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AE86 Trivia: Levin and Trueno meaning lightning and thunder?

May 24, 2009 / banpei / 5 Comments

As being an admin of AEU86 I’ve seen a lot of questions, facts and fun stuff about the Toyota AE86 (hachi roku). I also see a lot of questions returning even though we documented it on the FAQ already.

AE86 Trivia
So I thought: why not share it in a returning item on my personal blog as well? Be prepared to encounter silly trivial facts about the hachi roku you probably never heard before! ;)

This week we’ll start off with the Levin and Trueno naming. Where did it come from?

Toyota started using the Levin and Trueno designations already back in 1971 when they created the high performance TE27 models. The TE27 Corolla was called Levin (and SR5 in the US) while the TE27 Sprinter was called Trueno. This naming scheme for both cars lived on till the AE111: the Sprinter line ended with the AE111. The Corolla line still lives and still carries on the Levin badge for the more sporty models.

Classic TE27 Levin trunk emblem

There was a rumor that the Levin means lightning and Trueno means thunder in Japanese.
The Japanese part is not true: look it up in the dictionary, there are no such words listed in Japanese.

Classic TE27 Trueno trunk emblem

Then we started looking into this on AEU86 and first found that Levin meant lightning in Middle English.
Levin/lightning part confirmed! So, if Levin means lightning, does Trueno mean thunder then?
TE27 Levin grille emblem: lightning picture
TE27 Levin grille emblem: clearly lightning!
As you can see at the end of the topic I sent an email to Toyota Japan asking where the naming came from.

Yes it does: before the Initial D hype flushed google with references to the Sprinter Trueno I already found the name Trueno matching a lot by El Capitan Trueno on images.google.com:

El Capitan Trueno deriva al rescate
Note the lightning arcs in his name! ;)

So it was not difficult to look up trueno in the Spanish dictionary.
Trueno/thunder part confirmed!

TE27 Trueno grille emblem: is this supposed to be thunder?

Funny story is when I had a dinner with a couple of friends in a restaurant and gave a few of them a ride in my old Trueno (featuring the AEU86 reproduction decals). One of the friends was a Spanish girl and she couldn’t believe the car actually was called Thunder and she was having a ride in the Thunder! :D

AEU86 Reproduction stickers of the Sprinter Trueno AE86 trunk decal

In the end I never received a reply back from Toyota Japan. So the decision why they took a Spanish and Middle English word still remains unknown!

Next week another AE86 Trivia! :)

AE86: Whining diff?

May 23, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

AE86ers.org posted a video of an AE86 doing Central Circuit in Japan:

The first thing I thought was that the driver of the car really needs a new ring and pinion! (aka crownwheel) It sounds the same as on my old Trueno but then at least four or five times as worse! You can hear the diff whining from about 50 km/h till 140 or 150 km/h, that is if I remember the pitch of the sound correct and presume the owner still got a 4.3 ring and pinion! ;)

The whining diff is a very well known issue of the AE86: its design was never meant for drifting, so if you put too much stress on it the crush sleeve will deform. Only a small deformation on the crush sleeve will cause an imbalance on the ring and pinion and wear down the teeth of the ring much faster than normal. So in case this happened to your hachi stressing the ring will only wear it down more and the whining noise will get worse! To prevent this TRD created a solid spacer which can not deform.

Another possibility for this amount of noise is that the AE86 is driving on the circuit with uniball 4 links. These will return all vibrations of the axle back to the chassis. Correct me if I’m wrong, but with uniballs you would hear much more noise and feedback from the road than this.

Also you may think the noise is coming from a straight cut gearbox. This isn’t the case as then the whining noise would change pitch when shifting up or down. Here the pitch is constant and continues with the same pitch after a gear shift.

So for all those people out there wondering what a whining diff sounds like on an AE86: this is it! If you hear it this much you really need to think about getting a new ring and pinion.

Hilarious: Muscle March

May 22, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I can’t believe someone actually would buy this game on the Wii: I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw this trailer!

At first I expected some sort of bodybuilder game in which you have to compete against other bodybuilders: grow muscles and stuff.
Sure, that’s one of the goals of this game, but I wouldn’t have expected it to be in such a gay way!

It is almost as gay as this driftcar with its tires smoking pink clouds in the air:

I know: it is supposed to be some cool and it most probably should have been red smoke… If they only would have applied some more it would have been a really nice red color instead. ;)

Popular Bosozoku cars: Daisuke Shouten

May 21, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

Last week we featured three videos of Daijiro Inada and the Mark II platform. The poster of that video also posted part one of Daijiro Inada and Daisuke Shouten!

For people who are unfamiliar with him: he creates the most bizarre bosozoku rides! It is more a sport for him to create something exceptional than to perfection a zokusha into something beautiful!

Have a look at his bizarre creations:

I love the Corona JZT141 sedan! It looks bad and with the 1JZ swap it is bad!

[I posted this article earlier this week on Bosozokustyle.com]

Carina Sightings: The Assembly – Never Never

May 20, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

From time to time I still look at the Internet Movie Car Database to see if there are listed new entries for the Toyota Carina. This is not a new entry, but I finally found the original video clip. ;)

The music video of Never Never by The Assembly was shot in 1983 and was a one hit wonder: Vince Clarke (ex Yazoo) formed a new band and teamed up with Fergal Sharkey (Undertones). The band only created one single album with only one single hitsong. This song also featured on Grand Theft Auto – Vice City Stories on one of the radio stations.

The clip features a windmill, some trailerpark background and Fergal Sharkey walking around. On the IMCDB I found two screenshots of Toyota different Carinas:

White Toyota Carina TA60 van

The first screenshot is at 1:19, but I’m unable to find the second screenshot. The child in the foreground is clearly the same as the one in the music video but I could not find this shot after watching it three times in a row… I even downloaded the flashmovie and watched the clip 6 or 7 times over and over again. I also watched the movie skipping forward and backwards around transitions.

Black Toyota Carina TA60 front

Then I searched the internet for other versions of this song, but all of them have the same length and I had to give up. So after watching this music video for a total 10 times now I can’t stand that damn song anymore! :X

Anyone else volunteer to search for that frame? :D

Ying and Yang Datsun Cherry F10

May 19, 2009 / banpei / 5 Comments

Yesterday Japanese Nostalgic Car posted pictures of the Z-Car Club of Inland Valley Show in Temecula. Even though the name implies that it was a Z-Car only meeting, there were actually quite a lot of non Z-Cars at the meeting!

The most spectacular of them was this double frontend Datsun Cherry F10:

Double frontend Datsun Cherry F10

The two 1977 Cherry F10s were welded together by Fram to show how important car maintenance is: one half did get its proper treatment while the other half was neglected. The car was driven 20000 miles per year and after 75000 miles the neglected side really performed worse, got a bad MPG and produced more smog.

Double frontend Datsun Cherry F10
After they had proven their point the whole car got neglected until Steve Jasik found it more than 10 years ago parked next to a church.

The funny thing is that the lights in the grille serve as brake lights to make it road legal. So you can actually drive this car on the road without any problems at all!

He called the car Ying and Yang. According to Wikipedia: Ying and Yang is used to describe how seemingly disjunct or opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to each other in turn. I think the name suits the car very well!

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