For those familiar with the Club4ag forum, the screen name LongGrain should ring a bell. It is the pseudonym of a certain Ryan McClure from the midwest drifting scene. If you aren’t familiar with the forum, then you might remember his car from a Final Bout event coverage article or two. His 1986 Toyota Corolla was the only one on the track! Not only that, but it was the only AE86 with a Toyota 3SGE BEAMS engine!
Personally, I love the simple looking style on this 86. No side skirt, an OEM rear bumper, and a Good Line front bumper. Throw in a TRD or Run Free wing and some rear flares, and it makes for a very 90’s Japanese drift car style and boy does it work well. But the fiberglass bits aren’t the only thing that really make this car look good…
He’s got a little help from these 14×8 -12 SSR wheels. In the front, you can see SSR Reverse Mesh from the days of old and in the rear he has a set of original shank-lug faced SSR MK-III. If you tuned in on Friday, you’ll notice that SSR still carries shank lugs!
Now let’s talk engines. Underneath the hood (when he even has one on) sits a 5th generation Toyota 3SGE “Black Top” known as the BEAMS (Breakthrough Engine with Advanced Mechanism System) engine. For those thinking this could be an easy swap, think again. Ryan has spent countless hours and Benjamin Franklins to get this car to where it is now. For starters, he had to cut and reshape the transmission tunnel to fit the new transmission.
It now has a J160 6-speed gearbox from the Toyota Altezza RS200; the same car from which he got the engine. Then, to make this car stand out even more, he purchased an ITB (Individual Throttle Body) adapter kit from Xcessive Manufacturing to be able use the Toyota 20-valve 4AGE throttle bodies. To top it all off, Ryan even has a custom-made exhaust manifold!
Unfortunately, that is all the information I have for you so this article must come to a close, but in my opinion, no build article is complete without pictures of the car doing what it was meant to do, so here are some pictures taken from Club FR’s Final Bout.
If you would like to follow LongGrain’s Corolla build here is the link to his build thread on Club4ag:
http://club4ag.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1558
I’ll see you all next Monday with another radical build!
