Supra Gets Wired & Dyno’d Before Drifting to Victory
Built by Papadakis Racing, fifth-gen Supra receives mil-spec race wiring, then goes for a dyno run with a builder for extra weight.
Say what you will about the BMW bits and pieces on the fifth-gen GR Supra. At least it got the better end as far as looks go; have you seen its Z4 cousin? Besides, neither one would exist without the other, though the Supra is definitely the one to race in any competition, flexing its turbo-six everywhere it goes.
Speaking of competing, Papadakis Racing got a hold of a GR Supra not too long ago, with the intent of turning it into a drift machine. Team owner and namesake Stephan Papadakis takes us on a summary of the last things his team needed to do before bestowing the car its new clothes.
“On this build, we are using the factory engine and a lot of the sensors,” said Papadakis, “but we are replacing the entire harness of the car, and putting in race-grade electronics.”
And not just race-grade electronics, either. Every bit of the Supra needs wiring, and you can’t get any more hardcore than mil-spec wiring. That’s right! The car’s wiring is the same found in the likes of the A-10 Warthog, F-35 Lightning II and MQ-1 Predator! It certainly would make all of the Toyota trucks and SUVs proud.
“Instead of the normal gauges, where you might have a tac and temperature gauges,” said Papadakis, “we use an AEM AQ1 dash. The dash has all the information we would want — again, totally programmable with a laptop — in one place. And nowadays, instead of having all the different temperature wires coming up to the dash, it uses a protocol called CAN […] Like this dash, it only has a power and a ground to turn it on, and then, the two wires from the CAN stream, and all of the data comes in digitally through that CAN stream.”
All of that info originates from the AEM Infinity ECU, a big piece of kit used to pull data from the engine’s various sensors, transferring it to the injectors and coils, all programmable with a Windows laptop. The wiring itself is attached to tack-welded, bent washers with zip ties, keeping things neat and orderly.
Of course, none of that matters without the driver. Fredric Aasbo arrives to not only set-up how he wants to be in the Supra, but also make sure everything about the car is ready to run. All he needs is a seat to fit his frame well, and it’s off to the races.
“We had already run this engine on the engine dyno […] so we already knew that the engine would run and it should run well,” said Papadakis. “But we still go through a whole process of making sure that all the vehicle chassis harness works.”
Papadakis and his crew checked every last bit, finding no issues with the wiring itself. They did forget to drop in the air-temp sensor on the intake pipe, so Papadakis scrubbed off some of the powder coat to weld in the bung for the sensor. A lot of fluids and leak checks later, plus a another wiring check, and it was ready for the dyno after a brief drive around the team’s shop.
“Even though we’ve run the engine on the engine dyno, we wanna run it in the car,” said Papadakis. “We wanna make sure that the transmission, clutch, drivetrain, all that stuff works well before we go out on the test day.”
There was one hang-up on the dyno, though. Turns out the 1,000 crank horsepower was spinning the rear wheels during testing. Thus, one of Papadakis’ employees hops on the back to give some weight to the wheels. The tire pressure was also lowered for extra grip on the rollers.
“We were pretty conservative at the chassis dyno,” said Papadakis. “We just boosted at 25 psi, and made 750 horsepower. All that’s left now is to install the body kit.”
We can’t wait for this Supra to tear it up.
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