[Swede909]

UPDATE May 20, 2022: Officially promoted to GT1 status by the Canadian Motorsports Hall of famer Frank Sprongl. Crazy stuff. 😳

UPDATE February 18, 2022: Over the years this project has evolved from a very capable track car, hence RR (road race) in the opening paragraph below. I think it's fitting at this point of the build to recognize that this build has morphed into a full custom GT2 build. We're all very excited at the shop to see what this car can bring to the track. There are high expectations with all the effort that has been put into this project so hopefully the results will represent all the work and effort when she finally hits the track this summer.

Hey Everyone. I've been working on what I call my Supra RR (for road race) project for over 15 years and counting...although I have to admit this project had several pauses over the years as life gets in the way. If all goes well she may see her first track outing next year which is a dream finally coming true. Over the next week or so I will post photos of the project from start to present as I have time for it. It'll be a condensed version as it would take far too long to post every part of the build. I will do my best to keep the content updated regularly.

To start off here is a photo of the 1993 GE that became the project car. I had spent several years trying to track down a hardtop as that is what I wanted as the foundation of the project. In 2005, to my surprise, I saw a post on kijiji from a local guy advertising this 1993 Supra GE with over 280,000 miles. It was the perfect car as the chassis was in perfect condition, accident free and no rust.

The next step was stripping the car of all its former glory.



More stripping....



Onto the rotisserie to strip every last bit of weight possible.



Cage is beginning to take shape both under the hood and in the cabin. All wheel wells had to be enlarged as I'll be running 26" or 27" race slicks both front and back in 315/325 configuration. That is the rough plan for now. For test fitting purposes I used 26x305 in the front and 27x325 in the rear which you will see later in the thread. This build will see a tremendous amount of corner load and speed so we did a lot of strengthening to the chassis throughout to ensure the chassis dynamics and safety are optimized .

 

[FastTurbo]

subbed!

 

[Swede909]

Here's the underside of the front fender wells coming along. Lots more space for large tires to move about.



Here is the rear wheel well getting a similar treatment.



Good progress in the cabin. Around this stage I decided on a custom fuel cell from ATL which fits nicely in the rear seat compartment. This required part of the cage to come back out eventually before it could go back in to its permanent home. Photos to come later on.



I'm using a Holinger RD6 sequential gearbox so the tunnel had to be modified slightly. The peddle set required the driver side floor to be modified as well. And I also wanted a side exhaust so work was done to the passenger side footwell and rocker area to facilitate that. I also had mounts installed for the air lift system.

 

[yzracer931]

Subb'd

 

[Swede909]

Next day thread update. This is really good for me. Must have something to do with the excitement of going back and looking at all the photos and seeing all the challenges, decisions made over the years!
Quick history on the initial idea of what I wanted to build. Back in 2003 when I became serious about building this car I had the TRD widebody in mind with a stock 6 speed and modified 2JZ-GTE. The TRD had clean lines, a bit wider and racy looking enough to be a dedicated track machine. The fact that it was based on the JGTC cars of the early 90's also resinated with me as I'm a big fan of the 80's and 90's racing. Anyway, by 2008 the idea of what I wanted to build changed. I still liked the TRD body, but I wanted something more aggressive, wider, more capable and unique so I used JGTC and DTM as inspiration. The rest is history as they say.

The next stage of the transformation involved the control arms. Since the tires were growing by two inches in diameter meant the car would effectively ride one inch higher compared with the factory twenty-five inch tires. Centre of gravity would also shift up so I needed to bring the car down to compensate for this and to allow the control arms to work in their ideal range for the intended use. To make this all work the control arm mounting locations had to be shifted two inches up. This process took a lot of careful planning, measuring etc. to make everything work in the end which it did thankfully. Here are some shots of what it looked like up front.

Driver side lower control arm mount being worked on.



Setting up all the measuring equipment



Another angle



Here's part of the cage coming through the floor to tie in with the new mount location for added strength



Making progress on driver's side



Driver side is nearing completion



Passenger side coming along



Here is a shot of the new upper control arm mount



New upper mount welded into its new location two inches up



Straight on shot



Next we took a break from building and checked out the rear wing. This wing was used by Le Mans cars from a few generations ago out of the UK. Pretty sweet!

 

[Swede909]

I know some of you may be thinking why on earth would you mess with a perfectly good hardtop! Trust me, I thought about that many times before finally committing. I definitely appreciate an all original build from a purist point of view, but in this case I wanted to create something a bit special and something I can reminisce about with my kids.

Back to the project...and specifically the rear getting the control arm mount location treatment.



More cutting..



Test fit subframe for clearance



Rear mount beginning to take shape



Pretty much done



Full view of the updated rear subframe mount locations



Next we move onto the tunnel update for the new transmission. There's also a lightweight custom moulded dash. We're shaving weight everywhere we can to make her as light as possible. The estimated number is around 2800 lbs.



Here's a shot of the updated bushing being used for the subframe.

 

[airhead04]

This is going to be wicked

 

[Swede909]

This is going to be wicked

Thank you for your enthusiasm! One needs a lot of that to keep something like this project alive.

 

[Swede909]

At this stage of the project I felt like a massive hurdle was completed...:sadance: Major structural challenges were completed so the rest should be easier by all accounts....:nervous:

I'm going to switch the topic briefly. Some of you may be wondering what will be powering this machine..? Well, I'm happy to say that a 3.0ltr 2JZ-GTE is laying under the bonnet. It's a heavy beast by todays standards, but it's simply a legendary engine and anything else would numb my emotions. The sound, the power it makes, the history with the Supra is undeniable. There was never any other option I considered because the car would lose so much of its appeal.

Here are a few photos of the heart of this project

As the motor came from Japan. It's a stock VVti with about 30K on it.



Time for an upgrade..



And the internals..



The cylinder head..



The dry sump system comes from non other than Power house Racing. The level of detail in this system is outstanding! Thank you PHR for making my decision so easy when it came to deciding on where to go for this type of setup.

Oil pan



More oil pan



Mounted to belly of motor



Just checking out the underside. Sorry about some of these photos being a bit fuzzy. It's an older phone camera that doesn't have the greatest camera.

 

[SunBreaker]

awesome

 

[RRnold]

Damn, that's bad ass! I wish I had the garage space and a rotisserie to do shit like this. Keep 'em coming!

 

[MDSUPERSTAR]

Lovely project. Subscribed.

 

[Swede909]

Damn, that's bad ass! I wish I had the garage space and a rotisserie to do shit like this. Keep 'em coming!

Thanks! I wish I could say all the fab work was done by me. That’s a lot of hours that I wouldn’t have time for nor the experience. I owe all that work to a good friend of mine who’s educated as an architect and works on cars for a living. He’s not scared of any ideas I throw at him, well maybe for a day...haha so we work very well together.

 

[Swede909]

Thought I'd start the week with a couple more photos of the engine parts.

When it came to the valvetrain the goal was to be as light as possible since the motor was going to see higher rpms for lengthier periods of time. For this reasons I opted for titanium intake valves and inconel exhaust valves. Titanium connecting rods were cost prohibitive at the time which is a good thing (savings are good) as I can see getting the next generation Supra motor down the road which would shave around 50 lbs. NOT 150 lbs. off the front end. I know it's a BMW sourced engine, which doesn't resonate as well, so time will tell if that will ever makes its way into this build. There are billet 2JZ blocks available as I just found out, but nothing available for water cooled applications. However, the savings are round about 15kg (35lbs.) which isn't all that much considering the cost. I'll have to ponder that option for a while.



Close-up of cylinder porting work. The intake and exhaust ports are +1mm with custom bronze seats.



Crank bearings



Let's move on to the cooling of air and oil.

The front of the car will be occupied by a large radiator in a V configuration and the TRD front ducts normally used for the factory IC cores will be used, but modified to flow air to larger IC cores as per below. Below shows a rough modified version of the ducting parts.



This shows the rough layout of the IC cores from inside the wheelwell.



Since we used the front of the car to cool the intake air and engine coolant left us no space up front for cooling the oil. So, it was decided to mount the oil cooler at the rear of the car and will be cooled by ducting air to it and mounting high power fans.





The oil reservoir happens to sit very close to it so it works out well.

 

[Swede909]

Some body work being done. The final body design is based off the TRD widebody, but lots of modifications including custom forms to make all the parts should the need arise (dare I say accidents...). The new body panels are also significantly lighter than the TRD panels. The final body design will be 4" wider front and rear when compared with a stock TRD widebody kit.



Full front. Getting the shape just right before molds are made to make the real parts. A full carbon fibre front splitter will sit up front to make sure downforce is balanced with the large rear wing.



Rear right quarter beginning to look like something.

 

[Swede909]

Exterior view with final quarter panel design and fresh coat of paint

 

[2JZPWRD]

Wow!

 

[Mr Ree NZ]

Illl be coming back here regularly.

LOVE IT!!

 

[Swede909]

Since I'm on the subject of body I may as well introduce the high grade plywood front splitter. Nothing but the best for this girl. ....Anyway, this shows the shape the front splitter will be when she's all done. This photo also shows the air vent through the hood which will cool the V mounted radiator and reduce drag versus a stock configuration. Final hood design, and a few other details around the car will be determined next year when the car goes into a local wind tunnel for aerodynamic work.



Let's move back to the interior of the car for a moment. To make the car feel like a professional race car a carbon fibre bulkhead was installed behind the front seats. This really helps to give the cabin that cocoon feel. Here's a mock-up of the bulkhead that will separate the front of the cabin from the rear.



...and here is the carbon fibre bulkhead slowly getting there.



Seat belt support



Rear view of bulkhead. The fuel vent module is also seen in this photo. The fuel delivery is very fast with this system so the air has to escape quickly somehow.



Earlier in the thread I mentioned a custom ATL fuel cell going in the rear seat. To make this work we had to produce a mold to send to ATL.



Fitting of the complete ATL fuel cell. Fit like a glove.



A fuel cell must get its fuel from somewhere.

 

[Swede909]

Illl be coming back here regularly.

LOVE IT!!

Thank you for your support and kind words!!