Remember the Tortoise and the hare shirt? Just found an even cooler shirt for my son:
The panda Sprinter Trueno AE86 is Super Deformed and features some big fat rims/tires.
This is how it looks when your kid wears it: Continue reading
Category: ae86
Yes I know: that’s a very blunt statement but as I see it there is a lot of truth in that. Apart from that it was meant to say I’m currently not hopping on the 86 bandwagon, not writing the same as thousands of bloggers out there and simply just stick to the real deal: AE86 deathrace in Hokkaido!
Incredible how wild these guys throw their hachis around the track. Insanely close guardrail slides with the occasional tip over the tirestack to keep the audience awake. Well, actually I don’t think they were sleeping at all: they are just cheering to them to go closer!
Don’t get me wrong: the 86 is definitely one of the best engineered cars and it has got beautiful styling, but it is not the AE86. It is not an entry level car, not a light weight FR and on top of it all: it is currently hyped.
Direct link to video: Drifting v1.03
I just uploaded all worthy pictures I took at Japan Classic Sunday 2010. I haven’t commented them yet but I surely will do that in the upcoming week. I’ll also start posting pictures from the meet now and then. Let’s kick off with some highlights!
Trip to the JCS 2010
The trip to JCS was already a highlight! Five old/youngtimers cruising on the highway and of course we could all keep up with modern traffic. Only the TE71 (currently an AE71 with 20v blacktop) had some difficulties now and then: who says a blown headgasket can keep you from going to a meeting? So he just filled up that radiator with some water now and then… ;)
Double Beat!
These double Honda Beats sure look great! If you read my blog regularly you will recognize the red Honda Beat as the one I posted in the DOTS a few weeks ago! I spoke to the owner and he has an extensively large collection of cars and motorcycles and does indeed owns the FJ Cruiser. More on that later!
German Corolla AE86 in Haselbeck trim
What’s so special about this German AE86 except for its AE86 vanity plate?
German Corolla AE86 with 401k on the odo!
401k kilometer on the odo meter? Indeed: I spoke to the (young) owner who bought it only three weeks ago from the first owner! The first owner had the car for 27 years and drove 400k kilometers with it and then sold it off to this young lad. From the sound of the engine that 4AGE was still purring like a kitten! :)
More highlights tomorrow and on Saturday! In the meanwhile you can already have a look at the pictures here:
Japan Classic Sunday 2010 gallery
AE86ers.org posted a video of an AE86 doing Central Circuit in Japan:
The first thing I thought was that the driver of the car really needs a new ring and pinion! (aka crownwheel) It sounds the same as on my old Trueno but then at least four or five times as worse! You can hear the diff whining from about 50 km/h till 140 or 150 km/h, that is if I remember the pitch of the sound correct and presume the owner still got a 4.3 ring and pinion! ;)
The whining diff is a very well known issue of the AE86: its design was never meant for drifting, so if you put too much stress on it the crush sleeve will deform. Only a small deformation on the crush sleeve will cause an imbalance on the ring and pinion and wear down the teeth of the ring much faster than normal. So in case this happened to your hachi stressing the ring will only wear it down more and the whining noise will get worse! To prevent this TRD created a solid spacer which can not deform.
Another possibility for this amount of noise is that the AE86 is driving on the circuit with uniball 4 links. These will return all vibrations of the axle back to the chassis. Correct me if I’m wrong, but with uniballs you would hear much more noise and feedback from the road than this.
Also you may think the noise is coming from a straight cut gearbox. This isn’t the case as then the whining noise would change pitch when shifting up or down. Here the pitch is constant and continues with the same pitch after a gear shift.
So for all those people out there wondering what a whining diff sounds like on an AE86: this is it! If you hear it this much you really need to think about getting a new ring and pinion.