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Pierro's El54 Paseo Aka Project Pi


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Keep us updated on developements Pierros.

Hope your Neo turns up soon!

How do you go about with a compression test man, diy or pro?

Joz

Pro. But just to make sure I'll measure it again with a friend of mine that has the required equipment :) .

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E series are fuckers for valve seals, mine are being changed as we speak

Yeap it as classic as chaning oils in this motors (although you usually do it only once), but thankfully its the only common "problem" in this engines :)

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So after a long waiting I've received this....

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Here is a trial of what the possible layout will be

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Now I have to get this fitted and tune it. But in order to properly do that I'll need a wideband as well (and my mate that had a portable one, sold it with his car :) ).

So it may take a little more than I've expected... :)

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You wont need a wideband will you as the tuning place will have all that??

Yes, I can do it that way as well, but I'll have to pay for at least one hour on the dyno + tuning the bloody thing. In the end of the day it will cost me almost the same like buying my own wideband and tune it on the road. Plus I will have my own wideband to make further fine tuning with future upgrades :lol:

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Well guys I measured the cylinder compression last week and I took quite healthy figures. So I took my car to my mechanic, had a 5000km service (oils, oil filter, cleaning air filter, etc) and I also changed the bloody valve seals.

When the valve seals were taken out they were in a very bad shape and they almost "float" on the valves. Now I'm going to check the oil level every 500km or so to see if the problem is fixed or if its something else wrong.

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  • 2 months later...

I finally decide to clean once again my engine bay along with the whole car during this weekend....

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The last months were more of servicing and fixing various issues in the car (oils, fuel filter, various seals, distributer cap, new alignment, lubricating the coils etc), as last week I passed succesfully the Greek MOT. I'm going to have the rear calipers overhauled, put some fresh Ferodo 5.1 brake fluids and change the front brake pads to Ferodo Sport.

Then some extra handling mods that have arranged will be added and then.... :thumbsup:

PS: We have a seperate Paseo thread, hooray!!!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yet another small but very important update!

After shorting out my brakes (new Ferodo pads, Ferodo DOT 5.1 fluids, rear caliper overhaul) I had to take care an issue I had with my bucket seats.

The base I got them was pretty high and not so safe, plus was making them quite uncomfortable to ride. Plus the universal rails that were used were totally crap and didn't work properly (plus you should have the power of Hercules to move them :) ) and were rattling.

So T.P.G. got on the case and after getting some OMP seat specific rails we made a plug n play, bolt on seat base.

The new base/rail combo is about 3-4kg lighter (for both seats), is amazing durable and easy to use, it looks OE and most importantly lower the buckets around 4cm (about 2cm lower than the lower point of OE seats).

It like driving a new car and the seats and the feedback is much better now. Plus the center of gravity (metacenter) is lower now ;) .

It took 6hours to make them, but the finished product was top job.

Here are some pics before the install.

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Some more custom handling parts from T.P.G. are coming soon as well :D

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Well the new handling goods are fitted. :)

Check out the spec list and the photos in bottom of the first post.

I'll check them in some familiar roads to see if they really worth their money, although from the first impression I got the make a big difference!

Ahh, It must of slipped my mind, but (if you can remember so long ago after fitting them) does it bring much of an effective difference?

Well it made a difference, mostly towards more balanced breaking, rather than more powerful.

Also after the overhauling I saw a difference (of course this is partially due to other changes in the brakes)

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Well after having a good spin of the car the last 2-3 days, although I could feel that the car was more steady at high speed and corners, I could not predict how much it has changed, until I've start attacking some corners....

Well what to say? The cars handling some changed dramatically. The little weight transfer and rolling that has been left by the coilovers has disappeared and mind you I have my coilovers set even more soft now! In corners that I used to push a bit the car before and showed signs of understeering I could go now even faster and the car can handle even more speed! Also now in most corners I don't need to make corrections with the steering wheel, I've just have to keep it steady to the desired direction.

Another thing that amazed me was that the initial setup and alignment that I made when I installed them was almost spot on to my driving style. The car is quite neutral on corners, although there is still more space to make it even better. On the next alignment, I'll go from 1.3 camber to 1.35 or 1.4 and I will raise a little bit the caster as well without using a camber kit but with a new "trick" I've learned :surrender:

As far as I'm concerned the big difference was made from the front lower arm bar that gave much more stability and a better sharp feeling in the shity steering wheel feedback of the paseo (using power steering has its disadvantages) and from the rear arb that is currently set on the medium position.

The front arb helped mainly to balance the other suspension components, rather than making a great difference by its own. Probably if someone is on a budget could initially avoid having one, as the OE one is quite biffy (20mm over the light 22mm Whiteline replacement).

The only downside is that know that I found more traction, I realised that my tires are quite worn and need to be changed :drunk2:

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  • 1 month later...

Another small update.

I changed the rubber shift-bushings with aluminium ones made by TPG

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and I can say that although mine were in perfect shape, I saw a dramatic change when changing gears. It is far more stable, accurate and solid. I have to get a short-shift now ::thumbsup:

I also changed my exhaust backbox, with a more quite one, as now with the full exhaust and header the noise was too much for my taste. (pics of the backbox coming soon).

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  • 4 weeks later...

Another small update. After a quick msn chat with a mate before a week we've decide to change the interior dashboard lights on both our cars (he owns a Starlet/ Glanza conversion). So after a small but very careful search at ebay, a week of for delivery and some euros later we got our led lamps and changed all the green coloured bulbs to red multi-leds. Its not 100% finished yet as I haven't changed the a/c and rear windscreen heater button, but I'm quite amazed byt the result.

th_DSCF1227.jpgth_DSC00147.jpg

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Thanks for the comments dude!

For the heating panel you need 2 common "T5" bulbs. You'll need also 3-4 for the rear of the speedometer.

For the a/c, rear de-froster and rear fog lights you need some very special bulbs from toyota. I have the original part numbers, but I haven't found any red ones yet.

For the OE bulbs click here

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