GR86 Must have mods and ownership experience

S

Stardus.

Obsessed member
Joined
Mar 15, 2022
Messages
245
Reaction score
307
I am probably one of the few people that are very disappointed in the out of box driving experience of the GR86. After going through a few tweaks and mods, I am finally happy how it's setup as a road car.

Note: Frequent track driver and have completed in autosolo for years, my cars is not setup for safe understeer and will go into oversteer with steering input alone with a neutral balance


OEM setup issues for me:
Horrible mid corner understeer, does not trail brake at all (No front camber)
Lack of rear traction, making power on oversteer easy but not progressive (High rear anti squat, very soft rear subframe + diff bushing)
Soggy rear end response (Very soft rear subframe + diff bushing, tyres)
Soggy brakes (Soft OEM pads, can't handle hard driving)
Weird clutch feel
Throttle pedal too far and long for heel toe
Engine sounds muted


Best mods in order what I value the most
  1. Proper 4 wheel alignment - If you don't want to change anything on your car, PLESAE do this at the very least. The alignment from factory can be extremely wonky!
  2. Lighter Clutch spring replacement - Fixes weird clutch feel without drawback
  3. Cusco or other throttle pedal extension - I uses a Verus spacer personally but any will help. Makes heel toe much easier and reduces the big height difference from brake to throttle
  4. Front camber bolts - Adding front camber helps with reducing understeer and make the front end more receptive to trail braking
  5. Rear subframe + diff bushing inserts - Drastically reduces the floaty rear end and even help with drivetrain response
  6. Better brake pads + fluid - Finally can drive hard without spongy brakes, I use Endless MX72Plus
  7. Intake + exhaust of your choice - helps with making the car sound better
  8. GKTech traction arms - Massively increases traction on acceleration, you can use the throttle to rotate a lot more precisely without breaking into a slide
  9. Grow design lowering spring - More grip and body control without harsher ride, developed by the GR86 development driver Masahiro Sasaki. Kinda OEM+?
  10. Pedder offset front strut top mount - Extra camber and caster, OEM style design, so no bearing noise. Not needed if you happy with the front end bite with just camber bolts
  11. 25F/20R mm wheel spacers - more for looks but does look good. 25mm front will need more front camber than 2 degree

Currently the car sits around 30mm lower, with 50mm wider front and 40mm wider rear track.
Front camber at around 2.3 degree and rear at 2.2. No front toe out to save tyre life and 0.1mm total toe in rear. Around 6 degree caster with the Pedder top hat.
Stock ARB and damper.

With the narrow not crazy sticky street tyres, it's easy to exploit the grip limit and turning the car with throttle and weight transfer.

Perfect balance for me now!
 
Interesting post and good to hear some feedback on the various mods you’ve done. I’m considering a few of them at some stage in the future so it’s good to have someone with real world experience of them.

What wheels and tyres are you running on it ? Dyou have any photos of how it sits with the mods fitted ?
 
Thanks for sharing. How do you find the grow design HALsprings? Are they are good as people say?
 
For me:
- Camber bolts with a proper alignment done by someone who knows what they are doing. This made the biggest difference by far. Only -1 on the front but enough for the road and daily use. It's out from factory and I didn't realise how much I'd been managing it.
- Bracing for strut tops and a few underneath ones that fit. One doesn't because of our exhaust. Corner turn in and change of direction is sharper. Brake stopper helps too
- Light wheels - TWS T66F wheels in an 8.5 wide with Goodyear AS6's. Makes such a difference everywhere saving near 3kg a corner, corner exits especially.
- Bushes for the diff do help but it's definitely increased NVH a little
- Exhaust. Up to you what you go for. The Remark is fine with mates messing about but daily use, seats down it's tiresome. Gone C-TEC and it's great now. Even get comments by those following how good it sounds
- MCA traction mod - At first I was sceptical but now I wouldn't be without it. Gives so much more grip and stability at the rear end, it's almost kart like in that my throttle is on far earlier and yet it doesn't let go. People following have said they see me turn in and it's just gone, where others are not as stiff so have the body roll.

What's left
- Brake pads and fluid. Got MX72+ to go on when these need a change, which I suspect will be the service and MOT in November
- Steering rack bolts and rack brace bits. May do this in the winter.

After that who knows. For me it doesn't need anything else. I don't want to go too extreme, keep it OEM+ and work on myself. Don't need the throttle plate or clutch spring. Used to it without, although my clutch pedal does creak now, especially when warm. Damping is OK but low speed on our crap roads is noticeable. Don't really want to lower it as we have many speed bumps here in Wales and some B roads undulate so much, there's already risk of bottoming out at speed. High speed on good roads is great, especially from where I've come from. A map to sort the throttle out would be nice but time in the car gets you used to it.

As the car is now matches my driving style, which has changed a bit as I've owned the car too.
 
Stardus. said:
I am probably one of the few people that are very disappointed in the out of box driving experience of the GR86. After going through a few tweaks and mods, I am finally happy how it's setup as a road car.

Note: Frequent track driver and have completed in autosolo for years, my cars is not setup for safe understeer and will go into oversteer with steering input alone with a neutral balance


OEM setup issues for me:
Horrible mid corner understeer, does not trail brake at all (No front camber)
Lack of rear traction, making power on oversteer easy but not progressive (High rear anti squat, very soft rear subframe + diff bushing)
Soggy rear end response (Very soft rear subframe + diff bushing, tyres)
Soggy brakes (Soft OEM pads, can't handle hard driving)
Weird clutch feel
Throttle pedal too far and long for heel toe
Engine sounds muted


Best mods in order what I value the most
  1. Proper 4 wheel alignment - If you don't want to change anything on your car, PLESAE do this at the very least. The alignment from factory can be extremely wonky!
  2. Lighter Clutch spring replacement - Fixes weird clutch feel without drawback
  3. Cusco or other throttle pedal extension - I uses a Verus spacer personally but any will help. Makes heel toe much easier and reduces the big height difference from brake to throttle
  4. Front camber bolts - Adding front camber helps with reducing understeer and make the front end more receptive to trail braking
  5. Rear subframe + diff bushing inserts - Drastically reduces the floaty rear end and even help with drivetrain response
  6. Better brake pads + fluid - Finally can drive hard without spongy brakes, I use Endless MX72Plus
  7. Intake + exhaust of your choice - helps with making the car sound better
  8. GKTech traction arms - Massively increases traction on acceleration, you can use the throttle to rotate a lot more precisely without breaking into a slide
  9. Grow design lowering spring - More grip and body control without harsher ride, developed by the GR86 development driver Masahiro Sasaki. Kinda OEM+?
  10. Pedder offset front strut top mount - Extra camber and caster, OEM style design, so no bearing noise. Not needed if you happy with the front end bite with just camber bolts
  11. 25F/20R mm wheel spacers - more for looks but does look good. 25mm front will need more front camber than 2 degree

Currently the car sits around 30mm lower, with 50mm wider front and 40mm wider rear track.
Front camber at around 2.3 degree and rear at 2.2. No front toe out to save tyre life and 0.1mm total toe in rear. Around 6 degree caster with the Pedder top hat.
Stock ARB and damper.

With the narrow not crazy sticky street tyres, it's easy to exploit the grip limit and turning the car with throttle and weight transfer.

Perfect balance for me now!
Click to expand...
Would love to see a picture or two of how it sits now. If these are in another thread, apologies!
 
KobayashiMaru86 said:
For me:
- Camber bolts with a proper alignment done by someone who knows what they are doing. This made the biggest difference by far. Only -1 on the front but enough for the road and daily use. It's out from factory and I didn't realise how much I'd been managing it.
Click to expand...
Where did you go for your alignment? Acutely aware that I’ve never had mine done and you’re (relatively) local to me. Feel like there’s not much point going to someone like Kwik Fit for a car like this!
 
KobayashiMaru86 said:
- MCA traction mod - At first I was sceptical but now I wouldn't be without it. Gives so much more grip and stability at the rear end, it's almost kart like in that my throttle is on far earlier and yet it doesn't let go. People following have said they see me turn in and it's just gone, where others are not as stiff so have the body roll.
Click to expand...
Heard a few people mention this. Interesting. Worthy upgrade even if you only drive on the road? Looks like something I could install myself, but does it need an alignment as well?
 
Delahorney said:
Where did you go for your alignment? Acutely aware that I’ve never had mine done and you’re (relatively) local to me. Feel like there’s not much point going to someone like Kwik Fit for a car like this!
Click to expand...
The guy who did mine sold his garage to focus on other things but was a motorsports based company as he raced competitively
 
Conscript said:
Heard a few people mention this. Interesting. Worthy upgrade even if you only drive on the road? Looks like something I could install myself, but does it need an alignment as well?
Click to expand...
No alignment needed. Bought them to do myself but since car was in the air at C-TEC for the exhaust, they fitted them. I'm almost concerned how much more stable it is now. As if it's more than just this mod. Combination of this, new tyres, light wheels and warmer temps I'm not sure. I've got more bracing for the rear arms but I don't think I'll bother fitting them any time soon. I do need to find somewhere to test when it lets go, how it responds. In conditions it would slide before, it doesn't. Even the Blacks hairpin a few weeks ago, it was trying to let go and would tyre squeal but never fully slide. But it was 28c that day.
 
Conscript said:
Heard a few people mention this. Interesting. Worthy upgrade even if you only drive on the road? Looks like something I could install myself, but does it need an alignment as well?
Click to expand...
Definitely, I have the GKtech version that have adjustable bump steer. It reduces anti squat and give you a lot more acceleration traction
 
Might look at doing that. I'm not really into drifting everywhere, and like a nice confident rear end. And ever since I fishtailed off the road a couple of years ago I've been a bit nervous accelerating out of corners.
 
Delahorney said:
Would love to see a picture or two of how it sits now. If these are in another thread, apologies!
Click to expand...
1000094856.webp

1000097304.webp

How it sits with spacers, camber mods and the springs
 
Looks fantastic, I presume no arch mods/liners removed required and no rubbing with it how it’s currently sitting ?
 
Stardus. said:
I am probably one of the few people that are very disappointed in the out of box driving experience of the GR86. After going through a few tweaks and mods, I am finally happy how it's setup as a road car.

Note: Frequent track driver and have completed in autosolo for years, my cars is not setup for safe understeer and will go into oversteer with steering input alone with a neutral balance


OEM setup issues for me:
Horrible mid corner understeer, does not trail brake at all (No front camber)
Lack of rear traction, making power on oversteer easy but not progressive (High rear anti squat, very soft rear subframe + diff bushing)
Soggy rear end response (Very soft rear subframe + diff bushing, tyres)
Soggy brakes (Soft OEM pads, can't handle hard driving)
Weird clutch feel
Throttle pedal too far and long for heel toe
Engine sounds muted


Best mods in order what I value the most
  1. Proper 4 wheel alignment - If you don't want to change anything on your car, PLESAE do this at the very least. The alignment from factory can be extremely wonky!
  2. Lighter Clutch spring replacement - Fixes weird clutch feel without drawback
  3. Cusco or other throttle pedal extension - I uses a Verus spacer personally but any will help. Makes heel toe much easier and reduces the big height difference from brake to throttle
  4. Front camber bolts - Adding front camber helps with reducing understeer and make the front end more receptive to trail braking
  5. Rear subframe + diff bushing inserts - Drastically reduces the floaty rear end and even help with drivetrain response
  6. Better brake pads + fluid - Finally can drive hard without spongy brakes, I use Endless MX72Plus
  7. Intake + exhaust of your choice - helps with making the car sound better
  8. GKTech traction arms - Massively increases traction on acceleration, you can use the throttle to rotate a lot more precisely without breaking into a slide
  9. Grow design lowering spring - More grip and body control without harsher ride, developed by the GR86 development driver Masahiro Sasaki. Kinda OEM+?
  10. Pedder offset front strut top mount - Extra camber and caster, OEM style design, so no bearing noise. Not needed if you happy with the front end bite with just camber bolts
  11. 25F/20R mm wheel spacers - more for looks but does look good. 25mm front will need more front camber than 2 degree

Currently the car sits around 30mm lower, with 50mm wider front and 40mm wider rear track.
Front camber at around 2.3 degree and rear at 2.2. No front toe out to save tyre life and 0.1mm total toe in rear. Around 6 degree caster with the Pedder top hat.
Stock ARB and damper.

With the narrow not crazy sticky street tyres, it's easy to exploit the grip limit and turning the car with throttle and weight transfer.

Perfect balance for me now!
Click to expand...

Have you tried a master cylinder brace? I found this helped with the spongy feel of the OEM brakes.
 
I’ve found that my brakes have always felt spongey, but if you give them a good press to the floor, they feel okay after that. Seems like some air in the system perhaps, and it didn’t get better (or worse) after the second service where they supposedly changed the brake fluid.
 
JonBon said:
Have you tried a master cylinder brace? I found this helped with the spongy feel of the OEM brakes.
Click to expand...
I cooked the pads right away, it was swapped to Endless MX72+ and Motul fluids in like a month. No issues with those on, most OEM pads are just more compressable anyway
 
Getting some Goodyear Supersport to replace the Yokohama Advan Sport V107 which I really loved on road.
Let's hope it's not a disappointment, it should still have stiff sidewall and pointy front end that I am looking for.

Costco tyre deals are just too good to miss, good to try out new tyres!
 
Oh yea, check your tyre pressure. Just got some new tyres fitted and the car felt horrible on the way back, tyre fitter inflated to the factory 2.4bar setting.

The default 2.4bar cold is horrible when the tyres warms up and balloon out to 2.7bar+

2.1 bar cold feels much better to me, and it warms up to 2.4bar when driving. Car no longer feels like the tyre is skipping across the road
 
Yeah tyre pressure makes a noticeable difference. I also feel like the 2.4 bar is too high out of the factory, I'm guessing it's the most economical setting and ok for regular driving where you never generate much heat in the tyres. I set mine to 2.2 cold (road only).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top