serialk11r's FR-S
 

Hello everyone!

After 4.5 years on this forum, and 3 years in an MR2 Spyder, I somehow found myself in one of these cars. My MR2 blew its crappy 1ZZ engine and I decided I wanted something newer that wouldn't need replacement parts left and right, which could hold groceries without taking 10 minutes to neatly tuck them into tiny little cubbies.

This car fit the bill, mainly because I don't trust Beamers after reading about the problems, a Cayman has no rear seats, and a 911's rear seats are useless (an older one of course haha, just graduated I don't have 90k :P).

Quick facts: 2013, Argento*, was originally a Colorado car, 28k on the clock. PO added track pipe (I'm adding a muffler to it, it makes me too scared to hit the gas for fear of cops), absurdly dark tint that I can't see out of at night, and red felt over the dash. Paid a Benz dealer 18.5k, I think they screwed up their ads so they were getting worried they couldn't sell it.

First thoughts: I really don't like driving this nearly as much as my MR-S. It's tail-happy, the engine makes unhealthy noises (for the record, my car sounds exactly like the brand new one I drove at the dealer), and the transmission feels clunky (although maybe a fluid change would make things better, it basically just needs less friction sliding into gear). To its credit, the engine's power delivery is pretty smooth and despite having bigger cams and a higher rev limit, it's only equally as pitiful as the 1ZZ under 2000rpm.

Wind noise got a little annoying on the drive home, but at least my ears aren't ringing, which is what always happened in the MR2.

And of course, when I look over my shoulder I'm reminded that real people can fit in the back, and gone are the days of spending 10 minutes cramming groceries into tiny cubbies and frunks not meant for luggage.

One thing I'm going to be experimenting with is blending E85 into the tank to get high octane gas on the cheap. Since I was near an E85 pump (which are rare around here) I went ahead and mixed 5.5 gallons 89 into the tank which had around 3 gallons of presumably 91 left, drove to the E85 pump only pressing very gently on the gas, and added 1.6 gal E85, giving a ~22% ethanol blend. In theory this blend should behave like ~95 octane, and it ran great. I'm going to mix a little 87 in tomorrow and monitor the knock sensor with Torque.

So enough complaining, let's talk mods!

To be done immediately are a muffler and lighter window tint. I have an appointment next week to get 3M Crystalline on the windshield, going to decide what goes on the side windows when I get there. Probably the lightest tinted ceramic I can find. I think I'm going to have an exhaust shop weld a Magnaflow into the track pipe, this car needs a little more volume for my MR2-damaged ears.

Noise tube will need to go, and a catch can will be going on.

I'm 99% sure I want this thing plastidipped in matte clear for the satin metallic look. That's what boring colors like gray and silver are for right?

I'll be getting an OFT and spending some time attempting to tune it myself. Not going to stray much from stock since I'm not stupid.

All the incandescent bulbs are going to be discarded except the high beams, they simply look awful. Ordering LEDs right now. Rear lights will be replaced by Valenti ones.

Later down the road are suspension, front brakes, lithium ion battery, gonna take it to the track at least once.

Stay tuned!

Certainly looks better than the mr-s lol. Congrats on the purchase. I love mine.

Hahahhaha you're totally correct, I forgot to say that. Walking up to the MR-S, if I approached it at the wrong angle I would think "god that is ugly". This car looks pretty hot from every angle except directly from the rear. That will change when I put Valenti lights on.

Okay, just removed the noise tube, but I can't get a good photo at night time so whatever. Used a 1.5" rubber cap from Lowes, but it seems a little sketchy since the intake pipe is also rubber and it's very easy to pop the cap off...but it seems to work for many people so whatever. I think the engine sounds a lot better now that there's no strange raspy sound coming through the tube.

Had the worst experience trying to remove the tint though. I tried using a steamer, which left tons of glue on the glass, so I switched to a blowdryer, which didn't do any better, so I decided to pull the film off and remove the glue afterwards.

That glue is a b**** to remove! I first tried putting alcohol on paper towel and rubbing it off, but there was so much that it would gum up. Then I tried window cleaner, which was only good for dissolving a small amount at a time. Then I bought Goof Off and tried that, and from the sheer quantity of glue that was gumming together I realized I should probably try scraping it first.

I didn't have a proper razor so I broke 2 segments off a utility knife and scraped with that. After like half an hour of diligent scraping I managed to get most of both windows clean. Then I went to clean up the residue with Goof Off and went through another pile of towels. I probably got brain damage from all the fumes, and there's still a little left at the bottom and front edge of the windows...:mad0602: I hope the people in the tint shop won't charge me too much to scrape the little bit that's left off, because I'm done with this BS.

On another note, I went to the Toyota dealer today to see if they could get rid of the weird rattle. I scheduled an appointment to get it checked out, then it suddenly dawned on me that it might be coming from the seat. Sure enough, the passenger seat adjustment bar thingy at the bottom made the exact same rattle when I gave it a flick. Whatever the mechanism down there is, it didn't have enough friction on the passenger seat to hold the bar steady. I pulled it a few times and moved the seat around, and the sound went away temporarily, but I'm sure it'll be back.

Then I discovered the source of the rattle coming from the door: the freaking window switches. The window switch assembly wiggles in its socket! I'll take care of that when I go to get the windows tinted next week, since they'll have the doors off.

Just bought a Magnaflow SS Universal muffler, which supposedly flows pretty well and quiets things down considerably. On a Mustang some magazine found a 6dB reduction from a straight pipe, which sounds pretty good. LEDs and some other goodies when I get back from Vegas. Stupid Citibank is taking forever to ship my new credit card.

You may want to introduce a resonated frontpipe into the equation. It makes a huge difference with regards to drone at highway speeds, and entirely killed the noise from engine braking and the like.

Resonated frontpipe? Is that ahead of the cat? I don't anticipate it'll be necessary, even with the track pipe freeway is very tolerable. My MR2 was much much worse than this on the freeway lol. Currently it's a little too loud for my own ears under acceleration but I'm more concerned about pissing people off and attracting cops. The Magnaflow seems like it should do the job nicely.

Yesterday I went to Walmart and got some Meguiar's PlastX. I was skeptical that it would work but 6 bucks, whatever. Tried it on a piece of old plexiglas I had sitting around for years, and my jaw dropped to the floor. I used a dirty cloth and it cleaned the surface up in 2 seconds. This stuff is the s***. Went ahead and rubbed it into my gauge cluster, now it's perfectly shiny.

Got an OFT from a member here, pretty stoked to get it in the mail.

Got some razor blades and was finally able to get the glue from the old tint off. Should've gotten the razor blades first lol. 3M Crystalline film going in tomorrow morning at Quality Auto Glass and Tint.

My Magnaflow universal muffler came in the mail, it's getting welded in by Pat at World Mufflers tomorrow. Can't wait to use higher rpms without fear of getting the cops called on me :D

As preventative maintenance and hopefully get a smoother transmission feel (the synchros are fine but I don't like how it takes some force to slide into gear), I'm putting Redline MTL in the tranny and Motul 300 in the diff on Thursday at Garage One Subaru Service.

wait you said that is a silver ignition color? your headlights look like a standard frs. could just be the angle.

The dealer wrote silver ignition in the posting, but it is indeed a standard FR-S. I didn't check the door jam because I believed them? Now I'm discovering only 10 series have them LOL. Woops, time to edit.

Muffler and 3M Crystalline went on today. Today was rainy so the 3M film's effectiveness couldn't be tested.

The Magnaflow muffler was welded in today and it has a very nice tone, but it's a little too quiet! :/ Well, at least now I have a very civilized car, and Magnaflow mufflers are supposed to flow well. Knowing that it's so quiet, I'm not scared to rev the s*** out of the engine anymore, which is great.

http://oi60.tinypic.com/28uqkc0.jpg

As you can see, it's nothing special, the Nameless track pipe was cut off at the hanger, some tubing was bent and welded on, Magnaflow went on, and then another piece of tubing bent. This setup added probably around 11 lbs over the track pipe, the muffler itself was 9lbs including box.

http://oi58.tinypic.com/307qm3a.jpg

I'm in the process of polishing the tip right now, but this is a pretty tough sanding job to do by hand. I spent a good 30 minutes sanding it down and went through the few scraps of low grit sandpaper I had left. It looks shiny here but it's pretty ugly in daylight, I will get some more and continue tomorrow. I think it'll look pretty good with some shine to it.

I'm also going to try to get a cover for the hole on the other side done tomorrow. If I still think it looks awkward after the hole cover, I'm going to get an aluminum plate and make a diffuser to hide the tubing.

Today's update:

Redline MTL in tranny, Motul 300 in diff. Here's the car on the lift at the shop:
http://i57.tinypic.com/fviwxu.jpg

Shifting is way smoother with the fresh fluid, but 5th/6th are still kind of notchy and the gear chatter is still annoying, but the shop owner said his BRZ does the same thing so :/

Project nerf-that-rattle has officially started:

The driver's side latch on the rear seat has a little bit of rattle, I put these vinyl stick-on door bumps onto the plastic trim clips to give the rear seats some pressure against the latches. If I wiggle the seat it still rattles, so I added electrical tape to the latch. I may need to switch that out for aluminum tape.
http://i57.tinypic.com/243qezo.jpg

Door switches rattle like crazy, but I'll use some foam tape on them when I get my side windows retinted. BTW 3M Crystalline 70 is amazing stuff, but I'm thinking Llumar Air 80 on the side windows to save a little money because most of the heat comes through the windshield anyways.

Passenger seat rail latch sliding adjuster thingy fix:

Cut a piece off one of the PVC stick on bumpers to make it thinner:
http://i60.tinypic.com/32zs8dg.jpg

Somehow managed to stick it onto the metal tab that blocks the rail (the passenger side adjustment handle has a second bar that's actuated when the seat back is all the way forward, but they chose the same springs to hold the heavier bar up so it rattles):
http://i58.tinypic.com/1j9mkk.jpg

My hands are pretty big so it was a very very tight fit under the seat lol.

Another thing I picked up today was a 1.25" PVC plug for the soundtube. I had been using a 1.5" rubber cap like one of the tutorials described but I don't feel good about putting a soft rubber cap over a rubber tube! The plug goes in too tight so I sanded it a little and painted it black to match:
Fitting painted black:
http://oi61.tinypic.com/2zoapno.jpg

Installed:
http://oi59.tinypic.com/14ilv2b.jpg

Finally progress report on the tailpipe sanding, as you can see there's still some places where it's pitted that I haven't sanded the rest down to yet :/ I need to pick up more low grit sandpaper.
http://i60.tinypic.com/mtx9fq.jpg

Next installment will be exhaust hole cover, followed by OFT tweaking and LED installs next week (just bought replacements for every single incandescent bulb on the car minus the high beams :) ).

All the rattles from the seats have been successfully nerfed!

Today I tried to make the exhaust hole cover, and I discovered I am horrible at spray painting, because I sprayed way too much every time I tried.

Anyways:
http://i57.tinypic.com/24dlr2w.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/2d4ad2.jpg

Then I scraped the ugly bubbly paint off, masked off my car, and redid the paint, it's still drying.

In the meantime, I did several hours more sanding at the exhaust pipe and I'm happy to say I give up at this:
http://i61.tinypic.com/2lmb5ax.jpg

ex MR2 owner myself.. I can't complain about the 1ZZ. it loved being on boost too.

how are you compensating for the higher levels of ethanol, which requires more fuel/air to be stoichiometric?

I'm not, 15% more ethanol is only ~5% more fuel and 10% more ethanol is only 3% more fuel, which is well within the ability of the ECU to compensate. The long term fuel trims are ~5% or so. Plenty of people in the Midwest run E20 and E25 blends afaik. Maybe it's placebo effect but I feel like the engine runs much smoother and makes more power on this new high-octane blend. Right now I have a mix of 91 and 89 in the tank plus 2 gallons of E85 for about 25% ethanol, I'm going to mix some more pump gas in because this blend is probably completely overkill at ~96 AKI according to the papers I read.

The thing I like about the 1ZZ now that I have one of these is that the mechanical noises from that engine just sounded much smoother, minus some lifter noise (because they needed adjustment). Even the gear noise was a pretty cool soft whining sound. The FA20 is more powerful, much more responsive, and more fuel efficient, but it sounds awful, like a tractor engine powering a blender full of marbles.

Exhaust tube looks good after your work but have you considered getting an actual tip to bolt on? I think it would look better.
There is also a cover available for the side with no tip made of the same bumper plastic
Here http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/exha...le-covers-215/


The transmission being notchy and strong to shift is normal. If you live in a cold area just wait until winter and your idea of hard will be redefined. It is a very tough built transmission and made so you feel everything
More reads here
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87744
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9707

If you havent ordered your LEDs yet I recommend you look at DiodeDynamics. Good reputation by the members here and I love mine

Yea I considered it, but I saw an old Alfa Romeo go by once and it had this long "pea shooter" polished steel pipe coming out the back and I wanted to imitate that look. Old school and functional? Though admittedly, the pipe being the same diameter from the hanger all the way back does look a little awkward when you look closely, I should've had the exhaust guy use a pipe expander on it first.

I know there's a cover, but I wasn't trying to pay 70 dollars after shipping lol. I'm really hoping this looks good when I take the newspaper off.

Picture of the cover (from close up it doesn't look great, I'm going to try sanding the paint a bit when it hardens a little more):
http://i57.tinypic.com/2ylplyo.jpg

Yep, that is one of the very few things that I do not like about my son's FR-S. I described the engine noise as a washing machine full of rocks. The 1ZZ is much better and the 2ZZ is better still. No other 4 cylinder sounds as good as a Honda 4 though.
Nice to see you making the FR-S your own.

Edited to clarify.

A Honda 6? :D The J35 in an Odyssey or Pilot even is just so smooth, and makes such a great sound with so little NVH when you let it rev to its pitiful 6k limit.

Tuning is so addicting, I'll try to post some maps when I sort them out. I really don't like the VVT maps on the off the shelf OFT stage 1, there's unnecessary enrichment at low load, and I don't like the throttle map at all. The stage 1 map basically makes the first 10% of the pedal useless, and the values aren't scaled quite right so if you step on it lightly the revs will go up and down, which is super annoying.

Okay, since I couldn't figure out if Requested Torque A or B was the right table to change, I just did both. I noticed the OFT stage 1 tune only changed the A table, but it felt like the stock tune was using the A table and when I flashed the OFT tune it was using the B table...

6 hours of work later manually typing in numbers:
http://i57.tinypic.com/30jl8xf.jpg

I also made a hybrid of the stock and OFT stage 1 fuel and ignition maps, I basically copied over the OFT map's cells that were leaner, and then since the OFT map uses less knock correction in some places, I used the stock knock correction and added enough timing to get 0.35 deg less than the OFT map (just to be safe and if I adjust the AFR mixture further which I will) with ignition advance multiplier at 1.0. Since there's less timing than the OFT map it should hopefully be safe for 91.

EDIT: just took it out for a drive, throttle is still a little "soft" in the first bit of travel but now the response is just right, I'm super happy! Tweaked it a little more and now it's spot on.

Some goodies came in the mail today :)

http://i60.tinypic.com/hsuwl0.jpg

Yes, those are Ebay LED headlights, an assortment of Ebay LED replacement bulbs, and a 17 dollar Ebay catch can.

http://i60.tinypic.com/2rnk6qd.jpg
Yea, that's not going to be condensing much blowby or oil. I drilled the holes out a bit:
http://i60.tinypic.com/2i1e3hz.jpg
Not shown is some ugly removal of material from the slightly longer center tube and the hole it goes into so that it'll fit some 1/4" plastic tubing stretched over it. If the PCV gases go down into the can and then back up, they'll have plenty of time to condense on the walls of the can which being aluminum should cool them off. I'm going to pick up the tubing and install this in a few days.

LED reverse light vs. incandescent:
http://i59.tinypic.com/zspczq.jpg

You can see the incandescent is brighter, but honestly it wasn't very bright in the first place and one was already burnt out.

(30W per bulb claimed) LED headlamp next to stock (upside down):
http://i59.tinypic.com/2e4j1av.jpg
To the human eye they look about the same because the halogen bulbs have a yellower color. Color of these bulbs is a nice pristine white, no stupid blue or purple tint. The beam pattern is extremely clean and it sends more light downward towards the road. Super happy with this purchase for 50 bucks. I don't think they're actually 30W, they look more like 20W each, but that's why I bought the "60W" kit instead of the "40W" kit.

I was going to take more pictures, but I did the license plate, trunk, and dome lights. I got a 9 SMD dome light and it is almost uncomfortably bright for nighttime use. License plate and trunk are way better illuminated now. So what happened was I was trying out the cheap amber turn signals, which turned out to be pathetic (they were so dim the housings might as well have been smoked), so I tried to take it out and it got stuck:
http://i60.tinypic.com/2mg8283.jpg
Since this looks absolutely embarassing, I'm going to motivate myself to take the whole thing out...by ordering some Valenti lights sooner lol.

I will do front markers and turn signals when I have time to pull the fender liners out.

Dipped in titanium flake + white:
http://i61.tinypic.com/2lkuvdl.jpg

I was hoping it would turn out a little more silvery, but the yellower "titanium" color does look pretty cool. The car gets a LOT of stares and comments now lol. A female friend also told me the car looks way better than my old MR2 -_-

I used Meguiar's Ultimate Protectant on it and royally screwed up by not following the directions and spraying it directly on. That stuff dries quite fast and I got a bunch of visible wax spots. I'm sure as dirt accumulates that I have to clean off the excess will wear down soon enough but don't be stupid like me!

Gonna take the car to get recoated in a slightly lighter, more silvery color. I decided the titanium color looks a little funny, but a little bit of the yellowy tinge is not bad.

Today I installed this:
http://i57.tinypic.com/wvefdg.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/ra3s43.jpg
10 dollar Ebay "Momo" shift knob (lol). Quality is actually pretty good, but then again it's just a piece of plastic with some metal and leather bits glued on, how hard is that to make...

Most people go for short shifters but I like how my MR2's long throw shifter didn't take much force to put into gear and how gears were easy to find. I didn't realize this knob would make the shifter this tall, as the reverse lockout ring is a little harder to get to now but this knob feels so much better in the palm and the reduced shift effort is great. I have to be lighter on the clutch because it's now way easier to put into gear without a perfect rev match.

A bunch of mods happened in the last week:

Drilled aluminum "Momo Italy" collar on the shift knob out to 3/4" with my 5 dollar Harbor Freight bit that lost all of its TiN coating in the process (lol):
http://i58.tinypic.com/abjl74.jpg
Unfortunately this hole was barely not big enough to let the reverse lockout ring's top plastic piece slide through it, so I used my 9 dollar HF dremel to grind the hole out a little, and now the knob sits a little lower, and the shifter height is about perfect IMO :)
http://i57.tinypic.com/231zzl.jpg

(I installed it backwards in the last post lol)

Valenti lights arrived, installed them last night.
http://i60.tinypic.com/9zv89i.jpg

Not gonna bother posting the one with the lights on because my phone camera just sees a giant washed out blob of light, but this just improved the looks of the car by 10x. The light output of the Valentis is pretty good, but one of the tinted/red lens ones wouldn't have cut it IMO. Glad I got this color combo.

Ebay catch can installed:
http://i67.tinypic.com/2urxtz8.jpg

I signed up for an autocross and decided I should probably do the catch can since I put it off for so long. I couldn't find a small piece of aluminum tube so I glued some aluminum foil together into a slightly more rigid sheet and used heatshrink to attach it to the aluminum barb thingy. I didn't snap any photos since it was ugly, but the makeshift inlet now reaches around 3 inches into the can which gives the gases more space to condense on the walls of the can.

I couldn't figure out a good spot for the mount to use bolts with so I wrapped the strut bar with electrical tape, then used my last ziptie and some steel wire to tie the thing to the bar.

The PCV hose was really freaking oily so I checked the oil level (got too lazy to do that too haha), and it was near the bottom hole in the stick :/ I just added the half quart of cheap oil I had around since it's at 4000 miles already.

I was extremely conservative on the ignition timing for my map, I might try bumping the advance up a little now that the PCV is presumably not sending as much s*** into the intake.

If I cared more, I think brakes + coilovers + aluminum flywheel would be a good place to stop. Those combined would make the car maybe 5-10% faster off the line which is as good as you can expect without forced induction. Since moving to SF this car has turned into a very occasional people hauler, so putting more mods on doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

Well, yesterday I took my FRS out to my first autocross ever! Went with a coworker who had a tuned Integra who gave me some tips. The fastest guys in low powered cars were hitting ~52 seconds on the course during my work shift, so I was hoping I wouldn't be too horrible when I went out for my first lap...(there was a guy in a Caterham pulling 47s without even trying, no tire squeal, chilling in a higher gear the whole time, those things are SO fast)

Driving all out was super strange since I never really did it. First lap I kept on shifting gears and pressing the clutch in instinctively and coasting when I got scared, got a dismal 65 second first run lol.

It was pretty hard to really hit the brake hard because everything looked so slow, so I was entering corners too fast for a while, couldn't break 60 seconds. My coworker sat with me and instructed me with "brake...turn...gas...brake...turn", which immediately shaved 4 seconds off.

Last run of the day I managed to get under 57 seconds, lost a bit of time because I dropped the clutch when shifting to 2nd and almost spun the car (but kept it under control), but I was pretty proud of myself for going from total s*** to faster than like 10% of the people there -_-. My horrible driving punished the front tires pretty bad though. Super fun day, definitely gonna sign up for more of these events. Seeing some nice cars there is an added bonus, there was a supercharged NSX, a 991 GT3 (wow that thing sounds good), and on the track day event there were tons of Ferraris, McLarens, GT3s, Lotus, etc.

Ending thoughts, I really wish I could take an MR2 or Cayman to one of these. The FRS is really not that grippy overall, and mid-corner at least on my car I found that between letting off the throttle and barely touching it is the range you get to play with if you don't want a big drift. I like how the throttle plays a much bigger part in a rear heavy car.

Pictures to come.

Ah, forgot to put this up, you can watch my horrendous second run here along with my coworker driving his Integra much better.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzlBR2ZMB-A"]Trackmasters Autocross, 11/21/2015 - YouTube[/ame]

Ever since the autocross my driving has gotten a lot more aggressive and abusive to the clutch. I did used to wind the engine out but using the engine at high rpm for half a day made me addicted to the power, and after having too much fun doing a few 3000+ rpm launches I'm starting to slip the clutch more :/ The other day it was raining and I was trying to pull out of the crawling traffic into the exit lane that was moving quickly, I pressed the two buttons that disable traction control and whatever so I wouldn't lose power for multiple seconds, and tried a modest 2000something rpm launch. What I got was both tires spinning like crazy from 0 to 25mph, which took a while. Made me miss my MR2 again, even the shit all seasons on the rear just never stopped gripping.

Sorry to bring this up after so long but could you explain more on how you managed to resolve this? The picture is dead and I'm not having any luck on fixing that rattle :(

Ah crap, I don't have the image anymore. Take a flashlight and study the mechanism that the slider latch handle/bar attaches to, you should find a tab that it's supposed to rest on. When the car is moving and bouncing, the latch will bounce around on it because it doesn't have enough spring tension. If you glue something soft there, it will stop rattling.

Thanks! I think I've got it - will grab a picture of the solution in a bit :)

Edit: solution in the link below.

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/show...8&postcount=14

serialk11r's FR-S
 

Everyone walks away from their first autox blaming the car. The Twins kick ass at autox. No offense but drive is always to blame after your very first autox. My suggestion to most people just starting is to let an experienced driver do a run in your car. That will keep you from blaming the car so you can focus on driver mod.

As for not being grippy, OEM tires are a joke. I’m not sure what you are running on yours but a set of just about any performance tire will obliterate the OEM tires.

Edit: just realized this was a really old post. Hahaha

Oh yea no doubt I'm a terrible driver, I was actually talking about the "fun factor" though. Because an MR2 is so much more twitchy and dangerous, it's more fun to slide (and more dangerous). In fact, I crashed my 2nd MR2 at Laguna Seca because I'm so bad at driving XD

In either car, I would not be able to put up a good time, but I find the FRS less fun because the front end pushes, instead of inertial oversteer (which again, is dangerous, but that's kind of what makes it fun).