Good People,
I am a newbie. Was eyeing a Celica for years and then I came across an accident damaged one and bought it about three years ago. When I started trying to rebuild it I discovered it was the very rare SSII TRD. The C60 gearbox and superstrut front suspension would have cost me about $2000 to buy and coming from Zimbabwe which is far from anywhere, and import tariffs are 160% it would have easily cost me $5k just to get the parts in the country. The previous owner went on and on about how insanely fast the car was, and he had basically written it off within a couple of days of getting it.
Anyway, I got an opportunity to get one that had been recently imported from Japan, a 2005 ST231. When I test drove it I felt something must be wrong with the car, as it didn't feel fast at all. I bought it notwithstanding, as you don't really find them easily here, and have been driving it for a couple of days and it still feels really slow. I drag raced it against my RX300, which has a 3L V6 rated the same as the 2ZZ-GE, and despite the RX weighing a full 400kgs more, they are much of a muchness in a straight line.
So I plugged the machine on a scanner and there were zero errors reported. Cleaned MAF, checked hoses etc, and still nothing. I went to see a Toyota guy who was working on a RunX with the same engine. After test driving the car he reckoned mine was fine, and then explained to me the whole VVTi @ 6500rpm thing. He believed that the reason mine felt like a slouch was because of the 4speed auto box, which has really tall gears. I just found it hard to process, because it takes forever for the car to get to 6500rpm, and in fact - its actually very impractical driving the car beyond around 5000rpm in manual mode. Even when in neutral, the time it takes for the revs to climb is much slower than my RX300.
I then called the previous owner of the SSII who told me that his car had a HKS Speed Limit Defencer, which was unfortunately damaged in the accident but he reckons that its probably the reason my car feels slow. Now I have been online and cant get a lot of information on these things but they basically seem to remove the speed limiter. I don't see how these things could affect performance below the speed limit, but I would love to know more.
My car is from Japan, the limit is 180km/h, and ironically so is it on the SSII (which I still have by the way). All the cars I have seen on the internet basically top up at 160mph, which is quite different to mine. I also noted however that my TRD SSII has the rev counter and speedo swapped around.
So I am left wondering - did I just buy a dud, is there something wrong with my car, or the Jap Celicas just aren't that fast? Unfortunately there is only one dyno that I have heard of in the country, and its not working at the moment so I cant really get a gauge on the power output.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
