I could have gone on and on spotlighting cars from the recent Offset Kings Japan event at Fuji Speedway. But after looking at all the photos I took, a trend began to emerge: without even realizing it, I ended up with a ton of AE86 shots. The more I look at what people in Japan are doing with their Hachirokus, the more obvious it is that they’re pushing the boundaries. But rather than present you with a regular spotlight, I want to get you more involved and create a bit of a discussion – because I know there are a lot of AE86 owners and fans that check Speedhunters on a regular basis.
I call it progression – the unavoidable consequence of falling for a modern classic, owning one or more examples, and coming to that satisfying conclusion that you have found your car. You are content and more than happy to spend the foreseeable future perfecting the machine at the heart and soul of your automotive passion.
And as someone who has found their own automotive nirvana (Project GT-R continues to satisfy me to no end), I know where these people are coming from. It’s satisfaction enough find your perfect car, but it’s even better knowing that you now have all the time in the world to properly nerd-out, carefully research, choose and fit the best parts to create the perfect interpretation.
And there was so much of this happening with a lot of the AE86s at Offset Kings. I’m going to start off with a car we have seen a few times before on Speedhunters, which I think is the perfect example of what I’m trying to discuss here. Takahashi-san’s Levin was only featured two years ago, but since then so much has changed, and it continues to evolve every time I see it. From the shaved engine bay, to the AE111 20-valve 4A-G ‘black top’ swap, to the fresh coats of body paint – it’s one ride that gets better and better every time it’s shown at an event.
It’s a road that more and more AE86 owners are going down, and the results are overwhelming. I find it interesting that at the core of all these builds is basically the same chassis, but there are so many ways this 30-year-old Toyota can be built.
From the mechanicals, to the looks, to the finer details – I love observing the execution of it all.
This USDM GT-S is the AE86 that stood out to me the most on the hot day at Fuji. Color aside – which is pretty rare on a car like this – the execution was so good. For me, this car has raised the AE86 customising bar in Japan.
The fresh look, the attention to the smallest of details both inside and out, and then this engine bay. There are so many tricks borrowed from hot rodding, the show car scene and even motorsports, resulting in a simple yet purposeful look. Talk about impact! With FCR bike carbs and a wild-looking takoashi manifold you also have the recipe for serious throttle response.
The interior too reflects the mental picture of the perfect AE86 that so many of us have in our heads – brilliantly executed down to the Bride seats and gradation trim fabric around the cabin.
Yes, yes, and then yes again!
The same expression of perfection can also be applied in a slightly different way, as the other Hachi next to the USDM car perfectly showed.
The exact same shaved and smoothed out engine bay is there, but with the camo-covered 20-valve sitting pretty with a quartet of billet velocity stacks, the flavour couldn’t be any different. This my friends is automotive pornography at its finest. In fact, we should probably be censoring these images!
I’d really love to hear what you guys have to say. I’m personally very excited to see this whole trend continue – not only in the AE86 scene, which is of course one of the most popular, but applied to every modern day classic you can think of.
The day of the dirty, oily, uninspiring Japanese engine bay may may be over. The fusion of JDM tuning and know-how coupled with the presentation aspect that foreign influences have played on the Japanese scene is creating some of the best cars we’ve ever seen come out of Japan. What do you think?
PS. Look out for full features on some of these AE86s coming soon to Speedhunters…
Dino Dalle Carbonare
Instagram: speedhunters_dino
dino@speedhunters.com
OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS
yes yes yes annnnnd yes more please
Personally I really dislike shaved engine bays, way too boring looking, and it reminds me of Honda/VW show cars. I always loved how crowded and wild the engine bays from Japanese tuned cars looked, the Pentroof z32 and Top Secret v12tt Supra are good examples. Different strokes for different folks I guess, but I can say that it looks like these are all very well done and props to the owners for doing it right. Japan always doing it better lol.
I always say function before form, but if they work well in performance, it's nice to see clean engine bays, and I think they are more easy to work, you have a lot of room!
Haha makes me fell bad for my engine bay... I personally like the look of shaved engine bays for sure but I'm way too lazy to be doing such a makeover ^^
But I should do something with it I guess, at least when I see engine bays like this ^^
Just out of curiosity - do Japanese hot rodders pull the air cleaners off just for the shows and reinstall them before they leave, or do they actually run their cars around town with no intake filtration?
Or do they yank the heads and carbs so often that the gunk doesn't really get a chance to build up?
i love 4age
i love AE86
god...FRS never will excite me that way
AE86 is god like
Ice Age i wonder that to..i run silver top 4AGE no filter, 2500km..blow all piston ring..blue smoke like honda
@turbo BEAMS ae86 Give it 30 years and your mind may change !
Bro5 not of FA20 engine
My first love and only. AE86. I remember my old work in japan, me and my friends had 5 AE86's parked. Every combination Levin ,Trueno, Hatch, Coupe. I am looking at these pictures , Either they are really good drifters or more than likely these are a bunch of trailer queens. No battle scars at all. and why in hell would anyone use a USDM bumper? They are beyond ugly. I had friends who were going to college in the U.S. and had purchased AE86. On their summer or winter breaks they would request help finding JDM bumpers to take back home. Lights too. The funniest is it would be wrapped up in cardboard with a piece of string to help carry it. I looked like a 6 ft cardboard bow. Check in luggage was epic to see the airport ask what is this? reply A car Bumper. If you know the 4AG engines and stare at the pictures you can see the small details of what they did secretly. Distributors, pulleys, No engine powered fans, aftermarket radiators, the Header designs. High up means high torque, Lower ends, upper ends , Haltech computer system, ect...
ryukyustriker thanks for the kind words
sneaky engineered to slide sticker on the camo 20v cam gear cover, heheehe
ryukyustriker the green coupe gets used hard on track. Owner is highly skilled. look him up. loves linking tsukuba.
why does almost every show car only have an engine and nothing else in the engine bay
I love the idea of a clean engine bay and would love to be able to proudly lift the bonnet on my ae86 and it not be the current hodge podge of parts and colours that it currently is...
HOWEVER - I do think that you can go too far the other way. I would rather see things like fuse boxes, catch cans, etc. in the engine bay, but just done cleanly and neatly, with attention to detail. These set ups here, while really well thought out and executed just seem a little too empty. Like shaving all the chrome from an old muscle car - it seems to lose something of its character?
Also, I think ae86s always look better with a bit more of a "race" influence, but I think that about every car so take that with a grain of salt. Like all show cars I think these ae86s are a great inspiration to the rest of us to try a little harder, polish a little longer and think a bit more deeply about how we do things. Its certainly a vast improvement on the "drift missile" look that was popular a few years back, with everything covered in oil and bits held on with cable ties...
MON¥ because minimalism is king.
ryukyustriker One car at least (that I know of) gets used and abused regularly and the drivers is indeed amazingly good. Plus most have AE86 beaters that they use on track. Is that such a bad thing to build a clean one? Oh and the bumpers, they have them for the very same reason you were bringing JDM ones back to the US
Plus if you look closely the car is a USDM, so I guess the owner wanted to keep the look, make it different from all the other JDM cars out in Japan, make it stand out...
Ice Age Some run with, others without
Max @Ghettoporsche Well if your engine ever comes out would be the perfect time to get stuck in there
DonHoonigan If form can work with function I'm all for it in this case
crispykrem3 Interesting. I guess people are into anything and everything
@truhidden YES! lol
@truhidden YES! lol
Nat1984 How would you classify "race" influence?
Nat1984 How would you classify "race" influence?
sr_mangz Well spotted. Nigel would be happy
sr_mangz Well spotted. Nigel would be happy
Now I feel like an idiot for searching for years to restore all the parts to my AE86 GT-S's engine bay. (It was a gutted and stripped track car when I bought it.)
Now I feel like an idiot for searching for years to restore all the parts to my AE86 GT-S's engine bay. (It was a gutted and stripped track car when I bought it.)
4A-GE & AE86 ... there is something that you can't replace with the ToyoBaru 86 , the sounds of the 4A-GE .
I always love the sounds that made by the old school twin cam 4-cyl engine , although truth to be told I love most of the twin cam 4-cyl engine , for example the one found in Ford Escort ... they just sounds so hard working , so lovely !
I hope there's a way to made a modern day AE86 , or made AE86 comes with modern day stuff ... maybe NA-built 2AZ-FE with Aisin AN6 6MT ? But I never know if it would sounds as good as the classic 4A-GE though . But then , F20C swap is closest to what I want .
4A-GE & AE86 ... there is something that you can't replace with the ToyoBaru 86 , the sounds of the 4A-GE .
I always love the sounds that made by the old school twin cam 4-cyl engine , although truth to be told I love most of the twin cam 4-cyl engine , for example the one found in Ford Escort ... they just sounds so hard working , so lovely !
I hope there's a way to made a modern day AE86 , or made AE86 comes with modern day stuff ... maybe NA-built 2AZ-FE with Aisin AN6 6MT ? But I never know if it would sounds as good as the classic 4A-GE though . But then , F20C swap is closest to what I want .
This is a perfect example of, as you say, finding your automotive nirvana. It's not always about maximum power, or rail like handling or owning the most expensive poser car you can afford. Sometimes it's the simple classics with simple motors that keep you the happiest. Having owned a variety of pretty much everything in the way of engine styles and capacities, high HP and super fast cars to ones that handle perfectly, I'm left with a slow, old, boring(to most) car that's probably my favourite that I've owned so far....I do have others in the stable to keep things varied, but that one is my nirvana. As you mature I think you realise that POWER isn't everything.
MON¥ Like what else, a tiger perhaps? What else goes in and engine bay apart from an engine?
Alternator other parts and cables
speedhunters_dino
I guess I am a believer in form following function. Ride height is lowered, but still allows proper suspension movement/doesn't upset roll centres too much. Wide wheels with appropriately sized sticky rubber. A sort of minimalism I suppose, but achieved through not adding things that are unnecessary, rather than trying to delete or hide things that are required.
Something more along these lines I guess is what I am thinking?
http://www.speedhunters.com/2015/07/finished-business-an-inspired-60s-barracuda-racer/
To give you an idea, this is what my ae86 looks like. In a similar vein the the "OEM+" style the VW guys have been doing so well. Something that isn't an out and out n2 car, perhaps not far from what someone would've build in the mid 80's when these cars were new
As for the USDM bumpers, everyone wants what they can't have. People here in the US want JDM stuff because it's not available without a conversion and it's different same can be said of Japan they want it because it's not available originally.
Spaghetti Well said, and true. It's more about the right sort of power.
Nat1984 speedhunters_dino Very nice! And yeah I'm all for that too, a combination of the two styles but none done so much that it upsets the other.
wojcei20 I call it human nature lol
I died. Dino you killed me. I'm in heeaavvveeennnnn!
I died. Dino you killed me. I'm in heeaavvveeennnnn!
speedhunters_dino ryukyustriker Track says it all right there. We weren't rich and had one car a daily driver and drift street only. People don't realize track is straight money. When I look back at my younger years we drifted night. I don't know how my body could keep up then. Get home catch a shower eat sleep a couple of hours , meet up with friends go cruise or work on someones car. About 10:00p.m. hit the industrial areas and drift until it got busted out by JP's (Japanese Police) We are talking 50 cars plus. Slow guy gets caught. If it was too packed to get out. We would just park the cars lock them up and walk away for a hour or so until the JP's left. You would hit spots it gets busted and move to another all night long. Usually until 2-3 in the morning. Go home and sleep to wake up a 6:00a.m. to go to work. Most of my crew were Half Japanese so we had the best of both worlds.
The stock body AE86 is like the girl next door, can be boring. The black one is nice with all the body additions. The stretched tires are lame, form over function. Just because someone did it once and it looks "different" nevermind that it detracts from performance. Bride seats are ugly, I don't care how much they cost. Do they pay you to advertise for them with their logo plastered all over? Their gradation colors are gross too, like shades of house paint or nail polish that no one ever buys. The shaved bays are very nice and clean, some of the color combos work too, like the black fittings.
speedhunters_dino Nat1984 Thank you! Sadly it is a long way from being as neat as the cars in this feature, but I don't intend parting with it ever so I have a lifetime to remedy that!
Each one of them is beautiful, but the yellow GT-S is absolutely awesome! Thank you for another great article Dino!
Each one of them is beautiful, but the yellow GT-S is absolutely awesome! Thank you for another great article Dino!
great engines in these.......and I won't comment on the silly wheel size/angle. But still, nice, clean builds showing good talent.
Krakatau Thanks!
Chri5 Duncan Are you talking about Bride? I said that because it's always been a favoured look to get the whole interior done. Everyone has their tastes and no they don't pay me to advertise out of stock trim palaces lol
Brentonmartian lol
Nat1984 speedhunters_dino Sounds like you will have a great time perfecting it over the years
That yellow car is absolutely fantastic. Perfect interior, perfect exterior, except for that sunvisor(?) at the top of the back window.
They all look so good. Incredible quality builds!
They all look so good. Incredible quality builds!
Please sir, can i have some more?
Please sir, can i have some more?
speedhunters_dino Chri5 Duncan I wasn't refering to you, just anyone in general who buys Bride seats. The logo is all over the seat basically it's like a billboard.
speedhunters_dino Chri5 Duncan I wasn't refering to you, just anyone in general who buys Bride seats. The logo is all over the seat basically it's like a billboard.
maxvr6 haha, you'll have to wait for the features.
maxvr6 haha, you'll have to wait for the features.
Yeah I do like the hot rod / race strip influence for the engine bays but I'm big on driving rather than parking, and driven cars break things that are needed for street use. Fixing things in race stripped areas is so much easier, until you need the thing you removed to register the car lol. I think the owners commitment to the longevity of the platform is to be commended though, I do like the 86 and 4A, but I won't be stripping and shaving the bay in my RT72 anytime soon
Yeah I do like the hot rod / race strip influence for the engine bays but I'm big on driving rather than parking, and driven cars break things that are needed for street use. Fixing things in race stripped areas is so much easier, until you need the thing you removed to register the car lol. I think the owners commitment to the longevity of the platform is to be commended though, I do like the 86 and 4A, but I won't be stripping and shaving the bay in my RT72 anytime soon
Wow, Gorous, and the think i used to have one of those guys/jet her go
Chri5 Duncan Needs more unlike button.
You're so far off the mark its just awkward. Please leave.
Spaghetti MON¥ turbo? doesn't have to be a big eff off type turbo either. sometimes smaller is better. I had an HKS 2540 on my 4age small port, and it suited it really well.
speedhunters_dino you´re welcome
will it be featured later ?
Chri5 Duncan speedhunters_dino It's really a personal choice. There are bride seats available with a more subtle logo if that's what the owner wants. At he same time other manufacturers like Recaro have seats with their logo all over it too. It's a bit of fun really with different strokes for different folks
Wow, Gorgeous, and to think I used to have one of those guys/let her go
Do you think its possible for you guys to make an article showing how to exactly prepare the engine bay to look the way that it does?
Afonsoae82gt YES PLEASE
What do I think? Mother of God...These cars are used on the roads? when a belt chain gets dirty after a rainy day let's say...., is it changed just for this reason?
Afonsoae82gt This is something the US Honda/VW guys have been doing for decades now: https://www.google.com/search?q=wire+tuck
There's no magic formula or secret trick, it's just A LOT of work.
Afonsoae82gt This is something the US Honda/VW guys have been doing for decades now: https://www.google.com/search?q=wire+tuck
There's no magic formula or secret trick, it's just A LOT of work.
the backseat of the yellow hachi makes all jdm lovers drooling
the backseat of the yellow hachi makes all jdm lovers drooling
speedhunters_dino wojcei20 Thanks for the reply and you hit the proverbial nail on the head my friend lol
And not an F20c in sight, perfect!
Save the F20/F22 for the s2000's that need them.
GrantC LOL
GrantC LOL
GrantC LOL
greenroadster probably LOL
Wow... Just... Wow!
just beautiful!!!!
Well done yet again Dino.
Your killing me with these rigs, so much so, i might just have to pull the 20V out of mine and do a proper clean up of the engine bay....
Amazing photos. But holy yellow this is a long shot but do you happen to know the colour code for that yellow Tofu-Mobile?
Amazing photos. But holy yellow this is a long shot but do you happen to know the colour code for that yellow Tofu-Mobile?
Amazing photos. But holy yellow this is a long shot but do you happen to know the colour code for that yellow Tofu-Mobile?
Chri5 Duncan Keep in mind most of these cars are running 14 or 15" wheels and the widest tyres you can get in the correct profile are 195-225. If you want to run wide wheels you don't have any other option than stretch. At the track it has been tested and proven that 225/45/15s on a 9 will run better times than the identical 225s on an 8. So cars like the black one would be about the best wheel+tyre set up available. But none of that is relevant. These cars were all taken from a meet that is about looks, not performance.
Chri5 Duncan Keep in mind most of these cars are running 14 or 15" wheels and the widest tyres you can get in the correct profile are 195-225. If you want to run wide wheels you don't have any other option than stretch. At the track it has been tested and proven that 225/45/15s on a 9 will run better times than the identical 225s on an 8. So cars like the black one would be about the best wheel+tyre set up available. But none of that is relevant. These cars were all taken from a meet that is about looks, not performance.
Carburated 3sge engine
The black top conversion is the holy grail for me, I would be very interested to know how the Japanese go about it. I can see some have swapped the distributor to the other end of the head and some have probably gone for a coil pack conversion. And how do they route the coolant/heater piping? I would love some details on this, all the black top conversions I've seen in Australia have seemed pretty rough and slap dash with lots of coolant leaking problems and such.
I agree, the sound of a 4AGE is amazing! I've been thinking about the possibility of a 2ZZ-GE swap into an AE86 since its kind of like a modern version of the 4AGE, I haven't heard of it being done before so doing something original would also be cool.
Caspaa
I'm guessing the reason why no one swap 2ZZ-GE is because it doesn't cheap , and you have to deal with gearbox choice (and possible starter position) ? Because 2AZ-FE swap also not easy to do , from what I found out (via a forum) , since there's no gearbox that is match AZ or ZZ series engine in longitudinal mount form .
SeanKeenan It looks pretty similar to the factory yellow the ae85 and Irish & Australian ae86 came in . Colour code for that is "Light Yellow - 558". Mine comes up like that in photos but it is not as vibrant a yellow in person
Man all those 86 are perfection, particularly the usdm good car, I thought it sat just right. Makes me want to by a 86 before the prices triple in 10 years.
RDS Caspaa Yes you would probably need to get a custom bell housing made that would allow you to use the gearbox you wanted. I would guesstimate ~$500 for that.
RDS Caspaa Yes you would probably need to get a custom bell housing made that would allow you to use the gearbox you wanted. I would guesstimate ~$500 for that.
these 86 are so sexy. I just love them all.
But, and don't get me wrong here, i'm catching on the ''pushing the boundaries'' thing. I mean, i dont see extensively built engines and chassis, crazy motor swaps, or anything really uncommon here. They actually all use the same base recipe. I'm not saying there's something wrong with that. but you have to admit there's only two basic set up in this article. 16v with ITB's or 20v. It's cool to see the clean shaved engine bay a all the attention to detail, but as someone else pointed out, that's nothing new.
I really dont mean that in a negative way! Just saying I didn't see anything in these pictures that made me say ''WOW! thats something you really don't see often!'' which is my definition of pushing the boundaries.
Great article Dino.
@speedhunters_dino big fan of his work !
@speedhunters_dino big fan of his work !
Caspaa
$500 is like bottom line , and then you gotta know how the whole engine being mounted , for example AZ engine are naturally mounted a little tilted from the sourced-car ... well , not easy , might as well cost a lot .
But like you said , original idea .
Nat1984 SeanKeenan Thank you very much for the reply and answer appreciate it a lot, thanks.
MON¥ Which car/engine doesn't have an alternator? Take a closer look in the bottom right.
the car was very good
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