Okay, sensible hat on, I decided to order some KYB's from Fensport to sort out the issue with the front dampers being stupidly bloody hard, just for the meantime.
Whilst, realitically I can afford to buy CS2's at a grand, I'd rather bank the money for the time being and look at spending over the winter period once I've got my winter wheels.
So for
£124 including everything, I've bought a pair of KYB inserts for the front.
My main reason for this is that my front end is hopelessly underdamped, so it ruins, turn in at speed, the ride is bouncy and over bumpy roads it doesn't feel good and you cannot carry speed for fear of bouncing off the road.
I suspect the car has the original dampers in the front, but this with TRD blue springs is not a good combination.
The rear end is fairly well resolved with TRD blue dampers and matching springs.
Okay, massive thanks to Si, Tom and of course Mark for their help to fit the new inserts at the front.
Getting the struts out was not particularly difficult.
We did wonder if it would be stock or not.
We found out that the struts did indeed have inserts of the TRD green variety!
These are part number 45811-TA001
Sorry for the hopelessly blurry pic! Better pics to come.
There was me saying the front was underdamped, but I think it was really over damped as the car would skip everywhere.
The TRD Greens are just so stiff.
They are also short stroke.
I'm really coming to the conclusion that nothing TRD works very well on UK roads.
I've still got the TRD blue springs which are pretty short.
So, putting in basically OEM replacements which are long stroke of course, so I'm not convinced how clever that is, but really I'm doing 300 miles a week in the car and am about to do a 1000 mile round trip of Europe in a couple of weeks so I was getting fed up with the really choppy ride which tended to make the car jump around on bumpy A roads.
Installation of the insert wasn't anything difficult really.
Here we bolted the axle back to the wheel so we could do up the nut holding the insert into the strut:
Of course now we had a nice short TRD spring and a long stroke damper, the top mount was miles away
(literally) from the top of the spring, which made it a right PITA to try and put the strut back in.
This was hindered more by the RCA's.
In the end my friend came up with a solution which was to compress the springs sufficiently enough so we could get the strut back in.
It worked but there were a few frustrating moments!
RCA can be clearly seen here:
The top mounts weren't too clever so we cleaned the bearings up:
After this we re-greased it.
They weren't amazing but they are a bit better.
I didn't want to spend money on new top mounts when I am planning to fit CS2's in the next six months or so.
Unfortunately my front discs and pads are in desperate need of replacing, so will be doing that next weekend.
Those Hawk Racing Pads have just eaten the disc away to pretty much dodgy levels in 20,000 kms! So they will be getting changed before our holiday in two weeks time.
There are still a number of other jobs to do, but the car is getting the propshaft centre bearing changed.
We've opted to let a local indie do this as we don't have the pullers and presses needed.
We'll also get the gearbox rear oil seal changed at the same time and hopefully have a seat mounting bolt helicoiled as well.
How does it ride? Well, it's now perhaps a little underdamped now, but overall the ride is a lot, lot smoother.
It still kicks the back end out with seeming impunity, so all is well as I found out on every wet roundabout on the way home.
I did also run it at higher speeds on a bumpy road and I do think it rode them a lot better, this time absorbing the bumps rather than skipping over them.
It feels like the tyres are in contact with the road more.
Mark has been in to Toyota and ordered front pads and discs.
Discs
£80 pair
Pads
£40 pair.
Last time I did this, pads were Hawk Racing from Fensport at
£90 and discs were Brembo courtesy of ebay at IIRC about
£70.
So overall it works out cheaper from Toyota.
I was quite alarmed at how much the pads had eaten into the discs in 20,000 Kms and the amount of dust they produce that has wrecked my front wheels is alarming.
Seeing as the car won't be going near a track this year and not out until it's seemingly yearly outing next summer, I'll be happy to run stock pads this time round.
In respect of the ride quality, well it really has been transformed.
If I'm honest, it does feel a little underdamped, so you have to watch for big compressions as it will ground out.
But, this only happens if you are a bit mad really.
Otherwise it's lovely to be able to float over bumps and ridges which had me bracing myself before.
Now you just don't feel it.
Handling wise, it doesn't seem to have too much of an effect.
The front end doesn't feel quite so tight as obviously stock dampers allow more movement, but settling into higher speed bends doesn't seem to cause any more roll than before, but I would say I can cover a bumpy B road much quicker
(and more comfortably to boot now).