This is the story of Declan's Toyota Soarer, built to compete in the D1 GB.
Twelve weeks of hard work, late nights & mashed fingers. This is what it takes to build a drift car on your own, in a short space of time & a small budget for top level competition.
Many of you will know Declan, aka Cptsideways on the forums, he used to drive the Turbo’d MX-5, well not any more.
This is his story
I decided at the end of 2005 that my MX-5 had to go, it'd reached its limits of tuning & handling. I'd also managed to break it at four out of six championship rounds last year, I’d simply out driven the car & was asking more than it could provide. I needed a bigger car for the higher speed drifting, one with all the right ingredients but me being me, wanted something different, a car nobody else had. Now this is all very well but my budget was very small indeed, my timescale to complete the car by April was even smaller as I was taking a slight 4 week detour over the new year to West Africa, as a guide on the Plymouth-Dakar Rally for charity, 4 weeks of precious build time gone.
Arriving back late January eager to start get a car sorted & within a week accidentally finding one on Ebay. It turns out the seller is a Driftworks trader, Yokohoma Racing who usually specialises in drift spec cars. Only it's was'nt an out & out drift car but a bone stock original, straight from the 80's loaded to hilt with toys & weight, 6 cylinder, twin turbo, two door coupe, and a rare 5 speed manual too, what is you ask? It’s a 1988 Toyota Soarer GZ20 2.0L Twin Turbo & it's about as JDM tyte as you can get, all 18ft & 1700kg’s of it!
Luckily there is an active community for these cars on the net, albeit Australian based, so I’ve been gathering up info on the car & tweaks from the guys at the Toymods forums, there are several Aussie drifters with GZ20’s, though they’ve fitted the 1JZ 2.5 engines the drift engine of choice, an upgrade route I have planned for the car giving the option of a reliable 400bhp.
Mechanically & chassis wise this car is a MKIII Supra underneath, the engine is JDM only but still a current engine as it fitted to the Lexus in a n/a guise. First job was to fit a clutch as it was knackered, so in went an uprated Hilux pressure pressure plate & standard friction plate. Then came the diff, I fitted a MKIII Supra Turbo LSD diff, though the ratios are so tall 3rd is good for 100mph! so at some stage when funds allow I’ll upgrade the super low ratio standard one to a 2 way LSD.
So in the freeze of late January a couple of weeks after arriving back from sunny Africa, there’s me ripping the period beige velour trim from this beast in an effort to remove some weight & make room for all the safety kit that is destined to go back in. Luckily freezing weather has its benefits, when you wallop the layers of sound proofing tar with a mallet it all falls off in one big go, try doing that in the summer!. So within two days the car was stripped to the bones, all the bumper trims gone, heaps of wiring, the TEMS suspension control system, in fact the only bit of trim left is the headlining as I hate condensation drips & the dashboard stays as the D1 rules state we have to have one in.
Once stripped it was then time to fit stuff back in, the main roll hoop was fabricated to my design to be a nice snug fit, a quick check of the MX-5 cage revealed almost identical front cage dimensions, so that got used instead of more custome fabrication & it fits like a glove. The door innards have been cut away to save weight so I’ve fitted crossed doorbars & rear braces to finish it all off. The whole cage is welded in place with footplates & bracing points. Cobra Monaco FIA seats are fitted drivers side is fixed but the passenger one is on the standard rails so it can be removed for practice days.
Now at this point with the suspension looking more like an offroader than a drift car, due to all the weight coming out, I decided to take her to the weigh bridge, just a drivers seat & a quarter a tank of fuel 1320kgs!! Getting this car to the sub 1200kg level will be a struggle, still some panel trimming to be done maybe even composite hood & boot etc if & when funds permit. This makes the 400bhp engine more a necessity than a at this sort of weight.
The power or lack of it, the 1G engine stock makes 210bhp, most of that in the upper reaches of the nearly 8k rpm rev range. Its not torquey at all & really not suited to a 1400kg drift car. I’ve an HKS FCON for the 1G engine & she’s off to Surrey Rolling Road for some tweakage this week, the plan is to run 1 Bar of boost on the stock turbo’s for the first round, which should be good for 240-260 bhp still not enough but I’ll manage one way or another, I'm therefore praying for rain at the D1 opening round.
The hunt was on for a 1JZ engine & a super rare 5 speed gearbox that'll take the power. Ebay strikes again & I now have a rolled 92 Soarer as a donor car to be stripped, engine & gearbopx are going in after the D1 Licensing round in April, I don't have time to work on the car with all the safety related stuff & practice time taking priority. The 1JZ is planned to have some power mods with reliability being the key. ProlexUk have offered some assistance with the engine & Universal Turbo’s will be offering a big single turbo, custom manifold, external wastegate & screamer pipe to bolt on so she should make all the right noises.
A hydraulic handbrake has been fitted, but its lamer than the standard one, so some Supra front callipers will be going on the back to sort that, a quick bit of testing at Silverstone reveals this car loves hanging on the handbrake at speed but is also very keen to flat spot the tyres at an equally alarming rate!. I’ve fitted a coilover conversion kit to the car on the now manually adjustable original shocks which have a demon super stiff setting, I guessed the spring rates & it seems pretty good still have to play with ride heights to get the balance right, she’s front heavy as standard. I've set the geometry to a pretty standard drift spec of 3 degs front camber, 1.3 degs rear camber. I modified the suspension pick up points to add some castor so I now have 8-10 degs up front. The rack & lockstops have been modified with spacers to give me 44 degs of lock, not bad for something that’s 18ft long, no one will be able to pass this beast easily when she’s on the lock stops haha.
So yesterday was her first proper test at Silverstone, wow does this car get onto the lock stops easily, maybe some more mods are in order to increase rear end traction. The tall 2nd gear is just great for pulling out of those shorter corners & up the straights, the cars fairly settled but the weight shows & its going to take some getting used to after mastering the MX5. Nothing I can’t get used to but practice time is the order of the day for the next few weeks so expect to see it in testing before D1.
I help pay for my drifting by running demo events throughout the year, around my local area such as the Yeovilton Airday with 40,000 spectators, Haynes Museums Open Days & at the Dorset police open day where I get to meet the local constabulary (on my terms!!) & get to frighten the life out of their driving instructors.
To finish off I’ve found some period RS Watanbe’s that will be having a refurb, these suit the car really well & hopefully I’ll find some more for spares, apologies about the chrome wheels but they were cheap & save me money for important mods. Big thanks to my sponsors for all your help & assistance, ProlexUk, Universal Turbo’s, Blandford Tools, Haynes Museums Workshop & Peacemarsh Garage. The graphics I did myself, sort of mirroring Tokitas car in D1 but I got carried away, at least its my car, its original & I can say I did all of it. All it needs now are my sponsors logos & some DriftWorks stickers & she'll be nearly ready for D1 & the seasons drifting, roll on summer.
Declan has a website up & running with all the info on the cars build, the story & events he’ll be attending at www.drift-demo.com
