Well, it took a little longer than I had hoped but I will say they were definitely worth the wait. I stopped by my paint guy’s place this morning on the way into work in the uhhh….. “shop delivery car” to pick up those Watanabes I have been restoring. You would be surprised how much I can actually fit in this little clown car
I took a couple of pictures outside so you could hopefully get a better idea of how they actually look.
Up close…. so fresh and so clean, if I didn’t let you in on my little secrets I could most definitely pass these off as a brand new set.
Just need some rubber stuff to put around them….. it’s getting close now, can’t wait!!
A few things to wrap up and we’ll be on the road……
Love them or hate them, they will probably always be around the classic Japanese car scene. Most of you know they first appeared on the Hakosuka race cars in the early 70’s.
I understand them on track cars, the mounting always seemed to me to be very functional. But the super long oil lines have always bothered me. I guess on a race car its always about functionality over anything else and straight fittings are just plain simpler. Don’t get me wrong, I love this Celica to death but in my opinion the oil cooler lines are just plain silly, no matter what style you’re going for.
Anyways, I’m rambling again. The only reason I even brought up this topic of externally mounted oil coolers is because I came across the first tastefully mounted one I’ve ever seen on a Hakosuka.
Ooooohhhh that’s clean! See what a couple of 90 degree fittings and clever mounting will get you? Then again maybe I’m missing the point, and they’re supposed to be mounted all crudely and mad max style. Just like anything else I guess it’s all a matter of preference. But If I do ever build a track ready Hakosuka, the oil cooler will not have 2 feet of extra line And because that C10 Skyline is so damn sexy how about another pic?
So simple, so clean, so in love.
And you can do whatever you want with your oil coolers, but let’s at least keep your intercoolers where they’re supposed to be…… ha ha!!
Well, it’s that time again. If any of you have been reading this blog you will know that we just received a 71 Skyline 2000 GT and a 73 Celica GTV. http://www.jdmlegends.com/blog/?p=709 The car had a restoration performed a few years ago and it actually looks pretty good, but as always I tend to be a bit of perfectionist and there will always be something that needs a little bit of TLC.
The first thing I had noticed that was a bit off was the badge orientation on the right front fender.
Holy moly! Really?!!! Those two extra holes aren’t supposed to be there are they? Hmmmm……. let’s have a look at the other side.
This one looks right. For those of you that don’t know the “Skyline” is always supposed to be in front of the “GT” badge. So it turns out those extra hole are actually supposed to be there, it’s just that some nimrod decided they liked the badges mounted in their own special way. Whatever, no big deal. Hopefully they’re just stuck on incorrectly and I can just reposition them and be done. Wrong!!
They liked the badges mounted that way so much they actually decided to drill their own hole to remount them, disregarding the extra holes just hanging out. Whoever you are, you are a genius. Thank you. Now I could just leave it as it is but what self-respecting Japanese restoration shop sells legends like these with the badges mounted all jacked up? Not us Time for some body work, first up is to bring the holes down to the bare metal enough that I can weld them up.
Little bit more work to make sure everything ends up all nice and straight and we’re about ready for paint.
Now while I’m at it you may have noticed those badges weren’t looking exactly factory fresh if you know what I mean.
Same with the ones on the rear quarter panels.
First up is removing the old paint so you can put down a nice even new coat. Different badges will require different methods of removal but I found with these I could actually just chip off the old paint with an x-acto knife without doing any damage to the chrome plating underneath.
Next up is to get your paint. On these ones I had to use a candy red that is actually a bit transparent so it allows the chrome textured surface underneath to show through, duplicating the factory finish. You will also need some VERY fine brushes as there are some very small nooks and crannies to get in. Some Q-tips for cleanup, and a steady hand will also be quite handy so no Redbulls beforehand
And there you go, much better right?
Hmmm…. wait a minute, something’s missing. Time to refer to to some of the GT-R Bibles I have here for reference.
Aha!!! I forgot the “G” !!! After I took all the red off I forgot. It’s the little things that will get you. There, that’s better.
Rear ones were pretty straightforward.
And back from the paint shop the right front fender now looks just like Nissan intended….
Now onto one other thing on the car that was looking a bit tired and definitely in need of some TLC were the wheels. After quite a few years of wear and tear and what appears to be a couple of parrallel parking mishaps, they were in need of some serious refurbishing. Most looked like this, a little chipping and some minor rash.
But the left front was the worst. Major curbage and this one was actually a bit bent as well. If your Watanabe’s look like this you should be ashamed of yourself. Rotas, go ahead
Bent wheels are actually a bit out of my league so luckily I have a great wheel shop in town that specializes in this stuff. After I had the wheel straightened, I had to remove the old paint so we could lay down a nice new even coat to get them looking like they just came out of the box. There are a couple of ways to do this, some require a bit more elbow grease and chemicals than others. Luckily I just so happen to have an awesome paint guy that has some connections down at the local High School autobody shop that just so happens to have a media blaster I can use. Schweet!!!
That there is the tank that holds the media. We kept having issues with the media clogging up so we had to disassemble it to figure out what was going on.
That would be what was causing our issues. GUM!!! WTF?!! Well, I guess that’s what you get when you use High School shop equipment The teacher there was a pretty cool guy. Super knowledgeable and he had the raddest old Econoline van I have ever seen.
Time to put on the crazy spaceman suit and get to blasting!!! Sorry I don’t have any pics, hard to take pics while your all geared up and sandy. You have to be very careful with the media you use because I have actually had a set of forged Prodrives end up looking like orange peels when they were done due to the redneck I had do them using way too coarse of media on them. Live and learn I guess, If you want something done right, do it yourself.
There they are in all their raw, aluminum glory. As you can see, the Watanabe’s actually have a cast finish in the center and a machined lip. We were only able to keep that finish by using very fine media. Now they were getting close, but they still needed some work. Here’s the bent curbed one after I got it back from the wheel shop.
Almost perfect!!! Hard to believe it’s the same wheel! Now, I said almost perfect because there were still a couple of nicks left in the wheel that were too deep for them to get out. Here’s one…..
Not a big deal though, fire up the TIG welder and add a bit of aluminum.
And very carefully grind it down to match the profile of the rest of the lip.
A little bit more minor rash on the other wheels that wasn’t very deep at all….. just a little more careful resurfacing.
And we now have a perfect set of Watanabe’s!!!
I just had some Satin Bronze paint matched to the original color that should add a bit more flavor to the plain Jane gunmetal on silver look the car had before. Should be back from paint next week, stay tuned!!!
Yes, yes, I know it’s been a little while since we have visited our RA29 project. It just so turns out that I have been working on cars quite a bit more than talking about working on them
With our new power plant in place we have decided that better brakes and and a LSD were next up on the list of mods. Once again we turn to the fabulous AE86 Corolla again for parts as the RA29 chassis actually has quite a bit in common with it making it a great donor. As some of you may know the GT-S Corollas came with factory LSD’s and rear disc brakes, a definite upgrade from our RA29’s open diff and drums. There is only one bad thing about the AE rear axle, is that if I recall correctly it’s about 40mm total, or 20mm per side wider then the RA axle. Being that I am opposed to running flares on our RA, I don’t want to mess with the front to rear track width, and I am trying to fit as wide of a wheel as possible all around, losing that amount of wheel width I can run is unacceptable.
The next option? Take all the goods from the the AE axle and swap them in the RA. The first thing you need to know is that you need a Zenki, or earlier model (83-85) donor axle due to the difference in axle diameters between the two. Here we have the two side by side.
The first thing that needs to be done is removing the RA axles and taking them to a machinist to turn down the hub flange (the side with the wheel studs on it) enough to fit under the new AE disc rotor. The best thing to do is match the AE axle, or bring down the rear rotor and make sure the axle fits inside it when it’s done. You also need to remove about 6mm off the splined end of each RA axle to make up for the difference of width in the AE diff. Next up is filling and re drilling the holes on the AE caliper brackets to match the RA axle. This shows a the different bolt pattern between the two.
After measurements are made to assure that the calipers end up on the RA axle in the exact same orientation as the AE, the holes need to be filled, smoothed and re drilled. This shows the approximate orientation and as you can see, all the holes need to be re drilled.
Holes welded up…
Ground flat….
And re drilled. Note the cutout on the bottom which allows the diff fluid to drain out the bottom and not on the rotor should there be a leak.
From here you will notice that the RR spring perch needs to be modified just a bit to clear the parking brake actuator.
Installed shot…
Since we are using all AE suspension and brake components front and rear we also decided to use the AE swaybars as well. This means we will need to remove the swaybar mounting brackets from the AE axle and re weld them on the RA one. I made a pretty simple jig to assure they would be mounted exactly the same way.
If you are careful with your die grinder you can cut them off without losing any material…
Here they are tacked into place on the RA axle. Don’t forget this means we will have to make mounts on the chassis as well but that is for later.
With all the major fabrication out of the way, it’s now time to install all new bearings, seals, and gaskets on the new rear axle and also rebuild the old differential.
Pressing out old bearings can be easy, or a huge pain. In this case, they were all pretty seized on which required cutting some of the old bearings off. You must be very careful when doing this though not to touch the surface that the bearing is mounted to. I usually don’t cut all the way through, instead I keep grinding until the surface is thin enough to crack. This will relieve enough pressure to release the bearing and assure you don’t nick the mounting surface. In other words, use the grinder like a surgeon uses a scalpel This is the Pinion gear bearing, and you can see the very slight crack after grinding…
Same on the wheel bearings, you can also see here where the hub flange has been machined.
Sometimes the hardest part about pressing bearings in and out is finding a way to mount whatever you are working on in the press. This will require some ingenuity and possibly even making some of your own specialized tools….
And cringing until you hear that big BANG!! and the bearing finally comes loose.
Good old fashioned puller here…
Installing the new bearings is a breeze as you can usually use the old bearings and races to press the new ones in…..
I actually had a hard time finding gaskets so I just made my own… don’t forget that important cutout.
Setting up the rear differential is a whole other complicated subject that I wont get too much into here but that yellow stuff on the ring gear shows the contact patch between the ring and pinion gears.
If it looks like this, you’re on the right track…
Now we can’t just slap a rusty old axle in there, so stay tuned for part 8 where I show you how to properly treat and re coat the axle with some POR 15. We will also be installing the AE86 front brakes, coilovers, and new bushings all around.
I don’t really consider myself much of a motorcycle guy, cars already take up all my spare time 2 wheels or 4, I find this guy very inspirational. To his craftsmanship, his attitude, his passion, and definitely his insane shop collection of cool old industrial stuff usually picked up at swap meets. Check out his blog @ http://shinyakimura.blogspot.com/
Still grinding on out two recent additions….. more updates soon!!!!
Cool little vid The marketing guys put together from the Redline event in Fontana. Check it!! Sorry, for some reason you have to click on the “Redline round 4 video” above to see it. Still figuring this blog stuff out, I’m a car mechanic dammit
Some of you may recall that we had just received a couple of cars from Japan a few weeks ago. With all this Time Attack stuff slowing down a bit lately It’s now time for me to get back to the classics. The cars are both in real good shape, but just like most older cars there are a few places here and there that could use a bit of improvement. If you are the type that would rather do the wrenching yourself and would like to pick up one of these cars as is before I do any restoration drop me a line here and we’ll see what we can work out. And just a little FYI, The Hakosuka is a 71 with the original L20, and the Celica is a 73, TA27 with the DOHC 2T-G motor.
So I Just got back from California on Monday and I would have to say that things pretty much went as good as they could have possibly went for us. We took 1st in Super Modified AWD, 1st in Modified AWD, 1st in Street Tire AWD and capturing the Overall Event Win. Unfortunately the only car that we didn’t podium with was the 370Z because Trey got food poisoning just before the event, and for the enthusiast class the Driver has to be the same person that is on the title, thus making us ineligible for this event. We took it down anyways for some more track time with Gary Sheehan behind the wheel and we would’ve ended up in 2nd place. I was happy with the car, the new OS Giken differential and cooler worked flawlessly. But as you will see in some of the pictures below the car definitely needs some more roll control.
The GT-R just got a fresh built motor in it before the event which had us all a bit on edge. It’s never fun being the Guinea pig for new parts, I think we’re the only R35 in the states right now on a built motor in competition unless I’m mistaken. All worries aside the Motorsports guys did an awesome job putting this thing together as it ran all weekend without a hitch. After putting down a strong time in Modified, we decided to throw on some slicks and see how competitive we would be Super Modified and and it turns out we were quick enough to take 1st! No small feat that’s for sure.
The STi also ran perfectly all weekend as well taking wins in Street class and also in the super session.
See what I mean about that roll control? I swear the car isn’t very low at all but when it gets loaded down on that gnarly bank turn on some very streetable spring rates this is what it looks like. Slizammed!!
I was also fortunate enough to have Gary take me for a ride in the Z and holy sh*t that bank is scary! I’ve been to plenty of tracks in some pretty quick cars, but the G’s you experience on that big Nascar bank is insane!! It takes some serious brass balls to enter that turn around 140mph (in the Z, I think the R35 enters it at around 175!) throw it into the turn and rely on the banking to make it stick. There’s also a big concrete wall up there to greet you should you step out of line. Not a track for the faint hearted.
Here’s were I spent the majority of my time along side some of the fastest time attack cars in the states.
Next up I’m just going to show you a couple of crappy shots I took with my cute little camera that sparked my interest while I was there. First up is probably the first, and last time you will ever see a Mustang on this blog but this thing was pretty nasty.
This is a rolling chassis you can buy from a company called Agent FortSeven. A-arms up front coilovers in the rear and it weighs in under 2,000 lbs. A mustang that actually turns and looks like this is something I could get used to.
I need some of these seats here at JDM….
I have always wanted to build an MRS Spider, this is one of the last lightweight affordable sports cars ever built in my opinion. I think they only weighed around 2300lbs. But like any convertable, the hard top is a necessity for retaining your manhood.
I took a picture of this car because I liked some of the aero that had been done to it. The dude actually had a ex-WRC carbon rear spoiler on it that I unfortunately didn’t get a pic of.
The one thing that also caught my eye were these really nice hand formed aluminum flares. Nicely done.
I’ve been seeing some pretty brutal Miatas lately that have been making me very happy, this in one of them.
Wing much?
Some serious lips on those Equips.
Boso Southern California style, note the AE86 wheels, S30 mirrors, Takumi Tofu stickers, and obligatory roof rack of course.
Unfortunately not much J-tin to be had at these events but I did spot this lonely 510 in a row of R35’s
That’s one way to do it I guess…. props though, build it how you want. 510 guys are a whole other breed that’s for sure.
This car was one of the highlights of the weekend for me, hopefully we’ll get to see it on track someday because it has all the right stuff.
Love the TRD styled livery, looks pretty well put together. Built 4AGZE block from what I can tell, I talked to the owner for a minute but I had to split. Cool guy though.
Not far from an 86 I would build myself…. we need more nostalgics at the track!!!!!!
That’s all I got, Next up Chicago!
I am also going through the Hakosuka and TA27 we just picked up so check back for updates on those ……
Before I leave tomorrow I thought I would throw up a couple of shots of what has been keeping me busy here lately at JDM Legends. As some of you may know JDM Legends is affiliated with Cobb Tuning and I have had the pleasure of serving as the lead mechanic on the R35 GT-R and also prepping the 370Z for the Redline Time Attack series. We have decided to step our game up a bit with the Z for the next round. First up is better tires, we were previously running on 19″ Volk ME’s with some pretty mild Advan street rubber. We decided to make the change to some Hankoook Ventus RS-3’s and because there isn’t much in the way of good 19″ rubber we had to downsize to some 18″ (9.5″F-10.5″R) EnkeiNTo3’s. Not usually the biggest NTo3 fan but this looks pretty good.
Unfortunately I can’t keep it that low due to the enthusiast class minimum 3.5″ ground clearance. Bummer. We have also had to do some spring changes to the prototype AST coilovers, and some heat management. We had an oil cooler on previously but decided some ducting was necessary to increase the efficiency.
To help keep the driver a bit more planted in the seat I also installed a Kevlar Recaro out of our old JDM R35 which required some custom brackets and relocating the fire extinguisher as well. I get to drive 1400 miles in this tiny thing….. yippie!!!!
We had also noticed the factory 370Z’s limited slip differential wasn’t really limiting any slip if you know what I mean We had OS Giken send us a new unit which we had to rearrange the discs in to be a little more street tire friendly before installation.
Next up is a cooler to preserve our new diff due to the fact that the Z’s differentials are notorious for overheating due to a serious lack of airflow. I decided to use the non-functional rear foglight as vent to expel the hot air. It was either that or a flashing LED F1 style rainlight and this seemed a bit more important
Shots of the ducting…
Here is the pump and plumbing, If you plan on using this on a street car take note that this thing is seriously loud, even with a 1/2″ piece of rubber in between it and the chassis.
In and out of the diff….
Finishing up the corner balancing.
Now I am just waiting on Fed Ex to get me another axle flange to use in the OS Giken unit ( you have to use 2 right side ones) and then we shake it down on the 650 mile drive down to Fontana. I hope I put everything together right wish us luck!!! Next week it’s back to classic JDM business I swear!
And because that C10 Skyline is so damn sexy how about another pic?
