OEM+ FR-S for Mountain Roads

[Clean Racer Club]

When the Scion FR-S launched in 2012 journalists and enthusiasts couldn’t stop talking about it. It was the first sports car after what felt like a very long time that came with exceptional handling and a genuinely affordable price point. It was a special car.



When this FR-S came to me in February of 2014 it was used with 8000 miles on the odometer. It was a steal for thousands off MSRP. I thought the best colors the FR-S came in were silver and metallic orange. I guessed that I would enjoy silver more in the long term. But you don’t see many orange ones now, so maybe I should have gone with orange!



I only learned to drive a stick shift one time with my dad on an old Ford Ranger pickup. When I test-drove the FR-S I kept stalling it because, unlike the pickup, it needed a little gas to start moving in first gear. I remember being stopped at a light, and when the light turned green I stalled the car three times before I finally got it going. In the rearview mirror, the older woman driving behind me had a look on her face that said, “What on earth is this guy doing?!” The man in the passenger seat was slapping the dashboard laughing uncontrollably.



When I finally got the car going around some corners I remember being amazed at how flat it stayed and how precise the steering felt. The dealership had a free delivery service which I happily agreed to since I was terrified to drive the car home. Here’s a picture of my young self with the car.



It took me a long time to get good at driving stick smoothly. I’m talking years. I think what helped, in the end, was understanding the physics of how the drivetrain works. I would try to imagine the flywheel slowing down as I disengaged the clutch to shift gears. Then I focused on trying to match the flywheel speed to the speed of the clutch.



In stock form, the FR-S looked pretty bare bones. It didn’t even come with a spoiler! One of the first modifications I wanted to make was adding a small ducktail spoiler. Next, I swapped the Scion badges for Toyota badges to put the car in the family line of Toyota’s motorsports heritage. Toyota built legendary sports cars like the 2000gt, AE86, Supra, and LFA. On the other hand, Scion had very little racing heritage and never really became the cool brand in the U.S. that Toyota hoped it would.



Apart from some Weathertech floor mats, my FR-S received no real upgrades for the next 9 years. However, during that time it did go on many adventures. I packed it full and drove it across the country with my dad. I road-tripped around the western states 3 times then drove it cross-country again! All in all the car has been so reliable.



In 2022 the car turned 10 years old. I still think it’s the best-looking car in most parking lots until some exotics arrive. Just look at the way the front fenders curve up above the hood to fit over the wheel arches! And the subtle lines in the center of the hood look like a nod to F1 cars. How about that big rear diffuser that looks like it belongs on a time-attack car flying around Tsukuba Circuit! The fastback body style never gets old. The clear tail lights looked a bit “ricer” when they came out but have aged well. And the whole front end looks very similar to the Lexus LFA. It even has a racing-inspired double bubble roof!



Underneath the body though, there were some performance components I knew I eventually wanted to upgrade. I was always happy with the car, but after 10 years I felt like it was time. My vision for what I wanted the car to be simmered for those 10 years and calmed down drastically from the Rocket Bunny, V8 swapped, screaming loud car I dreamed of when I was much younger. With a little more wisdom and a lot of time to think I decided on this: a tastefully modified Japanese sports car built for mountain roads.



Being the best entry-level driver's car meant the FR-S came with many entry-level parts. One thing that was repeated over and over by journalists when the car was first reviewed was, “It comes with the same tires as the Prius!” Indeed it did come with some very skinny 215mm width tires that slid very easily under braking and cornering. So my first job was to get some wider tires which also meant getting some wider wheels. I always dreamed of having bronze racing wheels. Most of my cars in video games had bronze wheels. I think Enkei’s RPF1 wheels match the FR-S styling well. I was able to fit 245-width General G-max RS tires providing 3 more centimeters of grip at each corner and widening the wheelbase by a full 6 centimeters! That change in physics made a huge difference in how fast the car can take a corner. The RPF1 wheels are each about 5 pounds lighter than the OEM steel wheels. That’s a significant drop in rotational mass and unsprung mass. It also feels cool to know that the wheels are a similar design to the ones Enkei made for F1 cars!



The next job was to reduce body roll and keep those wheels in contact with the pavement when cornering. Toyota needed to make this car usable for the mass market, therefore the car had more body roll than I wanted. The solution was three-way adjustable coilovers and stiffer sway bars from ST Suspension. The car dropped down 8 tenths of an inch, but because of the excellent design of the ST coilovers, there is now even more compression travel than before. More compression travel provides more pavement contact and a comfortable ride. Only a little while after I installed these I learned about the great work that Racecomp Engineering is doing. They get suspension parts from KW and dial them in for Subarus. If I had known about them at the time I definitely would have bought coilovers from Racecomp.



The suspension was the first big project I had ever done on any car, and that brought a lot of learning and frustration. The tricky thing about suspension is that it’s all geometry, so if you change the length of one part, you have to change the lengths of a bunch of other parts to make it work. Every time I have tried to install an upgrade on this car I was lacking a tool I needed or I broke something. This meant I became a regular at the Harbor Freight store (not something I wanted). If you’re going to do some serious work on your car I recommend you have an alternative means to get to work when you can’t button it all up before the next day.



Some of the best money I spent was to have the car professionally corner balanced and aligned. Corner balancing attempts to have the suspension in each corner support an equal amount of weight. Alignment allows the tires to achieve maximum grip when cornering. The car has 1.3 degrees of negative camber which is right in the sweet spot for a road car. It’s confidence-inspiring to turn into a corner and know that the weight distribution, suspension, and tires are all perfectly dialed in.

Just by making some handling modifications, the FR-S felt like a completely different car. Then it was time to add some horsepowers! I don’t take the car to the race track, and I don’t want a speeding ticket, so I decided to make just a few simple upgrades that would allow the naturally aspirated engine to run more efficiently. These can be summed up by letting more air into the engine, letting more exhaust out, and increasing the fuel octane.

The infamous torque dip around 4000rpm that this car has is mainly caused by the exhaust manifold. Swap that out with a better design and say, “bye bye torque dip!” I chose the HKS equal-length manifold because of the lovely sound it makes. Anyone who’s into Japanese tuning culture dreams about putting HKS parts on their car. I remember putting HKS stickers on my cars in Need for Speed Underground 2! To complete the exterior look of the car I swapped the rusted muffler for a stainless steel Legamax Premium cat-back exhaust from HKS. It’s a very quiet exhaust (remember, I’m not trying to draw much attention from the authorities!) And it ties the whole look of the car together.



There is a fine gentleman named Vishnu who created a tuning device called the OpenFlash Tablet. This allowed me to flash a new file onto the ECU designed for an aftermarket exhaust manifold and… E85! When the car is running on ethanol it has about 30 more horsepower to the wheels. That’s significant in a car that weighs under 2700 pounds. To give you some perspective the FR-S now has a better power-to-weight ratio than the new GR86 with its 2.4L engine! Check out this dyno graph comparing a stock FR-S to one running an aftermarket exhaust manifold, e85, and Vishnu’s tune!



To add some extra reliability to the engine I installed Crawford’s Air Oil Separator which gives me more confidence to push the engine hard. I also installed their Billet Power Blocks which were a PITA to install but made more efficient use of the engine’s power band.



Lightweight engine pulleys are my favorite underrated upgrade. They allow the engine to rev up quickly during gear shifts like a race car. I plan to install a lightweight flywheel next time the clutch assembly has to come apart.



The car feels very well-rounded with a great balance of power and handling. I’m content to leave it where it’s at. Those are all of the major upgrades I have for now. But who knows? Maybe there’s a Rocket Bunny supercharged track car somewhere in the future.

The day I installed the exhaust manifold the odometer crossed 110,000 miles. I just moved to Asheville, NC which is close to some great mountain roads. I’m looking forward to driving the FR-S a lot and hopefully getting it on track. See you at Road Atlanta?

Engine:
OpenFlash Tablet tune
HKS equal-length exhaust manifold
HKS Legamax Premium exhaust
Grimmspeed cold air intake
Crawford billet power blocks
Crawford air oil separator
Fuel starvation door
Go Fast Bits lightweight pulleys

Chassis:
ST XTA coilovers
ST sway bars
Blox rear lower control arms
Perrin front end links
Kartboy rear end links
Enkei RPF1 bronze 17x9 +45
General Tire G-Max RS 245/40/17
Stoptech street brake pads
Project Mu brake fluid
Perrin steering rack lockdowns
Tower strut bar

Other:
Five Axis ducktail spoiler
Toyota badges
Weathertech floormats

Top five modifications I recommend if you want to upgrade your ZN6 chassis:
1. Coilovers from Racecomp Engineering (Plus new front and rear end links, rear lower control arms, corner balancing, and alignment. Whew!)
2. Wider wheels (ZN6 Fitment Guide)
3. Tires 225/45-17
4. Aftermarket Exhaust Manifold
5. Openflash Tablet tune (E85 fuel)

[KMA KiCKz]

Originally Posted by Clean Racer Club

But you don’t see many orange ones now, so maybe I should have gone with orange!

I also think this sometimes since I also considered orange but I'm glad I went with CWP.

Awesome pictures and well written thread!

[EvilPenguin04]

hello from just down I26

[Racecomp Engineering]

Awesome pics and story! Kinda cool how we grow with these cars and our plans change (meaning reconsidering things like rocket bunny wide body kits...9/10 of people regret that lol).

- Andrew

[Clean Racer Club]

Originally Posted by Racecomp Engineering

plans change (meaning reconsidering things like rocket bunny wide body kits...9/10 of people regret that lol).

Maybe I need to buy a used Rocket Bunny car to turn into a track car... Something like this: https://carsandbids.com/auctions/rbl...013-scion-fr-s

[Racecomp Engineering]

Originally Posted by Clean Racer Club

Maybe I need to buy a used Rocket Bunny car to turn into a track car... Something like this: https://carsandbids.com/auctions/rbl...013-scion-fr-s

In terms of aerodynamics...it's not a good kit.

- Andrew