GR Yaris Duke's bus

Duke

Duke

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Figured I should start a proper thread instead of adding to the pre-delivery one.

A quick photo from shortly after collection.

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Car is a Europe-spec High Performance (equivalent to UK Circuit Pack, but with heated seats ;) ) in pearl white. It's done 600 km now and is an absolute hoot, as we all know. I can almost guarantee this will be the dirtiest GR in the Zoo, I'm not exactly what you could call 'into detailing'. I do love seeing all your shiny cars though!

I'll be doing a trip from Luxembourg to Scotland in a few weeks time to do the NC500 so will occasionally add some photos when a) I remember to take some, and b) am able/can be bothered to post here :D It'll be a ~3,000 km round trip so should be well run-in by the time I finish.

I don't intend modifying much, certainly not straight away, but a remap/tuning box is probably on the cards at some point, if only to remove the 230 km/h limiter. I also like the sound of a downpipe and/or cold air intake to liberate a bit more low-end shove, but will probably leave the exhaust alone as it's loud enough for middle-aged me.

One thing which I did do almost straight away was disable the 'engine sound enhancement' via Carista. Much better.

Next on the list is the mirror riser mod. Will tackle that next weekend probably, but with the seat as low as it can go I'm actually not finding it much of a problem. In my sitting position (180 cm but with very long legs) it's the a-pillar that is more of an issue.
 
You will love Scotland the roads here are built for this car (y)
 
MRSUB said:
Nice one - Now go and play (y)
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Oh, it's getting used 😈

I consider new engines to continue to improve until about 20,000 km though, so looking forward to it loosening up further.
 
Found a semi-out of the way place for the garage remote control to sit. Still not 100% happy with it though.

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Will see if my impending road trip unearths any better candidates. I’ll be spending a lot of time in the thing!
 
All washed and ready to be made dirty again on my 3,000 km trip round Scotland.
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Last cheap(er) top-up before I leave Luxembourg. It’s managed about 7.7l/100km (30.5mpg) on the trip so far, but a lot of that was on the interminably boring Dutch motorways at about 110 km/h.
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Waiting to disembark. Cute little thing next to me
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Finally back home after a stop-off at Knokke-Heist on the Belgian coast for a week where the car covered a grand total of zero (0) km and I consumed all the litres myself 🍺

Final tallies are:
  • Distance: 2,982 km (1,864 miles)
  • Fuel used: 287 litres (63.1 gallons)
  • OBC consumption: 9.8l/100km (28.8 mpg)
  • Actual consumption: 9.6l/100km (29.4 mpg)
Very impressed by the fuel consumption. Around 1,000 km trundling through BE and NL helped bump the average up quite a bit, but even so I was expecting a good bit less, maybe 12l/100km (24 mpg). There were certainly good stretches where it was using a lot more fuel than that average though 😂

As for the car, well it performed faultlessly, tyre excepted but that’s hardly Toyota’s fault.

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In the end I had to get a normal Pilot Sport 4, but I think even managing that was quite fortunate considering the location it was discovered (Ullapool) and that fact the garage managed to get me one next day without really impacting my trip. Couldn’t risk just leaving it in given it’s awkward angle, and it was too close to the sidewall for a repair.

Have ordered a replacement PS4S, we’ll see how long that takes to arrive.

I had barely run the car in when I left so it’s fair to say we did a fair bit of bonding over the week in the Highlands. I learned where I could push harder and played with the various drive modes, becoming more comfortable with Sport and even preferring it for slower, tighter stuff where the extra kick out of the corners was a real plus.

There were obviously some immense roads, some of which I’d done before in various cars but many which I’d not been on. When you get a 10 or 15 mile stretch that’s free of traffic and with good sight lines/friends leading it was possible to have enormous fun, the flow was ridiculous at some points 😁 and we had a few cars that were fairly well matched for pace which made for some lovely shared experiences, nothing too exotic that was either getting held up or disappearing into the distance. That we’ve all known each other for nearly 40 years and could trust each other’s driving and judgement helps enormously too.

We were all quite sensible though (mostly) and there were no real scares and apart from my tyre, only one casualty, a bird who sacrificed itself on the front of a fiend’s Mini going through Glencoe. I found this memento in my intercooler a day or so later. RIP 🐦

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All in all a memorable trip 😍

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Top of Bealach na Bà

A friend took his drone and got some amazing footage, the forum doesn’t seem to allow uploading video but here’s a still of a few of us crossing Kylesku Bridge.

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Cool stuff.

I wonder why so many user of this forum get screws in their tyres?? I mean I only personally know one person with that happening. It's quite rare in general, isn't it? Why it's so often happening withe the GRY?
 
Not sure. Given the scarcity of PS4S, a tyre problem, specifically the thought of being stuck in some windswept passing place in Sutherland for hours waiting on recovery, was the one thing I was worried about before the trip.

And so it turned out 😂
 
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foxspeed said:
up there in july with a few mates...might be last time as the price of everything is making it too expensive to go again...
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Well worth doing. Can’t take it with you etc. 😂
 
Fitted a DTE piggyback box yesterday and have since gone through a tank and a half of fuel, including a 40 km detour on the way back from picking up some bellota for lunch. Don't tell my wife that's why I was late 😬

Definitely makes it more punchy between corners, much easier to provoke a slide. Although the top-line figure for power should now be around 290-300 hp, it really is the midrange torque pickup which is the biggest difference. A couple of times I even got caught out in traffic as it really lunges forward on part throttle now in a way that it just didn't before.

It's not snatchy or jerky at all though, just much more oomph for a given throttle input and boost levels that the standard ECU can only dream of at lower RPM/throttle openings. Despite that, it's not just a throttle map mod that flatters by removing all the range from the input, it still matches the standard ECU's linearity by providing relatively more thrust wherever your right foot is. The mapping is really well judged.

I deliberately waited until I was well-versed in the standard car's talents, and for it to be reasonably well run-in, before thinking about giving it a tickle. Allows me to appreciate the changes as I have considerable experience with it standard.

This is a nice first step, but I think in time I'll try to compare with a full remap to see if it's worth it. As it is, the DTE is truly plug-and-play and can be removed without a trace, and that is quite attractive.

Roll on summer!
 
Since installing the DTE box, I have felt a couple of hesitations after jumping into the car after it had been switched off for 20-45 minutes, so I was suspecting a bit of heatsoak being responsible. These had occasionally thrown a camshaft sensor error, but other than that there were no other symptoms. Cleared them with Carista and no further impact.

On advice of Andrew from DTUK, sprayed my harness connections with contact cleaner and reassembled last week.

Touch wood, but after a few hot starts over the last few days, no reoccurrence :)
 
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