Full-Throttle

9 hours ago, Hiro said:

Could just be a quirk of a make-before-break switch, you can do a similar thing with some headlights where it you balance the stalk between low and high you can get both to turn on at the same time (even if your lows normally turn off when the highs come on)

That's what I thought initially, but it does it even when the engine is dead cold, so there's no reason for the fans to come on when the key is in the 'ON' position or otherwise. Seems like Toyota did it on purpose.

Yes, it's one single part.

Yes, the Aurion is the same. Possibly a way to test the fans on the production line after the engine has been fitted. Pretty sure it's only an Australian assembled thing though as I've never seen it on any Japanese models.

Figured that I should post a few other small things that have been done over the last couple of months that made a noticeable difference (or at least to me anyway, haha). The photos were taken before some of the latest updates (carbon lip etc) but include chrome trim around the silver dash inserts and front fog light surrounds, a facelift Aurion license plate bracket that I modified to fit the pre-facelift front bumper so the plate sits nicer with the large frame, the reinstall of my original knob type A/C controls but wrapped in carbon vinyl to match my centre console and an updated photo of my engine bay as it stands right now.

Something a bit different from me - Night shots!! We decided to take the kids into town last night since they've never been before, so while we were there I took the opportunity to take some night shots of the Aurion with the Auckland Sky Tower in the background.

5 minutes ago, trentmeyer23 said:

You could possibly throw a resistor in and lower the input voltage to dim the LED.

I had considered that, but I suck when it comes to that sort of stuff, so I bought some red vinyl online tonight instead. That way it'll still be red but the vinyl should cut out a lot of the glare/brightness.

I installed these LED bumper reflectors today. I haven't see this particular style on any Aurion before so when I saw them I knew I had to have a set :). They're designed to be 100% plug-and-play with no splicing required and mount the exact same way as the stock reflectors.

The worst part about the whole job is that you have to remove the rear bumper in order to get to the screw on the back holding the reflector in, but it didn't turn out to be as difficult as I had imagined.

After fitting them I found that they were really quite bright, in fact too bright, so I put a layer of tint film over each light to dull down the light output a bit. Not 100% sold on the tinted look however, so time will tell if I pull the tint off or not. Either way, the lights are here to stay.

The lights come on when the park lights are on and get brighter when you brake. They also have the ability to flash when you indicate, but this looked tacky in my opinion so I left that particular plug disconnected.

All in all it's a nice simplistic mod that looks like it was there from the factory. Below are a series of photos in their original form and then tinted.

Also, these carbon fiber vent stickers arrived in the mail today so I figured I'd chuck them on and see how they look. I'm not normally a fan of dull/matte carbon fiber designs but these were nice and cheap. I traced around them before sticking them on so I can try and make my own ones out of glossy carbon in future:

Cheers mate :)

Here's some new ones I took today:

Never did manage to get it fully functional. Even with the proper connector/plug it didn't work at all, so I came to the conclusion that that was the most I was ever going to get out of the swap without actually changing over the entire harness/loom and A/C components.

Quick Saturday mod - I pulled off my old foam EZ Lip and installed this glossy carbon lip in it's place. Was difficult to photograph due to the glossiness but you get the idea :)

I've got the Eonon GA5146F in mine and love it. Previously had the Erisin ES7668AU but it was way too buggy and annoying. Had no issues with the Eonon however. I did a bit of a review in my build thread:

The TRD Aurion grille is made specifically for that model, so won't fit with anything else other than the TRD front bumper.

I installed an oil catch tank in my Aurion recently. This might be helpful:

12 hours ago, Sportivo_05 said:

Sweet, are they lows or super lows?? And would you happen to have any pics of it lowered with stock wgeels??

They're super lows. My Aurion came with the optional 18" TRD wheels, so all of the photos on previous pages of this thread are how it sat with the factory wheels.

I just did this today on mine. As far as I can tell, the purpose of the hook is to stop the top inner corner of the glass from flexing too much as there's no real support there for it. You don't actually need the hook however, as it's sturdy enough without it, but it basically acts as a 'leg' between the glass and the mirror housing. The worst part about reinstalling the glass is connecting the two wires for the motors.....Get ready for a lot of swearing.

On 3/1/2016 at 10:12 PM, Sportivo_05 said:

Are you still running the king springs?? just wondering if you used the standard shocks or not?

 

Yes, still using King Springs with the standard shocks. Planning on changing to aftermarket shocks in the near future just because the current ones have done 200k so are likely starting to get tired, but there have been no issues using the King Springs with them.

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 :)

Some more new photos:

Yes, the 2001 doors are the same . Your shape Tarago was made from 2001-2006. 

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 :)

Yep, that's definitely not the factory one.

In the 4-months I've had my Eonon installed I haven't experienced any problems. No freezes, no reboots, nothing.

10 hours ago, GDude said:

Hmmmmm...would anyone know if IS350 or IS-F steering wheel would fit?

Both will fit fine, and I'm 99% sure you can resuse your factory Aurion clock spring without any problems at all. You'll likely have to change over your airbag igniter on the back of the hornpad if it's only a single stage airbag (sounds & looks scarier than it is) and add a couple more wires to your clock spring for the paddle shifters but apart from that it's an easy swap.