Toyota Mark II (JZX110)
Discussion
I moved on my old Bugeye Impreza wagon track car as i'd gone as far as was financially sensible with it (getting 'more' from it involved doing things radcially more expensive than the value of the car), leaving me with nothing to tinker with and only spending time on it replacing bits. Track days for me were 50% about cars,10% about driving and 40% cooked breakfasts.
I was after something where the engine was front and center to the experience that I could also use to learn my way around a 3rd party engine management system. I liked the idea of something that would be a bit more of a cruiser and the idea of 1JZ-GTE Chasers and Soarers grew on me, mainly thanks to my fetish for '90s velour trims
Then I happened upon the 110. Still a bit left-field and quite a bit cheaper (and less off-the-shelf stuff, at the time).
One came up that had just been bought at auction and I went for it - 80K mile ir-v that'd been manual converted already.
Originally, part of the idea of this car was that I was going to document and video every last bit of it and cut it together into a 20 or 30 minute video, just as hobby work.
As it turned out, it arrived a few months before things dictated I'd be doing everything solo rather than sociably - and I really wasn't feeling the love for setting up cameras and audio equipment at the same time as working out where the bolt I just dropped landed... so I've been chipping away at it and doing nothing but taking the occasional camera phone picture. I'll cover the major points here as best I remember.
The day after it arrived - road dirt 'n all
I'll give you all an overview from the outset: For an '02 plate car, this thing's pretty mint - the underside looks like a UK car that's 9 months old. I'm sure it spent most of it's life undergoing meticulous care and maintenance. However, i'm fairly sure it spent it's last 12 months in Japan in the custody of a wally. They'd been at the modifications - some of them removed prior to going to auction, some of them still just about attached. The car is still a lovely base - but my WORD has it been a labor of tracing everything that was done to it and replacing it!
I'd waited months for it to clear customs and get it's registration. Then, on it's first attempt at getting shipped down, it snapped it's prop shaft getting on the trailer (omen, that was) and I had to wait on a new one to be made up. It arrived on a wet winters night and I couldn't help myself but take it straight out on a gentle run around my local bypass. On the most fractional application of throttle coming off the first roundabout, it decided it wanted to be a 15mph drift monster.... righto, I thought, it's like that... and I tucked it up in the garage to wait till a dry weekend.
The weekend came and I fetched it out again. Run up the road from my house and it had a serious misfire under load. Sounded between my lawnmower, Onslow's Cortina and an i30N. It was fairly obviously ignition so I ordered up some plugs plus the bits of connector that tend to go brittle and snap.
Think someone gapped to .mm instead of thou?
Anyway - sparks all done, it ran fine. I decided to put a few miles on it to work and back to entice anything else out of the woodwork.
Straight away I got some odd engagement from the clutch and some ratta tatta noises. I figured maybe air in the line and a bad thrust bearing. 50 miles later - it threw it's clutch fork off. Recovered it to a local transmission place and they popped it back on and figured it'd maybe lost it's retaining clip. However, it still felt like garbage so I jacked it up and found the fork had far too much movement - even with the pin and clip sorted.
Decided to pull the box off and look. Since I was on my own on the garage floor, I got a few extra tools in to help lighten the load
Immediately - the problem became clear. The guide for the bearing carrier just wasn't there. It'd sheared off. And it hadn't sheared off in use (i'd have found it), it'd been fitted like that! The whole thing was being held in place by the clutch fork.
So I ordered up a bunch of new seals, gaskets, clips and a new front end for it, plus a Spec clutch.
All back together again and it was time to turn my attention to the wayward handling. It clunked, thumped, tramlined and had zero grip.
An obvious starting point was the badly rotted tyres on OEM wheel on it, most likely put on just to sell. I'm in no doubt it was sat on some 10 inch wide chrome wheels with 185 tyres before it went to auction.
Replaced these with some 18s running an extra 10mm offset with 265 rear and 235 up front.
Next up - the sus iteself. It was sitting on some coilovers that I couldn't identify from any marking / product code and google. Since been informed they're probably 'JIC Magic'. They managed to somehow blend a bumpy ride with a massive amount of wallow. When I took them off, the fronts were adjusted to radically different settings just to sit level...
The geometry was also massively out. The lowering had moved way beyond the range of adjustment giving it a ton of rear camber and so much toe-in the alignment machine wouldn't dignify it with a number (seriously, I think it was 6 degrees. Yes, 6... not 0.6).
I pulled all of the arms out, rebushed and painted what could be reused OEM and swapped out the rear adjustable arms for hardrace kit - then used a set of Tein Coilovers.
I did 36 bushes / bearings / ball joints all by hand. NEVER AGAIN. EVER. Looking back, I should've dropped the whole sub-frame off and taken it to someone with a press.
All back together and it's far less common for the car to try and kill me now
Whilst the body is all pretty straight / clean - the wally had added a bodykit that had seen better days. Apparently the best way to fix it was to drive wood screws through the sill.
So I sent it off to the body shop to have the kit all removed, fixed up, sort out the screw holes and get it painted.
And took it for a little trip out to Germany
That's the bulk of it. There will be a ton of extra details and little bits I might add here. I'm just deciding what to do next, as well as crossing off niggles here and there and generally learning about the car.
I was after something where the engine was front and center to the experience that I could also use to learn my way around a 3rd party engine management system. I liked the idea of something that would be a bit more of a cruiser and the idea of 1JZ-GTE Chasers and Soarers grew on me, mainly thanks to my fetish for '90s velour trims
Then I happened upon the 110. Still a bit left-field and quite a bit cheaper (and less off-the-shelf stuff, at the time).
One came up that had just been bought at auction and I went for it - 80K mile ir-v that'd been manual converted already.
Originally, part of the idea of this car was that I was going to document and video every last bit of it and cut it together into a 20 or 30 minute video, just as hobby work.
As it turned out, it arrived a few months before things dictated I'd be doing everything solo rather than sociably - and I really wasn't feeling the love for setting up cameras and audio equipment at the same time as working out where the bolt I just dropped landed... so I've been chipping away at it and doing nothing but taking the occasional camera phone picture. I'll cover the major points here as best I remember.
The day after it arrived - road dirt 'n all
I'll give you all an overview from the outset: For an '02 plate car, this thing's pretty mint - the underside looks like a UK car that's 9 months old. I'm sure it spent most of it's life undergoing meticulous care and maintenance. However, i'm fairly sure it spent it's last 12 months in Japan in the custody of a wally. They'd been at the modifications - some of them removed prior to going to auction, some of them still just about attached. The car is still a lovely base - but my WORD has it been a labor of tracing everything that was done to it and replacing it!
I'd waited months for it to clear customs and get it's registration. Then, on it's first attempt at getting shipped down, it snapped it's prop shaft getting on the trailer (omen, that was) and I had to wait on a new one to be made up. It arrived on a wet winters night and I couldn't help myself but take it straight out on a gentle run around my local bypass. On the most fractional application of throttle coming off the first roundabout, it decided it wanted to be a 15mph drift monster.... righto, I thought, it's like that... and I tucked it up in the garage to wait till a dry weekend.
The weekend came and I fetched it out again. Run up the road from my house and it had a serious misfire under load. Sounded between my lawnmower, Onslow's Cortina and an i30N. It was fairly obviously ignition so I ordered up some plugs plus the bits of connector that tend to go brittle and snap.
Think someone gapped to .mm instead of thou?
Anyway - sparks all done, it ran fine. I decided to put a few miles on it to work and back to entice anything else out of the woodwork.
Straight away I got some odd engagement from the clutch and some ratta tatta noises. I figured maybe air in the line and a bad thrust bearing. 50 miles later - it threw it's clutch fork off. Recovered it to a local transmission place and they popped it back on and figured it'd maybe lost it's retaining clip. However, it still felt like garbage so I jacked it up and found the fork had far too much movement - even with the pin and clip sorted.
Decided to pull the box off and look. Since I was on my own on the garage floor, I got a few extra tools in to help lighten the load
Immediately - the problem became clear. The guide for the bearing carrier just wasn't there. It'd sheared off. And it hadn't sheared off in use (i'd have found it), it'd been fitted like that! The whole thing was being held in place by the clutch fork.
So I ordered up a bunch of new seals, gaskets, clips and a new front end for it, plus a Spec clutch.
All back together again and it was time to turn my attention to the wayward handling. It clunked, thumped, tramlined and had zero grip.
An obvious starting point was the badly rotted tyres on OEM wheel on it, most likely put on just to sell. I'm in no doubt it was sat on some 10 inch wide chrome wheels with 185 tyres before it went to auction.
Replaced these with some 18s running an extra 10mm offset with 265 rear and 235 up front.
Next up - the sus iteself. It was sitting on some coilovers that I couldn't identify from any marking / product code and google. Since been informed they're probably 'JIC Magic'. They managed to somehow blend a bumpy ride with a massive amount of wallow. When I took them off, the fronts were adjusted to radically different settings just to sit level...
The geometry was also massively out. The lowering had moved way beyond the range of adjustment giving it a ton of rear camber and so much toe-in the alignment machine wouldn't dignify it with a number (seriously, I think it was 6 degrees. Yes, 6... not 0.6).
I pulled all of the arms out, rebushed and painted what could be reused OEM and swapped out the rear adjustable arms for hardrace kit - then used a set of Tein Coilovers.
I did 36 bushes / bearings / ball joints all by hand. NEVER AGAIN. EVER. Looking back, I should've dropped the whole sub-frame off and taken it to someone with a press.
All back together and it's far less common for the car to try and kill me now
Whilst the body is all pretty straight / clean - the wally had added a bodykit that had seen better days. Apparently the best way to fix it was to drive wood screws through the sill.
So I sent it off to the body shop to have the kit all removed, fixed up, sort out the screw holes and get it painted.
And took it for a little trip out to Germany
That's the bulk of it. There will be a ton of extra details and little bits I might add here. I'm just deciding what to do next, as well as crossing off niggles here and there and generally learning about the car.
Er yeah, some of the Japanese lads can have some... interesting ideas about modifications. In many cases, throwing the camber way out of any sensible window seems to be seen as a 'cool' benefit to lowering the car (oni-cam), rather than a problem that needs to be compensated for. Also a lot of very poor bouncy-castle coilovers around at the bottom end of the used market.
So really good to see you saving this car, it already looks 100 times better in your last pic than the first. Hope there aren't too many more 'surprises' in store for you.
I think these are really nice cars, really well engineered by Toyota after something like ten consecutive generations, and a good base to develop into something more sporting.
samoht said:
I think these are really nice cars, really well engineered by Toyota after something like ten consecutive generations, and a good base to develop into something more sporting.
It's an interesting one - a lot of the drive train and tech feels firmly rooted in the '90s (Traction control, ECU, gearbox and, of course, the 1J). Chassis wise, it's pretty much a first gen Lexus IS so pretty well catered for.
EdmondDantes said:
Very nice, love these. Did you manage any laps round the ring?
I stayed off it this time! I'd only really just gotten it to the point I was happy to road trip it, including 'nipping up' a couple of little coolant drips. It's been fine but, equally I didn't want to push it and find out a 20 year old radiator hose wasn't up to it and drop coolant on the ring.I'd like to book a short bit of track time locally just to get a feel for the car, rather than drive it flat out. I'd have to add some kind of recovery point on the front first. I'd also prefer a relaxed evening session but it's only just inside the daytime noise limits
Yes... it's too loud. The shoe test isn't for arch gap, ya know.
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