Main Quest s13 Ft. Side Quests Galore

Forgot to update:

Car prep for GLL Practice day (1/11) - first wash of the year

Towing with a fresh rack felt so damn good. Didn't feel like I was going to die at all! The one fucked up thing though was a 30+mph headwind the entire way to the track. I couldn't even maintain 60mph (usually cruise at 70), which was a pain in the ass. I used 3/4 of a tank on the way there, but fortunately the wind was consistent throughout the day and gave me a little boost on the way home so I only used 1/3 tank! Usually it's 1/2-2/3 tank each way depending on how prepped I am.

The car felt super good all day, most dialed it's ever been. I was so in the zone that I didn't notice my tire getting low on tread and wound up popping it. Though to be fair, the tire did have a pretty big flat spot from dragging ass on the front straight at the previous Thunderhill West event.

Lil clip courtesy of v.inspire_ 😍 I hadn't run these type c's for drifting before and found out that my qp chop wasn't quite enough because in drift the tire rubbed CONSTANTLY. It actually wore a deep groove in shoulder of the tire after doing a handful of runs. I legit thought I was down on power, had a slipping clutch, or had a stuck caliper until I got home and pulled the wheels off and realized what was going on.

And then it was time for another side quest... With my wife nearing the end of her pregnancy it was time to take a break from drift events, which meant I wouldn't need to use the LX for a while, so I dropped it off at Stellar Built to redeem a generous wedding gift (custom front bumper) the Gold Star dudes got me over a year ago. They built EXACTLY what I had envisioned in my head and only eded up needing the LX for a week. 11/10 service and quality work! Now I just need to stop spending money on d car things so I can get a winch to fill the hole in the bumper.

Back on d car things: so with the car feeling really dialed, preforming and running reliably, and car part tariffs looming, I decided it was finally time to move on to the next stage...

After a million hours of research and sorting through conflicting bullshit I picked up this PSR 3576. It honestly may not be the ideal turbo, but it's a good, cheap starting place that should make cool sounds. There's still about another $3k worth of shit I need to buy to actually put this thing on, so it'll be a while! haha

This time, prepping for the first event of the year actually required a side quest: tackling some long-overdue maintenance on the tow rig.

So, the steering seemed extremely loose the last time I towed the car to an event. Every big bump had the LX squirming all over the place, so I replaced the inner tie rod, which had a decent amount of play, and the outer since I was down there. After reassembly and an eyeballed alignment, the LX seemed to be pulling/pushing on acceleration still and then would straighten out while coasting or under braking, which was weird.

My buddy and I spent a half hour driving around my neighborhood trying to figure out wtf was going on, but nothing made any sense until we pulled back in the driveway and I had him shimmy the steering wheel. The steering rack was literally JUMPING. The 276k mile bushings had had enough. So, I went ahead and ordered a new rack since the original had been leaking for the last 10 years 😂

Also, I decided to finally replace the passenger side axle which had torn a boot for the 4th time in 5 years. I just keep a spare axle with a torn boot around so I can keep rotating them around the car any time one needs replacing so step 1 was cleaning and re-booting the old unit.

And then removal of the old rack. I had to disconnect the motor mount and raise the driver side about 3 inches so the rack could slide out without me having to remove the whole oil filter block. Gotta love when engineers make things nice and easy for you... sike!

Look how polished the left side is from the worn bushing 😳

The two other bushings had definitely seen better days. Plenty of grime from the combo of ps leak and constantly exploding axle boots. God I hate IFS. Whenever time for new tires comes around I'm gonna drop to 33's and lower the suspension a bit in hopes that it remedies the issue.

Upon reassembly I randomly remembered I had a chopped wrench of some kind in my toolbox and it wound up being exactly the size I needed for this ps fitting. Thank fuck because it took me like 30 min to remove with a full sized wrench and would have been impossible to torque at all at the awkward ass angle I had to access it from. The little dose of dopamine from this great success made reassembly a breeze.

All done and ready to tow! Nice chrome amidst the grime. One day when my axle boots stop exploding I'll give the undercarriage a nice wash, but until then I'll just gasslight myself into believing it's acting as rust protection.

New idler pulley and tensioner came in just in time to get the car back together for our first ever Gold Star cruise and bbq, which was nice. Zero hiccups on the 100+ mile loop of mostly highway cruising and 25 miles of mountain road.

I did lose a chunk of straight body filler from the corner of my fender on the adventure though 🌝

Shop hangs and BBQ is always a good time!

After the cruise I did a nut and bolt check in preparation for an event and found a cracked weld on the passenger rear drop knuckle, likely from the off-track excursions the previous track day. Probably a very low likelihood, but still glad it didn't have a catastrophic failure on the cruise haha

Rather than get it welded up, I decided to switch to PBM's newer cast versions to hopefully avoid any future cracking issues. And I figured while I was at it I might as well upgrade to the newer RUCA's, which provide more axle boot clearance.

But of course 5 minutes in I had to prank myself. My trusty little ratchet-that-could called it quits after a decade of similarly abusive antics. What the hell is a breaker bar?!

A couple days, beers, and a new 1/2" breaker bar later I arrived at self-prank number 2. Pretty sure this was the original cotter pin from 1989... Bent back and forth more times than a used car lot's wacky wavy inflatable arm guy.

20 minutes with a Dremel and a pick later I found self-prank numero tres. I actually recall noticing this issue when the arms and subframe were on my hatch, but totally forgot to flip it around when I transferred it to the coupe fully assembled. I have the front of the subframe shimmed so getting it to even drop just enough to pull the bolt out took a good amount of effort. Good thing I had a brand new breaker bar to use for leverage because what the hell is a pry bar?!

I also replaced both axles. The outer boot on the driver side recently exploded, which I think (hopefully) may have been the cause of my e-brake feeling like it was barely working at the last event.

With everything reassembled, it looks like I have about twice as much axle boot clearance at full droop (pictured). At ride height there's about 2cm now vs 1-2mm previously 😎

Finished the Final Bout 7 video! What an adventure!

Some pics form the last event

Still working on the full Final Bout video, but I did make a quick little raw driving clip edit

I picked up some type-c's that were in need of a refresh. I did a quick rattle can job to see if gold is the way to go. A bit more GOLD gold than I'd like, but ya, a nice change from the grey scale scheme of the car haha

I've always driven with the steering wheel pretty far from myself because I'm not a huge fan of the prospect of eating it in the event of an accident, but I decided to suck it up and try out the whole "90º elbow" thing, which meant throwing a 50mm spacer on. Looks absolutely ridiculous, but I've gotta admit it does feel like I have a bit more control.

Cleaned the car and took it for a little pre-event rip. Had to take a gas station pic as dictated by the law.

OnGrid's inaugural Motorsport Meetup was PACKED. Drift entry was free (aside from the cost of a windshield banner), which was rad. Somehow only getting 5 20 minute sessions throughout the day felt like plenty.

On the first couple flying laps I noticed the car was running a bit rich. I think switching over the TPS may have thrown things off a bit, but it wasn't noticeable until I was on track at WOT. Regardless of being a bit down on power I was still able to have plenty of fun. I went off roading a couple of times and lost my rear bumper twice.

After the 4th session, I noticed my belt was getting a bit frayed in a couple spots. I checked the kpower pulley bolt and it was loose and wouldn't tighten at all. I pulled the belt and sure enough the bolt came out with threads on it. Yay, aluminum blocks! Also, the timing cover started leaking 😑 I had been considering going back to the stock belt tensioner anyways, so NBD. I had planned to drive both days, but free event so whatever! haha

All I really wanted to do at the event was nail the entry into turn 7 (left hairpin) and I think I accomplished that goal, so I'm pleased with myself and the car.

Final Bout prep kicked off with finally finishing up the hood. I went back and forth trying to decide whether I should fully remove the vent and start over, but salvaging what I already had done seemed to be the most time-efficient route though some day I would like to start from scratch again. The two main issues I wanted to fix were 1 - the transition from the area in front of the vent to where it had been grafted and 2 - connect and smoothen the backside of the vent to the underside of the hood.

I forgot to take a picture of it and I forget where I saw this technique, but I put some tape on the upper portion of the hood, where there's a good original section of the hood rising contour, and caked body filler to form a perfectly shaped sanding block. This worked MUCH better than the guess and check cardboard-cutout contour technique I had used previously.

After sanding and shaping a few pounds of fiberglass and filler, I brought the hood home for the finishing touches - painting and wrap. I hate to fake the funk, but I'm a ricer at heart. Jimmy did an amazing job wrapping the hood, unfortunately though, the heat from the header caused some of the adhesive to melt, which created a bubble, but it halfway looks intentional, so whatever!

One small project I had been putting off for a while was re-mounting the splitter. I'm not sure why, but the splitter was way off from where it had been previously, so it required a bit more tweaking than I had anticipated - as is it seems to be anything when you're working towards a Final Bout departure deadline...

And another small project that turned out to be easier than I anticipated - I have always loved the Nismo "dildo" shift knob and have run it in numerous cars over the years, but the m20x1.5 shift rod for the ZF transmission made it impossible until I saw Tomas (@milliardoxpeacecraft) was making his own 3D printed knobs. He recreated the Nismo knob and increased the diameter 10mm for me just to make sure it wouldn't snap in half during some violent shifting. It came out beautiful and feels even better than the original imo.

Final Bout is smart and now requires everyone to have a fire extinguisher mounted in their car. I had previously had mine self-tapped to the floor board, but when I replaced the carped I filled the holes in order to force myself to make a legit bracket. After a little super inaccurate CAD I started welding some pieces of scrap metal together.

I ended up having to add an extra 1.5" of width. No idea how I was so far off, but it ended up fitting perfectly after the extension. Not bad for a guy with very limited fabrication skills I think?

Between coats of paint drying and welds cooling I managed to spray-dye my crusty old headliner. It looks like ass in this photo, but I swear you'd never know in real life.

The very last project on my prep list was this rear seat delete. I had intended on having Jimmy wrap it in carbon as well, but I vastly under estimated how much vinyl I'd need. Then I underestimated how much spray paint it'd need. It looks like ass in photos and in real life. I'll redo it one of these days... At least I was able to get it to fit nicely.

So, Final Bout itself - we, Bryan (of Run Up) and I rented a 1 ton from Enterprise and a trailer from Secret Factory. My buddy Ryan also tagged along and did a huge chunk of the driving for us.

Things got off to a rocky start as the truck had a screw in one of the front tires, but fortunately we found a tire shop that was still open and was able to patch it for us. The very next stop the rear strap on my car snapped while we were doing our checks and luckily the truck stop had ratchet straps on sale. Still not sure what the issue was, but the rest of the trip was smooth sailing.

After driving 35 hours straight, with just stops to refuel we made it to Shawano

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but after doing some drifting in the morning and then the parade lap before the team competition, my TPS took a shit. When we took it apart, a bunch of metallic shavings came out, which I can only assume came from the spring, but I'm not sure... Cleaning it did nothing so I had to wait until Sunday afternoon for one of my friends to deliver a replacement TPS (which required a wild goose chase around Greenbay Autozones itself), which turned out not to be an exact fit. Luckily with some very technical zip tie science we were able to get the car running well enough for me to drive the last 3 hours of the day.

PSA: FUCK Petlas tires. I killed all 4 pairs in the 3 hours of driving that I was able to do. They barely produced any smoke at all and basically just turned to dust then delaminated with 80% tread left. Absolute garbage.

I feel like such a dumb ass. I had this Skunk2 B-Series throttle body sitting on my shelf and could have saved myself the trouble if I had just put it on and switched the TPS before Final Bout. It even looks better. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

More Final Bout content in next post...

When I took the car out for the first time the strobes weren't hooked up and the wires were all coiled together in the corner of the engine bay, but not secured, so they ended up flying over and melting to the header 🙃 Fortunately only two of the six wires were damaged beyond repair, so I just removed them. I honestly can't remember how/if I was actually running all six strobes up front... Four seems more than adequate. I never marked which wire went where, so after an hour of trial and error, I finally got them all placed. Damn near had a seizure when I turned the lights off and filmed this video 😂

One of my wheels had been slowly leaking since I built it, so, having finally killed the tires, I decided it was time to reseal it.

Hit the seam with a wire wheel, cleaned it up, wiped it down with alcohol, and applied the good stuff.

My diff had a small leak as well so I decided to just have a full on re-seal party.

I hadn't noticed this damage along the inside edge of the pumpkin before. May have been contributing to the poor seal.

I hit the damaged area of the diff with a file and sealed it up. Yay no more leaks!

I also made a somewhat more legit dipstick holder bracket thingie. Just slightly less janky than wrapping the wire around the exhaust runner. I have an idea for a more elegant solution, but this works...

Kinda funny, kinda sad, but now that this car is working 10/10 for the first time in its existence I'm the weak link. I've had to cancel back to back events due to illness and injury. I'm not sure who's cereal I pissed in, but I hope they get over it soon. At least I've been able to have some fun driving the car around town though!

Also, I ended up buying the trailer I've rented a few times. Too good of a deal to pass up. Easy af to load and sturdy as hell. Also, It's been a while since I've driven an event outside of Northern California, hopefully this will make it more feasible.

Photos from NorCal Allstars

When I got home, I did a thorough nut and bolt check and noticed the shoulder of my tire had been sliced all the way around. Turned the wheel and realized the bumpstop on the LCA had loosened up and was allowing the wheel to over-center and hit the brake line tab, brake line, and inner tie rod - a trifecta of fuckery if you will. It also explained why I was having so many issues with left-hand turns at NorCal Allstars.

While under the car, I glanced at the flywheel and noticed it was caked with mud. I didn't really go off track much at the previous event, so I figure it's been in there since the NYE event. There is noticeably less vibration now that it's been removed. I should probably buy the Kpower dust shield...

If you notice in the photo above, there are a couple drops of oil on the oil pan, but fortunately it was from a leaky front main seal, not the oil pan flange THANK GOD. Thankfully the front main seal is super easy to replace in a FR platform and only took about 20 minutes!

At the NYE event, I hadn't had any bulbs in my corner light and it got filled with a bunch of dirt, water, and debris, so I gave it a quick lil wash with a pipe cleaner. Didn't come out super perfect, but is definitely a hell of a lot better now.

With the oil leaks fixed and feeling pretty confident I had adequately solved any possible reliability issues, I finally decided to give street driving the car to and from an event and hit up Recollection Auto Fashion.

It made the drive there no problem! A couple runs in though, I kept seeing little puffs of smoke from under the hood on left-hand turns. The valve cover bolts had come loose, so I torqued them down and went out for another run and it did the same thing. This time the dipstick was partially sticking out. The motor isn't showing signs of blow-by anywhere else so I'm not sure what's going on, but I ended up using some wire to keep the dipstick in it's hole the rest of the day and had no more issues.

I finally felt comfortable enough in the car to start doing some tandem, which was fun. Ian's car has no business being as fast as it is!

And then I drove home on cords. It was a most excellent day. Such a feeling of accomplishment being able to drive your car to an event and home without issue. It can't be beat!

I made a short little video. I miss making videos. Maybe I'll make more of these lazy-edits haha

I didn’t know this was K swapped these days! Must feel absolutely hectic revving the hell out of an NA K.

January 2024 - my passenger seat finally arrived after a little 15 month delay. Still hoping to score a blue stadia or gias one of these days

I ordered a full set of coil pack plugs just in case I ran into another issue down the road and fixed the one that got fucked up at NYE.

Also, I bought back this carbon Origin trunk spoiler since I felt like a nerd driving around town with the GT wing, but going fully wingless looks weird with GT aero haha

February 2024 - And I finally got some tires mounted on these XD9's... Not sure how I feel about them with this paint and aero combo...

March 2024 - So the front end has felt funky at every event I've driven since doing the swap. I'm sure my eyeballed alignment was a major contributing factor, but things like the Volvo PS setup and old rack bushings had me questioning what the true cause was. I also wanted to dial out some camber so I could do some grip driving. So I bought some "stock" GK Tech LCA's to replace my 45mm extended LCA's, Ikeya Formula inner tie rods to replace the obscenely long Maxima tie rods, and some new rack bushings. Also I got some "high flow" PTFE 90° fittings since it looked like my lines may have been kinked due to the extreme angle they were routed at. Also, while I was down there I figured I might as well reseal the oil pan. Yay!

I always wanted one of these engine hoist things, but always did some janky shit in the past instead. So much less scary crawling around an engine knowing it isn't only being held up by a jack handle and a ratchet strap. Highly recommend lol

Pan, rack, and crossmember all ready for a nice cleaning!

The name's Bond, Hondabond. Double O 69. If you recall, way back when I originally did the oil pump and pan, I had forgotten to put the crank trigger wheel back on before sealing the pan and front cover. I alway figured I did a shitty job cleaning where the pan and front cover met, so this time I cleaned the shit out of it before sealing it up and even waited 48 hours before pouring any oil in the motor. Turns out my suspicion was correct, but it looks like the crank pulley seal was also leaking, so that's next on the list.

Anywho, I put the pan, cross member, and rack back in. I randomly discovered that this enormous wrench Corbin gave me is exactly the right size for the inner tie rod (I had been using it as a pry bar to get the engine and crossmember lined up lol)

And then I ran into a weird issue. The Voodoo13 tension rods didn't want to play nice with the GK LCA's so I had to introduce them to a grinder. After a bit of trial and error I got them trimmed down just enough to allow space for adjustment without there being a huge gap.

Took the car to the alignment shop and realized he was the last one who aligned it 7 years and 2 paint jobs ago haha

Going from 45mm to roughly 25mm extended LCA's decreased the camber by 2.5°. I should decrease it a bit more, but right now the wheel well clearance is way too perfect.

I kept the rear pretty conservative for good tire wear and streetability

Recently I noticed my clutch fluid levels randomly dropping, but hadn't seen any drips on the ground so I was baffled by where it had been going. While at the alignment shop, I noticed the fluid level was low again, after having topped it off the night before. Finally it dawned on me that it may be leaking inside the car, so I took a look under the dash and sure enough there was a stream of brake fluid running down the firewall. So once I got home from the alignment shop I ran to the part store and the dudes helped me swap it out real quick with the car still on the trailer before we drove up to Redding for NorCal Allstars. When we got to the track I unloaded real quick and Corbin got on the wet ground, in the rain, and helped me bleed the clutch. What a guy!

Hopefully someone grabbed a few decent pics/vids cuz I forgot my GoPro and all the homies were too busy drinking beer and trying to stay dry in the pits on day 1, and day 2 I was only able to get one run in thanks to waking up late and chronic throttle sticking issues (more on this later). Over all though 7/10 event. Some disorganization is to be expected from inaugural events, especially at a new venue. The track layout is fun and technical, I just wish the entry had a longer run up. You can get more speed up on the Thunder Hill small skidpad haha

this car cool, k series gotta feel great. must get ride-a-long 😤

Some photos from GorillaTornado

So, NYE happened.

I need to get my own trailer so I can paint it to match the white/grey combo lol

Corbin came out of retirement!

So last time on the skidpad, I thought I had gotten the alignment pretty dialed, but when I got home and took the car for a street drive, it was all over the place. I was going to get an actual alignment, but the holidays were a bit more hectic than expected, so I didn't get a chance. On track, the car was just as unpredictable as it had been on the street and for some reason the wheels no longer wanted self-steer. As you can see in this video (the only video I ended up with because I accidentally switched to photo mode 😑) my hands were all over the place trying to feed the wheel lol

I went in and out of the pits a few times adjusting toe, caster, and tire psi and hit the skidpad for a couple runs with Corbin and all was feeling pretty good.

and then I went back out on full track, confident that I had solved the issue, chucked it in and the car started misfiring 😑 Checked spark and fuel and it seemed to be the cyl 2 injector, which turned out to have a tottally fucked o-ring.

Thought I had fixed it after replacing the injector, went out for a rip and made it all the way to turn 14, gave 'er a yeet and the car fell on its face when I went to get back on throttle.

I pulled back into the pits and Corbin and Nick started doing some poking and proding and zeroed in on the wiring for the cyl 2 coilpack. After depinning the plug and trying to undo the pin clasps ever so delicately so it could be reused, the wires pulled right out of the insulation. The wire had broken right where the wires had been bent to suit the way I routed the harness, which apprently was less than ideal. The harness is designed to work with the stock valve cover, which has a valley in it for the coilpack and sensor harness to run thourgh, but the Skunk2 valve cover doesn't and instead has the oil filler cap right where the harness should run. Almost tempted to see if a stock valve cover would clear the hood, but FUCK is that annoying. Anyway, here's me sitting in my bay trying not to look pissed off.

At least the fix is easy enough. I feel like I might as well redo the other coilpack plugs while I'm at it just in case.

this is the type of thread that makes a mf want to wrench

Carbon door panels 😮

So good 🤍

9/9/23 I FINALLY DROVE AN EVENT WITH THE K24!!! (Excuse the u-haul-friendly ride height)

The car ran flawlessly. I only had a handful of small issues, mostly caused by the car rattling shit loose (throttle body pulley, fuel rail bolt, starter signal wire). Aside from desperately needing an alignment, it was a blast to drive. The k24 is such a ROWDY motor. The best comparison I can make is it's like a stock SR with a 4.6, but can rev to the moon.

October 2023 - The factory carpet has always been pretty nasty, so I got some new black carpet to replace it with.

After removing the original carpet I realized the seat mount point was pretty fucked up, which explained why I couldn't get a bolt to thread in.

The stock 4.08 is super short with a ZF transmission, so I swapped it out for a 3.5 from a Laurel.

I took the car off PNO.

And I took the car for its first legal drive in 5 years. It felt pretty damn good.

I ran out of time to wrap up the seat mount repair and carpet install and went drifting. The 3.5 made the car soooo much more drivable and I started getting pretty comfortable after dialing in the alignment all morning.

The event was a comp and I was pretty sure I nailed a couple perfect runs, but I guess it was too little too late and I didn't end up qualifying. Oh well!

November 2023 - I got around to fixing the seat mounting point.

Corbin came to the rescue and plugged up the holes I made while drilling out the spot welds and then tacked it into place for me. It ended up lining up perfectly!

Then I got to reassemble the interior. I hope I never have to replace my carpet again. I got the driver side to fit perfectly, but the passenger side is another story. Another thing I don't have the patience for I guess... Thankfully you can't really tell with the Dmax floor mats in.

And then I drove Dlux and continued to get comfortable with the car. I pretty much only focused on two turns the entire day, trying to get the feel for throwing backwards entries and aggressive transitions. I think it got me nice and prepared for turn 14 on Thunderhill East, which I'll be driving this coming weekend 😎

April 2023 - All of the aero bits and whatnot came out perfectly

But the car came out a bit too glossy. Satin proved to be a bit more tricky than I had anticipated. Poor Rus had to sand the entire car and spray the satin clear coat again.

I got my wheels back from powder coating and bolted them back together. I think I got it down to 40min per wheel by the time I finished the last of the 6.

I ran into a couple of issues with the Skunk2 intake manifold so I swapped it out for a Kpower one, which made the already crowded intake side of the motor just a tad more crowded.

The final piece needed to get the car driving was the throttle cable. Fortunately I got lucky and was able to reuse the factory cable bracket and the new one slipped right in.

The one shitty part is that you have to adjust the cable length from under the dash, which is a fucking nightmare to do. Getting a tiny allen key and a wrench in there requires Cirque du Soleil-level contortions.

I was hoping to have the same good luck as when I had done the SR swap and that it'd start right up and run with no issues, but this time I wasn't so lucky. I was hoping to make it to FB SSNW and had fab, tune, and transport all lined up for the week prior, but being unable to diagnose what the issue with the motor triggered a domino effect and everything fell apart at the last minute. It was probably for the best though as I was finally able to take a break after thrashing, trying to get the car done for the previous 6 months.

May 2023 - I finally fully assembled the car, put it on the ground, and got to see my vision come to life. It felt really good to see it all together, but the last 10% of shit I needed to do to get it driving seemed daunting.

June 2023 - Interior tune started coming together.

August 2023 - Corbin brought his computer and we dove in to try to figure out what was wrong. After doing a Zoolander "files are inside the computer" reenactment, we made some progress. It turned out that the software needed to be updated. I never saw a prompt or notification when I had "loaded" the base tune onto the ECU, so I assumed it had been successfully loaded, but apparently it hadn't been loaded at all. DERP

With the car running now, I took it to Secret Factory to have the exhaust done, electric ps pump mounted, and my janky hood/headlight bracket reinforced.

September 2023 - I brought the car home and finished up little things like wiring the gauges and ps pump

And added a bracket to make the dummy headlights fit better

And found I had a bad injector causing a misfire after my first drive around the block

Then it was tune time

The car died on the dyno and I had to run out and grab a new alternator

But after that it was all good and made 199hp 152 ft/lbs (228hp 174 ft/lbs when adjusted for the dyno)

VERSION 4

August 2022 - I never got the paint match right in the bay when I did the tube front and then the fire happened, so it was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint.

The tubs were also a bit oversized, so I decided to trim them back with the intentions of molding an air box on one side and a place to hide fuses/relays on the other. (I still need to finish this project)

November 2022 - Rus laid a fresh coat of Nissan 463 as an homage to the car's two tone origins.

Over the years I had accumulated a few K24's, two A2's and one A4 (for turbo things eventually maybe?). I decided to start with the one that appeared to be in the worst condition just in case I fucked anything up trying to get it running lol

The K24 crank pulley legit requires more torque to remove than the motor puts out.

Always remember to double check that you've drained the oil before you flip it over.

ZF transmissions are real small. This is in a Miata trunk for reference.

I rushed myself trying to get the motor in the car and running for our annual BBQ and in my haste I forgot to put the trigger wheel on, which sits behind the timing chain cover. Knowing what I know now, there was no chance in hell I was going to have the motor in the car and running in time for the BBQ anyway and I should have just taken my time.

December 2022 - I got the motor in the car and thought I'd be able to drive Super D NYE, but a seemingly endless list of fittings, sensors, plugs, hoses, and BMW shit didn't allow that to happen.

February 2023 - After spending at least 2 days a week at the shop I had:

• Reshaped the fuel hard lines so they'll hopefully be far enough from the header

• Plumbed fuel system and FPR

• Plumbed heater

• Plumbed and mounted swirl pot and coolant overflow

• Wired e-fans

• Plumbed radiator

• Cleaned, painted, and installed brake booster

• Cleaned and installed BMC

• Cleaned and installed CMC

• Plumbed clutch line (GK Tech rhd braided clutch line worked perfect)

• Partially plumbed catch can (Waiting on the can itself)

• Air intake set up

• Shifter mounted

• Wiring harness mocked up

But then I was stuck with the wrong injector clips and Wiring Specialties didn't even have the correct ones so I had to figure it out myself. Thankfully, everything else was done as far as I was concerned.

March 2023 - Nothing like cutting into some brand new (having sat on the car for 3 years) fiberglass!

It was time to disassemble the SP1's and drop them off for powder coating.

After mixing and matching some faces and ordering a new pair of lips and barrels I ended up with a pair of 17x9.5 +0 HP disk, 17x10 +11 MD disk, and 17x10 +5 SL disk.

After 32-ish hours of shaping I was satisfied with the shape.

And then Rus started doing paint prep.

Finished drop vent

Bonded to the hood

And started prepping for paint. If I were to do this again, I would have made a negative mold from the foam drop vent and then made the fiberglass drop vent from that. Trying to make the transition smooth with the way I did it is impossible without caking the entire hood with filler.

While I was dicking around with the hood and trying to get the motor started, Rus managed to tackle a few fiberglass repairs and prepped the entire car.

You got crazy perseverance I fucking love it. This car has a wild story. I kept up to date with the K(hold the A)24 build thread and don't remember all the shit this car has seen. Awesome story Max, and impeccable style.

Then I drove down to Grange (now AVS) for Super D Matsuri 2. I didn't have time to break in the clutch, so I tried to break it in at the track the day before...

But I only made it a couple laps before I gave in to the temptation to spin the tires.

After a couple skids, the clutch started slipping. I tried my best to somehow get it to continue breaking it in in the hopes that it'd start gripping, but to no avail. Somehow I was unable to find any new SR clutches in LA, so I parked it for the weekend.

October 2018 - After moving and not touching the car for 6 months, I finally pulled the transmission. I couldn't find anything wrong with the clutch, but did find some odd wear on the throwout bearing and noticed I was missing the retainer clip for the clutch fork, which led me to believe the clutch was never fully engaged. So, I put everything back together (with a retainer clip), made sure it was in working order, and drove off to a skidpad event.

I babied the car the entire way to the track and just before pulling off the highway, I did a pull and found that the clutch was still slipping. I drifted anyway until the slipping got to the point I wasn't sure if I'd be able to drive the car home.

November 2018 - I threw in a new 3 puck Exedy and headed back to the track. This time the clutch worked no problem with zero break-in. I was stoked.

The car had been smoking a bit recently and towards the end of the day it began to get worse. I can't find the photo, but at the end of the day it looked like it was doing a burnout while idling.

I pulled the motor because I thought the valve seals were shot. Upon disassembly, there was a bunch of oil in the intercooler piping, pointing to turbo seals. It wasn't until I pulled the turbo off to put on my hatch that I realized the oil drain tube had developed a bubble on the inside, which was restricting the draining of the oil. All of that work for $3 hose lol

BIG FAST FORWARD

February 2021 - The KA in my hatch blew the head gasket and I parted out most of the car, aside from the turbo, which I slapped back on the SR and threw it back in the coupe.

I got everything hooked up and went to start it up and the CAS plug started smoking. Literally the only things changed were the exhaust manifold and turbo oil drain tube.

March 2022 (yes, 2022) - After spending a year trying to diagnose the coupe and throwing several hundred dollars at it, I decided enough was enough and that I needed to finally dive in to the k-swap headfirst, so I sold the SR.

VERSION 3

January 2018 - So the first time I painted the car, we didn't know what we were doing and didn't want to attempt any major repairs. The second time was rushed. The third time though, I wanted to dive in and fix the issues I had been putting off. After blocking the car, a lot more damage popped up than I had anticipated.

I used a flapper wheel to remove up to 6mm of bondo in some parts of the lower quarter panel to reveal some seriously warped and rusty metal.

When I tried to straighten the metal with a stud welder, I found that rust had eaten away so much of the material that even the lightest tac would rip a chunk of metal off when pulled. I wasn't ready to do a full-on restoration so I just cleaned off the rust, coated it and sealer, and decided it was time for overfenders.

February 2018 - Car Modify Wonder doesn't make their GT fender for coupe, so I decided to make my own.

Don't forget to countersink your rivets!

I was going to make some CMW-inspired fenders too, but never got around to it.

Then it was paint time. We kept having issues with the paint. The first coat of primer came out rough as hell, so we had to sand it, spray again, and sand again before base went on. I also made it a bit extra complicated because I wanted to do the roof in a darker shade.

I also wanted to paint the accents on the kit, which also required a few extra steps and a ton of masking.

March 2018 - Our air compressor ended up taking a shit before Rus was able to hit everything with clear and when he did, the new compressor wasn't able to keep up. That plus not having our booth fully set up and another car being prepped at the same time led the clear coat to come out with a bunch of imperfections. I was out of time in the booth and money for paint/supplies, so I started assembly and decided I'd just cut and buff the paint once it had time to cure.

For as long as I've been into drifting, Uras GT has been my dream aero, but I only really liked it with a silvia front, so despite loving a good pop-up front, it was time for a change.

My tube front had been designed for the pop-up front, so I had to redesign it and incorporate a new, shorter FMIC.

After a couple weeks, the paint had fully cured and it was time to cut and buff. I hope I never have to cut and buff anything ever again. You need an insane amount of patience and focus. Props to people who do that shit for a living, but it's definitely not for me.

April 2018 - I fucked up in a few spots and burned through the paint, but it helped a ton on the large panels. Here you can somewhat see the comparison between the qp which was cut and buffed and the wing, which wasn't.

My red painted factory tails had begun to fade, so I swapped them out for some red painted clear units. Much nicer looking IMO.

I pulled the old burnt up clutch and flywheel

And dropped the car off for some stickies

Reflective vinyl is the coolest! It's thick and stiff though. Arthur of FXD&WLD had a hell of a time doing the install with all the contours of my aero and fenders, but it came out amazing.

Back to the exhaust shop for a little lobster tail!

Super D Cup Round 2 was interesting. So many changes had been made I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Of all the things to have issues with, my power steering randomly started acting up. Side note: I wasn't able to diagnose it at the track at the time, but there ended up being a pinhole in one of the ps lines that kept letting air into the system. I was in and out of the pit trying to figure out the car, but I kept pushing until I tagged Dom's rear wheel with my front wheel and mangled the lip. I ended up running out of time and had to sit out the comp, which was probably for the best.

After the comp, I went back out, with a freshly-bled ps system and a borrowed wheel. I was able to get a few good laps in before I tagged Dom's wheel with my (borrowed) wheel AGAIN. I felt so bad. I also wound up bending my tierod that time around and decided it was time to call it a day.

August 2017 - I finally ditched my chopped knuckles and went with Heatmaker Hot Side.

And I finally got a real alignment after 4 years of ownership.

Also, I swapped my differential out for what I thought was a 4.3. I literally just found out THIS YEAR (2023) that it was actually a 4.6 lmao

Super D had an event on Thunderhill West and I was determined to get redemption for the lack of driving I got in 3 years prior.

Unfortunately the universe had different plans. A session or two in, I went off track in turn 1 and knocked my downpipes loose. By the time I reached turn 6 there was smoke coming out from under the hood and as I slowed, flames.

I used my entire fire extinguisher and the car behind me gave me his as well, but neither was a match for an oil fire. From what I could deduce, it looked like the catch can hose melted due to the loose downpipe and then ignited the oil in the catch can at the back of the head on fire.

October 2017 - All I ended up having to replace was the coil pack harness, coil packs, bmc reservoir and cap, wiper cowl, turbo/downpipe gaskets, and hood, which the fire crew had taco'd to get better access to the bay. And just like that I was ready for Super D Cup Round 3.

The car drove phenomenally with the ps issue solved, the new knuckles, and alignment and I was able to make it into the top 16.

I battled Al and he was just too damn fast for me so that's where my comp ended.

November 2017 - Round 4 came up quick! It was by far the most fun round. Most of the drivers drove every round so I think by the last one, everyone was pretty comfortable with each other. It was pretty neat to see and be a part of and made for a very good qualifying session.

Dom and I faced off in the top 16 and he wasn't quite able to keep up so I advanced on to battle Julian. We went OMT and in my follow, the car fell on it's face and I gripped up.

I let Dom take my car out for a couple runs after the comp and he said it was very slow. After I took it for a drive and noticed the same, I took a look in the bay and found an nice gaping hole in the hot side coupler I overlooked while repairing damage from the fire.

December 2017 - Super D NYE was the first event on the big skidpad at Thunderhill and showed the shortfalls of the shorter gearing. I was between 2nd and 3rd on nearly the entire course.

I was able to drive the majority of the day, but I had to slip the clutch to stay in boost and it decided enough was enough by the afternoon. This was ok though because a refresh was on the way, which was desperately needed after I smacked the shit out of a tire stack 😂

August 2016 - The SR came out yet again. Cyl 1 bearing was completely gone. The amount of shrapnel was pretty impressive.

September 2016 - After taking all three cranks to a differnt machine shop, it was determined that the original crank was the best option, despite being used as a door stop for nearly a year. They fixed the crank threads, cleaned the block and head, and made sure I didn't fuck anything else up before I put the motor back together and hit the streets.

October 2016 - I broke in the new bearings by driving the car up to Thunderhill for a shakedown day with Nakamura and Animal Style. The car worked flawlessly without skipping a beat.

Then we headed down to Grange (now AVS) for Super D Matsuri. Nick and I got there a day early and drove an event the day before and had a ton of fun, but I may have pushed it a bit too hard.

During the actual event, we did a few practice runs before the dantai comp and my car was feeling strange. I thought I was down on power, so I opted to follow and got as much speed for the run up as possible. On the entry though, Nick sent it too hard and Dom took avoiding action, but I had too much speed and smashed into Dom. After the crash I went to do a burnout and finally found out that my real issue was I had a broken axle. I guess I was too hopped up on adrenaline to notice lol

When I got home I picked up my first k24a2. Crazy how long it took me to actually put it in.

January 2017 - I made a splitter. It made the car a pain in the ass to load onto a trailer, but it definitely saved my bumper's live a million times. For this one I used angle iron and bolted it to the bottom of the frame rails, square tube bolted to the splitter, and turnbuckles at the front and back of the splitter to adjust the angle/fitment. Wish I had more photos of this setup.

Dbax took some pictures despite the rough condition of the car

April 2017 - I kept cracking front wheels, so I switched to a 17/18 stagger.

The td05 that came on the car was showing signs of age, so I swapped it out for an s15 t28.

I'd be lying if I said seeing Naoki drive in person didn't have an impact on me. It really shifted my focus towards getting better performance out of the car and went on a bit of a rampage, starting with the drivetrain. No more floppy ass 2pc driveshaft. DDS 1-pc aluminum driveshaft.

No more tripod ass axles. Villains z33 stubs and oem z33 axles.

May 2017 - Then I corrected the rear geometry with some PBM drop knuckles and put in ARP lug studs all around

And got a weird no-name rear bbk, which used MDX rotors

And finally upgraded to PBM z32 front calipers and found an old PBM bbk kit to match.

To retain the brake feel, I got a 1 1/16" z32 BMC. Supposedly there's a pressed-in fitting in the stock BMC you can re-use in the z32 unit so you don't have to bubble flare the line, but I learned the hard way that aftermarket BMC's don't have this fitting, so I ended up getting a bubble fitting and bubble flaring my stock hardline. I probably should have just done that to begin with, but you live and you learn.

The morning after finishing all the brake upgrades, Lamar (Total Shop Prestige) came up and did a street tune (he's brave). The t28 felt soooooo much better than the dumbass td05. It felt like a brand new car. After the tune I loaded it up on the trailer, ready for Super D round 2.

This version was one of my favorite Onevias of all time.

VERSION 2

August 2015 - I wasn't sure what color I wanted, but after flipping through a handful of pages of swatches at the paint shop I found a nice dark cherry color that I fell in love with.

It came out looking a bit more copper-y/brown than I had anticipated, but I still loved the result. I'd love to paint another car this color some day.

September 2015 - Everything somehow worked out at the last minute. Finished paint and finally got the SR running the day before we needed to load up to head out to Final Bout 2. I didn't even get to see the car at ride height and fully assembled until we got to Wisconsin, but boy was it worth it.

I wasn't used to the power and after a handful of runs I blew up 2nd gear, clutch kicking like I was still driving a KA.

I spent the second half of day 1 pulling the transmission and swapping the bell housing to fit the spare KA transmission I had brought with me. I actually tried to pay a couple buddies to do the work for me but after an hour sweating in the heat under the car they tapped out. Day 2 I spent the first half of the morning putting the transmission back in between moments of questioning why I was even bothering.

After getting the transmission back in, I went out and got 10 or so laps in before destroying 2nd gear again. I was exhausted and my driving was sloppy anyway so it was probably a good time to call it a day anyway, but not before I overshot a turn, went off track, and exploded my front bumper.

November 2015 - After not touching the car for a while, I finally pulled the transmission and really looked at the clutch/flywheel setup, which turned out to be an unsprung 6 puck on a stock flywheel. No wonder it blew up two transmissions! When I pulled the flywheel off to replace it, I found that two of the flywheel bolts had stripped out the crank.

March 2016 - I sourced another SR block and two cranks just in case. The machine I took my crank to said they couldn't fix the original crank, so I put in the "good" crank that was in the block I had picked up and slapped the motor back together with new bearings, a new clutch, flywheel, and transmission.

On first start, the motor sounded off. After doing some diag it seemed like timing was off and it sounded like there was an issue with the head, so I pulled the motor out again and pulled the head off, only to find it to be completely fine.

Then I checked the crank and rod bearings, which turned out the be the issue 😂

April 2016 - There was only a week until Final Bout SSW, which I'd already signed up for, booked a room, taken off work and all that, so I said fuck it, threw the motor back together with the bad crank and put it in the car. I also got a dual exhaust setup for the LS460 tips I had added to the rear bumper and repair/painted the old Sexy Style front bumper for the 900th time.

First lap out, I understeered off turn 1 and finally finished off my poor sexy style bumper. The SR managed to last 15-20 laps before the knocking got so bad that I was worried about throwing a rod.

October 2014 - I fixed/stitched together what I had broken at Final Bout and Dom and I went and drove at Sonoma Drift. We were on one that night. Legit the most fun I ever had at Sonoma.

Matt Field put on a fall/winter tanso drift series (aside from the last round), called the Drift Cave Series, and I managed to snag the top step (the roof of Matt's beater) at round 1.