Conan

The Will brand is pretty interesting. It was an attempt at creating a brand that catered specifically to the youths. A lot like what Toyota would later did with Scion or GM with Saturn. Except, this wasn't a brand started by Toyota, but a host of Japanese conglomerates. Panasonic was a participant with a massive array of electronic products, along with Asahi making Will beers, Glico making Will snacks, etc. one participant was a tour company name "Kinki". The Will Cypha isn't the only one Toyota made either. There was also the Will VS which basically was a weird Auris, and another Yaris-based Will Vi with it's absolutely bonkers styling, even more so than the Cypha. All of this ended in 2005 to the surprise of absolutely no one.

They're front heavy, quite susceptible to lift off oversteer, with vague, rubbery steering, and they struggle to put 225hp down the tarmac even with UUHP tyres in the dry. Driven at 8/10ths they are perfectly safe and quite stable. Once you go nearer the limit the shortcomings are becoming very clear very fast. It is just my 2 cents. I bought mine for many things but sharp handling. 😆 It could make sense for the police to use R ECU. But I don't think it makes that much of a difference considering it's about 15hp more with the automatic. My point is that even the normal T-5 225hp is quite fast already especially in period.

These don't handle nor stop as standard so I doubt they'd put more horsepower through it. Mine have the bigger brake disc (302mm) that these supposedly later have and it still doesn't stop for shit. That and once it actually got more power stuffs tend to break a lot. Stock they're plenty fast compared to most 90's tin anyway. Later S60 isn't much better because surprising amount of the components are carry over. I reckon many of those "300hp" ex-plod Volvo are just people chip tuning it themselves.

I forgot. On the circuit board some guy printed a bunch of little moose. They probably don't realised but it does make my day a little bit better.

The fuel gauge and temp gauge stopped working a while back. They were intermittently working before but they finally died completely. Since they both went out at the same time it's not likely going to be the sender or the sensor but the cluster itself is kaput. So I just bought a used cluster off the internet and swap them over. Well it is only £30 so if it's not that nothing is lost, right? I don't know which engineer in Gothenburg designed this car so that the entire dash pad had to come out to remove the cluster but I wish them well. The diagnosis was correct though. The circuit board failed on the original cluster. Everything is now working correctly and the Tripmeter gear isn't broken like the other cluster as well, so that's a nice bonus. It's a bit of a shame the old cluster is nicer cosmetically, but if it cannot function properly then it's useless being clean and nice.

I'll distract you from the recent calamity. As it happens, no, that was not the first film to feature a Stellar as the main starring role. This was. I doubt it'll be the last as well. Late 80's nostalgia is going on pretty hard in South Korea.

Well I think a huge part of why some older cars seem to be more reliable in 2022, not only that the owners are likely gonna be people who cares, but also because if it's survives this long it's very likely to have been a good example out of eleventy billion made. Car QC can be visualised by a steep bell curve. Some example are better made than the manufacturer expected, some are worse. Every single car ever made got a specific measurement of time manufacturer expected them to survive. So if they're problematic from day one it wouldn't likely survive past manufacturer's expectation, on the other hand if it were to survive for even longer than expected it gotta be a properly good one. Especially those who have owned many examples of a single model would see it this way as well I believe. Once I have been around enough old cars I start to feel like some specific car out there are just made so well that it's no wonder why they last longer, even models with reputation of being haphazardly made can have a better example than expected.

For anyone interested in this topic I'd suggest giving a YT channel called William Moser a watch. This guy simulate combustion firing noise along with visualisation in form of light bulb and the result actually sounds a lot like real engine would. There's A LOT of theoretical firing order shown and also a lot that does exist but not in high rev application like in typical passenger cars. I'll provide an example starting with 1.

Cheeky cunt blew it's rubber brake lines. All 5 of them. Caught it before I cannot stop though. New one put in. Exactly the same as 1974-1987 RWD type Corolla so very easily sourced replacement. It's now also got a rev counter. For counting revs. More shenanigans found as when I've rev it out to the max speed indicated for each gear on the speedometer, it's only 4,000rpm. FOUR THOUSAND. Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro. What's this? 1947 Crosley?

Did some more works today. Yesterday I was gonna use the car for night run but when I went to start it I found the headlamps were not illuminating. It was dark out so there's no point in trying to diagnose. Guy who put the radiator in noted that there was quite a bit of crud in the cooling system. It's 42 year old iron block engine so that's to be expected especially when I got the car there wasn't even glycol in it, just plain, hard water. I've drained and refill the radiator when I got the car 2 times and got a lot of the murky rusty water out but not all of the crud. The shop told me they chuck some radiator flush in so I have to drain and replace again today. I did the first drain and refill with just tap water. Bleed for 15 mins and drove the car 20 mins. Come back, drain and refill this time with some genuine Toyota pre-mix so I don't have to faff about with trying to get a hold of distilled water. It's all good now but the next change will be I reckon in 6 months time then it can go to proper 2 years interval (saying this like I'll be keeping it that long). Then I started diagnosing as to why the headlamp wasn't working. I went through every relay there is in the engine bay. (There was, all in, 8). Not a single relay is labeled as to what they do and there's way too many wires to run them through. I hit every single relay just to see what happen. The headlamp suddenly came back. I tried high beams. Nope. I hit the suspected relays again. This time the headlamp doesn't work, but high beam which turns on all 4 lamps at the front works. At this point I decided I'm going to put the high beams on and unplugging each relays to find which one it was. As it happens, all the relays that have new and easily removable plugs are not forward lamp relay. It was the one without the nice new plug but instead individual wires. I randomly removed one of the wire running to that relay and found it to be exactly the same. Everything working except main driving lamp, even the main beams still working. Maybe it was the other relay. So I plug it back in but the small individual connector was clearly loose and a bit corroded. At this point I thought surely it cannot be that lucky, but I was lucky. Plug that wire back in and the headlamp is back. I knew exactly how this tall farang felt on that day. I use some pilers to make the small connector a bit tighter and it's still working as it should. Dipped beams, high beams, sidelights, all rear lights. Then I notice one of the side indicator isn't working. I thought to myself at this point, now that is the reason why one of the indicators was indicating slightly faster all this time. I run removed the offending lens to find that there's nothing wrong with it. So I run the wiring back to find one of the connectors to be a bit iffy, a bit corroded. Some light cleaning and it's working again! Look at the above picture again. Yay. I like having cars with correctly working lights. Seeing cars on the road with non functioning lights pisses me off. I'm sure others are the same.

Fuel injection is BORING.

I've been driving only 7 years and have had 5 cars. Compared to all of you it's nothing to write home about. 😅 Although many people have said that I change car wayyyy too often. 1995 Mercedes-Benz E200 W124 (2016-2018) 1989 Toyota Corolla GL (2018-2020) 1995 Volvo 850 T-5R (clone) (2020-) 1986 Mazda 626 LX (hairnet ride which due to the event he never get to see in metal) (2020-2022) 1979 Toyota Corona Liftback (2022-) Not counting others that I have at my disposal but not actually in my name.

This is Memorial Bridge. A drawbridge which's been open since 1932 but isn't lifted regularly anymore. Thought it looks cool. This car is absolutely reliable 100% tip top mechanically. Cosmetically it could do with a sparkly stick and a lick of paint, but that's for the future. It's runs too well to be laid up for weeks right now. Maybe later this year. It now also has a big aluminium radiator and one new cooling fan. More cooling fin, wider, thicker, more actual coolant capacity. It's so thick it's probably good enough for 300hp engine. In all fairness it's way overkill for this engine but it's £170 so there's no point faffing about with anything less. Well it'll be adequate for when I put twin sidedraft on this thing.

An update. The engine bay now look like this. It now got reverse intercooler piping custom made for it. Turns out doing so is cheaper than ordering a pre made kit from overseas. The barry in me also decided to put cone air filter on it. It doesn't make it go faster. It is there to make noise. Plenty of noise. Then the air-conditioning stopped working a few months back. That took weeks to sort out. The evaporator which is situated behind the dashboard was leaking thus the picture above. When it's back together there's even less dashboard creaking than before so pretty well done job I'd say. Then I decided it was time to finally fix the boost controller. I got new Pierburg turbo control valve from the S60 because the original type boost control solenoid is no longer available. It is completely plug and play and now the car finally make boost again. Way too much boost. Peaking at about 17psi at one point. Usually it's peaking around 14. It's suppose to run at 8 if it's stock. I spent a week fiddle with the wastegate actuator adjustment and it makes absolutely no different to the way the boost peaked. I even brought out a contraption with small syringe and digital low pressure gauge. Set it up so perfect and correct to the guide in a way that I'm pretty sure not even independent garage would bother. No different. I even swap in a spare wastegate actuator I have and it's still boosting more than expected. It's boosting way too stable to be a fault. And the exhaust hole on the bumper is very sooty for a pez (not overly so though) so it's clearly not running lean. Maybe this car actually has a chip. Those do run at 17psi without issues. Anyway, I also replaced the ruined Bridgestone Potenza Sport with Michelin Pilot Sport 5. Not as good of a tyre I must say. It's softer sidewall so the steering feel is more numb. The grip itself is also not as good although on public road it's already a plenty. The Potenza Sport is so ridiculously grippy that I rarely ever gets to use to it's full potential. And I haven't had a chance to track it again and likely not to considering how much wear it got. I still got to try wearing the Pilot Sport 5 down though I only got a few hundred miles on them. Why did I changed to Pilot Sport 5 especially so soon? Well... it was free ninety nine. Long story as to how that happen. The Potenza Sport is now repurposed into my modern Mazda 2. It's still good enough for regular use on the road. Finally, yesterday I also decided to fix the exhaust. It was bodged when the bypass valve got stuck open the last track day. A week back the bodged bypass valve was leaking again leading to a Rickard Rydell moment on the street. It sounded cool as hell but it was so noisy my ear felt like it started to bleed after half an hour. It was even louder outside. So it was finally welded shut and no chance of it stuck open ever again. It's so quiet all I'm hearing now is turbo noises from the cone filter. I still love this car a lot. In case it's still not clear it's purely for my inner yob. Corona update soon. It's still in the shop.

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