old GT86 along with his friend from work in a Golf GTI. As we headed out on the M56 from Manchester Airport, in the pouring rain and held a steady speed in all the standing water that was there, I pondered to myself, that this is absolute madness. As it transpired the GR Yaris took it in its stride, though Mark in the GT86 was having a few wake up calls trying to drive in a straight line. As we neared our rendezvous with Richard, I was seriously reconsidering why I had had such a bright idea to go out in these conditions. It was certainly hardcore. I reassured the convoy that things would improve as we headed down the A49 as it we emerged into daylight. I'd also pointed out that there would be no heroics and reminded all to take it easy.
As it turns out things did get better as we neared Whitchurch McDonald's for our breakfast stop, though it was all somewhat relative. Breakfast helped though and it when off in the direction of Market Drayton for the Eccleshall Loop. I had my car in track mode, stability on considering the conditions. My car felt so surefooted which was reassuring and I found I could launch it out of the corners, getting on the power earlier than I felt would have been reasonable. Mark at the back in my old GT86, was having a whole different kind of fun! To be fair, there was no way this was ever going to be more than a brisk drive in places and I still have to consider that I haven't yet driven my car in the dry. This car does give you confidence though. Traction is absolute and though I had the front wheels perhaps edging into clawing their way into the tarmac, it was nearly always surprising in the manner in which the car could be fired through the apex and just tear down the next straight. I would normally of course be looking for some really fast long radius bends, where I could properly load up the chassis, but in today's conditions this was neither the time or the place and caution as they say wins.
After losing Mark and his friend when they went the wrong way when we joined the M6 it was just the two GR Yaris for the drive back to Wilmslow. We took the back roads of course though inevitably there was the odd horse box and duffer along the way. Now we were two cars rather than four overtaking was a lot easier. There were a couple of times, when I went to overtake one car, only to think I may as well take the next as well. Getting to 6K rpm now I've got 500 miles on the clock, you can really make the car fly. The jet like sound from the exhaust as the revs climb to six thousand, does a bit addictive I admit.
Overall in these difficult times where going out for a drive is about all you can, do much fun was had. So much so that my friend from Toyota is now buying his own GR Yaris and it only took a day with the demonstrator for him to do that! This car does impress. I am now contemplating what it might be like come warm and dry roads. My alarm for the summer on a Sunday is going to be very early indeed!
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4 hours ago, Lloyd said:@Lauren It is my car that Gary at RRG Macclesfield has been providing tech support and assistance for the last three weeks... The one in Northern Ireland.
Understandably I'm not going to say too much on here but the car has came back with a few issues but I'm confident that they will be resolved soon.
I just want to be in possession of the full information so could you ask Gary to confirm that it was a misalignment of the crankshaft position disc was responsible for the misfire? Any other information would be greatly appreciated.
Also, is the bonnet removed? Or does he know if it was removed when the recall work was performed?
Thanks Lauren
Hi Lloyd. As I"m sure you can understand, it is not for me to ask Gary about your issue. I'm pretty sure the bonnet would be removed. Good luck with it, but it would not be appropriate for met to get involved.
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10 minutes ago, GT86-Ian said:I had a call from the dealer I purchsed my GT86 from to say they had a demo car. But as delivery is now june 2021 told him I'd wait to see what the next 86 is like.
He informed me that it was getting the 2,0 engine from the Supra
Oh that is interesting. I can't see that being true though.
GR Yaris who's going for it?
in Non GT86/BRZ General Chat
Posted · Report reply
I won't be realistically looking at changing anything too quickly, I've still only had my car for six weeks. I'm still in the novelty phase of being able to go over speed humps without wincing and that does have some appeal as I spend a lot of time driving around residential streets for work.
I also need to try my car out on track, when COVID allows, as I need to understand how it handles stock.
In other news, I've teamed up with Richard and a tuning box company, and will be doing some testing, which is fine tuning of the box yet. It's a mild increase to 300bhp/300lbft which will be interesting to try. Not that the car doesn't feel fast enough stock, but a lot of people will want that slight boost in power.