///as seen in Honda Tuning.
//words by Derek Troy.

Eric O’Sullivan has been in the car scene with a while; some of his earliest memories
are with his dad at auto tests in Mondello. Once he turned 17, he started driving immediately,
because of the insurance situation Eric couldn’t drive the car he wanted and like all lads with an interest he became part of the modified car
scene. Eric eventually decided to get a bit more enjoyment out of the driving aspect of his
cars and he stuck his cash into a Toyota Corolla AE86.

The main aim with the car was to go drifting and see how it went from there, most of us have
been following his story now for the past while in Modified Motors and on track, but Driver.ie were given exclusive access to his car after the final
round of Prodrift in Mondello. So here’s the AE86’s story, it was brought into the country from
Japan by Eric with the blacktop 20 valve engine, an unknown manifold and exhaust. The exterior
was all standard except for an FRP bonnet and a set of 14” Longchamp wheels. Although it
had obviously seen some track action, the car was set up for grip driving and didn’t drift well at all
at first. It had front coilovers with camber plates, adjustable tension rods, uprated anti roll bars,
adjustable panhard rod and adjustable rear lower trailing arms. There was a 6 point bolt in cage and just one bucket seat for an interior! The first thing Eric did before his first event was fit a hydraulic
handbrake – changed the fluids and gave her socks from there.

After competing in Prodrift for a year and managing to do
very well, including battling it out in the D1 GP Drivers Search, Eric decided it was time to go
back to the drawing board with his hachi roku. Having been involved with the preparation side
of motorsport with some time Eric knew the task ahead of him, but like all great projects some take
longer than others. And time is the only price you can put on quality. Eric was searching for
more power and was undecided what route to go until he was onto T3 in the US for parts and
it was the company’s owner, Gabriel Tyler’s car that he saw with the Honda engine swap.
Instantly Eric fell in love with the conversion, even more so considering his fondness for all things
Honda..

So the build began with the hardest part coming first the shell preparation - It’s very difficult to
start working away on a bare shell that looks like it’ll never be finished, after a long days work
but good things come to those who put in the hours. Eric’s main objective was to get everything
clean and then seam weld the shell for strength. The tunnel in particular was very tricky, but it
turned out well in the end. While all this was going on Eric was sourcing his engine from Ronnie
Brown in Northern Ireland. Once Eric had the engine a major component then needed
to be custom made, this was engine produce the power Eric needed, anyone he looked at
fouled the steering column, and in the end he turned to Gunt Tuning to make him one. It is a
tricky one to get right without restricting the flow of the engine.

Ben in Angelworks was given the unhealthy task of trying to set up the car for Eric. The first major decision that was taken was to run a stock engine for a shakedown season, time had become an issue at this stage and Eric still hadn’t any seat
time. Ben barely had a week or to from when he received the engine to do the loom, check
the engine and map it. Eric was a bit generous to Ben when he sent over the engine in a crate;
he sent the ENTIRE vehicle loom. It took Ben a day to spread it over 3 car park spaces in the
boiling sunshine and sit there tracing wires to see what he needed, didn’t need and how to power it.
When the mapping started a big issue was spotted, the engine was only making 150 BHP! The first Mectronik ECU came from Italy with faulty
loom, it had a blown resistor, and this meant that the engine wouldn’t engage the VTEC on
the dyno. Ben mapped the car using a manual vtec switch, in the mean time the loom was re-ordered and Ben got back to work. Mapping took a while as
the Mectronik ECU has a large resolution map so there were a lot of breakpoints to map. Ben had no choice at this stage to send the engine and
loom back to Ireland so that the car could get it fitted back together, minus the VTec Circuit. So Mectronik delivery turned from overnight, to next day, to 3 days later, just 2 days before Slam 06.

Once it arrived Ben hired a car and pointed
it for Holyhead to get the next available ferry to Ireland. Eventually with some guidance
from Ian Bergin, Ben made it down to Inchicore
and to Eric’s car. An all night and day turn was pulled to get the new circuit in and the final
adjustment’s made to the car setup. It fires up first time and runs like clockwork. So here’s the hard bit to swallow, the lads have worked their collective arses off for a week solid, Eric goes out on the first
test run and hit’s all the marks spot on. Not after any seat time, nothing, this being his first
competition, of course they have one small teething
problem, it turns out there was no load signal to the alternator for charging, so they just had to
connect that up and it was fixed and finalised. Ready for battle, well almost.... on Eric’s next run
the oil filter span off and spat oil all over the manifold, which was heat wrapped and acted like a
candle wick and it went up in flames.

What would you do from there?

I know less strong willed men would be still on the drink but Eric has had the strength of character
to come back again and go at the build again and get out at Mondello later on in the season. And in that final round he came up against Damien
Mulvey, and was unlucky to get out foxed by the canny Cork lad. Eric will have had a lot of
seat time for next season folks, and If I were a betting man I’d be putting a few bob on him
and the S2K-86 to be there about come prize giving time at the end of the season.

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