Desktops #3

By Eric

Sorry, not much content other than pretty pictures lately….  trying to knuckle down and get some work done around here.   One more of the Kenmeri,  for some reason I have a thing for shiny restored old cars in front of grimy old run-down buildings…..  great contrast if you will.  Gawd I’m so artsy

Speedhunters desktops #2

By Eric

Here’s another shot from the speedhunters shoot  that I think is one of my personal favorites….

It’s big, click it.

Back to business here on the TA27 Celica,  so expect some updates on that soon.

Speedhunters desktops

By Eric

Hey everyone,  for some of you that frequent this blog and don’t already know, I was asked to do a guest blog for Speedhunters  by Mike Garret of Auto Otaku fame.   I must say that the the response I have gotten so far has been overwhelmingly humbling.  Thank you to all of you that had so many nice things to say, and another BIG thank you to all of you that have been supporting the blog for a while.

I am going to try to put up a few of the pictures during the next week from the photo shoot that we did specifically for this story in wallpaper sizes.  Please feel free to spread them around wherever you want.  Actually,  you would be doing me a favor if you did

Click on them for full size….   And one more big thanks to Ryan (the owner of that fine green hakosuka) for helping me out with these awesome pictures.

The speedhunters blog can be found here.

Chilliwack Datsun circa 1970

By Eric

I stumbled across these the other day and it’s pretty crazy to see these cars fresh out of the factory, waiting to be sold.

And by the way, Chilliwack is in British Columbia in case you were wondering.  I googled it

Looks like I need to step up my style game if I want to cruise with this guy….

Or this guy…..   killing it with those striped bell bottoms!  I’m sure my kids will be looking at pictures of me from back in the day and wonder what the hell I was thinking as well.

Can you imagine having an S30 right off the showroom floor?!  And this fox is most definitely someone’s mom grandma by now.

And the real gem of this whole collection…

I’ll take two please.

Stolen from Ratsun.  Thanks for sharing.  Have a great weekend!!

Hakosuka restoration part 4 : Exhausted.

By Eric

When we last left off I had installed the refinished wats, replaced some coolant lines in the heater core, and also some neglected fuel lines just to name a few.  The car seems to be humming along pretty well now but I still want to get a few more miles on it to be 100 %  sure ALL  the bugs are worked out before I go into full celebration mode.   When this car arrived at the shop from Japan I was pretty pleased with the  overall condition, but when I was writing up my list of things that had to be done to the car before it was fit to be sold there was one thing that was very high on my list of priorities.   That would be this.

Yes, that muffler.  Wrong on  a multitude of levels for this car.  First off, it’s really not a poor quality muffler, it’s an HKS Dragger.  The bad thing is that it’s not 1997, and this isn’t a JZA80 Supra.  From the manifold back the exhaust is pretty decent.  2.5″ mandrel bent with nice resonator, but for the muffler section they decided to add this abomination.

Yes that is 3.5″  piping (about 90mm)  for a small displacement 2 liter straight six.  Probably a bit of overkill.  And if your unsure if your muffler tip is too big or not, here’s a quick test.  If you can double fist it, it probably is

I wouldn’t sleep well at night with one of our cars running around with that thing sticking out of the back so it’s tome to rectify the situation.   After a great deal of searching for a suitable muffler for the Hakosuka I decided on this.

It’s a 2.5″ stainless steel muffler with dual 2.5″ tips. The sizing is right and  I think this will fit the classic looks of the Skyline perfectly.  Time to get it into place.

With quite a few years of designing exhaust systems for Cobb Tuning these one-off jobs are pretty simple.  Note the  2 little plastic spacers on each side if the tips to make sure it sits centered perfectly in the cutout.  A couple of stands and a cart full of 2.5″ mandrel bent stainless steel piping and flange to connect it to the rest of the exhaust.

With the piping all tacked together it’s time to make some hangers.  I’ll show you a little trick I use to make the a bit quicker and easier.  I use welding rod to get a good idea of what shape the hanger needs to be.

I then take it over to the press where I have this tool we made out of some burly angle iron  that makes bending this 1/2″ thick SS rod a breeze.

And luckily I needed the exact same shape for the other side…

Now I could just TIG weld them on to the muffler just like that but I’m going to show you something else I learned that will prolong the life of the hangers and will allow the exhaust system stand up to a bit more abuse.

These are just basically stainless steel plates that get welded to the muffler body where the hanger sits to give the hanger more surface area distribute the load.  If you just weld the hanger directly to the body, it will eventually tear itself out.

And here’s the entire axle back all fully welded up.

The only thing I need to do now is extend the tips just a wee bit….

That should about do it.   I thinks this looks much more appropriate don’t you think?

And here’s a little clip I took with the camera, obviously it sounds MUCH better in person but you get the idea.   It would be a shame to hide the beautiful sounds he straight 6 – L series motors make and I think this one turned out perfect.

Just a quickee….

By Eric

I’ve been a little busy around here as usual lately trying to get all the bugs worked out of the Hakosuka and also spending some time trying to do a little promotion for JDM Legends.  We are on a pretty slim budget over here and I don’t always have the time to put into creating exposure for the company as I would like so I’m doing what I can  at the moment.  I just started up a JDM Legends facebook page so come check it out if you get a minute HERE. And also, if you like what we do here, do us a favor and feel free to jack whatever you want from our site and spread it around….   unfortunately being in Utah means that the majority of our business is out of state and we need all the help we can get.   Speaking of which, I have been spending some time doing a proper photoshoot of the shop and some of the cars we have here for an upcoming project and I’ve been scouting some locations in the trusty old Starlet.   The real shoot will be done with nice cameras, and some of our nicer cars but this will give you a little idea of what to expect.

That also reminds me that I never posted up pics of the KP61 in a somewhat finished state, I’ll get to that later.   Like I said, I took the Hakosuka on a drive home last weekend to be 100% sure that all the kinks are worked out before it is ready to sell and what do you know, I found another.  It looks like the previous owner thought plastic windshield washer line would be suitable for a fuel supply line.  Ummmm…..   needless to say by the fuel dripping  from the bottom of the car,  it’s not.  I have since replaced all the suspect lines.

After I finished that up in the garage at my house, I found myself later that night just staring at the car for what must have been a good 15 minutes.  I really love Hakosukas, and it has been an honor to work on something with so much  history and prestige.  One day, maybe I’ll have one to call my own

I also received a nice little package from one of our friends Jay from the notorious JDMEGO blog.  This guy is one of the real OG’s in the JDM blog scene before they were a dime a dozen.  If you haven’t checked it out, you should.

Thanks man!!  Much appreciated.  I feel like these plate frames work best on cars that have original versions of commonly knocked-off wheels.  Which in my case having a limited production 9″ wide 5×100 Work Emotions (one of the most copied wheels ever argghhh!) fit my GC8 perfectly.

More updates next week, Go for a drive this weekend, it will do you good I promise.

8/6 day love!!!

By Eric

I feel obligated to post up a couple of pics of one of the best cars I ever owned……   and changed my whole perspective on what makes a car enjoyable to drive.

I appreciate the fact that they decided to put Hayashi’s  on that cutaway.

This guy has one…..

And you can’t forget about this guy……

Don’t be ashamed,  You know you love it.

And I guess I’ll put one up of my old one from way back in the day before I realized that offset made these cars look way better   I remember driving this thing all the way down to Las Vegas for what I believe was Drift Day 10…..    beating the hell out of it for  hours, and then driving it home almost 500 miles.  You have to love that Toyota reliability.

And I’m spent.

That thing…

By Eric

I’ve seen a couple of pictures of this thing around before but I stumbled across a few more recently that shed a little more light on this  uuuuhhhhhhh………   creation?   Words really can’t even describe how crazy this thing really is……

Yes, that is a Jeep……  slammed on Watanabes.

??!!!  How does a build like this even enter someones mind?

I’m not saying I hate it,  or love it…..   It just kind of boggles my mind to the point where I don’t even know what to think about it.  There’s one thing for sure though…..  you wouldn’t be bummed to show up at a meet only to have another dude in a single seater slammed wrangler bring another one

With an SR20!!!???

You could also expect to probably get your *ss kicked at your average  Jeep meet for showing up in this thing,  but I have to give the dude props….

No more Jeep posts I promise.

Hakosuka restoration part 2, or maybe 3……

By Eric

So I’m going a bit out of order and am leaving out quite a bit of work that has been done to get the car in it’s current state but I just wanted to show you guys where the car is at right now.  Hopefully I can play a bit of catchup after the car is all done to fill in the blanks.    I just recently got the car and wheels  out of the paint shop and have been spending quite a bit of time tiding up the engine bay and putting everything back together.  First off, I had to get new tires to go on the newly refurbished wats  because the old ones were so cracked and worn that they were just plain unsafe.

See what I mean?  These are much nicer…..

And thank God for that,  I’ve been looking at this thing for way too long on rolling around  on stock skinny Celica wheels and let me tell you it wasn’t pretty.  Nothing worse than skinny wheels on a car with over fenders.

I would show them on the car but I would hate to have  you blow chunks on your keyboard   So now with the car reassembled  it’s time for a washing…….

And my attempt at a couple of artsy shots with my trusty old point and shoot.  Don’t expect too much, this is the same camera that sits on the shop bench as I grind and weld.

Oh yeah, I mounted the Rubber Soul chin spoiler….  like I said, skipping ahead here a bit.  Hopefully I can fill you in later.

I can’t tell you how good it feels every time  after putting a bunch of hard work into these cars to finally see them all together again. And I am VERY pleased in the way this one turned out.

Just a couple of basic exterior shots here that I use in our vehicle inspection sheets.  You may notice that I have made the decision to remove the GT-R badges.  Even though GT-R clones are probably more prevalent in Japan than actual S20 equipped ones, I have come to the decision that I just have too much respect for the KPGC10’s  than to be slapping GT-R badges on non-GT-R’s.  Don’t worry though, I still have all  the GT-R badges and they will be sold with the car and the new owner is more than happy to do whatever they please with them.

Engine bay looking pretty factory fresh.

One thing I have to say about this car is that it has THE best chrome I have ever seen one of these yet….

Seriously, look at it!!  I think I see me in there   And as you can see I also went through and polished all the plastics until they looked like new, but more on that later.

Now with the majority of the aesthetics taken care of there is still a bit work to be done to make sure the car is mechanically sound as well.  As soon as we received the car I went directly into getting the bodywork out of the way so I actually haven’t had much of a chance to drive it yet.  I have already gone through and performed a compression and leakdown test on the motor so I know it’s in tip top shape.

And the brakes have been flushed and bled…….   vacuum bleeders are very handy if you don’t have anyone around to pump the brakes for you.

All fluids checked and/or replaced and everything else appears to be in great shape so now it’s time to get this thing on the road!   …………………………………………….   So far so good, suspension feels good, steering is tight,  motor is humming along nicely, good times…….   wait a minute, what is that hissing noise?   And why is there coolant spraying on  my foot?!!   Uh oh, that’s not good.  Luckily the leak is pretty small and I’m not far from the shop.

Looks like the old heater hoses were finally done for.  Bummer, I was really hoping to have this car ready for sale this weekend.  I could just cap off the hoses and sell it without a heater but once again that’s not how we do it.  And this is also another perfect example of why there is such a big difference between just bringing these cars in and just reselling them, and actually going through the cars to make sure they are actually fit to be driven,  If you have seen Kev’s thread on the JNC forums he could probably tell you exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s much better that this happens to me on a test drive than the new owner.

Not too big of a deal though, just a hose replacement right?  but as you may notice that hose just disappears into the heater core assembly……   hmm…..   It just so turns out (and believe me I tried) there is no way to access the other end of that hose without completely removing the entire heater core assembly.

And after a good deal of sweating my @%& off under the dashboard here is the assembly out of the car,  I also noticed that the valve that controls the amount of coolant (circled)  that enters the core was pretty seized up so I might as well fix that at the same time.

More disassembly……..   where does that hose go, and where  is that heater core?

Jackpot!!!  While I’m in there I’m also going to do a little more preventative maintenance and  replace the other hoses at the same time so hopefully the heater core won’t have to be removed for another 40 years

So this brings me to the state the car is currently at as I type this.  Hopefully I will get it all back together early next week and this thing will be ready to go!   I will keep you updated………

Hakosuka update: Wheels, man!

By Eric

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……