DJKOR

Well it's about time to chime in with the results for my Aurion. Overall it was an extremely fun experience and would recommend it for anyone. It may have cost $139 and used up 30 litres of fuel, but I would gladly spend it again because it was that good. At first I was quite nervous, but once I got the first lap out of the way, it became a fun challenge to do my best. At first my times weren't so great, but as each round came along, I had some slight improvement. The most difficult part was because I was in the newbie group and it was quite a busy day, there were a fair few people on the track at the same time. This made it difficult when it came to overtaking, and giving way to those that just overtook you. It cost some precious time here and there, but I'm not really complaining since it was my first time. For all laps, I had my traction control off. One thing that I reckon cost the most time was the combination of gear change lag (and the fact that the gearbox locks out certain downshifts) and planting the power to the ground efficiently. There were many cases where the car would still be gripping sufficiently, but trying to accelerate out of corners would cause one front wheel to lose traction. Either way, it's something to work on as well as more and more events come up. So out of all the rounds, the third round was my best and these were my times: Lap 1 - 1:09.6833 Lap 2 - 1:10.7493 Lap 3 - 1:08.6874 Lap 4 - 1:10.4222 Lap 5 - 1:10.8292 I'm kind of happy with my result, but at the same time I kind of feel a little disappointed in myself. I feel that I could and should have done better than that, but I guess I'll just have to try again in future. My major weak spot was turns 3 and 5. With them, I found that I tried to push myself a little too much to gain speed in the straights that approach these turns and as a result, my brakes had their limitations in slowing me down sufficiently for these tight turns. Quite a few times I ended up doing a little bit of a drift though these turns because I couldn't slow down sufficiently. This is definitley one area I need to work on. On a side note about the Adrenalins, boy do these tires grip around the track when cornering. You can be cornering with quite a bit of force and they will still hold you through the turn. They do give a little and I have found that they let you slide a little, but still within the track boundaries. This by far was one of the most fun I had on the track... experience such high turning forces without sliding off the road. The only aspect where they didn't really give the best grip is rotational acceleration as I mentioned above. This may partially be due to the Aurion and the way it puts it's power to the ground. IT was a disappointment when I passed the apex of the turn still gripping onto the track and then trying to accelerate a little more only to get the front tires smoking up whilst STILL maintaining my driving line. There wasn't much photo or video taken on the day (I also regret not being able to mount my camera in the car), but here are a couple of random clips from here and there. Nothing fancy, but something to look at I guess: Please wait a few seconds for Video to Load!Edit: I was just having a think about it. I guess I should be fairly satisfied with my result when you consider the power-to-weight ratio of the Aurion tied in with the fact that it is a family barge. My main point of reference when I'm looking at QR figures is the 1:05 that Phil got. When you consider the power-to-weight of the Sportivo is around 93.21kW/tonne and the Aurion is 98.42kW/tonne, it starts to look a little more reasonable. That said though, I've now got this massive urge to try and shave a good second or two off my time. It would be quite interesting to see how much better I can possibly do when there are less people on the track with varying abilities. Being in the newbie group today meant that a bit of the time around the track was spent trying to keep place within a crowd moving at varying paces. It just made it that little bit more difficult to focus more attention on my own driving. Oh well, that's what next time is for I guess.

Took her to QR so she can go for a run and show me what she's got. Then took her to the car wash to clean her up and then did all the finishing touches when I got home. All nice and shiny once again.

Cheap suspension and touge are words that I don't like to hear put together. About the most cost efficient thing you can do to the SV21 if you want it to corner better is to pick up some King Springs. Their stock ride height is just that little bit too high for you to throw it around like that in my opinion. They shouldn't set you back too much either. Can get the springs for under $300 and free fitting if you have a mate with spring compressors.

That would be SO F**** FUN!!!

Sorry to hear mate. When your car takes a beating, it definitely doesn't feel good. At the end of the day, no matter how careful you drive, you just can't prepare for what other hopeless drivers on the road can do. I have had my car in the panel beaters once before, and have had two near misses in less than a week... all thanks to hopeless drivers out there.

Just gave her a once over in preparation for QR tomorrow. Felt good looking at her from underneath. I like a girl on top Am just about to take her out for a drive again to make sure she feels nice and good.

As if! What a lie. Didn't even know you were gone. See... even you knew. .. j/k. Just messing with you. Well as before, keep us update. And welcome back.

Sure have... ... driving it to redline on each gear

i see mitsubishi 380. the taillights would look good with a light smoky tint, but the rims are crap looking! Yeah. Some lightly smoked tail lights would be perfect. This whole facelift is a bit of a mixed bag eh? I guess that's to be expected. At first I liked the change of rims, but that's from a further back view. When up closer, they look like hubcaps.

Transmission fluid is never 'used' unless there is something not right. Maybe the last time they checked the level it was too hot and it lost a bit of its fluid.

It should only be needed for the steering rack end because they are un-screwing the tie rod from the part which plays a good part in wheel alignment. You can get away with changing the intermediate shaft without doing a wheel alignment afterwards, but it's usually best to do it just in case. In any case, for my own scenario I'd just be buying the part myself and getting Fulcrum to do a wheel alignment.

Or go on a Mi Goreng noodle diet. Saves me lots of cash when I'm away for work. Easy savings FTW.

It will, but depends on if the track is mapped into it. I might check that in a moment. I have found some strange things mapped in mine. My front is jacked up with the wheels off and is cooling down as we speak. Will be checking it all after I finish my lunch. Somewhat don't completely trust that Toyota looked at it in depth. Did that this morning. Car is like factory inside. That is meant to be my next question. Bridgestone recommended my tire pressure be 38 PSI. Now that's what I put it to when cold and don't think any more about it's hot temperature when on the road. For the track, should it still be 38 PSI when cold and in that respect, how much higher should they be within for the track when hot? Got myself a new tire pressure gauge today to keep an eye on things. Thanks for the advice mate.

I ran some errands and gave it a nice drive after last nights events. Nearly had another accident. Scarily enough, the situation was just like the last near miss but replace a female driver with a senior. Then came home and cleaned out my throttle body. That would be this topic: Interior Lights Most interior lights on Toyota's these days are 31mm festoon bulb for the dome light and T10 for everything else.

Ari, the Thai Camry one will work rite since it is also from the 3.6L Camry?? I would say so since their Camry uses the Aurion body. I'm pretty sure the engine is the 2.4l I4 though. Irrelevant, but meh.

Thanks Dave. It's getting so close now.

So for a newbie like me, what time would you suggest I turn up. I do notice it says 'afternoon sprints', but what's the earliest that things start taking order?

Welcome mate. Very good choice in car and in a 2009 model as well.

Crap enough that the speed bump at the end was so well hidden that I slammed on my braked and slipped a little. Ignore the massive bass distortion: Please wait a few seconds for Video to Load! Thanks.

I'll race ya.... in my Nike's

Those clear Sportivo lights just stuffed the rear end up big time. Even the bulging red tail light look wrong. Edit: The more I look at the front of the facelift Sportivo, the more I see Ford.

The wiring harness is already there. The way it works is by varying resistance when a particular button is pressed. If you obtain the appropriate circuit board/button assembly, you can just replace the blank panel there and you can work off that. As you mentioned though, you will need to tie into it because those new buttons won't work on anything else if they weren't already there. Getting your handsfree to tie into this can potentially create some issues, but that all depends on how it connects. I personally have never heard of the UNIKA system before. I will look it up in the meantime. The reason I say this is depending on how the UNIKA connects, if it ties in parallel with the controls, it needs to be a high resistance circuit otherwise it will potentially cancel out your existing audio controls. If it ties into the existing controls in series, then it needs to be of low resistance for the same reason. Just basic electronic knowledge there. Probably best to ask the people where you are getting it from. These pictures here will give you an idea of how the on hook/off hook buttons tie into the harness already there: Left side: Right Side: Basic layout (corresponds with the orange, pink, and yellow wires behind the head unit): The stock head units are Fujitsu Ten which share some commonality with Eclipse.

Will hopefully have an external camera mount by then. Will experiment since I will be going. Had to use Adobe Premiere. It allows you to define the length you want the video to go for and then change the audio track. It took a whole 3 hours to encode the video file for that short clip. Not the best PC I have here.

I'm not too sure about how every one of them are linked up, but try speaking to the service manager at the dealer you bought it from. If it was serviced there, they would have record of it in their system. If not, you might be lucky and they have record of where it was serviced (providing it was a dealer as well).

Was a good meet. Also good to meet you Ray. You have restored my faith in the ZRE Corolla. Never really heard a ZRE with CAI (DIY or not) and stock exhaust. In my opinion, they sound just as good as the ZZE which I wasn't expecting.