Tag Archives: FR-S

Gazoo Racing Twin Charges the Toyota FT-86

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Gazoo Racing is Toyota’s factory backed tuning company. Some of their previous projects include a supercharged 6-speed iQ and a hybrid sports MR-S. They’ve just released news of a twin charged GT-86 / Scion FR-S / Subaru BRZ. Twin charged means that the engine has both a supercharger and a turbocharger. The supercharger boosts the engine while it’s still at low rpm’s and then the turbocharger takes over once it’s spooled up at high rpm. Generally speaking, this allows the use of a larger turbocharger since you don’t have to worry about turbo lag. The Toyota engineers went with the boxer engine layout for this car because it was the only way to get the sporty look of a low hood line, but it eliminated the possibility of AWD (no room for a front diff under the engine) for Subaru and didn’t leave space for a large air to air intercooler in front of the radiator. That’s why news of this twin charged car comes as a bit of a surprise. I think there was enough complaints about low power from the media reviews of the car to warrant them breaking a few traditions to make this happen. A closer look at the engine bay reveals a few interesting things.

  1. The air enters the system through the intake box where there’s a stock style panel filter. The air moves through the black plastic pipe to the supercharger behind the engine.
  2. This looks to be a roots type supercharger that is driven by a shaft that runs across the top of the engine to the belt system at the front. The cylindrical cover directly under the number 2 hides the shaft. It looks like the pulley that drives the supercharger is peeking out from behind the blue coupling on the air box. The red pipe above the number 2 is the output of the supercharger where the air leaves after it’s been compressed.
  3. If you follow the red pipe out of the supercharger, it drops down into the corner of the engine bay where the turbocharger is hiding. The turbocharger isn’t visible, but if you look carefully you can see another red pipe behind the one that connects the supercharger and turbocharger. This is where the air leaves the turbocharger after it’s been compressed.
  4. The large aluminum box against the firewall is the air to water intercooler that cools the compressed intake air. The coolant used is piped to a radiator in the front of the car. The radiator for the air to water intercooler is smaller than an equivalent air to air intercooler making it easier to package in the front end.
  5. This is where the air enters the intake manifold for the engine. The stock intake manifold would normally go where the shaft for the supercharger is. They must have designed a new one for this application.

The press release says the car develops 320 horsepower as well as having an aero kit, staggered 18″ wheels and a rollbar. The fact that it was prototyped by Gazoo means that there may be a possibility or seeing a production version of this car. At the very least Toyota felt there was enough of a demand for a higher power version of the FT-86 to build this car and gauge the demand for it. Head over to the FT-86 Club to look at a lot more high resolution pictures, specs and the full press release.

Source: FT-86 Club

HKS “Racing Performer” D1 FT-86

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This is a video released by HKS Japan and captioned in English by HKS Europe. What they’re doing is finding the baseline performance of a basic Toyota FT-86 / Scion FR-S / Subaru BRZ. The car has a stock engine but has been outfitted with HKS coilovers and an Endless big brake kit. Nobuteru “None Better” Tanaguchi takes the car around Tsukuba circuit after they pull the fuses for the stability, traction control and ABS. His initial impressions are that the car is light and handles well, but doesn’t have much power. Take this with a grain of salt, though. HKS is developing a GT Supercharger kit for the car so Tanaguchi can use it to compete in the D1 Drift Championship. There’s been footage of the car with the supercharger on, but it hasn’t been used in competition yet.

****Be sure to turn on the English captions with the “CC” button to the left of the video quality gear


Source: HKS Europe on Youtube

Scion Racing/Greddy Formula D FR-S

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Scion Racing uploaded this behind the scenes build of Ken Gushi’s FR-S drift car for this year’s Formula D Drifting Championship. Aftermarket parts manufacturer Greddy handled the construction of the car. The video had a few interesting details that I was still curious about. They advertise the engine as a flat-4 that produces 500hp. I didn’t think it would be possible for them to have already developed the stock 2.0 liter with a brand new direct injection system to that level. There’s a scene in the video where they clearly show a Cosworth engine going into the car. That means it’s more than likely a Subaru EJ25 based engine much like Hibino’s D1 car in Japan. I’m excited to see how well Ken Gushi and Scion Racing does this year after having to campaign a special exception rear wheel drive converted tC for the last four years.

 


Source: Scion Racing on YouTube

The FT-86 and the Age of the Car Forum

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Motor Trend just posted this video review of the Scion FR-S. It’s got me pretty excited because I was worried about how well the FR-S and it’s twin, the Subaru BRZ, would be received here in America. I’ve noticed a bit of a disturbing trend in enthusiasts lately that involves taking tuning too far. Everybody seems to be dreaming of massive power numbers or some sort of intricate fabrication intensive way of doing something that nobody else has had the resources to try. I overhear a lot of these delusions of grandeur at car shows where some guy is talking really loudly about how the car that he’s going to build is better than the one everybody is looking at. This kind of mentality bothered me to the point where I cancelled my subscription to Modified magazine when they decided to turn all of their weekend warrior project cars into unlimited budget time attack racers and then raised the cover price to pay for it. I’m not willing to pay $35 a year to read tech articles on how to install a $12,000 carbon fiber wide body kit that’s not readily available here in the States. I was thinking about it today and I think at least part of the responsibility for this mentality is due  to the age of the car forum.

The internet makes it a good time to be a car guy right now. All of the cars that I have owned have had their own dedicated forums where I’ve been able ask questions and do research. I’ve even been able to download free PDF’s of all of the factory service manuals that I’ve ever needed. This sharing of information makes car forums great, but it’s not without its downsides. Just like the rest of the internet, problems arise when some people realize that they have access to a large audience of people to impress. That’s when sensible tuning philosophy goes out the window. “I sharpened up the turn-in of my car and did some autocrosses” simply doesn’t carry the same weight in digital text as “I made 800 hp with my custom turbo setup.” I think that’s why a lot more people are too eager to go over-budget on a project that’s well beyond their skill level. It could also be that I’ve been in the car scene long enough to turn into the equivalent of the crotchety old man who yells at all the young kids and their big turbos. Get off my lawn!

Either way, I was pleasantly surprised when the guy doing this review of the Scion FR-S, Carlos Lago, starts talking about how well balanced the car is. He realized that the driving experience the car provided was the result of the engine power, steering, brakes, tires and suspension all working in harmony. That’s exactly why I’ve been so excited about this car. This is what it means to be a driver’s car, not “Check out how hard you get pushed into your seat as I mash the throttle to the floor and get a speeding ticket.” Lago even goes on to ask the tuners of America not to ruin the car by putting turbos on it. They then proceed to do the standard barrage of tests and hand the car over to Randy Pobst to drive on The Horse Thief Mile at Willow Springs. I would say this is the best review for the FT-86 that I’ve found so far.


Source: Motor Trend on YouTube

GT Channel Interviews The Scion FR-S Chief Engineer

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GT Channel got this exclusive in-depth interview with the chief engineer of the FT-86 on the Toyota side, Tetsuya Tada. I believe he’s the same engineer that was interviewed in the Chris Harris review. They get some pretty interesting details out of him about the development of the project. He talks about interviewing enthusiasts before the project started and how they shaped the decision to use a boxer engine. He also tells the story about how he got Subaru involved even though the car wasn’t be turbo or AWD. Tada gives out a few other interesting facts about the car that you probably won’t get from anybody else. There’s a bit of weird editing at the end, so just turn off the video after the main part ends.


Source: GT Channel on YouTube