jonbays

Ask them to do a before and after dyno run for you to prove it. post up the charts. lets see whats real here. Easy to claim hard to prove. Lots of people doctoring up the dyno charts too its so easy when you know how. I have done this and it's interesting. The guy laminated up the before and after dyno charts and all looked really rosy until i asked to see the correction factors and questioned the values and low and behold i get to pay the bill and f off without the dyno charts. oh they would ahve looked good posted up here but i know they are all bs. Don't believe all you are told. 10-15kw at the wheels is big. Sort of thing you would get with an old falcadore with extractors and exhaust mods for sure but then their std stuff was rubbish anyway.

Because they make the claim doesn't make it true. I am sure the guarantee has enough weasel words for them to wriggle out of the claim or they would be out of business. You keep saying the Aurion exhaust is so restrictive and that isn't true either! A good point was raised about the TRD Aurions performance exhaust system. ( Dead stock with diffusers). Have a look at the early model old 3 litre V6 camrys and then the lexus ES300 exhausts same 3 litre V6 and then look at the Aurion. Change the rear mufflers for a bit of a rorty sound if you like but it's not going to make a measurable performance difference and cost a lot and you may find it's too loud and annoying after a while.

I think you might be able to make your Aurion louder and noisier, maybe even sound good but the stock exhaust is not restricting the performance of the car much at all. 20% power gain would be 200kw to 240kw! Sure thing. Why bother with a supercharger? Where did you get that from the sort of gain you could get from a decent exhaust on a 20 year old V8 Holden. I would say it's possible to lose power over the stock system which is well designed if anything a really well thought through low restriction design might addd 3-4rwkw. Of course it would sound faster!

Not real sure on the value of demo cars. The dealers probaly make more on them than new ones. Consider the depreciation of a car that costs $40K is about 60% $24k over the first 4 years when it will be worth maybe $16k. About $6k a year! So you rego it and drive it more than 1,00km and its lost a lot of value in my eyes maybe more than the price you have been offered. I would be looking for a clear $6k better than the best new car on road price I could get.

Its just the wrong car to tow a van that size. I would have said a falcon wagon and an egas LPG one if you do the miles.

Toyota dealers are much help with Bluetooth thats for sure. The 6300 will connect in hands free mode to the Presara no problem. The HFP is not an issue really version 1 or 2. The OPP may not be compatible which will mean you can't synch the contacts from the phone to the car. it's not a huge deal but quicker than entering them manually. I have a Nokia N73 and the HFP works fine. the OPP was not good but have reloaded different firmware on the phone now and haven't tried since so not sure its a no go just can;t be bothered trying again.

It all comes down to the average speed in those 20 min trips. if its less than 20kmh then the economy is going to be bad for sure 14L/100km. 20 min bumper to bumper stop start trips is never going to get the 9.9l/100km claim is it? i can see 8.5l/100km on the freeway say gong sydney to penrith but going from sydney to chatswood daily in peak hour? well 12-14l/100km is what you might expect. This is where the 4cyl camry will do better on fuel than the Aurion

without a supercharger or turbocharger forcing extra air under pressure into the engine increasing the air flow capacity to the engine will do nothing at all. The vac butterfly is for warm air on cold start and works well without causing enough of a restriction to worry about with any non supercharged engine anyway. this whole CAI business is an aftermarket accessory rip off using dubious science and dodgy claims

Nothing against Prius at all my sister (a greenie!) has one they are OK but not for me yet. But i am also a keen cyclist still. with QR wheels the bike fits in the boot just. You do wish for fold down rear seats though like a hatch sometimes

fuel cost is such a small overall cost compared with the bigger depreciation and fixed insurance and rego costs that it doesn't make sens to focus on it that much. if you want to save the world ride a push bike drive a Prius do something positive. converting a fairly large sedan with a 3.5L V6 to run on LPG isn't doing much for anything. Cetainly I won't bother till they bring out the pluggable diesel electric hybrids in the next 10 years or so. thats my bet for the future anyway for now its the Aurion reasonably big fast and not too bad on fuel.

The Aurion will produce less power on LPG than ULP. You can expect it to produce 10% less peak rear wheel kilowatts. Low quality old style mixer conversion will lose heaps more. Not that this would be a worry with the Aurion with 3.5 litres and plenty of power anyway but the top end power will suffer. Econmy wise if you spend $100 a week on petrol and average say 12l/100 in the Aurion which you should you would be doing 35,000km a year costing $5,500 in ULP well today at $1.30 a litre and as we know this is going up and up and sometimes down. With ULP because it has less energy density you will only get maybe 16L/100Km and the same 35,000km will cost $3,000 at an avearge $0.54/L at the moment on average. This too will go up though as taxes will increase to similar levels as petrol. So in a perfect world payback in an Aurion doing 35,000km a year and doing badly on ULP getting only 12L/100KM versus one on LPG doing well and getting 16L/100Km is around 18months. So you would be even in two years. Of course if you were only doing 17,500km a year then the payback would be 36 months and so on. All sounds good if you believe you will keep the car for over two years and the resale value remains the same. In some cars (mostly gas guzzling old V8's) the resale will improve but mostly it is worse than a standard car. It will go slower and produce less power but torque may be better and driveablity is 100% due to the competence of the conversion company to match toyota's development! it could be good or bad you just need to find out how many happy V6 Toyota customers they have on LPG. For me it doesn't add up. The real running costs differences between LPG & ULP are tax related in the main and thats the hard one to predict. See if you can drive a converted Aurion before doing it too. i remember when ford brought out the AU they had a dedicated LPG version. I drove two wagons 1 LPG and 1 ULP and in 2000 the technology wasn't there for LPG it was a miserable poor cousin to drive in comparison.

Why LPG? What is the attraction? How much do you spend on petrol a year? $3,000, $4,000? How much would a conversion cost? How much would you pay on LPG a year? $1,000 $2,000? What happens when they add excise tax to LPG? The economics of it are not favourable unless you do huge miles every year or keep the car for 10 years. If you want an LPG car buy one. Ford and Holden will gladl take your money.

I know for a fact this will void all warrenty unless Toyota fit them. I was told by a TRD tech that they will be releasing the super charger to bolt onto normal aurions but it will come at a price.. Around $10,000 inc install Bargain. Which tech from what dealer lets give them a call!

Toyota will have to support the TRD Aurion with spares but it can't sell them yet and you would need a little bit more than just the supercharger to bolt on anyway. TRD won't sell it aftermarket . . .YET and the manufacturer HARROP engineering won't sell it YET. see www.harrop.com.au They will soon enough if there is a demand as money talks with all these things.

How so.. i tryed it.. did'nt notice that much. Try it on a wet day and come back and tell you didn't notice much! it does work and there is a lot of nannying by the ecu if you drive at all spiritedly.

Exactly Holden proved that a supercharged V6 is a practical warrantyable soltion for an Australian road car in 1996 with the VR calais. It's just a well trodden road that conservative Toyota are following. The only innovation here is Harrops supercharger itself the concept is proven.

I read the new TRD Aurion is supposed to be speed limited to 250kmh! Thats proabably a hint that all are or the standard Aurion wont hit 250kmh with stock gearing which is likely enough.

They had enough trouble getting the 240kw out of the motor, 270 with the current charger is out of the question due to intake temps. When they were testing with the older M series charger the engine made SFA more power due to the massive intake temps. They even tried an intercooler which hardly helped. The supercharged option was taken as it fits easily into the package FWD and V6 east west easily and delivers in a road car a nice broad powerband. With a 3.5L v6 with all all the mod cons it isn't able to make up for any deficiencies in the design as there aren't many. With 205 kw stock anyway with PULP the supercharger is really giving a peak gain of 20% about as good as you could expect but the lift in the overall average power is more significant throughout the 3500-6500rpm range. 241kw is a good effort Fords turbo intercooled 4L even in the Typhoon only claimed 270kw so with the 0.5 litre difference its doing as well as you could expect. If you wanted to build a dyno day winner then twin turbo would be the go every time.

There is a different shift strategy for warm in in cold weather. i don't think this is a problem but some people in the USA reported shift flaring between gears when cold but they mean real cold over there of course.

Sports mode is not really sporty by the way but it locks the car into the highest gear you select so it will rev to the 6500rpm limiter and just stop there quite happily no beep beep to say change or anything. If you try and change down it will not change down unless you are going slow enough for it to change down "SAFELY" and will go beep beep if it thinks its too fast to change down. If you select sports mode it goes into fourth and hold that till 220kmh and the rev limit but it will use all the first four gears normally and change up normally into 4th. You can select 5th and 6th but its just like drive. You can select 3rd if going slower than 125kmh and it will use 1-2-3 only. you can select 2nd if going slower than 90kmh and it will use 1-2only redlining at 120kmh. you can select 1st if going below 45kmh and it will hold first to 70kmh redline. Sports mode isn't that much fun at all really useless lock out of change downs no change up chimes that would be useful and not much different to drive if you drive it hard in drive anyway

Well I had VL, VR, VS Commodores then an AU falcon that got traded on an Aurion! maybe i am a yobbo?

Never believe a salesman! he only there to sell you a new car. You can do all of the above just at your own risk. Now the factory supply an ADR approved supercharged Aurion it will be much easier to do legally but still no warranty of course. The hard part is getting the supercharger and the ECU program to match it. the brakes are a no brainer just buy and fit.

Well it makes for a good day out and for a while you do get it all out of your system so you will be content driving like a grandpa. The Aurion was a disappointment on the track though. it's just not happy to be pushed more than 8/10 ths before nannying stability control interferes and works well mind you but a bit too early for any sprited track driving. I couldn't really get the hang of the fine control of the drive by wire accelerator which noticeably lags behind your input and the manual gears are a joke again a big lag between actually changing and the car changing and although it hold to the cutout you can't change down untill it is going slower than you could pick up the next lower gear with a boot of full throttle. Overall if you drive smoothly and fast its fine. try fast and flat out and it's accelerator and gears remote control feel and interfering stability control make it feel pretty average and make you look like an amateur learner. i had more fun punting my au wagon around the track. The Aurion was faster though and quite a bit. mostly the braking you feel very confident with. i was mostly just standing on the brakes too soon and by slowly leaving the braking later it got quite quick as long as you didn't try to cahnge gears or jump on the accelerator in the iddle of the corner as nothing happens till your out and then its all wrong. Oh and by the way there is no big back off oversteer available not matter how you try which was disappointing too i used to love that about the old minis

fantastic must go and see one in the dealers

Well correct me if I'm wrong, but I've seen elsewere people mention a speed limiter on the Aurion ( 180 Km I think ) so then the speed limiter is not present as "Soloman" says he got too 210. I will bet that there is a speed limiter setting in the Aurion ECU but I can be certain for Presara's built in May 2007 it doesn't stop you redlining in fourth gear. Not that I am watching the speedo when doing this as I am about to brake hard and steady it up for the corner rapidly arriving but the speedo was reading around 230kmh, probably real speed closer to 200 due to speedo error as they all read fast. I think the 180 kmh speed limiter is unlikely. Why 180? more sense to set it at 240 the tyres v rating limit.