About
Glenn Groseclos
Eugene, OR
1989
Supra89Dad@aol.com

Background
I picked up the car in August of 2001. It came equipped with a JDM engine, an HK$ mushroom filter, a Flowmaster bazooka out back, and a host of 200K plus miles. After a month or so of reading up on the potential of the MkIII supra, my son and I decided to experiment with mild modifications.

Turbo
Trust T-78 34D 18cm2. Translate Greddy speak into English? I don't know, the thing is frigging huge.

Bottom End
Ross Racing forged pistons, .20 over. Shot peened stock rods. Stock 7m stamped 12 counterweight crank. ARP rod studs, main studs and head studs. Trust 2mm Stopper HG. Screw reinforced oil seals.

Head
Ported, polished and roughed intake ports. Ported and polished exhaust ports. 5 angle performance valve job, AEM True Time adjustable cam sprockets. Stock valve train. Stock Cams

Intake
Custom intake manifold with forward facing stock throttle body. (Made Adam Hintgen’s as well) Port matched and polished stock lower intake runners to massively larger-than-stock head ports. Massively huge Trust three core racing intercooler for an S-15 Sylvia. Custom fitted 70mm boost tubes. HK$ SSQ BOV. No AFM. AEM IAT sensor. AEM 3.5 bar MAP sensor. Remote mount stock IAC valve.

Exhaust
Trust tubular stainless split housing turbo header. Trust type R external wastegate. Trust 3.5" downpipe. Random Tech 3" test pipe. Blitz N?R Spec 3.25" cat back exhaust.

Fuel
Trust 720 CC Injectors. Twin Walbro 255LPH high pressure Fuel pumps. Stock Fuel rail. Aeromotive linear rising rate adjustable fuel pressure regulator. No J-Pipe. Earl’s fittings. Stainless braided supply and return lines. Hard wired pump voltage, no resistor.

Drive train
RPS Max stage three pressure plate. Horsepower Freaks ceramic clutch disk. Stock flywheel. Stock rear-end. Stock driveshaft. Stock R-154.

Suspension
Tokico illumina 3 TEMS compatible struts. Intrax lowering springs. Stock sway bars. Brembo cross drilled and slotted rotors. Porter field carbon Kevlar pads.

Electronics
AEM PEMS 30-1010 Currently at AEM undergoing hard wire changes to facilitate COP LS-1 coil packs with dumb igniters, and to free up secondary knock sensor input. Required use of Honda B18 distributor for cam angle inputs. Full standalone engine management supporting fuel and spark based traction control, anti-lag, and gear biased everything. Full laptop control over every parameter, input, output, function, you name it, you can control it. GM two port boost control solenoid. Trust 60mm electronic peak hold warning EGT gauge in pod. Trust 60mm electronic peak hold warning AFR gauge in pod. Blitz dual turbo timer digital compact. AEM UEGO wideband O2 sensor and controller.

Interior
Stock plus lotec 2 gauge pillar pod. Turbo timer in center cubby under TEMS controller.

Exterior
Custom White with blue pearl paint job. Wide open stock front bumper cover, no fins. Motegi MR-7 17s w/ Sumitomo HTR-ZII 225-40-17 up front and 255-45-17 out back.

Writeup
After searching for some guidance on the upgrade path, we stumbled across Jeff Montigney's web site, and plotted out our "stages" of modifications. After gutting the stock downpipe's cat, and feeling what seemed like 60 HP at the wheels, we were hooked. We soon replaced the gutted stock downpipe with the Random Tech unit. With boost hitting a whopping 7 PSI, we decided to get a little more serious and ordered a used Apex-I AVC-R for $280.Still have never seen one go for anywhere near that price since. Now 12 PSI made the car feel like a rocket. Still more power was to be craved.

A Lexus AFM from the local junkyard and some RC engineering 550CC injectors teamed with the single Walbro pump and the Aeromotive FPR gave us the fuel needed for 18-19 PSI on the stock turbo. Amazed with the functionality of the Apex-I boost controller, we decided to go with the S-AFC for fine tuning the fuel curve. The term "everything else is just transportation" suddenly makes unreal sense. The car now genuinely feels like a rocket, and my first trip to the drag strip ever yields a 13.7 @ 103. Still new to the racing thing, I didn't know what those numbers meant for a while, but I knew I was hooked.

After waiting for 6 months, my Blitz exhaust finally arrives, although I had to pick it up in LA. After a while of driving like this, I decided to take a trip to the dyno at SP engineering, in LA, and with all stock internals, turbo and IC, the car put down a respectable untuned 297WHP and undetermined torque due to top end sputters from the motor. After shearing one Ct-26 compressor shaft, after the wheel dug into the housing and seized, I looked on to turbo options. The stutter past 6000 RPM also made me look into retiring my current engine soon, as well. Enter the real modifications.

I purchased the hair dryer online from Thepartstrader.com, as well as the race prepped long block, Looking into header, wastegate, and intercooler options, I decided to get a JDM Trust turbo kit. Very few kits were available in the states, so Jon at SP looked into his Japanese catalogues and found just what was needed. A T-88 full kit was ordered as well as a huge front mount kit originally intended for an S-15 Sylvia. The T-88 is a nice paper weight at the moment, as the 78 is much more streetable, and actually reaches full boost by 3800 RPM. The intercooler is your typical front mount, and it seemed childish to run piping from the drivers end tank to the passenger side of the vehicle, out the fender, over the blazingly hot turbo, and into the throttle body. So began the search for an intake manifold with a forward facing throttle with no actual manufactured items available, and custom applications being in the thousands of dollars, and limited still, we decided to fab our own. Using the stock lower runners, welded onto a plate, a 4"ID aluminum conduit was sliced and diced accordingly, and carefully reduced at the TB end to reduce turbulence. The result is the mirror finish intake in the pics, which works perfectly with almost any FMIC.

Adam, AKA DrJonez has had great luck fitting it with an IC off of an Isuzu NPR. With this setup we dynoed an untuned 469RWHP and 450 lb-ft of torque on pump premium at 18 pounds of boost at an AFR of 9.5-10.2:1 AFR. It was becoming apparent that trying to utilize the stock fuel map was getting tricky, as the mixture was so rich, that leaning it out even to 10.2:1 was causing slight detonation by inadvertently advancing the timing too much. Also the Karman AFM was beginning to get quite finicky about working at low RPM. With so little Air flow down low, the AFM didn't even register above 3 Hz until 3000 RPM. With this setup we mustered a best Trap speed of 117 MPH with sideways ET's all over the 13 sec range. Also detonation had claimed the insulator to #1 cylinder, and it quit firing before we even raced. Even with theses issues, the car now sounded like an F-18 was coming from behind the car as the turbo spooled. And when full boost arrived, it both sounded, and felt like a fighter jet was literally pushing on the rear bumper.

Even with so much WOT fun, the daily driver-ability of the vehicle was so poor, that the decision was finally made to ditch the stock ECU and switch to speed density instead of MAF. HK$ had just introduced the F-CON V Pro, which looked promising, but with its proprietary programming scheme, was untunable by anyone except an authorized HK$ tuning shop. Electromotive, Motec, Haltec, SDS, and others were considered, but the programmability, user interface, and availability of base calibrations, and publicity of AEM made the choice pretty straight forward. With the 30-1000 race ECU temporarily discontinued due to compatibility issues, AEM recommended adapting a Civic, Integra unit to our needs. With a pin out kit, weaning out all the now unnecessary wiring was made easier, although not easy. After failing to get any timing signals from the 7m CPS, AEM informed us that we would need amplified signals for the ECU. Now we have a b18 dist grafted onto the stock driven gear of a 7m CPS. Timing signals here. No Sync. No Start. Long nights on phone with AEM. Now no timing signals. More sleepless nights with AEM on phone. We have timing signals; we have sync, no start. 7M igniter requires multiplexing to work. AEM no support multiplexing. Enter LS-1 coils. (Thank you Derek from Derekdevises.com) The LS-1 coils need switched 5VDC to charge and fire the coils. The 30-1010 Civic ECU fires Honda coils which use a switched ground. Great. The sun comes up after another long night. Cranking, no start because no 5vdc from ECU, and strangely, no sync. Turns out my ECU from AEM only works in 70 degree or cooler weather. Ship back to AEM. This is where we are today. Months after the initial switch to standalone, and I thank God I have a metro to put around town in. AEM is making the required mods to the ECU to work flawlessly with my car at no charge. Their tech-support, although slow to call back, is second to none,

Future plans
With the addition of a second fuel pump, and 720cc injectors, I am hoping to make it into the 700RWHP category with some c16 race gas. Future mods include a Methanol injection system controlled by the AEM software, put together by Derek Obanion of DerekDevises.com. This system will provide a progressive methanol/water spray as boost pressure increases, allowing for up to 32 PSI of boost be run safely on 91 octane fuel with no detonation and IAT temps of 20F on a hot day. More on this to come soon. All Dyno info was based on a stock ECU, AVC-R, S-AFC, Lexus AFM, RC 550s, T-78 turbo, forward facing intake manifold and big front mount.