Goals
The main objective with the car is to accentuate all the virtues it has.
The AE92 is a light and nimble car with quick response, rev happy and a great driving experience. To highlight these features we have to focus in three main groups:
Enhance the light and nimble nature of the car:
The car has steel body panels with the exception of the bumpers, the goal here is to make replacement parts for the hood fenders doors and trunk with glass-fiber or carbon-fiber. This not only reduces the weight of the car dramatically, it also provides the possibility to make changes to the original shape of the parts, for exemple, pressure relieves on the fender, wide arches in order to fit bigger tires, hood naca ducts as intakes for the engine and more.
Other area where the weight can be lost is in the rear seats and spare tire. Both the rear seat and backrest weigh 17.8kg and the spare tire another 15kg for a total of 32,8kg.
The removal of the back seats not only reduces the weight but also gives way to bolt four point harness to the rear strut bar.
(picture)
The removal of the spare tire allows to transfer the battery from the front of the engine bay to the truck which helps with weight distribution.
(picture)
The car as a 60/40 weight distribution, with this changes the predicted weight lost is 63 kg and the distribution to 55/45.
The other aspect to enhance nimbleness is a good suspension set up, which I talk about on the suspension page.
Enhance the quick responsiveness and rev happiness:
The 4AGE is notorious for its high rev limiter and quick response to the accelerator.
The three key modifications that provides an even quicker response are lightening the internals and flywheel/clutch assembly, a set of ITB´s and rubber or polyurethane engine mount.
The one key factor that determines how fast revs increase is the inercia of the internals and flywheel/clutch assembly.
Inercia is good in an engine that is daily driven, where you are not banging gears all the time instead you need the engine to keep up the revs to have a smooth ride in traffic.
With less inercia the speed of the engine will increase and decrease in a faster rate, so for exemple on an up-shift when the clutch is engaged the revs will decrease quicker and the next gear can be engaged faster and smoother. Other exemple is with rev matching in downshifts, the blip on the accelerator will bring the revs up quicker and the lower gear can be selected faster, in the other hand the matching on the revs has to be more accurate or else the engine will not like it so much.
The best way to remove mass from the moving parts of the engine is with forged pistons and connecting rods (demonstration), a lighter flywheel (stock vs aftermarket) and aluminium polies. If you want to go extreme you can also use a dual disc clutch which has smaller diameter discs and pressure plate. Normally they are lighter than conventional one disc clutches due to a billet pressure plate and more compact volume. This not only help with static weight, that is irrelevant to the inercia, but also reduces the rotational mass which huguely improves a reduction in inercia.
Enhance the driving experience:
When I´m referring to driving experience I´m stating the feel the driver has when in the driving seat, meaning how much information can the driver receive front the hands and body and how precise the set up let him control the car.
In that regard, the four points I intent to improve are: pedal layout, sitting position, shifting feel and tightness of the driver.