DIY Tech: A guide for the rest of us: KW Variant 3 Installation
By Tatsu Tsuchida
When Mike Kojima extols the virtues of a particular coil-over kit, or discusses what spring rates it has, how the valving works in the shock body, or what sort of proprietary hydraulic oil makes the shock respond well to undulations in the road, I sometimes feel these concepts require an engineering degree. Much of it is over my head, but I know well enough that when a smart guy raves about some product I'm better off following suit than trying to understand it. We all know Mike and Daijiro's relationship with KW is a strong one, and Mike has put these KW V3s on the MotoIQ FR-S, so that's endorsement enough for me.
Project Scion FR-S: Suspension Part 1 - Getting the Basics with KW Suspension, Cusco and Race Comp Engineering
By Mike Kojima
With the FR-S engine giving us fits we decided to turn our attention to something different on the car, the suspension. We were surprised with the FR-S, the ride in stock form was pretty darned stiff for a stock car, the car felt oversprung for the amount of low speed damping from the stock shocks but the ride felt harsh. The car was also really tail happy, fun to drive but not the fast way around turns, especially on corner exit. Perhaps the worst fault the car had was an odd shimmy on the freeway. The car felt like it was following the rain grooves much like a motorcycle does. It was a very unsettling feeling.
Project Scion FR-S Part 4- Exhaust and Tuning Frustrations
When we last left off, we had just installed some bolt ons onto our Scion FR-S' motor and picked up some quick power. Our stock power levels were 145hp and 119 lb-ft of torque and after a few weeks of driving our power levels had returned to 147 whp and 122 lb-ft of torque for a big WTF. Determined to keep adding power, we continued with our testing and tackle the rest of the exhaust.
Project Scion FR-S Testing GReddy's Cold Air Intake!
The Scion FR-S is a pretty exciting car to be involved in. It has single handedly given our industry a shot in the arm and parts are rapidly being made for it. Our FR-S is being worked on fast, so fast it is kind of a blur as we were cramming a lot in just a few days to get the car ready for the SEMA show.
In our last edition of the Project we tested the GReddy EVO 3 Exhaust and now we are going to test GReddy's cold air intake. In reality this happened on the same day but we didn't have time to write much about it during the SEMA and PRI shows so now we are trying to catch up!
Project Scion FR-S Part 2- Uncorking the exhaust with Greddy
The more time we spend behind the wheel of Project Scion FR-S, the more dear it is becoming to our hearts. This car is really fun to drive. What really puts a damper on things is that it simply just doesn't have enough power. If power is the FR-S's weak point then that's what we are going to address first. To help us get more power, we turned to our friends at Greddy who supplied us with their new Evo 3 exhaust for our evaluation.
Project Scion FR-S Part One - An Introduction
27 years ago I bought the first new car in my whole life, a red Toyota AE86 GTS Corolla hatch. It was in 1985, I was in my last semester of College and I was working as an intern at TRD. A whole new world was ahead of me. It was an exciting time in my life and the AE86 was the car for that time. It was inexpensive, economical, good looking and its twin cam 16 valve 4AG engine was quite advanced for the time. What ended up making the AE86 an Iconic car was that it (and the Nissan S chassis) was one of the last RWD compacts made. I had a lot of fun with that car and wish I had never sold it.
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