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4/08/2004 MY STORY -'We meet' The story starts a few years back. Having owned a 1000cc Starlet I was impressed with the GT Turbo, but at the time they cost a lot, so I just had to do without. Like I said a while back, if you just do your job, then things will work out. I live roughly 90kms from my place of employment. Doesn't sound like a lot, but in Jamaica thats the other side of the island. Ocho Rios is my hometown. I hate Kingston. I akin Kingston to my bathroom 'its rather useful, but you wouldn't want to live there.' My commute is a myriad of contrasts and extremes. From the tight winding roads in Fern Gully, to the second highest mountain range in Jamaica Mount Rosser, followed by a long flowing highway leading to a vicious river side road, and finally the fast traffic filled flats into Kingston. When it was time to upgrade I had to make up my mind on my next vehicle. The choices were three, Honda Civic Type-R, Starlet GT Turbo, and the Mitsubishi lancer GSR. The CTR was the only Honda, besides the NSX that I hadn't experienced and from the reviews I was beginning to like it. Drive it like you're mad they said. I had concerns about tackling Mt Rosser in the CTR, low torque figures, but since you had to rev the hell out of it to get anything anyway I was willing to get one. After talking with local Honda dealer ATL getting one would prove hard. I was told that I'd have to be put on the waiting list for the waiting list since Honda would make the deliveries to domestic orders first then to the overseas dealers. Strike one. The GSR is basically a low powered Lancer Evolution. Its 1800cc turbo engine match with the 4WD gave it the dual nature I needed. Fast enough, but enough grip to make the corners disappear with ease. However, they are quite rare in Jamaica and people were asking too much for them. I wasn't willing to spend that much money on a used car when I could get a new car for a few more thousand. And a manual one was hard as hell to find. The GT Turbo craze had fallen and the Starlets were getting affordable. Pissed off owners were selling them left and right and migrating to Hondas. They dont' drive good, easy to blow up, were the comments. This was in contrast to what my friend in Japan was telling me. Buy the Starlet he said, you won't regret it. CTR straight track car, he said. Nice suspension, chassis, but he said I won't like the motor feel. The GSR is great as long as it doesn't break and there are few performance parts available for it. The best thing he said it had going for it is that you can convert it to a Evolution. The Starlet with a few proper tweeks would be just what I was looking for. After buying a '94 GT Turbo I was quite happy, but after two weeks I was dying. The car was fast, but driving the 88kms back and forth through the terrain I had to face would leave me so jacked up on adrenalin that I couldn't get to sleep quickly. Not the thing you wanted after a long day at work and only a few hours to go before you head back. Driving the EP82 at speed of such a distance required a level of commitment few can provide. Then I saw it. At a local dealer I saw my first Glanza V up close. I'd only seen another one and never knew what it was. Funny enough my friend would come to own that car. The Glanza was great. Its lines were amazing. I asked for a drive and I was sold. Unfortunately so was the car and the owner had no wish to part with it. A contact of mine indicated that he could source one. I made the arragements and a few weeks later I had taken delivery of my present car, a 1996.7 Glanza V. Unlike the GT which is a rather raw car, the EP91 was a civilized, comfortable, more refined and still had the speed I was looking for. It was a damn pleasure to drive, and when its working properly still is to this day. 25/08/2004 CLARIFICATION There is some confusion about my 5E build up. This site doesn't reflect the present state of my car. These modifications are taken from my articles published in the Sunday Herald, a local Jamaican newspaper. As such the information is treated like a normal performance magazine, which it is in fact part of. These modifications were done months, even years ago before reaching here. This allows for proper evaluation of the information by me before I publish it in the paper or out on the web. The 5E build up you are reading took place in mid 2000, when my 4E gave up the ghost one night. It was one of the first 4E/5E conversions on the island. At that point the only other conversion known to me was that of Stephen Gunter with Chris Shim, but there may have been others. As I indicated I had no help because there was none at the time. People were doing crazy stuff like shaving down piston crowns (bad for combustion stability) or running their 5E's high compression. Now this isn't an instructional 5E conversion guide, but just a highlight of my own efforts to be 1500cc. There are many theories out there about how to make a 5E, and I have noticed that the majority of the successful 5Es have adopted much of what I've done, despite the fact that I didn't gve them the information. This outside validation said to me that I'm pretty much on the right track. Conditions were never right for my 5E swaps as they seem to come after some random engine failure, but I some point I will put together an super5E, or maybe I'll just do a super4E instead. So for those that have been waiting on the engine stuff, its here full force. It won't stop until it reaches my present engine situation, which should be for a while. During that time I hope the information garnered will be of service to all, and I thank everyone for their emails and interest. Up top for our pic I have our foray into print, the Toyota Tuners of Jamaica Club Magazine. TToJ Magazine will not only be print, but also digital for those outside of Jamaica wiching to purchase it. If you like my site then you'll love the mag as it'll be 100% Toyota for our local view here in Jamaica. Our premiere issue will be a 100% Levin issue as the revitalization of the 4AGE spirit begins here. We'll have it all, from Starlets to Supras, they'll be there every quarter. It'll compliment the soon to be up TToJ website. So sit tight folks hope the cover is enough to get your mouths watering. NEW: 5E lesson number 3. 16/09/2004 THE FINAL STAGES I just finish watching Jet Li's HERO. It is a terrific movie, much more so than his normal action flicks. SPOILER WARNING. In the start of the movie there is a line that all war has heroes and villians, it just depends upon which side you're looking from. Hero is about four people trying to assassinate what they have come to see as a tyrant, a madman with a dream of uniting his country being paid for in blood. The assassins tried to kill the king, but stopped due to 1)a higher reason than bloodshed, 2)a man reaching a level of self awareness, as revealead later in the movie. As the movie draws to a close we see the level of emplathy shared by both assassin and target. It reaches a peak when the King finds out that the one man that can kill him stopped because they both share the same dream. Even more so the assassin reveals to the king himself in the form a calligraphy of the Chinese word for sword. In it he sees the three stages of a warrior and the ultimate truth. 1:Warriors must train to be one with their weapons for maximum ability, 2: War, conflict is inevitable, its how we handle these battles is important, 3:In the end all the battles are meaniless, a true warrior will attain self awareness leading to self peace. Right now I head for peace. The pieces of my EP91 project are slowly coming to a fruitful end and I see than now. The mad tuning to win 'whatever' and prove 'whatever' still linger, but the truth is that I'm at peace with my tuning. The path I take now will not be one forged in the street battles of old, but the knowledge of new. In all my battles the true enemy has been me, drowned in the ignorance of ego and pride of others. The notches and scars of races won and lost have now been cleansed from me. As I bow to my path I hope that HardcoreEP will enlighten you as it has me. Its not over yet, we still have some ways to go. Enjoy. NEW: 5E Turbo, put together. Thank you Sandro for sending in your 5E turbo powered Sera, one cool ride from Toyota. Love the doors. 8/10/2004 JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I COULD LEAVE... Famous words from Godfather III..., 'Just when I thought I could get out they drag me back in.' Didn't have much to say this update until to my abject horror another 5E down the drain. After pulling the engine apart I could see no reason for the failure, other than just a bad rod. It broke, putting a huge hole in the engine block and puncturing the oil pan. Funny enough I was on my way to help another friend who had just trashed his 5E. Now people may question the strength of the 5E, I don't, but there are some realities of any engine. My friend's 5E survived 22psi and no oil to get him back home. His boost guage is metric and in a lapse he forgot that it wasn't 1.5psi, but 1.5KG/CM. His car started making funny bearing noises and when it was pulled apart, one dead 5E. On my way to help him move his car my 5E went. I wasn't revving the car. Due to certain issues I hadn't passed 4000rpm in a while and just crossing over a stoplight I heard the engine go. I just laughed. I promised myself this would be my final modification, but my efforts will be put into a Super4E. Since the 4E had responded so well to my 'Jap tuning' I will just be assembling the parts that I had lying around for the now defunct Super5E project. Of course it will be featured here on HardcoreEP. I would also like to thank all the people that have emailed me. I thank you all as usual for taking the time out of your surfing time to visit my little corner of the web. What I'm doing here is rather different. I hope that my experiences will add to yours. As I started this website on the concept that I started my previous Suzuki website, let the information be available. It isn't perfect, but its a serious start. Normally when I vist other EP sites the stuff is rather limited and working in the media has made me realize the power of a photo. My friends complan about the Shockwave, but the investment in quality software, layout time, and photos, as far as I'm concerned make it worth it. So for the time being I'm still in the game. I'll be doing it alongside my attempts to get my car back in tip top physical shape, which this is holding up. 22/10/2004 I COULD BE WRONG... One of the reasons this site exists is because information is so hard to come by for the EP. Those that have it hold on to it with a fury that I think is legendary. If its your info fine, but many times its information from somewhere else and people are playing the stingy gatekeeper. The Starlet forums, thank god, are not like this. I find it refreshing that data can be passed with little incident. Of course, many a times we disagree, but the fact remains the information was passed. Now passing wrong information is an issue. My site is not a end all be all of EP information. I see and treat it like an on-line culmination of my experiences as I attempted to tune my little ride. There are errors here and there, spelling, grammatical, layout, and visual, but these are all part of the humaness I try to put into my site. I'm not some cold calculating service with armies of people behind me. Its just me and my Macintosh, putting up the site during one of my few work breaks. Recently, I came across and issue of the head gasket thickness in a forum. This isn't a rant or rave, just an observation. One person asked said it was 1mm, and I'm inclined to believe him because he has the Toyota service manual, but one person said he measured what he had right there and got a different measurement. I myself have measured them, twice,and just to make sure I went back again through the rubble that is my store room, found a old stock EP91 head gasket and got a different measurement too. This isn't an issue of wrong or right, but of examination. My choice of head gasket was made because I measured the one I had. As a matter of fact when they pulled the engine apart the guy asked me why I was running two headgaskets because it looked so thick. I hope that others will do the same and LOOK before they modify, and unlike other people if I'm wrong I'll be happy to correct. Right now I'm kinda happy. The rides on the road, things seem to be coming together despite the recent run of bad luck. I must thank Wendly again, for being the BEST STARLET MECHANIC BAR NONE, in Jamaica. NEW: The CT9 in detail, before we start tuning it up Japanese style. 23/12/2004 ASSHOLES ARE EVERYWHERE Apologies for the late update, but anybody that works in the media knows that this is the busy time of year for us folks. Nuff stuff to do with shrinking deadlines due to the impending holidays. For many it is also a time of reflection, so let me reflect. I've been fortunate. I consider myself a customer of the world, a consequence of living in the United States for several years. Catalog shopping became common place. Doing business with people over the phone, miles away, was usually a very good experience. Some hitches, but nothing that couldn't be solved. I ranted about my local situation a while back with precious little for my Starlet I was forced to shop elsewhere. Thank God, for the Internet and good friends. My local interactions have been less than positive from the start. However, I must tell this story, as I think its only fair to Assholes everywhere. Sure, Jamaica has a lot, but we didn't invent it. It's the story of two companies, both Australian I might add. Now I must commend Bob Tait at Whiteline Suspension components. After discovering their products I must have emailed Tait every day for over four months before even buying a thing. He responded to every email with an uncanny frequency only matched by my questions. Finally I bought something, a set of lowering springs and their rear sway bar. Now, I would suspect that Bob had no idea that I'd be buying anything, but you wouldn't have believed that he thought that I was wasting his time. Over the past years I've bought 90% of the Whiteline parts available for the Starlet and would easily recommend them to anyone. Then there was JMS! I frequent autospeed.com a lot. As you can see from my site I by a lot of performance videos. The Serious Performance series is part of that. On one of their tapes was Japanese Motorsports led by some guy named Denzo. Anyway, I hit their website and saw that they sold used Japanese Performance parts. Cool, I thought, but I never saw anything much for the Starlet. Then one day, about TWO years ago I saw a Blitz turbo kit for the Starlet. I emailed them to ask about buying it. A quick response netted that I could just send a deposit to hold it and then send the rest of the latter. The price was around $700, I had the money, but decided on caution for whatever reason and sent only the deposit of 20%. As I respected that they run a business I opted to send the money the fastest method possible. In Jamaica, that means expensive. So on top of my US$200, I coughed up the extra money to wire the money directly to their account. I wasn't about to use my credit card over an unsecured phone with people I've never done business before. With the money wired I thought everything was okay. Only to go to the site and see the turbo kit gone, despite the fact that I had confirmed interest and sent a deposit. Much to my dismay I was informed that another sales person had sold the turbo kit. No real problem, until I asked back for my money. At that point communication became rather spotty at best. My requests for refunds were answered with the frequency of rain in the sub-Sahara. Until finally I was told 'the accountant will handle it'. I went to the bank that did the transfer and asked for a trace. This was to confirm that the money had been sent to JMS' account. It wasn't free, but I got the information, scanned it and sent it to them showing them absolute proof that they had my money. Again, 'the accountant will handle it'. They must not have an accountant. I have yet to receive my money, or even a reply to my email indicating that they have done so, and its been going on a over a year and a half now. I've done business with many individuals, and businesses the world over, and I find it unfortunate that a company would ruin their reputation with a customer for a mere US$200. I was thinking of many ways to try and get back my money like starting a web campaign against them, but what would that achieve. My Grand-aunt lives in Australia and offered to get my money back from them for me, but I decided not to bother. It is only $200, even if it was my hard-earned money, the effort to retrieve it at this point is moot. Even if they gave it back to me, I'D STILL THINK THEY WERE ASSHOLES. If you see Denzo or any of 'high-cocktane crew' tell him I hope he spent the money on something good. During this xmas season, I have nothing but best wishes for the Starlet community. I'd like to thank the people that have emailed and participated in my little corner of the web. I'll be continuing with my hardcore technical stuff next year, when I'm not so busy. NEW: I feature Richard Perkins hardcore Starlet, and review the Drift Bible. For the few Jamaicans out there that frequent this site, I've added the new Toyota Tuners of Jamaica forum board to the links. I've also put our first newsletter here in PDF form (1.6MB) for you to download. Again best of the season. 19/2/2005 HERE WE GO AGAIN Its a new year and I thank everyone for visiting my little slice of the web. I know I've been taking long, but the realities of life have been rather heavy for the holidays. I was alone as usual and spent the time thinking about where I want to be. Like everyone I made some new year's resolutions, and have failed to impliment any of them. That changes this weekend. Its been a tough year, I've spent too much money on my car, and complaints are flying left right and centre, but I've been one to capitulate. Someone once said to me that I don't know when to let go. That's not true, I know when to let go, but I'd like to leave it the way I got it, if even better. HardcoreEP will continue to be that lone voice of the path less travelled in the starlet world. I'll continue to do things the way I see them for my ultimate goal, building the best 'balance machine' that I can. The truth is I'm pretty much there, just a few more things. I'll admit I've made mistakes, but no-one here is perfect. What is bad is when we don't learn from these errors and continue down the path of sameness. Its me for 2005 and we've got some heavy stuff lined up for you. So sit tight. I'll update as often as I can and I'm sure that you'll love every minute of it. There are some problems on the site due to the shockwave, but I beg you to hold on till summer when I move to bigger quarters. HardcoreEP is my home, and my focus. I'd also like to say that I'm now on yahoo messenger. I'm not a IM hog so I'm not on it often, but at requests will do so. Just log into your YM client and add the email address to your friends list. NEW: I review the latest from Best Motoring in the media gallery. Parts section updated with my friend's HRF exhaust system. For space reasons I'll be taking down the video clips next update, so make sure you get them now. 17/3/2005 DA PLAN 2005 isn't going like I planned, fate has just thrown me for a spin for reasons I'll explain later. Still things aren't as bad as they seem. My CT9 seems to have been giving up the ghost. Its smoking randomly and every so slightly, so I suspect I need to recplace it before things get worse. Which brings me to my first goal. I'm gonna join the 200 wheel horespower crew around here. Small potatoes in Jamaica, but I'll be doing it in style and some light tuning. The next plan is fix the car. Its kinda run down physically. If it looked as good as it drove it would be an Aston Martin DB9. The parts have already been ordered and I'm just waiting for them to arrive. The next plan is to just tighten up things. I'll be making only three major block purchases for the year. Group one will be some coil-overs. I'm still considering retaining my strut and spring setup, but the future is definately coil-overs. Group two will be cooling. A high capacity radiator, thermostat, and some new hoses will be on order. If there is money left over we'll spring for an oil cooler. Finally Group three will be some interior parts. Most likely some racing seats. I have had a new steering wheel sitting at home for a while now waiting to go in, just lazy I guess. After that its set, as we say in Jamaica, but don't worry HardcoreEP still has tons of information still to come. I've also gone through the site to try an clean up any issues as best as I can. It seems to be a problem with the Shockwave, the browsers, and the hosting. Once I have my new server up everything I'll be smooth. NEW: The Japanese tuning begins. We go hardcore with parts never seen outside of Japan and start on the trek some cool numbers. I've removed the videos for space sake and have put up some cool JDM PDF scans from J's Magazine about the starlet. I was supposed to have done it loing ago, but you know, time. Enjoy till next update. 07/4/2005 THE REASONS There are a lot of different Starlet owners out there, because variety is the spice of life, but on one forum the call for a Starlet club has been put out for a while now, no takers. On another local forum someone made the comment about the willingness of others to share, but not Toyota owners, especially Starlet owners. That's a rather broad brush. For myself there isn't any question of a willingness to share. HardcoreEP was started on this basis. If you live in Jamaica you'll notice that HardcoreEP is also published in the traditional print media, The Sunday Herald our 3rd largest newspaper. I'd be the first to admit I'm not perfect, but I'm not making this up along as I go. Everything you see here has been used unless stated and I have no problem indicating my failures. I've broken a lot of stuff in my time. It isn't my way or the highway. I'm always willing to hear something new. This is unlike the attitude of may I've encountered. I find some are quiet out of fear or selfishness as they don't want anybody to know their secrets. On the other scale some owners just don't want to add their voice to the great discussion. I am not one to judge. I know where I stand, how about you? On occasion I do come across the midpacker. This owner is doing his own thing, but has reached a point outside of his knowledge base. He needs help, real honest advice, but has past the 'tricks' stage. Kinda like me. I've been trying to get the 5E to work for a while now. I know it can and does as many of my friends have upgraded to it. A few weeks ago I can add another friend to that list. with 9psi he rocketed out 203whp from his 5E conversion, more importantly his car isn't the bargain basement tins that I've seen around. He bought his car stripped from Japan. It turned out to have been a circuit car and came with some nice extras. With no engine to start with he went straight for the 5E turbo. Like most he trashed the 5E's high compression set up, and after a rebuild went with the low compression pistons. The rest is history. He's got a real nice ride he's proud of. That's why he's number eight in the Gallery this update. Then he got me thinking. He asked me at one point what did my car come with. I told him nothing, I bought it stock from Japan. Everything on it is from my hard work, and like him I was just damn lucky to own my car. My inital goal for my car was to touch the JDM wheel hp limit on the CT9. It made more economical sense not to at this time around. I have faith in my tuning so I know 200whp from the 4E will be a reality. Hope you'll join me as I do so. I'd like to thank Geo, and Serge, people like you give me hope. The above dyno sheets show the difference between my td04 set up, stock CT9 and jap tuned CT9. The car at this tuning stage has the following parts:Factory CT9x with HKS Actuator For the dyno people, I don't use flywheel quotes because the re-calculation percentage varies from dyno to dyno from my experience, further adding to any issues that may lay surrounding dyno figures. I use the US standard 15% worse case senario for flywheel figures if I must. |
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