The Relationship Between Man and Machine- Owning a Supra for 11 Years
A lot of people are stunned, when they find out that I have owned the Supra for over 11 years, since 2007. It is pretty rare for an enthusiast to hold onto a car for longer than a few years. This probably arises from the fact that we are enthusiasts, who love cars of all shapes, power levels, purposes, and styles. There are so many terrific sport cars available from the last 4 decades that as soon as one has the car they “want”, other desirable cars show themselves and the lust continues. I am certainly not immune to this, but a combination of determination, budget, and a deep connection with the Supra, has kept me in the same chassis for over a decade. This is part 1 of 2, which discusses the last 11 years and attempts at dissecting the personal and emotional reasons that I’ve become so attached to this specific chassis.
I say specific chassis for a reason. I have never really liked the A70 (mkiii) Supra, from the time before I bought the car to this day. They are big, they are needlessly heavy, I dislike the interior, and the aftermarket support is very small. My first rear wheel drive vehicle was a 1991 Nissan 240sx, that I lightly modified and drifted over 3 years, but eventually smashed into a wall and scrapped the chassis. I began looking for another drift car and was admittedly fueled by a desire to have a “different” drift car. Whether it was my being first in middle school to have Soap shoes, or being the only idiot on the high school wrestling mat with neon yellow wrestling shoes, I have always attempted to differentiate myself from others, and picking out a new car was no different. During the spring of 2006, I had it narrowed down to a Porsche 944 or the Nissan S12 chassis. I test drove a few, but then one evening someone posted a 1988 Toyota Supra for sale on the old www.clubfr.net forums. It was a gray NA chassis, that already had a running 1JZ swap, some basic Bilstein coilovers, and your standard intake/exhaust/fmic, and aside from that was basically stock. To this day, I don’t know why, but through all of my distaste for mkiii Supra’s, I looked at it and instantly said “I have to have that”. I messaged my friend for his opinion, and as fate would have it he knew the owner! A few weeks later, we took a long drive up to Minnesota and picked up the car from a guy named Josh Axle.
The next time I’d see the car was at a drift event at Autobahn Country Club, where I did my first clutch kick in the car, simultaneously finding its strengths and weaknesses. Thanks to a great group of friends that prioritized driving over modifying, a low college budget, and a personal taste for “doing over watching”, I put myself on a long and steady path for slowly upgrading the car using internal and external feedback after every time I went to the track. One of the first obvious problems was my knees were getting pretty beat up as I was getting thrown around the cockpit in the oem seat. I was told by several friends that a bucket seat is a requirement, but didn’t pay much attention to them for a few years, including my previous chassis. Eventually, I was able to afford a Sparco Evo seat and did a basic 6 point roll cage at the same time. The first time I took the car drifting in the new seat completely changed my perspective on bucket seats. Adding a bucket seat was the single greatest modification I have done to the car to improve drifting. Not only are you not getting thrown around, but a bucket seat connects you to the car in a way that nothing else can. You are finally sitting “in” the car, not on it. You get an acute feeling for exactly what the car is doing and thus your inputs are much more informed and you can react much quicker. If you are more comfortable, you can focus on the important task of car control. If you are serious about drifting, and don’t have a bucket seat yet, make that the next modification you do. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.
The car came with a Torsen LSD from a JDM Supra, which quickly became apparent as a major weakness. Generally Torsen LSDs are great for non-drift street & track vehicles. However, on a drift car, the dynamics of the Torsen are not desirable. A Torsen only works during periods of acceleration, so they give a vehicle dynamic that is snappy and wants to straighten during off-throttle transitions. It’s very common to see IS300 and GT86 drivers with the OEM Torsen needing to pull the handbrake on every transition, which has a similar effect to a 2-way differential on decel. However, my Supra’s handbrake did not work AT ALL for the first several years, so the Torsen made it very difficult to perform a drift. Thus one of the first modifications I made was to throw in a KAAZ 2-way differential. The KAAZ has really proven itself to be a great piece of mechanical design. It locks very hard, and simply “just works”. It is extremely loud in my chassis while turning at low speeds though. Clutch type differentials are known for making some noises in situations like parking lots, but for some unknown reason it sounds like the car is dying while driving through parking lots. I have received comments from people outside of the car that think the car is broken due to the extreme clunking! However, it works on track, and lasted me something like 10 years before I had to replace it last year in 2017. The new one sounds exactly the same by the way. It’s really incredible that a clutch-type differential, lasted 10 years of hard abuse. I’ve averaged a drift event every month for the last 10 years (between the months of April and September), and this differential had given me zero problems. The only “secret” that I can offer is to change the differential oil at least once a year, and use Valvoline Syn gear oil.
From here, I continued with the ethos of drive, modify, adjust, drive, modify, and repeat. Slowly upgrading things such as the coilovers, suspension links, and bushings, while trying to stay away from the drivetrain. I purchased the car with a non-functioning power steering system, which I neglected to fix for the first two years. This was a blessing in disguise. While I don’t think I would recommend that anyone not run PS, it was a great teacher on how to use the throttle to control the car. It also forced me to learn proper timing of the “release and catch” steering technique that is ubiquitous in drifting. If I caught the wheel a little too late, or a little too early, there was very little ability to adjust the steering angle on the 3500 lbs JZA70. I could really only adjust the line using throttle and braking…with my OE 298 hp and OE braking system. Coincidentally, my handbrake also did not work, but that didn’t matter as I wasn’t able to take a hand off the steering wheel to use it anyways!
For years, the engine remained a stock 1JZ, with intake, exhaust, OEM JZA70 FMIC, and downpipe. JZ’s are known for running higher than the OE 7psi boost when you open up their breathing, so I was running about 14psi simply because I had intake, exhaust, and downpipe. In fact, the car was infuriating on the highway for many years, as I was not able to floor it in 3rd gear because right around 4000 rpm in 3rd gear and higher, the car would hit fuel cut. At that time I was mostly focused on drifting slower tracks, so I had more important things to worry about. I treated the original engine like garbage. Overheating the thing almost every drift day and street session, because I did not have a functioning temperature gauge. I remember one streeting session I overheated it severely and lost a ton of coolant. After calming everyone else down and letting them know “it does this, don’t worry”, I started scrounging around for water bottles that friends had, which included some grape flavored water. PSA, grape flavored water does not damage the cooling system of the 1JZ. I have not tried other flavors, so YMMV. The engine lasted for around 4 years being treated like this, until eventually it started showing it’s age and started a decline on power over the course of a year or so. I found a beautiful rebuilt 1J on Supra forums, and swapped that over, retaining the OEM turbo’s and intake/exhaust that I had before.
This slow evolution was like watching a child go through being a toddler, then a child, then a teenager, and now a young adult, the car has grown in a way that has created a lifelong connection with its owner. I have done almost all of the work on the car aside from bodywork and the “fabrication” (aside from a few jobs done by the amazing guys at RCN motors). Hours upon hours of my literal blood, sweat, and tears have gone into this car. For approximately 72 drift events in 12 years, I have driven the car to the track, beat on it, and it has gotten me home. Many times it has barely, and I mean BARELY gotten me home. I have required a trailer to get home two times in the last 12 years, and trailered the car to the track once. There is a certain kind of connection that I have with the car because of this. I know exactly how the car feels to drive for extended periods of time. The sounds it makes, the feeling it gives on the highway, and the set of emotions it conjures within myself after successfully pulling into my garage after a loud and exciting weekend. When one trailers their car to the track, the car is an object that is used, and if it doesn’t perform “oh well, back on the trailer it goes”. For me, every drift event with the Supra is a real adventure with a friend. I prep the car with whatever it needs to stay healthy, anticipating that if the car doesn’t have what it needs, I won’t be getting it home. Then we get onto the road, and it’s just me and the supra cruising. In a way, we are having a deep conversation the whole way to the track. For hours I hear the engine beat like a heartbeat. The chassis’ high speed stability reminds me that it will carry me wherever I want to go in life, and the seating position is akin to an old rocking chair where I’ve developed some of my greatest thoughts. Then we arrive at the track together, and begin an intimate dance for the whole day. A dance that requires both of us to be at optimal performance. A dance that brings the widest smile to my face imaginable, and can then be instantly struck down into a deep sorrow if something goes wrong. Oddly enough, the car’s character reflects this. You can almost hear its smile at 8000 rpm full throttle, or feel it’s belly of laughter as I chase down a fellow teammate, but it also has a demeanor of stress and exhaustion when I pull it into the garage and it gasps for another breath.
I think this is why I’ve kept the car for so long. The emotional roller coaster it brings has created a relationship like parent and child. It has taught me many life lessons in the process. It has taught me things like patience, pride in work, and to focus on things in life that spark joy. It has been a main driver in my pursuit of furthering my career. Not only a simple “I need more money”, but it has shown me a path to good fortune through hard work, persistence, and the consequences if details are not focused on throughout a project. This is a big reason many enthusiasts change chassis so often. “The grass is greener” is a real feeling, resulting from the multitude of fantastic vehicles available for us in this day and age. An individual knows the struggles they go through on their own vehicle, the intermittent issues, braking down, and troubleshooting. The individual feels the pain, and looks across the paddock (or scrolls through Instagram) and sees other’s joy’s and success. However, they may miss the distress that also comes to others, and it’s this distress that forms the bond between man and machine. The bond comes from repeated frustration and pain, which is then transformed into victory and pride through hard work and determination. You do this for long enough, and a car can essentially create a connection that likens itself to family. Getting rid of that connection can be a painful event, that is more times than not accompanied with a lifetime of regret. “I wish I never sold that car” is a phrase that far too many enthusiasts have uttered. I have certainly come to the point of considering selling the Supra due too too many problems or feeling the financial strain. Even putting it up for sale at one time. I persisted though, and after owning the car for 11 years, I can’t see myself in any other chassis, A70 or otherwise.
For better or worse, without drifting I would not be where I am in life today, and would not have the Supra. Without the Supra, I would not have learned so many valuable lessons that I was able to transfer into my everyday life. I enjoy discussing these lessons as they relate to my motorsports passion, upgrading and fixing a project, and everyday life. Welcome to the terbob00st blog…let’s see where this goes.
