General info regarding parts of your Toyota Supra.

Here you will find general information about STOCK parts for the Toyota Supra. Rims, tires and brakes are currently covered. This will be expanded some day with body information and internals.

Linked on this page as well, is information about my sound system. This sound system is (for now) the only MP3 enabled Kenwood sound system in whole of Europe. Check out the information about this unit at the "ICE" link (In Car Entertainment).

The last addition to the ‘general’ section is a buying guide. Here I try to explain all the things you should look at when buying a Supra. This is a guide for the nitwit or nono. If you don’t know heck about Supra’s, but still want to buy one, take a look at this page and use it at a reference!

Engine specifications

This page tells you all about the Toyota engines I’ve found through the years. If you have more information about these engines, or if you know cool projects with it, please do not hesitate to contact me! The focus will be somewhat on the engines that where in the Supra, but any cool Toyota project is ok with me!

	5M-GE Toyota Celica Supra MA6 and the Toyota Cressida	6 Cylinder in-line 2759 cc (2.8 liter) 145 or 161 bhp 12 Valves
	7M-GE Toyota Supra MA7	6 Cylinder in-line
	1JZ-GTE Toyota Supra JZA70, Japanese specification	6 Cylinder in

Brakes for the Toyota Supra MA-70

Here an image of the original sales leaflet by Toyota (Germany). You can see the brake disk, the five connection bolts and the brake caliper.

Braking system (not the parking brake)

The braking system of the Toyota Supra consists of a hydraulically operated front and rear disc brake systems. The Toyota Supra has had disc brakes since the introduction of the first one (2000 GT). Some normal cars don’t have disc brakes, but drum brakes. Disc brakes are normally for high performance cars, or racing cars. Exactly, just like the Toyota Supra. There are some cars available having disc brakes only at the front wheels, the rear brakes are equipped with drum brakes, for example my neighbor’s car a BMW 3 series. Note that most braking power is applied to the front wheels, normally around 60% to 70%, depending on car and engine specs.

The whole braking system of the Toyota Supra MK3 is managed by an A.B.S. computer. This computer constantly checks if the wheels still spin, when you hit the brakes. When the wheels don’t spin anymore, the A.B.S. actuator will release some pressure from the brakes, so the wheels get a chance to spin again. Now you all people want to know why this is, right? Well, when wheels don’t spin, you cannot use them to steer. And the last thing you want when braking, is that you can not avoid any obstacles nearby or coming closer.

To monitor the speed your wheels are turning around with, both the front wheels are equipped with a speed sensor. The rear wheels share one sensor, which is located just after the transmission which goes into the differential.

Maintenance

The only maintenance I’m familiar with at the moment is replacing the brake pads. These pads look like this:

The brake pad you see on the top is the rear brake pad. This on has the dimensions of: w = 125.5 mm, h = 42.0 mm, t = 15.5 mm The brake pad down, is the front brake pad. This one is bigger, because the braking force applied on the front wheels is bigger. The dimensions for this pad are: w = 125.5 mm, h = 56.0 mm, t = 15.0 mm

You can easily replace your brake pads, with new stock ones. This is an easy job to do yourself. The first wheel will take you about two hours, and every next wheel you’ll do will take less than 15 minutes. The part numbers for the braking pads are (in my country The Netherlands. Please supply me with part numbers in your country when they are different):

0446614030 – Set braking pads (4) for front

0446614110 – Set braking pads (4) for rear

 

Replacing the brake pads

This is the procedure for replacing the brake pads.

• Securely park and block your car.

• Loosen the bolts for the wheel to be removed a little

• Lift the car using a jack. 

• Secure the car with wooden blocks or something else, so IF the jack fails / falls / collapses the car won’t fall on your foot or something.

• Remove the five bolts you just have loosen and remove the wheel

This is how the car will look when you remove the wheel 😉 Except for the black plastic I used while painting my calipers.

• Now remove the bolt that’s on the inside of the car, the one nearest to the ground. 

• You can now ‘open’ the caliper

This is the caliper while being opened. Yes people you are right, this is the wheel on the other side. That’s because you have to replace the pads on both rear wheels or both front wheels. Never replace only left or right side.

• Now remove the caliper and gently lay it on something high enough. For example some wooden blocks like in the picture. Don’t bother removing the brake fluid line. This is not an option! Takes you a hell of a time to fill up the whole brake line system with new fluid.

• Now gently remove the metal springs from the brake pads. These springs are there to ‘unbrake’ when you remove your foot from the brake pedal.

• Pull out the brake bads and check if they are really that worn as you think

The car should now look something like this, except for the red paint and the black tape ofcourse 😉

• Take your new pads and put some copper grease on the back of the pads. This is for preventing the brakes from making bad noises. Do not put grease on the brake part (front) of the pad. If you do so, maybe by accident, remove it all. Fast braking and copper grease do not match!!!! It’s very dangerous. 

Grease the pads a little up on the backside, to avoid annoying sounds while braking.

Put the new pads back into the caliper. Make sure you don’t put copper grease on the disks or pads.

Don’t forget to put the springs back in! I did forget it on one wheel, and you have to re-open the caliper. That sucks.

• Close the caliper and put the bolt on the backside back in.

It’s not a bad idea to grease the bolt up a little. In that way it can be easier removed on the next replacement job.

• Now it’s a good time to check your tires if they are still in
  the optimal state. Check for things that should not be there. right rear
  tire had a big screw in, I discovered while painting my calipers.

This can be in your tire, if you are unlucky

 

Aftermarket / Performance

 

If you don’t want to go for stock braking pads, but you want better braking performance, there are a lot of other braking pads you can choose from. I know people who have successfully applied these brands to their MK3 Toyota Supra:

Porterfield Racing Brakes – This company based in Costa Mesa California, can provide you with Carbon Kevlar racing pads. Three different types of racing pads are available, the ‘R4’, the ‘R4-S’ and the ‘R4-E’. The R4 is for racing applications, the pads need to be warmed up as well, before they can really operate at full performance. The ‘S’ in ‘R4-S’ stands for ‘street’. These pads are the most common ones used by many Supra owners. The ‘R4-E’ is the so called ‘Endurance’ pad. This pad is the best choice when you do a lot of racing for very long times. Hence the size of the fuel tank, not an option 😉 Bear in mind Carbon Kevlar brakes don’t leave that much dirt on your rims, which is a very good plus I would say. My rims always are dirty as hell. The order number for the pads from Porterfield are: AP336 for front and AP337 for rear. Tell them you need the R4-S type, as the R4 and R4-E have the same order number. The front brakes are $89,- and the rear brakes are $79,-

Axxis Metal Master Pads – This company, formerly known as ‘Lucas Metal Max’ or ‘Repco Metal Master pads’ is from Australia. Currently I don’t have enough information about these pads, nor do I have a website of this company. If people can supply me with, please do so.

Tires

Nothing about tires yet!

Rims for the Toyota Supra MA-70

It’s quite difficult to get good rims for your Toyota Supra. I’ve spent over three weeks to find good rims for my car. The difficult part in finding good rims is the offset or "ET value". These are just two names for exactly the same. The offset of a rim is the value (in millimeters, hail the metrics system) the rims stand to the side of your car. The bigger the offset the ‘wider’. If the value is small your wheels will ‘fall’ into your car a little.

If you put rims under your car with an ET value being too big, the tires will scratch on the inside of the fender, especially when your car is either lowered or you take a huge bump. Some people have used the grinding machine to remove the little thickening at the inside of the fender, but I don’t think it is a fairly good option.

If you put rims under your car with an ET value being too small, it is possible the tires will scratch to the inside of your car, especially the wheels you’re steering with.

Some companies specialized in repairing rims are able to change the ET value of your rims. They do so by removing some aluminum from the rims where you mount them on the wheel bearing. Please keep in mind these companies are only able to make the ET value less, as it is quit impossible to put some aluminum on the rims.

ET values can be negative as well.  

The right "ET value" or offset for the Toyota Supra MA-70 is ET 37.

Rims are indicated by more values than the ET value only. The other parameters include:

• diameter (this is the normal ‘size’ people refer to when saying 16 or 17 inch)
• width (common values are 7 or 8 inch)
• Bolt Pattern (Number of holes for the bolts; 4 or 5)
• Size of the holes for the bolts 
• Pitch Circle Diameter (P.C.D.)

The Toyota Supra MA-70 has 5 bolts for every rim, the Pitch Circle Diameter is 114.3 mm (which equals exactly 4.5 inch). This value is the diameter of the imaginary circle created by the middle of all bolts mounting the rim.

If you put other rims under your car, than the stock rims (16 inch x 7 inch), your ET value can change a little. Although the ET value is not something you need to comply with to the millimeter precisely, it’s more something like an indication. One, two or three millimeters change is not really a big issue; when you take a very fast turn or something, the tires can swing a couple of millimeters around as well. The ET value given for your car is the ideal ET value though.

The following rims has been mounted under the MA-70 Supra without any problem:

• 16" x 7" ET 35
• 16" x 7.5" ET 35
• 17" x 8" ET 40 under my own MA-70
• 18" x 8" ET 40

Please read the page about tires as well, to get a good indication of what tires can be combined with your rims chosen.

Related links:

General Information about rims (and tires)

The Tire and Wheel bible This site is quite an awesome site giving you a lot of information about rims and tires. Give it a look. It’s very informative. 

Suppliers of Alloy wheels

TSW Very nice rims, especially the ‘VX1′ model, in Europe also known as "Venom". Currently mounted under my own Toyota Supra. The TSW site has a nice application page, where you can see what sizes fits under your car, as well as how they look under your car. Well, it’s more or less an ‘impression’ it’s not your own car of course, and the bad thing is the Supra MK III is not in the application guide.

http://www.enkei.com/
The enkei site, I’ve never heard of before, but today somebody put it on the UK supra’s list. Quite some nice wheels over here. Check it out.

BBS These wheels are quite common over here in Europe, especially under European cars, like Volkswagen, BMW or Mercedes. Can’t find a web page. If you know the URL please email it to me.

Buying a Toyota Supra

I’m writing this page as a general reply to all people sending me emails asking advice when buying a Supra. A lot of people visiting my site do not have a Supra and can only dream of having one, currently. Well people, the dream is over, as second hand Supra’s are getting way more cheaper. There are however some things you have to take in consideration when buying this awesome car. Here are the following things explained:

Service history

Check if the seller can show a service history. See what has been done on the car in the whole period of time and see if the car has had some big repairs recently. Maybe this is the reason the seller wants to get rid of the Supra. Ask the seller why he wants to get rid of his Supra. 

Check if the car has had some serious damage in the past. How is this fixed? Does it look ok? If you cannot judge for yourself, have someone judge it for you.

Has the car always been serviced by Toyota? Is the count of the odometer registered? In a lot of countries the car’s odometer is registered every time it’s taken for servicing. In Holland this is called the nationale autopas.

Outside check (exterior)

Check the whole car for rust and dents. Places where rust are common are on both the doors (lower part), in the hatch (trunk) where the rubbers are. Rear spoiler, all points where it bolts into the car. The side skirts (they are plastic, but behind is metal). Around the taillights can be rust as well. See if the car has been over sprayed. To check this, open the door and check if you can see any color difference. Check if you can see any color difference on the whole car. A re-spray can tell you the car has had damage.

Check the windows. Are all windows marked the same or is one window not the same as others. If a window is replaced the car might have been stolen, or again repaired.

Check the wheels. Do the rims still look ok? How about the tires? Are they worn? New tires cost quite some money, so buying a car with good tires is not a bad thing. Can you see the brake discs? Do they look very worn or carved? Replacing brakes is not cheap either.

Check the taillights. Is there any water in the lights? Water is not a good thing. Open the trunk. Check the spare wheel. Has it been used a lot? A good spare wheel is never used of course. Check under the spare wheel, is there any water or rust in here? If you find this, the rubbers on the trunk or the taillights are worn. A lot of Supra’s have this problem.

Check the targa roof. Does it still keep the rain outside the vehicle? Maybe you can check this by checking the cloth in the car. Do you see any wet marks?

Interior

Move more into the car. How does the car look from the inside? Does the inside look the same as the mileage on the clock? If the car looks totally worn out and the clock is only showing 100.000 kilometers you might want to check if it has been tampered with.

Do all gages still work? Some cars had a bad oil pressure gauge. Do all interior lights work and how about the electronic windows and the filler cap opener?

Check the rest of the inside if everything looks ok.

 

Engine checks

Open the hood and get a general impression of the engine bay. Check for oil and coolant leaks. Especially the valve covers are known for this. Oil leaks at the valve covers is not really bad, but it can show the maintenance of the engine is neglected.

Get the oil filler cap off. Check the state of the oil. If there is some white or gray cream in the cap, this might be a blown head gasket engine. The other possibility is the valve seals are worn. Ask the seller if he had any overheating problems with the car.

Check the color of the oil. The oil color can be best seen at the end of the dipstick, so take that one out as well. If the oil is very black, it hasn’t been changed in a long time. While having the dipstick in your hand see what the oil level is. Check the oil level for the automatic transmission as well. Check all other levels, like engine coolant level, power steering and brake fluid.

If possible check the condition of the Turbo. Do so by checking it’s the original turbo and not a replacement. Replacement turbo’s will have some scratches (or scratches on the exhaust manifold’s heat shield) because of the repair. If you got the time, get the accordion hose off the turbo and check the wheel play of the turbo’s turbine wheel. Check if the turbine wheel rotates without any (big) problem.

 

Test drive the car

Listen to the engine. In a good (stock) Supra you will hardly hear the engine. To check the engine sound open the windows and drive near some walls. Do this at both low and high speed & revs.

Accelerate to about 150 km/h if possible and hit the brakes as hard as you can. Check if the car stays in a straight line. If not, release the brakes immediately to prevent killing yourself. Better to do this test when you are prepared for doing it, than when you NEED to do it and find out the car will turn around or not continue in a straight line at least.

Check if the manual transmission shifts without any problem in all gears, take special tests for the 2nd gear and the reverse gear. If it’s hard to shift into these, the synchronization rings might be worn.

Check if the cruise control works without any problem.

 

Well, this is whatever comes at me first. When you got some tips yourself, please send them to me at arnout@supras.nl I’ll be happy to add them to this list. Whatever is wrong with the car, it must not prevent you from buying the car if it’s the right price. If you can buy a completely wrecked Supra for let’s say 200 bucks I would do so, the parts are always worth something. If you happen to buy a NA Supra for let’s say $ 7000, I would really reconsider this. When it’s a perfect car, you can do so as it might be a good deal, but well, it’s your own decision after all!

The Toyota Supra was first introduced in 1979. This model was just a Toyota Celica, with lengthened body. The engine was replaced as well, the four cylinder was replaced with a six cylinder 2.6 liter engine (SOHC).

	Mk2 Supra
	Mk3 Supra

The first designs of the Toyota Supra Mk3, straight from the design studios of Toyota.

The Toyota Supra MA-70 is one flavor of the third model in the Toyota Supra range. There are quite a bunch “mark 3” Supra models, of which only two are really known. These two models are:

1. MA-70. The Toyota Supra 3.0i Normally Aspirated
2. MA-71. The Toyota Supra 3.0i Turbo

Although these models are officially indicated with different chassis numbers (70 and 71) they are both normally referenced as MA-70. The MA-71 chassis is really scarce, this chassis number was intended to be used for the Turbo model, whereas the MA-70 was the normally aspirated model.

This was changed after Toyota found out they had way too many MA-70 models and the Turbo model was more wanted. So they just put 7M-GTE engines (turbo engines) in the MA-70 chassis and shipped them out. After all the chassis is about the same.

(Can people please confirm this story, this is what I heard from various sources, and I never got it confirmed).

The other models of the Toyota Supra Mk3 I know of, are :

1. the JZA-70, with the 2.5 liter twin turbo engine in (1JZ-GTE). There are only a couple of cars made & shipped with this engine. This engine delivers 276 bhp to the crank. It’s a really scarce car / engine combination and very nice. I couldn’t find many links on the web about this car, this link seems to work: Another New Zealand JZA-70 This car is sold in various countries during September ’90 until may ’93, just before the Supra Mk4 was released.
2. the GA-70, with the 2.0 liter twin turbo engine in (1G-GTE). Of this model, again only a couple are made and aren’t wide spread either. This
   engine delivers 210 bhp at the crank. I couldn’t find many links about this car in English. Only a couple in Japanese, of which this page is the nicest (judging from the pictures).

During the time the ‘MA-70’ model was on the market, some model changes were applied. These model changes are:

1986.5

Introduction of the MA-70, Normally aspirated

1987

First Turbo model introduced with standard sports pack (Limited Slip Differential, TEMS and headlight washers). The sports pack was an option on the NA model. Both cars can be bought with ABS as an option as well.

1988

Cloth interior

1989

New grill, new taillights and newly designed rear spoiler. Note that the taillights are not available in Europe. European cars are put on the market with
the ‘old’ taillights. The Turbo engine had a little ‘tune up’ horsepower increase from 230 to 232 hp (stock). Torque increased as well.

Progressive power steering introduced (was it 1989). The power steering now works according to your speed, the slower you drive (parking) the more power is applied by the power steering pump.

1990

Drivers side airbag (U.S. version)

1991

ABS standard on turbo models. Sunroof standard, sports roof still available. (U.S. version, again)

1992

Ten speaker sound system as option

Standard specifications & Performance

Some curiosities I found

A mk3 with no spoiler!

About this site

I made this site to supply other people information about how to tune your car. The information on this site is generally applicable to any type of car, but becomes more easy to apply the more your car looks like a Toyota Supra Mk3. That’s the car I have (end 1991 model).  Have fun cruising my site and give me some feedback like:

• What do you want to see next on my site?
• Is the information on this site enough for you, or do you need more?
• What is your general opinion about my site?
• Have you found more than 200 spelling errors? (Hey, I’m Dutch people!)

To give me feedback, send me an email at: arnout@supras.nl

I update my site quite regularly. Updates can be expected any day of the week, but on Friday and Saturday you will not have that much chance to find an update. Hey, I gotta work on my car as well, in order to get some pictures!!

To make life easier for the returning surfer, I keep a change log as well. Again, if you want to see something on my site, just give me an email and it will be prioritized.

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that this site tells you about the modifications I did to my car and how I did them. It is only intended as a guide to help you understand what you are doing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, please do not modify your car until you’ve found out all the ins and outs about a certain mod. All modifications to your car are at your own risk. If you blow a piston, an engine or your whole car, you’ve done something wrong and you can not blame me.

Copyright: This whole site, as being a compilation of information, as well as all text on this site is (C) 1999-2001 Arnout van der Kamp. Please do not copy, but make your own. All pictures are copyright by someone. Most pictures are my own property, some scans are (C) Toyota. Pictures can be used for your own site, after I have agreed on that. To get my written permission to use the pictures, send me an email.

When using pictures from my site, you have to link my site.