Shakotan G35!!

Remember that solution to my axle problems i previously mentioned? Hopefully this is it!

Happy to share this fabrication marvel Ryan Downey (@nismoboy67) cooked up for me,

I originally had Ryan weld in the gktech subframe bushings and we soon realized it wouldn’t be enough to solve my axle issues. I assumed we’d need to do the traditional cut and raise.

But Ryan had a brilliant idea of using an offset diff bushing to maximize the tip top space in the bushing hole. He even went as far as lathing the new diff bolt down to get the utmost height out of the opening.

He cut and welded the rear and kept the stock dowels for the bolts, machined brand new rear bushings to tilt the rear of the diff up as high as we could up against the dowels and got new counter-sunk bolts for the back. The 25mm raise with these mods + 10mm from the subframe bushings = 35mm of CV angle correction!!!

The best part is this setup is 90% transferable aside from the cutting of the subframe. Both F/R diff bushings are removable and can be transferred to another subframe should need be.

I’ll have to wait til after FinalBout SSE to mock it up in the car but my excitement is through the roof. Hugest shoutout to Ryan for entertaining these drift low antics and cooking up this magic🖤

March 30th 2024,

Jack Rancorn & Tyler Shelow’s Shenandoah Soukoukai event!

Man this was one of those de-motivating drift days. This picture below basically describes most of the day:

Car broke many times, my tie rod backed out the rack and I had to be escorted off the track, my lug nuts obliterated my Z stock wheels since they’ve been missing the “cone” section for a while and finally did their damage, then the ebrake assembly imploded on itself. All in all, a very not fun drift day, but i got some laps at the end and was able to test the Big lip 03’s in the back to see if it’s a driftable setup for final bout. So that’s a plus! Although i believe they might’ve taken my axles out cause there was some extra clunking on the drive home 😖

Took the kit to Josh Le’s for some paint! I def didn’t spend enough time on prep and the finish didn’t come out that great, but we’re in a time crunch for SSE, so after some touch up, it’ll have to do.

Good from far, far from good! 🥂

Nifty taillight covers from SFP Aero for that real early 00’s feel

Scuffed up with scotchbrite, and layed the same duplicator hypersilver over top the black faces and on the car they go!

Long overdue completion of the 03 set 🥹

Found these on partsfromjapan’s story on IG, and got them for a “reasonable” price in today’s market, and got them straight from the motherland!!

Specs are 18x10j +45 (lo disk)

I appreciate your dedication to the low and all the custom bits! When I had a z33 my subframe brace looked exactly like that lol

Everything mounted on the car, and it looks sick!!

Had to go with a BN style kit to stick true to Mitsuru’s car.

I was worried initially when shortening the kit that it’d quickly lose that BN sports feeling. Typically happens when you shorten aero as things start to look less aggressive.

But Nick had cut everything in the right places and they still feel very BN. The skirts had so much clearance, I had to lower the rear back down from where I raised it thinking I’d need to compensate for the kit. The skirts have more clearance than my stock skirts LOL

Dropped it off at Josh’s and I’ll be heading back down there when a warm weekend arises and we’ll get to spraying the kit!

Skirts gone so I decided to got with another idea for aero I had in mind. JPF came up with their own BN style kit for the G. It is a one off kit as nobody makes anything similar of the sort when it comes to bell bottom style kits so I knew I’d be taking a risk given that knowledge and their “great” reputation.

Out the box fitment is pretty decent. But one problem, no way was that going to fit under the car, so it had to be shortened.

I hit up Nick @mspecautoglass to see if he’d be willing to take on the project if shortening the kit for me. Open to try, I brought the kit down to him and we started cutting immediately!

1 inch cut out the rear bumper, & over 1.5 inches out of the skirt.

If you’re wondering why I have no skirts in the pictures, I ended up losing them on the freeway. I mounted them with quick release buttons thinking that’d hold up when I should’ve just hard bolted them up since they were KBD anyways. The skirts were constantly dragging and the KBD floppy material provided more leverage to pull the skirts off their mounting points. 2 hrs on the freeway and they were gone. Also right after I finally scraped through the heads of the subframe brace bolts and it fell on one side 15 minutes from home. Limped it home dragging it along the pavement and cut the brace out completely the next morning. Unfortunately that was the only thing between the ground and my gas tank, so now I’m trying to come up with a skid plate solution for that for peace of mind.

Excite Justin had just moved to Texas in the midst of all this, but he was gonna be back in town for a drift event that Roadstar was driving. While he was here, he printed, scaled and plotted the livery for each car, packed it up in his suitcase, and flew in and installed it for us! We went with a chrome back layer and a black retroflective vinyl over top to create a cool “disappearing” effect you see in the renders.

Also drifting photos of black cars suck at night so having that reflective hit will help them stand out.

With little information on this car, he ordered the Doriten issue off YAJ and translated the issue as best as he could, so we could pick Mitsu’s brain and know the intention behind the design.

We stuck with the one sided livery idea as that seems to the the entire purpose behind the design. He intended to make one sided liveries a thing, and while it didn’t necessarily catch on, we will live that vision on for you Mitsu!!

Plus with how good the paint came out, we did not mind having a clean side to show that glass off 🥹

Brainstormed some more ideas to make the livery personal to us and brought the ideas up to Mr. Excite.jp himself! Justin from Roadstar, knowing that he was just starting his livery design business. He was keen to take the task on and came up with the render below:

Loss for words:

Now, the livery.

Everyone knows Haraguchi’s legendary FC3S:

but the unsung hero is his blue s13:

Justin had the idea of doing a team tribute livery to this car and came up w the quick mock up below:

Fully assembled:

And just like that, all the grueling hard work, blood soaked into my durablocks, all paid off. Josh sprayed while we mixed the next paint cup read to go after he was out. It was a hot weekend, and got real hot in the booth, little too hot for our reducer ideally but, Josh made it work!

We went with KH3 Nissan Super Black, single stage for simplicity in drift repairs, and man I was only expecting 60% of the results we got. Josh even said our cars are the best job he’s done yet. Aside from one little run on the passenger QP, came out literally perfect. I can wet sand the run later on.

All our extra aero lol:

Now with all the grueling prep work done, it was time to bring the cars down to Josh’s for a weekend and spray all the them!

Booth set up:

let’s get to spraying !!

Got some new fenders, hammer and dolly them flat, and then added some resin to some bondo glass to thin out the consistency and skim coated the edge, blocked it flat.

With limited space/access to water in our tiny 1bd 1ba apartment, had to scuff the KBD material in the shower lol.

INGS style skirts came in.

Finally taking the time to repair the obliterated front bumper. Lots of hours put on this while I worked from home lol

Now this was a dreadful time. Days and days of block sanding and reapplying filler bc of sanding too far, and primering the night of, and then sanding the primer off to work the filler again.

All in the comfort of my apartment complex’s parking lot.

Another night at Riley’s:

Some plastic wrap to keep the moisture out rather than having to prime every day

Sadly enough this wasn’t enough to protect the panel, even with a car cover over, as after a rainstorm, i checked the repair area on the driver’s side and saw surface rust around the filler.

Had to sand all the soaked filler off and start all over again. Thankfully the passenger side was okay, as repair area was higher up.

2nd attempt. I believe the 1st attempt was a straighter fix before water got to it. But I laid some gloss black vinyl over top to check how the surface would look w paint and had to call it good enough. It is a drift car after all.

Laid some etch over the filler area’s and some sealer primer over the panel.

Yes masking was ass, don’t judge lol

Needed to address the Quarter Panels on the car. Driver and passenger sides were dinged up and creased. I hit up Riley and he was more than willing to provide guidance and supervise as we tried to address the damage. He helped me with the fancy weld on slide hammer they have at their shop and helped me hammer and dolly the rest to straight as we can before a skim of filler on top.

Catching up to more of the recent stuff to the car. Stayed pretty incognito for 2023 and did maybe 2 events out of the year one at Panthera and one private day at Shenandoah speedway.

Our goal as a team was to always have a cohesive look one day, I’d had always dreamed of us all painted black mobbing around the streets and in tandem on the track. We’d had green on black as it felt as if it fit the team name the best.

Now was the time to start prepping! Our good friend Josh from BlackHand had mentioned he’d be willing help us spray our vehicles in order to prep for Final Bout. He has a ton of land and a big ass inflatable spray booth that they all sprayed all the BlackHand cars with. It was around July and Josh said we’d need to spray around September/October in order to have the best weather to spray in. We started mine first as I unfortunately had the most work in front of me. My car was definitely the most tattered of the 3.

All teamed up and knocked the car down with 320 grit in a matter of hours.

Updated interior shot with the Sparco Circuit 2 from my buddy Khai. & ofc the Pivot open ended buttplug.

Decided to try my hand at trying to recreate that special edition finish again. Scuffed the gunmetal and layer 1-2 coats of duplicolor hyper silver on top and I’d say this is as spot on as you can get with rattle cans.

Repolished and ceramic coated the lips.

All assembled and resealed:

Scooped up a pair of 18x10.5 +12 Work CR Kiwami’s:

Finally installed the V1 Gktech Bolt-on angle kit I had got back when they first released:

Brought for an alignment at Hillyard Automotive in Sterling!

Time to do the D again w the bros:

Routine Axle replacements 🙃:

Little booboo into the tire wall at RIR

More drifting w my bois!!

one of the best g35's ever created

Remember when I said OfferUp was still a thing?

Found these Bomex Type 1 mirrors on OfferUp long ago for an s13 and guy sold them to me for 70$ shipped!

I remember seeing a thread on Zilvia regarding how oem z33 mirrors bolt on to a s13, so my caveman ass assumed it'd just work vice versa.

Deolio from Zilvia:

z33 mirrors on Aaron's coupe from Animal Style:

Quickly found out it's not always vice versa:

We're going to take a lot more work than I anticipated as the g/Z's mirror mounting area have a significant indent to the bolt holes. And the Bomex mirrors were flat. These are pics of it locked up looking okay but the bolts were only tightened halfway. Once fully tightened they sink in too much and hit the pillar and the door cannot close.

Put the idea on ice for a long while. Good thing to have friends with welders!

The homie Julius was keen to do a simple mounting plate for the Bomex's to sit against. Got the idea to replicate something like the Ganador mounting plates that they make for the Zn6/Zc6:

Template made out:

Cutting:

And welded plate to the door! (sounds scary/dumb i know):

Mocked up:

end result is so sick, can't thank Julius enough for entertaining my dumbass idea lol. Fitment isn't perfect, but it's just a mixture of the bomex's poor mold and the fact it isn't made for the car, going to cut and reglass one of these days, but for now, I'm happy!

Mo' Low Mo' Problems pt. 2

I've def had axle issues before, but after redrilling/notching the coilover bottom bracket it only exentuated those issues.

Got plenty of these pictures of abused axles.

Tried everything other than a differential raise as you can see below:

Seran Wrap:

Split boot:

Flex seal tape:

Pic of brand new Oreilly axles

Above is the best solution I had so far, spray this periodically on a brand new axle boot:

And it'll keep the boot intact. Infortunately in my case it's not just the boot that's the issue but the joint likes to separate due to the obnoxious angle the axles are at.

Exploded joint after 1st initiation of the day 🥲:

Drove home post event 2 hrs on a blown axle like this hahahaha.

GSP's have the strongest joints that I've seen so far, they typically last a few events before needing to be replaced. But as I've said previously, currently working on a more suitable/permanent solution for the car.

Well you know how it goes, Mo' Low Mo' Problems, scraped through my exhaust, and had my boy Riley from Roadstar patch it up with 1/4" steel. DIY oval! Thanks Riley!

Added some clamps to the hangers to raise the exhaust up. Unfortunately this fix is worn through now so back to the exhaust leak dungeon we go. Next setup I have I'm definitely going to try getting rid of the hanger bushing as a whole and run just the clamp to raise the exhaust up as much as possible.

Couple more drift days under my belt.

Up to this point I was unsatisfied with the rear height of the car. But I was maxed out as the shock was wound all the way into the bottom bracket and without a locking collar at that.

Here starts all the extra modifications you need to do to go beyond "off the shelf".

I definitely wanted to get an inch lower at the least. But wanted to incorporate preload back into the equation as I was running negative preload and as I was (and still am) learning the ways of drift, i wanted the car to be more predictable.

So simply enough just decided to redrill the bottom bracket hole an inch up! It was relatively simple enough other than having to grind the "U" of the bracket to make room for the RUCA. Got the idea from a guy doing it to non extreme low's on YouTube.

Screen Grab from yt video i got the idea from:

Now this was some ride height! Car is floored and I'm in love:

My first drift event!

Spirit JP's Novice clinic 10/18/2020

I had spectated the Night Touge event right before this and it only solidified my desire to be in this world. The vibes are nothing like your typical car meet. Everyone's there to see some rad shit and have a good time!

100% one of the best moments of my life, I've never had so much fun behind the wheel of a vehicle and having all my loved ones coming to support me, it was a really good day.

Made the big move out of my parents place for the first time after graduating college and moved 4 hours away to Northern VA/DC area to hopefully be in a better location to get my first big boy IT job. Got a house with Justin, and both our ladies.

One of my bday gifts was registration to my first drift event! This was huge for me, aside from any street stuff in industrial parks, this would be my first time doing the "real" thing.

Got the blitz mounted up on the car and posted for some flicks w da team 🖤🖤

Found this 50$ k2 front bumper on OfferUp when that was still a thing.

I originally had the oem VLSD shimmed by a local guy. Sadly I was unsatisfied with the result because after it was shimmed the Backlash was all the way off and the diff whined terribly. It sound like a I had a dog box in the car.

Worried about the diff possibly overheating and blowing up I found a terribly welded open diff in RVA and made the trip to buy it and had KC from AK integrated AutoWorks in 757 weld it up for me! KC does great work much more intricate that my little differential job lol. Check him out if you need sick ass fabrication jobs done.

My best friend Justin gifted me a pair of spare Blitz 03's for basically free on my Birthday!

Original specs were 18x9 +38 i believe?

Spray painted the faces and ordered 6" lips and 4" barrels for them. And some gold hardware. It was my sad attempt at trying to recreate the Special Edition finish at the time, but it worked at the moment, and needless to say I was stoked.

It wasn't until my senior year of college is when I started modifying the car with some intention. To finally explore the lore of what some of my friends & I have been fascinated with since getting my license, drifting! What originated my interest in drifting was the ironic FnF franchise, Initial D, Hot Version videos, and growing up on Gran Turismo.

For the longest time, I was the function > form guy in the friend group while all my friends were stancing and slamming their cars. Hilarious given the car's ride height present day! LOL

Finally got coilovers and arms for the vehicle,

BC extreme low's

30K F 24K R

Chose these initial spring rates based on the vehicles motion ratio so effectively the wheel is moving somewhere at a rate around 20k f and 15k R after the math equation is said and done.

Still relatively stiff, but I had every intention to lower the vehicle as much as possible.

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Funny looking at this height now and thinking I was unbearably low at the time

We can fast forward on the car's onset years in my ownership as modifications were relatively nonexistent aside from a simple front lip, lowering springs, and plethora of stickers. I was still a college student during this time period so my funds were limited.