T Montague's 2zr swap - '08 m/t sedan some extra info

[tmontague]

After my decision to buy a new family hauler I was stuck with storing my Yaris at the back of my in laws business. It is only 20 mins away but with prepping the house for selling (gets listed this week), fixing up the Subie, spending time with the family and studying for board exams - I didn't really have much time to go work on it.

Plus I don't have the cash right now to drop on new brake pads so that made track days out of the question for the season. Over the past week my (almost) 3 year old son and I have been going to work on the "race car" and trying to lighten it up, he absolutely loves wrenching with me. I recently stripped out the dash and the HVAC which all in all was surprisingly heavy. I had fully gutted the interior before I drove it to storage so the pics you see below is in its current state.



I have to now find the proper heater hose size and buy a length of hose to loop from the two connections on the block so the heater core by pass is fully finished.

The next time I go out to work on the car I will be separating and removing any excess electrical wiring and connectors such as the airbag system and HVAC wiring. There is a huge amount of wiring under the dash and most of it is now moot. Once our family moves into a new house I will be bringing the Yaris with me to store it in a garage. Over the winter I plan on replacing all the side and rear glass with lexan to further strip some more weight off of it.

The end goal is a sub 2000lbs yaris. Keep in mind with the removal of the window glass comes the removal of all the heavy motors as well.

I plan on heading out to the track on the last Friday of September as long as the weather holds up. I'll be driving the car out there and aiming for a sub 1:25. I just hope what little I have left on the brakes will hold up.

*I forgot to mention my plan for future windshield defogging if needed. Bimmerworld sells a $100 kit that is clear defroster wires that I can wire up right off of the battery with a switch that works similar to your rear defroster wires. This IMO is a perfect solution as it is light weight and would be very effective. I likely won't need this until I start doing time attack in rain or shine in the future as I am mostly only tracking in warm temps without rain currently. It didn't make sense to keep all of the HVAC just for defogging purposes.

[CrankyOldMan]

Originally Posted by tmontague

The next time I go out to work on the car I will be separating and removing any excess electrical wiring and connectors such as the airbag system and HVAC wiring. There is a huge amount of wiring under the dash and most of it is now moot.

I'm going to look into the dash wires on mine this winter as well. Maybe we can do up a spreadsheet? The SRS/Airbag stuff is all gone already but I'll inventory all the remaining wires and see what can be removed. I'm also considering removing the key switch and steering wheel lock since it's not going to go on the road ever again. Headlights can go too, I think, but they're already pretty light. Not much weight savings compared to steel and glass on some older cars.

[tmontague]

Originally Posted by CrankyOldMan

That's where the 2ZR Vios is right now, minus the rear window, plus the passenger OEM seat. Sub-2000 lbs is crazy quick off the line!

I'm still reading the rules for the SCCA class I want to run in (eventually) and some of the excessive weight shedding already done to mine may be outside of what's allowed. If you're interested in swapping doors and saving yourself the labour I think I can schedule a road trip.

When I went to the track for the first time this year after removing 150lbs out of my car I couldn't believe how noticeable the difference was. Not so much in straight line acceleration (although I'm sure that was improved too) but more so in the tight technical twisty back to back turns. The car seemed more "flickable" as if you could just rotate it and point it to where you wanted it to go. The chassis has much less weight and dive into corners so it was much happier to abruptly change direction and go where you wanted it to. The understeer also didn't feel as heavy if that makes sense.

*EDIT - that's a cool idea for the windshield. I was going to try and reinstall the OEM fan and heater core on mine.

Hmm, that might actually be a really god idea seeing as lexan isn't exactly cheap. I don't particularly want different coloured doors but at this point i'm not too concerned about looks. Mine still have all of the electrical hooked up, just no interior door cards.

IMO it is the best solution for windshield for a dedicated track rat. I contemplated keeping the OEM heater box for the defrost option, but it weighed way too much to keep around for a couple times of use. The heater wires from BW are extremely light and very effective. These are the ones I plan on using when need be https://www.bimmerworld.com/Safety-R...oster-Kit.html

Originally Posted by Leegamer

At this point you may as well just make your own harness.

That bimmerworld defroster is a game changer. I think I will use that in my Z31, so thanks!

Agreed, I was extremely happy to stumble across them online. Before finding this I never saw a good solution that actually seemed effective other than the heavy and bulky OEM defroster

I am probably at that point with the harness but this is new territory for me so my plan is to slowly separate the harness and remove what isn't needed. I eventually plan to go with a standalone ECU but I still need the OEM ECU and wiring for the throttle control, ABS, tach and spedometer so I don't want to mess any of that up.

Most of the wiring in the above pictures is likely now obsolete and I'm sure a lot of it will be gone once I clear through it all.

Originally Posted by CrankyOldMan

I'm going to look into the dash wires on mine this winter as well. Maybe we can do up a spreadsheet? The SRS/Airbag stuff is all gone already but I'll inventory all the remaining wires and see what can be removed. I'm also considering removing the key switch and steering wheel lock since it's not going to go on the road ever again. Headlights can go too, I think, but they're already pretty light. Not much weight savings compared to steel and glass on some older cars.

agreed, I'm going to leave my lights in for now. I though about the steering lock and key switch but since I plan to tow dolly my car I think the steering lock with prove useful for the time being.

[CrankyOldMan]

Originally Posted by tmontague

Hmm, that might actually be a really god idea seeing as lexan isn't exactly cheap. I don't particularly want different coloured doors but at this point i'm not too concerned about looks. Mine still have all of the electrical hooked up, just no interior door cards.

...

agreed, I'm going to leave my lights in for now. I though about the steering lock and key switch but since I plan to tow dolly my car I think the steering lock with prove useful for the time being.

Is yours black sand pearl? I found some doors in decent shape at a local yard but they're blue. The paint on the roof and trunk are in desperate need of repair anyway so it's going to get repainted at some point. My passenger rear door is dented as well.

Good point about the tow dolly. I intend to trailer mine and save the tires. =)

[tsk94]

Originally Posted by tmontague

*I forgot to mention my plan for future windshield defogging if needed. Bimmerworld sells a $100 kit that is clear defroster wires that I can wire up right off of the battery with a switch that works similar to your rear defroster wires. This IMO is a perfect solution as it is light weight and would be very effective. I likely won't need this until I start doing time attack in rain or shine in the future as I am mostly only tracking in warm temps without rain currently. It didn't make sense to keep all of the HVAC just for defogging purposes.

I don't know if you've purchased or installed it yet, but the BW defroster works great. I have it on my E92 race car. I was a bit reluctant at first to how effective it would be, but this season we've had quite a few wet track days and it's worked incredibly well.



A bit hard to see in the photo(kind of the point haha). It's a bit strange at first, but after driving with it for the first session the lines just disappear - great track car solution.