Continuing on from the last update I've cleaned up the engine bay now to make it more or less spotless as much as I can be arsed anyway. It was the first actual Spring like day today with the sun shining down and making the Final Speed wheels look awesome. I think the engine bay looks gorgeous now with all the new tuning parts in crammed in there. I took a couple of interior shots too so you can see how I've laid out all the electronics. Another major part for project-ep82 arrived a couple of days ago, the GReddy E-Manage ECU, this thing should hopefully bring out the full potential of my set up when I get it mapped in about a months time. I'm just waiting on the other harnesses to arrive now so I can send it off to my friend Nick Jones who will be wiring it all in to the extension harness so I can just plug it straight it without any hassle and have it all ready for the mapping session.

Engine Bay



Interior & Exterior



Trust GReddy E-Manage

As mentioned in the previous post i was going to be updating the old pillow mounts as they were pretty much shot from having lowering springs and more aggressive damping force from the shocks. Of course i went straight ahead and purchased a set of Cusco Pillow Ball Mounts, not only do they have a ball joint but you can set the camber a whole degree negatively which is useful when cornering hard. For now I've set the camber to -0.7 degree's as this seems to be a sensible angle for now. Once i fitted these the tracking was way out of course so first off i get that reset and now it feels great. You can definitely feel the difference over the stock items straight away, much firmer ride and a better harder turn in feel. The car is well on its way to becoming competitive at the hill climb that I'm planning on entering as mentioned in the previous post.

The GReddy E-manage unit is on its way from Japan, now i just need to buy all the relative harnesses and get all that wired in so i can go for a propper mapping session and get the car nicely tuned. The only thing that i feel is letting the side down is the braking system, so once the e-manage is installed and set up i will be investing in some 3G grooved and drilled discs and upgrading the brake pads to the Mintex 1144 range. Also whilst I'm doing the brakes i plan to install a set of braided s/s APP brake lines for good measure, these are said to make the pedal feel much firmer and a sharper braking experience and thats definitely what is lacking on the GT.

Cusco Pillow Ball Mount



Engine Bay

Well now that Stage 3.0 is all done and dusted of the tune i can start to enjoy the car a little more and not be as conservative with my driving trying to keep the mileage down. I've decided to live out my dream of being a race driver and start by applying for the racing license from the MSA so i can eventually enter the Harewood Hillclimb event this summer coming.

I have been reading the regulations in order to enter the hillclimb and all being well my car will be ok to compete in the modified road vehicle class. After looking through the entrants of the past and present i've noticed that there has never been an EP82 GT Turbo competing on the hill so i'm really excited to see people's reactions and thoughts to my car will be.

Now knowing i want to enter this event there's a few more things left to do on the car to do with braking handling and the ECU. The most important and next thing on my list is to sort out the worn Pillow Mounts and also get a mappable ECU so i can fine tune my set up. After some research and chatting to a few other Starlet owners i concluded that the Greddy E-manage is going to be the most cost effective ECU to go for as it is a more than capable ECU for the EP82's requirements. This should arrive in the next month or so then it will be straight off to get wired into the extension loom then obviously for a mapping session. I'm hoping i can hit around 180-190hp running 1 bar boost possibly slighty more as i have a slight spike issue with the waste gate on the CT9 not being very adequate. Keep your eye's peeled and hopefully soon you shall see some more persistent progress from me and the car.

Cusco Upper Pillow Ball Mounts


Stage 3.0 | Tunnel Run

I've decided to add in a new section to hopefully bring in some more interest to the blog. I will be featuring other tuned Starlet's of friends and tuners alike every so often so you can get an idea of the different tuning methods and vast tuning options there is for the Starlet.

This feature is of a EP91 Glanza which belongs to a friend of mine called Gee who lives locally. He bought the car pretty much standard and has been tuning the car for about 3 years now i believe. He's opted to go for the TD04 turbo swap which is a much more capable turbo in terms of boost and power and can also be easily adapted to fit the 4E-FTE, so its a good option for pursuing high power easily. Recently he has fully forged the engine and had extensive internal work done such as re balancing the crank, connecting rods and pistons. Now with all this work done he has increased the boost pressure to a whopping 1.5bar and the car is now producing 275hp at the fly-wheel. I have a full spec list available with all the modifications done to the car so if your interested click the following link to view it | Spec List

My friend Akimi aka Stimu1us took some photo's of Gee's Glanza and my EP82, please take special note of Gee's interior as its amazing.

Images courtesy of;
Akimi's Photo's
stimu1us's Photo Blog
stimu1us's Deviant Art Page