Project Crown: Just an Update
05.07.2025
Quite a bit has happened since last time, so here's a quick update.
Firstly, the Crown had to survive its first long road trip. Toyota Festival was on at Highlands Motorsport Park on 15 March in Cromwell, so there were a few things I wanted to do first. The biggest being a couple more pounds of boost - although this probably didn't help with it 'surviving' the trip, it sure did help with the overtaking.
To accomplish this, I shimmed my wastegate. Removing the J-pipe was an easy job, just a couple clips, a couple hoses, and a couple bolts.
Removing the bottom wastegate bolt on the other hand... Being blocked by the upper coolant neck, a socket wouldn't fit, and the bolt was too tight for a wrench.
After a couple hours, I finally got it off with a small pipe on the end of a wrench. I ended up shimming the wastegate by 4mm using 3 washers per wastegate bolt. This puts a little extra tension on the wastegate rod, meaning it'll make slightly more boost for the wastegate to open, and for boost to hold on better in the high RPM's.
The end result was 0.9 bar of boost as opposed to the prior 0.7 to 0.8 - a success. As a result, 0-100 times recorded 5.28 seconds, not too bad for an old-man wagon.
Toyota Festival was a major success for the Crown. It had no issues what so ever, breezed with passing, and even took a 60-inch TV, a full-size single mattress, all our tools, some frying pans for my parents holiday house we were staying in, and a couple duffle bags. The Crown's wagon-practicality was fully utilized.
We drove down in a convoy of mostly Supra's, but also my Crown, an old Mark II Wagon, and an ST205 Celica GT-Four.
After a deep clean, the Crown was ready for Toyota Fest!
The Crown participated in the show & shine, and also got a chance to go on track for the parade lap.
Following the success of Toyota Festival, the Crown was treated to a bit of maintenance and a couple fixes.
Firstly, I was alerted by a friend following me that I had no brake lights. Turns out, my brake light switch was misaligned, so after a couple adjustments, the brake lights worked as good as new.
Next up was the throttle body. I decided to clean it, since I knew that it had probably never been cleaned in the whole 180,000 KM it had been driven. And to nobodies surprise, it was absolutely filthy.
After a going over with CRC Thrott-L Cleaner, it was too looking as good as new.
By this time, I decided it was finally time to do a bit of major work on the Crown. The timing belt, while only having done an odd 70,000 KM, was to my surprise 14 years old... a bit past the due date. So, as anyone would do, I contemplated spending my precious modification money on maintenance parts, and then ended up buying an extensive list of genuine Toyota parts from Amayama.
New timing belt, tensioner, hydraulic tensioner, water pump, accessory belt, cam seals, crank seal, rocker cover gasket, and rocker cover hose. And as I planned to do the job myself, I also got myself a crank gear puller, crank gear holder, hex socket set that goes up to 14mm, and also borrowed a massive breaker bar for the crank pulley bolt.
After watching a dozen YouTube videos five or six times, I took advantage of the first long weekend I had to tackle the job. It took a day and a half, and overall, was not too bad. We got lucky with the crank bolt coming off easy, and no seized or broken bolts.
After torquing everything back up, putting all the new seals in, and putting some fresh Fenix red coolant in, the Crown was running beautifully and smoothly.
However, I realised that there was one part I forgot to order... the PVC hose. This was rock hard, and while ripping the rocker covers off, split on the end. Fearing a vacuum leak from this, I quickly pulled it off to try find a replacement.
Unfortunately, all my straight lengths of hose couldn't take the sharp bends of the PVC hose without kinking, not silicone or rubber, or with heat. As a result, I ended up having to do this with the rubber hose for it to work... It might not be the prettiest, by hey, no kinks, and no leaks.
Now that all the maintenance was done, it was time to treat the Crown to a few mods.
First up was a TRD 3-point front underbody bracing. In typical Facebook Marketplace fashion, I got ever so slightly scammed when buying it. Turns out, it came out of a crashed car, and munted in every proportion. Luckily, my friend Jacob, after many hours with heat, was able to fix it all back into original form. After a bit of paint, and couple touch ups on the TRD badge, it was ready to stiffen the Crown's chassis.
It bolted straight on this time, and looks beautiful under the car. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, but I'll upload some on the next update.
Next up was the boost gauge. While I loved the A'PEXi EL1, being indecisive, I decided I wanted to once again run my super rare Trust Super 80mm boost gauge. After swapping the harnesses over, and connecting the vacuum hose back up, the Crown once again had an obnoxiously large boost gauge that covers half the speedometer.
Now, to put a bit of attention to the engine. After some eyeing up of the HKS CAMP2 data, I noticed my IAT's were often quite high, which was to be expected, as I run an exposed pod filter. However, the IAT's were getting a lot hotter than I was really comfortable with, and higher than what I thinking that they would be sitting at. Not wanting to lose turbo dose by doing the smart thing and putting the stock air-box back in, I decided I would either make an intake air-box/heat-shield, or run some ducting from the lower bumper.
Being not bothered to take the front bumper off, I ended up going with the heat-shield idea.
A bit CAD (cardboard aided design) gave me a perfect template to make the real thing.
I ended up getting a sheet of 600x300x0.5mm aluminum sheet, which I cut with scissors and a box cutter, assembled with self tapping screws, and bent with an offcut piece of wood.
Overall, the end product came out way better than I expected. While not fully blocking all the hot air out, it divides the air filter from the fans, and should still contribute to lowering the IAT's.
So, what's happened in the last 5 months? The Crown got a long road trip, attended a car show, was treated to a whole heap of maintenance, and even got a few mods. It better be grateful and treat me nicely now...
I'm a bit low on cash at the moment with all the parts I've just got for it and installed, so it'll probably be a while until the next update. However, I am eyeing up a front-mount intercooler kit and a high-flow turbo...