DJKOR

I would like to do a meet like that, but as of right now, I can only travel as far as 1 suburb over... and that's not easy to start with.

Yeah, despite my previous thoughts, tomorrow's meet is officially **** canned.

Are you being sarcastic? Hard to tell on the forums .. He sure isn't man. The one thing you are missing out with when you didn't opt for the TRD are the many ladies that get on their knees for you. You are so missing out.

Now, I'm not so knowledgeable on the subject, so I have a stupid question. As we know, Wivenhoe Dam here is a good deal above it's 100% capacity. They have mentioned that it can take up to 200%. Now when I hear that, I would assume that despite being above capacity, it would be engineered to withstand that right? So if the rain has eased down, wouldn't it help to wait for the floodwater to subside and gradually release some water? Or is it too much of a risk. Or is there something about dams that I don't really understand.

I would say that is a wise idea. But if it isn't raining, the loop is a rather high spot and would still be great for a meet. From the look of everything, you would think the worst is actually over, despite what the predictions are.

Sure did mate. Worked on it in the same position you have there. It helped, but definitely not enough... well for me anyways to call it 'confident'. I think the fact that all the wires are bunched close together and they are partially twisted is what makes it difficult in the given space. Man, thanks for thinking I was that great for working with it on the engine side of the actuator. If anyone could do that there, I would give them a beer.

I'm pretty sure m_grumble isn't asking for what he already knows. What he would like to know is how much extra leeway he can get out of his service interval. For example, I have been able to be a couple of thousand out of a service interval and my dealer assured me that this won't affect the warranty, as the dealer was busy when the interval was reached. So basically, the OP wants to know how many days out of his service interval can he still get a service and be covered by warranty. Of course this answer may vary, but a general idea may help him.

Welcome to the club Steele. And you're welcome as well. It always makes me feel better when someone comes along recognising that a fair bit of information is out there in the forum and if you think of it, chances are it has already been discussed. These cars have seemed to hit a point where I think we are running out of things to talk about with them Make sure to definitely keep us all posted on the progress of your Aurion as we all like some eye candy.

Attaching heatsinks to heatsinks will provide some additional cooling ability, but the effectiveness is reduced a fair bit in comparison to having a efficient heatsink in the first place. I would personally be working towards improving it's ventilation.

I'm leaning towards postponing it.

Unfortunate that it happened to you, but cases like this tend to be an exception to the norm. Airbags are pretty stable/durable and don't usually break down whilst waiting in standby. Connect some wires up to it, prepare a 12v battery, and be creative. Just don't be like this idiot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ2XhDsNT5k If you can't think of anything, just launch it:

DEFINITELY IN!!! Off topic: I hope I still have front tires by then. Disabling TC was a big mistake.

Welcome mate. Great choice in engine. Those are some mean figures you have there.

I would hate to say, but if you are feeling this immediately after filling up, what you are feeling is most likely the placebo effect. Unless you are noticing a difference in feel due to slightly more weight being over the rear wheels causing less squat on acceleration, thus making it feel like something is different. That is actually air rushing out. Petrol is volatile. For example, (hypothetically) if you were to pour petrol onto the ground in one spot, then pour an equal amount of water on another, the petrol will evaporate faster. I would hope that you would know that already because if not, I'm not sure what they taught you in school, and that may be concerning since I'm sure most school kids go through the metho on the back of the hand lesson on evaporation. Anyways, when you have fuel in your tank, the lower boiling point of fuel means that part of it will become a gas and pressurise itself in your fuel tank. I won't go into the dynamics of that one because there is no need to. If you want more information, research "vapour pressure". When you open your fuel tank, you are releasing this evaporated fuel into the atmosphere, hence the hissing sound. It is nothing wrong with your car, it is just basic physics.

You notice a difference when light cornering in terms that you notice there is slightly less flex in the body at the front. You mainly feel it in how your body reacts to the turn based on what you are used to. In saying whether this really has it's benefits though, if you are driving lightly, then well... it's like saying is that energy drink useful if you are going to go for a walk in the park. Basically, if you are going to get one bar first (or only), get the rear sway bar. If you have the money to get both, get them because they will compliment each other.

Too many factors to consider here. As mentioned, some of the things that affect it are: - your tires including their air pressure - road/track condition (including stickiness of the surface and surface temperature) - transmission temperature - weight distribution of your car Personally, I wouldn't bother with trying to stall up the torque converter on the Aurion when trying to launch it outside of doing so at the 1/4 mile. Once the torque converter gets some heat into it from just normal driving, you can't really load it up otherwise it's just going to bog down when you do launch. For reference, at a drag scenario (on a proper prepared drag way), I have found that stalling it up to 1400-1600RPM on a cool (and I emphasise to word 'cool') torque converter, for NO MORE than 3 to 4 seconds will lead to an appropriate launch. Stalling it up at that RPM for longer, stalling it up at higher revs, or stalling it up on a transmission that has been at operating temperature for a few minutes or more nearly always results in the torque converter bogging down and giving a negative result. So the short answer, your Aurion is not built like a race car. I wouldn't bother doing so on the street unless you want to feel like you are a race car driver (if you do, please keep it to yourself). Edit: A good video of mine that shows me stalling it up is the following. You will see that once I stage at about 0:24, I stall it up, but when I quickly realise that the the tree won't start going (because of the time still up on the display board), I back off the throttle. Then at 0:36, you can see me stall it up again for a very short time just to be ready for the actual launch itself.

Definitely a wise choice going for the front bar as well, but in my own personal opinion, the difference is not as large as it is made out to be and your head tells you that it is. Off topic: Damn this rain is getting annoying. I think next time we get a week of sun, I'm going to go for a Nebo run.

It's not so much what I did today, but what I did yesterday... though I did some work today. Yesterday/today I disabled my TC, VSC, and as a side effect... my ABS without the need of the brake pedal dance etc needed for these cars. More details available here. It was meant to be a whole switchable setup so it is only disabled on demand, but unforeseen time restrictions left it in the off state. When presenting myself with the option to leave it in either the on or off state while I wait for some spare time to put the switch in, I ultimately chose the 'off' state for the fun of it. After all, with all the liquid horsepower that is being distributed around Brisbane, it seems like a nice time. In the meantime, it's purely driver control.

That's just sad that they are only considering doing that now. Toyota USA have been using the 2.5l 2AR-FE ever since they got their facelift to the Gen 6 about the same time we did.

Hence my concern about the longevity. Having 12 cut and solder connections close to the harness without the ability to inspect it right in front of my eye doesn't make me feel 100% certain about the quality of the connection. They are a solid connection, however the last thing I want to go wrong is all safety features to be disabled without me knowing, or even worse, a fried ECU. When I do stuff like this, I like to inspect the connection carefully. Not easy to do when I couldn't get the harness to extend very far. I'm completely with you on that one. I thought it would have only taken a couple of hours, but I guess I misjudged that one. You mainly need the time so that you can make sure everything is all carefully and neatly done. Unfortunately, my schedule today leaves me with other stuff to be done, so the lack of time available means it is going to look like this in the meantime:

A quick update... I am getting so so close to giving up on this damn relay pack. As well, my confidence in the longevity of this setup isn't overly that high. I think I am going to make a trip to the office and pick up some more cable so I can run it into the cabin and locate the relay pack there. I just don't trust it in the engine bay. Otherwise, time to just revert it back to stock. At least you guys now know it's possible and can be done if you have the patience. My suggestion though would be to avoid working close to the ABS actuator as it really limits how much you can do easily. Damn ABS actuator and all the brake hard lines coming off it. Edit: Okay then. I have kinda given up on the project. Mainly because I am over it for now, plus I have stuff to prepare for work. Basically I had planned to create a relay pack and mount it on the front end of the ABS actuator. Then I would run control lines from there into the cabin where I can supply the power and switching to the relay pack. Doing it this way however leaves you with limited space to do it in. It can be done, but I get frustrated easily. In addition to that running all 12 wires off the existing ABS ECU harness (via 2 stranded Cat5e cables which are perfect for the job) meant that it was a little bulky on the rear end of the harness which I personally don't like. So the new plan is as follows. At the moment, I have neatly tied everything off so it can wait till another weekend. In the meantime though, this means I have no traction control, VSC, and even worse... ABS. I just have to remember that when I go for a drive. Then what I will do is remove the parallel connection to the rear speed sensors from the harness meaning that I only need to connect 8 wires to the ECU harness... perfect for one run of Cat5e. Then I will run a single run of stranded Cat5e from the drivers side dash up to the ABS ECU and connect it up to the appropriate inputs. Then I will parallel the rear speed sensors from the wiring behind the dash (before it goes through the firewall into the engine bay) and then run this up to the drivers side dash. I will then mount the relay pack (without the need to waterproof) behind the dash there somewhere and make all the connections there. To me, this feels to be the safest option.

In my opinion, don't waste your money on those voltage stabilisers that look like that 'Raizin' product you want. The components in them are good for sweet **** all when used as a car batter voltage stabiliser. But it's your money, so feel free to spend what you want.

How about now? ZOMG!@!!@!@! Excitement. The theory stands correct. After picking up some relays, switches etc (because I was confident), I took the wiring harness off again and got to work. Firstly I have just ran a metre or so of cable from the ECU plug so it will be ready for a permanent setup, but I wanted to be absolutely sure so just connected the rears to the front input to try it out. Started the car... no CEL. Good. Drove carefully down the street.... no CEL. Good. Ripped a skid out the street... no CEL, no flashing TC light, no interruptions, big grin on face. Good. Drove on the highway for about 20km to make sure it is fine... still no CEL. Good. Headed back towards home... huge rain storm. Good. Detoured through to an industrial estate to take advantage of the fresh liquid horsepower. Spun the wheels all over the shop and went for a little bit of sliding... no CEL. Very good. End verdict. This is a plausible solution. Definitely not a task for the faint hearted though. There is not much slack on the ABS ECU wiring harness and it is a real prick to try to work with. Even with my small hands, I dread having to open the connector again to tidy it up. But all in all, In an hour or two, I will have a TC off button on my Aurion. I have noticed 2 side effects however: 1) Speedo is actually more accurate now. Quite good actually. Before at 100km/h, GPS would say 92km/h. Now it says 97km/h. 2) It's addictive.

And so it begins: I was originally intending on wiring it up by extending the front sensor wiring into the cabin and having the relay pack there. I then figured that I want to minimise excess wiring where not required, so I bit the bullet and am now at the harness side. I thought the ABS actuator harness was actually going to be quite 'busy' in there, but surprisingly there aren't as many wires there as I was expecting. I'm just going to do some resistance measurements and if it satisfies me, it's time for some cutting and soldering. Edit: Okay, as expected, the US Camry service manual/wiring diagram is half correct. They got the colours for the wires all correct, but the pin layout is different. The following are my findings. FL+ : Light Blue, Pin 5 FL- : Violet, Pin 6 FR+ : Pink, Pin 10 FR- : Light Blue, Pin 9 RL+ : Red, Pin 7 RL- : Light Blue, Pin 27 RR+ : Black, Pin 29 RR- : White, Pin 8 Resistance values are as follows (for my car obviously): FL : 1.713kΩ FR : 1.715kΩ RL : 1.210kΩ RR : 1.225kΩ Now, since the ECU is expecting to see a resistance reading of 0.92 to 1.22 kΩ on the front sensors, connecting the rear to the front is going to obviously provide a different reading. Part of me thinks though that the ECU will only test for this at engine start during it's self test. In that case, a switch feature for this should be fine because you can have the rears connected when you start the car. But that said, if the ECU tests it at some point during driving, then there may be a problem. I'm thinking then that maybe paralleling some resistance with the rear sensors when they are connected to the front may do the trick, but then I'm not sure how it will affect the speed readings. I think I will sit down and do some more thdrinking. Edit 2: HOLD ON A SECOND. I just looked at my resistance figures again. The readings I have are definitely for the right sensors. The original standard parameters are: Front: 0.92 to 1.22 kΩ Rear: Below 2.2 kΩ So that means the sensors are already out of the spec of the (US) manual and comply with what I'm planning on doing. WIN... I hope. But then again, the Australian spec could just be reversed. But then that is still a win you would imagine. But you have to wonder why the sensors have two distinct values though. Edit 3: Damn it, I need to be somewhere at 2pm now. Looks like I will have to put this one on hold till the evening or Sunday. I need time to make sure it is all neatly done seeing that I am messing with some sensors here responsible for the ABS as well.

As mentioned: The only thing is, if I do it that way, it's more stuffing around. I like to do things once, so it would be nice to get it all done in one go. But then if it didn't work, I'd be stuck with what I've done. First things first though, I will measure the resistance of the front and rear sensors to predict which way the outcome will sway towards. Edit: The funny thing is, despite how simple it would be to do it all (I'd give myself an hour since I like to bum around/have a beer/etc), part of me still can't be bothered to do this. I guess in a way, I just don't feel the need for it. I only want to do it to see if it can actually work.