We bought the AW11 early in 2003, to use as a daily driver while the Celica was off the road. It didn't take long for us to fall in love with it. This car is the reason for the SW11, and if it wasn't for the amount of rust in it, this may have become and SW11 itself. The car had a removable sunroof, which was really nice on sunny days, and with it just tilted open the sound from the intake was sort of "sucked" into the cabin, and sounded very cool.
Modifications:
- HKS Exhaust. This was on the car when we got it. It wass very old and leaky, but still sounded pretty nice. Or so I thought, first time I heard the car driving from the outside I was quite shocked at the terrible raspy sound, due to the leaks. The catalytic converter had also been gutted. I eventually gave this to my friend Ryan (fellow Toyota nut) before selling the car.
- K&N Pod Filter. I originally put the Celica's massive filter onto the MR2. It sounded very mean, but I didn't notice much, if any difference in HP. When we needed the Celica's filter for the Celica, I put a much smaller (5x3") K&N straight onto the throttle body, and immediately noticed more torque, and an even deeper and louder induction note.
- Clear taillights. A friend of mine was telling me about how some guy made his own clear taillights for his AW11, and I figured I would give it a try. It was very easy and I am very happy with how they came out. The material is cut from a large fluorescent light diffuser, I used the same material to make clear front indicators for the SW11.
- Clear front park/indicator lights. Same as above. My friend bought some clear lenses for about $100 from the US. I thought they looked cool so I made my own. Not quite as nice as proper ones, but about 1/50th of the price and you've gotta be looking close to notice the difference.
- Battery relocated to boot. I did this in anticipation of building a cold air box for the intake, but that never eventuated.
- TOM'S steering wheel. This was on the car when we got it, but was lacking a horn button (actually it had a boot opening switch from another car, put in a piece of black plastic which turned out to be cut from the lid of a can of bog), which was quickly solved thanks to Sollitt Trading. A very nice wheel, I must say.
- Instrument surround painted bright red, looked good in my opinion...
- Ricey chrome pedals, they were on there when we got it, and just never got removed
- Philips CD headunit, with wired remote (the design of this remote is the best I've ever used - wired remotes are way better than infra-red!)
- 6.5" Philips woofers in doors. Mounted on custom MDF spacers, painted gloss red.
- Sony tweeters on sail panels, behind ST185 Celica tweeter covers.
- 4" Sony woofers in factory dash locations.
- 4x50WRMS Response amp. 2 channels powering door speakers, other 2 powering the 4"s and tweeters through custom crossovers.
- For a brief period there was an Audiobahn 8" DVC sub in the passenger footwell, being powered by the Response amp, and all the other speakers were powered from the headunit
Sorry about the quality
