My luce

[Babalouie]

SIM_RX3's a good mate of mine, and put me onto this awesome site, so here's my current project, she's a work in progress so is a leeetle bit rough

She's a 1986 HC Luce Royal Classic, 13B turbo, and mine's a very similar spec to Sim's car except I've got the fridge.








In terms of mods, the engine's rebuilt and the turbo hi-flowed with a T04 compressor and a 3in exhaust. So far I'm just running stock boost and she gets 185rwhp. The tranny is stock but with an external cooler and 2200 stall convertor. Next mod are adapting a set of FC RX7 Teins, which I hope to have installed over the weekend.

Great 929 community you got here

[dmeetro]

WOW thats areally great car, Its nearly spotless as if it just came of the dealership lot. I'm loving the steering wheel and the tach. The thing that i like the most tho is the turbo 13b. Did you run on a dyno to get the whp #rs?
The car is nearly perfect accept for a couple scraches on the pass rear quarter panel. Those scraches look white in the pic and from what I remember white means its only on through clearcoat and can be buffed out.


I'm really glad that we are gaining members for AUS welcome to the forum


-Dima

[Matsuda 9]

Electric rear bench...... LOVEN IT

that is very nice S1 HC and fully featured too

i love jap bumpers.... nice and skinny

good, work and welcome, good to see that we are getting more and more members and hopefully will build on our knowlage base

[Babalouie]

WOW thats areally great car, Its nearly spotless as if it just came of the dealership lot. I'm loving the steering wheel and the tach. The thing that i like the most tho is the turbo 13b. Did you run on a dyno to get the whp #rs?
The car is nearly perfect accept for a couple scraches on the pass rear quarter panel. Those scraches look white in the pic and from what I remember white means its only on through clearcoat and can be buffed out.
I'm really glad that we are gaining members for AUS welcome to the forum
-Dima
[/b]

Oh no, the pics are a little flattering but the bodywork needs a lot of TLC and a full respray and dent-ectomy is on the cards as the next mod after the Teins. The interior is mint though, but the car was manhandled on its was to Australia so it was rather brutally shoved into a container full of engines and there are lots of little dents and scrapes as a result.

Yup, that power figure is from a dyno pull, I was worried that I might be running out of injector or something so wanted to check out the fuelling after the big turbo and the exhaust went on.

[dmeetro]

good to hear, keep us updated on the teins i'm sure a lot of HC owners are curious how to low their cars. Its good to hear that suc ha beautiful car is in good hands.


Also what have you done to the headlights to keep them so clean?


OOOH and are the shocks you are putting in coilovers or just lowering springs/shocks?

[Babalouie]

Also what have you done to the headlights to keep them so clean?[/b]

Nuthin special, just wipe it with a soapy sponge?

OOOH and are the shocks you are putting in coilovers or just lowering springs/shocks?
[/b]

They're Tein Super Street coilovers, so yeah, shocks and springs. They're actually for FC, so I'm going to try to adapt them to the HC strut tops and shock mounts.

Thanks for the warm welcome guys

[9ine Deuce]

First off, its good to see another Luce tuner from south of the Equator. Its good to have you on this site adding more to the 929/Luce data base. Ive seen some pics of your series I on Ausrotary. I like the gun-metal color & raingaurds.

The car is in pretty good shape for an 86. I thought 87 was the earliest they were produced ?

Im loving the lines of the hardtop & it looks good on those Advans. What are the wheel specs and do you have any pics showing fitament from the side ?

The woodgrain Mazdaspeed wheel is nice, it even compliments the 'faux' dash panel trim. Is that a Greddy boost gauge ? Are any of the buttons on the dash for the folding mirrors ? Nice demostration of the reclining rear seats, one option i wish was available for the sedan version. Do you have pics of the mini fridge in the rear & in trunk ? On the sedan model you can really tell how it is set up for these options, as i discovered from ripping the interior apart many times.

185 RWHP is still pretty good numbers for what you've done. Looks the intake box is stock too so theres more easy HP. Do you have any pics of the exhuast set up from underneath ?

With the suspension are you swapping HC top hats on to a set off FC Tein coilovers ? I assume you're getting custom springs made from what I was told on Ausrotary. Or are you canning it to the ground without custom springs ? How much are you planning to drop it f/r ?

The 929 has stock postive front camber, so does the Luce as I've seen in many pics. Do you plan on fitting a camber kit along side the coilover swap ?

I'd really don't really know too much about the Luce & I'd like to understand more. Thanks for the help.

[Babalouie]

The car is in pretty good shape for an 86. I thought 87 was the earliest they were produced ? [/b]

I'm pretty sure the owners handbook says it hit the road in Saitama, Japan in 1986. I'll check it again.

Im loving the lines of the hardtop & it looks good on those Advans. What are the wheel specs and do you have any pics showing fitament from the side ?[/b]

Wheels are 17x8 +33 in the front, and 17x9 +38 at the back. If you mean pics of the car from the side, I think this is the closest I got to tha angle:

Is that a Greddy boost gauge ? Are any of the buttons on the dash for the folding mirrors ? Nice demostration of the reclining rear seats, one option i wish was available for the sedan version. Do you have pics of the mini fridge in the rear & in trunk ? On the sedan model you can really tell how it is set up for these options, as i discovered from ripping the interior apart many times.[/b]

The boost gauge is a Blitz AC, and yup that switch to the right of the cruise control is for folding the mirrors back.

It's not a super clear pic but here's the panel which hides the fridge. On the left is the lid for the fridge on the right is the "air purifier", which sucks in air and breathes it out thru an air filter in the boot.

185 RWHP is still pretty good numbers for what you've done. Looks the intake box is stock too so theres more easy HP. Do you have any pics of the exhuast set up from underneath ?[/b]

I did have a pod at one point, but one of the quirks of the S4 turbo engine is that it doesn't have good boost control when you open up the exhaust a lot. So with the pod it was overboosting to 13psi which I wasn't comfortable with on the stock ecu. Refitting the more restrictive stock airbox capped this tendency and I get a nice stable 7psi. I might refit the pod one day when I've got an upgraded fuel system and standalone ecu so that I can get it mapped to 13psi and still stay safe. It theoretically should be making about 320hp at 13psi so that's way, way beyond what the stock ecu and injectors can handle. Sorry I haven't got any pics of the exhaust but it's a custom 3in system from the turbo, to a 3in custom cat then a muffler and resonator and then a baffled muffler. As it stands it's version 3.0, the first two versions were deafeningly loud, which I've discovered is sorta unavoidable with rotaries if you want to make lots of power. But it's a nice paradox...looks like a 929, sounds like an RX7

With the suspension are you swapping HC top hats on to a set off FC Tein coilovers ? I assume you're getting custom springs made from what I was told on Ausrotary. Or are you canning it to the ground without custom springs ? How much are you planning to drop it f/r ?[/b]

Yup, I've got Teins without the pillowtop mounts, so I'm going to adapt them to the stock strut hats. No, I'm just using the springs that come with the Teins, and that's 275/225 which I think should be a nice compromise without being too harsh. As for the drop I dunno...at the moment my exhaust hangs quite low in the middle, so dropping it more than 1inch might be a little impractical until I get the exhaust redone, but we'll see. Since the FC shocks are shorter than the HC ones I might not have much choice but to run quite low but we'll see.

The 929 has stock postive front camber, so does the Luce as I've seen in many pics. Do you plan on fitting a camber kit along side the coilover swap ?[/b]

Maybe....my suspension shop prefers a different method though, they bolt a rig onto the hub and then use a hydraulic ram to bend the lower knuckle. I've had this done to many cars and it works well. Problem is that on the HC the inside of the wheel is quite close to the strut, so I might not have enough room to do a decent camber job. We'll see, there might be tons more room without the stock spring pan in there. It's on the cards, I think it looks a little silly with that positive camber and it's more of a VIP look to have negative camber so it's one of the things I'd like to do if possible.

I'd really don't really know too much about the Luce & I'd like to understand more. Thanks for the help.
[/b]

I'll post up my mods as we go along Feel free to ask any questions

[9ine Deuce]

Thanks for the reply and for the pics again.

I really like how the hardtop has fog lights on the inner light cluster, its real classy.

For the fitament shot the 2nd pic is close, could be a tighter angle still it can give people an idea on HC fitament. 8" & 9" wide wheels fill up the fenders pretty good, lower offset even better IMO.

Interesting about the air purifier, i didnt really know too much about that.

Maybe when youre swapping the coils on you can take some pics because im sure there gonna be a members doing this mod in the near future, much appreciated.

Im not sure if I read right but even if FC coilovers are jacked up all the way in a Luce, the ride height is still slammed esp. up front. Interesting way of making camber, maybe it will work if you had lower offsets which would give some more clearance between the shock/rim. I heard from a member on here who ordered some camber kit from Aus. I forgot the name of the company but id be **** interested in getting a set.

[Babalouie]

Thanks for the reply and for the pics again.

I really like how the hardtop has fog lights on the inner light cluster, its real classy.

For the fitament shot the 2nd pic is close, could be a tighter angle still it can give people an idea on HC fitament. 8" & 9" wide wheels fill up the fenders pretty good, lower offset even better IMO.

Interesting about the air purifier, i didnt really know too much about that.

Maybe when youre swapping the coils on you can take some pics because im sure there gonna be a members doing this mod in the near future, much appreciated.

Im not sure if I read right but even if FC coilovers are jacked up all the way in a Luce, the ride height is still slammed esp. up front. Interesting way of making camber, maybe it will work if you had lower offsets which would give some more clearance between the shock/rim. I heard from a member on here who ordered some camber kit from Aus. I forgot the name of the company but id be **** interested in getting a set.
[/b]

Sure, I'll take some pics during the coilover install and post them up. I'll also take some pics of the air purifier too from the boot.

The prob with the front wheels are that there really isn't much room on either the inside or outside, on hard cornering the tyres lightly rub the guards (which have been rolled) so running lower offset or wider wheels than 8in is going to be difficult without pulling the fender lips out a bit. On the rear I have undersized the tyre a little for a bit of stretch and I think I could go another 8mm or so before rubbing. But on the front, 8in +33 offset is about the limit unless I can achieve some decent camber to tuck in the top of the tyre.

Yeah I hear ya about the ride height, so I guess we'll see. Typically the Tein Super Street kits don't lower the ride height that much, so if I can achieve a FC std ride height setting, then that should be an inch lowered or so on the HC. Well, thats the theory anyway