These next few posts aren’t going to come out in order, but I’ve been bad about updating the journal so I’m just going by what’s off the top of my head. Yes – this is diffs again. 2nd diff (technically 3rd if you include the factory helical) for the front and 4th (? stock, Cusco…
Evo The Evo has had a fairly substantial amount of work done over the last 2 years, and I’m still sorting out all of the upgrades that were made. I don’t like to change a lot between racing the car, but with how scheduling has been, it was fairly inevitable. I’m back on track now,…
We have added front window tinting and windshield tinting to our Venza. The front windows seem to not have any tinting at all, which was surprising to us. It looks like the rears are tinted at about 20%, so we added a 35% tint to our front windows. This will help with both the heat…
This is a how-to for the second-gen Toyota Venza (USDM) oil change. If you are a DIYer, want to do more oil changes than Toyota recommends (you should), or have just run out of Toyotacare’s maintenance, this is a very simple, straight-forward job. See below for a detailed step-by-step and a slideshow of important steps.…
After getting the fender braces & crossmember brace on, I decided it was time to do an alignment. It has been a while, and I wanted to make sure everything was on straight. It wasn’t too far off, just a little bit of toe to adjust. I’m running about -3.5front, -3.5rear, with 0 toe all…
The next part of upgrades made for the Evo are the Nagisa Fender Braces. These braces reinforce the next weakest part of the chassis, connecting the body of the car to the front support structure. These have been well documented as far as making a difference in terms of how the car turns in. Obviously…
This is a chromoly piece that is fully tig welded. I ordered mine with the wrinkle black option & jack point. The piece weighed in at 4.5lbs, which should save 7.5lbs over stock. This is fortunate, as the two Nagisa fender braces I ordered add 2.9lbs each, in a similar area, albeit higher up in…
There’s a process involved when it comes to running the dual map tune that I currently run. First of all, when I want to run pump or E85, I need to drain the tank down as best as I can. Then, after filling up, I need to switch the key to “On,” and hold the…
Finally doing another event in the Evo. This year’s looking like it’s going to be a lot more active, so I’m back to test n tuning the car. Unfortunately, the battery for the GoPro died after a year of not using any of them, so I was unable to record any runs. First off, I…
I think this was a long time coming, but I’ve finally installed the half-roll bar in the Evo. Half, as I’m keeping the car as streetable as possible. The back seats are basically not usable anymore, but still capable of holding a good amount of stuff. That said, a huge disadvantage is that I can…
QL Motorsport & Car Journal 