My '06 Toyota Aurion SX6 Sportivo

[Full-Throttle]

With a few more hours of daylight left, I decided it would be interesting to wrap one of my spare engine covers (and here I was thinking the center console was a challenge, haha). This is the finished result:

[Kanmuri79]

Haha man... That looks mint. is the just one piece? how did you go around the egdes etc? decals?

[Full-Throttle]

Haha man... That looks mint. is the just one piece? how did you go around the egdes etc? decals?

Yep, one piece :). Going around the lettering was a right bitch since you can't remove them, so I had to carefully cut around them with a Stanley knife and hope like hell I didn't slip . For the Toyota symbol I pried it off and stuck it back down with silicone afterwards. On the edges I had to cut slits in the vinyl and try to overlap as much as possible. I did have to use a few off cuts for any gaps left behind, but fortunately the carbon fibre pattern is very forgiving so it all blends nicely. Would love to do this with my white/black carbon fibre when it arrives next week, but think I'll buy another cover as there's no way I'm pulling all this off, haha.

[Kanmuri79]

*Applause for patience level 1000.

[GDude]

OCD overload lol, but in a good way. This car is so tastefully modded. Love it.

[Full-Throttle]

Haha thanks guys. Absolutely loving this car, and getting out for some nice drives in this sunny weather as we edge closer to Christmas ^_^

I may as well post these photos that I took today of my partner's 2004 Toyota Wish too :)

[Full-Throttle]

Happy holidays! :D

[Full-Throttle]

Got a couple of upgrades done on the Aurion today :)

First thing was the installation of some Euro plate style license plate surrounds and the second was applying some pre-cut tint film to the lower sections of the tail lights.

Here's some photos of the process and some before vs after shots:

[Full-Throttle]

More pics:

[Full-Throttle]

I wasn't 100% happy with the new plate surrounds, so I decided to wrap the rear one in some gold carbon fiber wrap that I had left over. Seems to take the blandness off and makes it a little more interesting.

[Full-Throttle]

A few small updates:

* 'V6 24VALVE' stickers fitted to the rear doors.

* Bought a 1:43 scale model of an Aurion (Asian Camry) from eBay.

* Received some Rays wheel nuts from Japan. Watch this space 

[TRD #527]

Hey Scott!, love the build so far mate, I have a question? I really do like the wood grain centre console that you had installed before the carbon fibre. I'm rather interested in doing the same for my TRD aurion. Is it a New Zealand only genuine part or have you wrapped it yourself? as i have not seen anything close to it on a Australian gsv40r. Cheers Matthew

[Full-Throttle]

On 1/11/2016 at 0:42 AM, TRD #527 said:

Hey Scott!, love the build so far mate, I have a question? I really do like the wood grain centre console that you had installed before the carbon fibre. I'm rather interested in doing the same for my TRD aurion. Is it a New Zealand only genuine part or have you wrapped it yourself? as i have not seen anything close to it on a Australian gsv40r. Cheers Matthew

Hey Matthew! Thanks!! I got the centre console from a Touring model. It's the only type I've seen with the 'flat' looking woodgrain. Most others like the Grande/Presara have the glossy woodgrain, which I'm not really a fan of. I decided to go with the factory silver compartments to break things up a bit, but the woodgrain itself is a factory option, so you might have to hunt around a few wreckers and see if you can find one . I'm now using my carbon fibre wrapped console and I'd offer to sell you the woodgrain one, but I ended up using the woodgrain rear flip-open pocket as my original silver one had a couple of broken mounting tabs.

[Full-Throttle]

So I decided it was time to upgrade my brakes, but I didn't need want to go for bigger calipers or larger rotors since my daily commute to work is only 10km and it's mostly straight, lol, so I settled on these Znoelli dimpled drilled and slotted rotors front and rear, combined with Bendix brake pads all round.

Znoelli is a New Zealand company who have been around for years making race brakes and custom wheel spacers/adapters, so when I managed to get a nice trade discount off the retail price I placed my order and 2-days later they were ready. Obviously after driving the car and applying the brakes the black coating on the face of the rotors comes off to expose the shiny silver underneath, but the rest of the rotor won't start looking crappy from surface rust etc after a while.

 

That's all for now, time to get back out there and burn some more brake pads 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15, 2016 by Full-Throttle

[Full-Throttle]

The Aurion got some new wheels today. They're Vertini Magic (concave) 19x9.5 front and rear, +32 offset and wrapped in 235/35/19 rubber. They get custom drilled for the stud pattern and shaved for the offset you want so I had to wait about a week for them to get machined, but it was worth waiting for . Being concave they bow in the middle, giving that very dished effect.

The rear guards needed to be rolled as there was slight scrubbing around corners, but apart from that the fitment was pretty straight forward. I just have to get some camber bolts for the front so I can give it some negative camber and tuck the wheels in a bit more, but apart from that the fitment is great and I'm loving the new look 

Edited January 16, 2016 by Full-Throttle

[trentmeyer23]

The style makes them look rather small.

[Full-Throttle]

7 hours ago, trentmeyer23 said:

The style makes them look rather small.

They look pretty damn big in real-life mate 

[Full-Throttle]

Threw some camber bolts in the front tonight. It's evened it out nicely now, so no more strange poke at the front.

[Full-Throttle]

New photos:

[Kanmuri79]

I don't think i've seen this much effort in such little time. Great work.

[GDude]

You take some pretty good pics!

[Full-Throttle]

On 1/25/2016 at 4:42 PM, Kanmuri79 said:

I don't think i've seen this much effort in such little time. Great work.

I don't think I've ever spent this much money in such little time! . Thanks mate.

21 hours ago, GDude said:

You take some pretty good pics!

Cheers man! 

[Full-Throttle]

Fitted some slightly larger tyres up front to fill up the guard gap a little better. Other benefit is that it brings the lip of the rim further away from potholes and is a bit more comfortable since you don't feel every dip and crack in the road. Fronts are 225/40/19 and the rears are 235/35/19. The old tyres are only a few weeks old, but the wheel-well gap was bugging the hell out of me, so for now I'm happy :)

[Full-Throttle]

Some more new photos:

[Full-Throttle]

I had been thinking of a way to fill the void in the engine bay where the factory intake used to be and ended up killing two birds with one stone by settling on this large oil catch tank. It's designed to catch blow-by oil from the PCV valve during full throttle and turns the vapor into a mist that settles in the bottom of the catch tank instead of getting sent back into the intake manifold.

Radium Engineering made a catch tank set-up for the Lotus Evora (which uses the same 2GR-FE engine) and owners have reported quite a lot of oil being caught, so they sound like they could be quite beneficial on this engine. I had one on the Corolla and it worked well, so I figured it'd be worth a shot in the Aurion. Ended up putting my factory silver engine cover back on at the same too, as I prefer the cleaner look compared to my carbon fiber wrapped cover (which I'll still keep to mix things up every now and then).

Will be interesting to see how much oil this thing collects :)