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for December, 2009.
By Eric
I just thought I would share one of the cars that we have brought in for one of our clients. It’s a 4 door 1972 Nissan Skyline 2000 GT. And I must say it’s definitely one of the cleanest, unmodified examples I have seen yet. Here’s a picture of the car as it arrived to us fresh out of the container. The only modification being a set of classic Enkei mags, or slot mags, or whatever you kids call them now days.
The thing I really like about this car is the color, it’s something you don’t see all the time on C10 Skylines. And apart from what appears to be a very minor dent removal, it’s all original! Just be careful not to burn your eyes by looking into that gleaming chrome hood garnish.
This car also has the most comfortable ride of any of the classics I have driven, it glides over railroad tracks like a Cadillac. Just look at that interior! And like I said, this is straight out of the container before we had a chance to detail it.
It also came with this so Ryan can romance the ladies with his Abba 8 track collection 
How sweet is that!
Since receiving the car Ryan has decided to ditch the Enkei’s for a set of super clean refurbished gold Panasport C8’s and give it a bit of a drop.
Green for the money, and gold for the honeys right Ryan? GT-R fenders are cool and all, but there’s something about the original surfline rear fenders that is just classy.
And there you have it. I expect great things from this car as Ryan definitely knows his Skylines and may be more particular about his cars than even I am. Rumor is that an L28 and a 5-speed may be in the works…….. I will definitely keep you posted.
By Eric
In this part of the Kenmeri build I’m going to go into detail another part of this 73 Skyline that definitely needed some attention before we could consider it fit to be sold. One of the most notable aesthetic features that distinguishes the GT-R from the standard model Skyline has to be the fender flares. When we had received the car it came with some reproduction flares already on it, and from about 10 feet away everything looks peachy but it’s only when you move in for a closer inspection that things start to get ugly. Now anyone who has ever bought any aftermarket body part (especially fiberglass) and prepped and installed it themselves will tell you that you usually get exactly what you pay for. This rings especially true here. Being that there is not an option to acquire OEM flares there is no other choice than to pick up an aftermarket reproduction. There are a few options out there and this car definitely came with what I can only guess are reproductions of reproductions, and were painted and half screwed to the car with no regard for fitment or finish. But wait, it gets worse………..
Now other than the fact that the flares are partially screwed with a variety of philips and flat head and “whatever I could find around the garage floor” hardware, note the fact that you can see the original fender underneath the flare. This was the case on all 4 fenders. Other than it looking ridiculous, it kind of defeats the purpose of installing flares in the first place, to fit wider wheels and more rubber. Instead of trying to salvage the existing flares, we decided to import a set of high quality FRP reproductions from Japan. After waiting a couple of weeks for the flares to arrive it was now time to remove the old ones and properly modify the factory metal fenders.
The front fenders are relatively simple being a single sheet of steel that just needs to be cut up a little higher to make adequate room and repainted. The rears however are much more involved as you will see. Here is a picture of the original factory rear “surfline” fenders.
Quite a difference from the GT-R rear fenders shown here.
Upon removal of the old flares I had noticed that it looked like someone had previously made an attempt to modify the rear fenders but for some reason decided not to cut them up high enough, resulting in the factory fender being visible underneath the flare. After removing some mystery goop I uncovered the initial attempt…
This would have been much easier if I was starting with an unmolested fender, but what fun would that be? I had to first start by grinding off all of the rivets that previously held the inner fender well and quarter panel together. The next step was to draw the line that would be the new fender line and cut it. The line above the cut shows where the new flare will be. Remember, the goal here is to make as much room as possible for some wider, low offset wheels.
After cutting the quarter panel you can see how big of a gap it creates between the fender well.
The next step can be done a couple of different ways depending on what you are looking to achieve. The metal from the quarter panel can either be bent down into the fender well, or vice versa. I decided to bend the metal from the fender well up to meet the quarter panel in this situation as the new flare would cover where the two meet and this would give us a much better finish inside the fender well.
By using a mallet and a fender roller I am able to bend the fender well up and out enough to meet the quarter panel and hold it in place while it gets tack welded. Note the aluminum in between the wheel on the fender roller and the fender well to prevent the wheel from being melted in the welding process.
Make sure to move around the fender as much as possible when making the welds because the last thing you want to do is warp the entire quarter panel from putting too much heat in one spot. I also used a wet rag to assist in the cooling process to be sure. With the majority of tack welds done you can now cut off the excess material.
After finishing up the welds we decided to go the extra mile and fill in any remaining gaps with seam sealer similar to what is used in new cars in place of spot welds. The idea here is to strengthen the bond between the fender well and the quarter panel to retain as much rigidity as possible in the chassis. After that I used some silicone sealant inside the quarter panels which required removing the interior panels inside the cabin and in the trunk to get full access. The last thing you want is for water to get inside only to be trapped and eventually turn to rust.
And this is what’s left after re modifying the fenders.
Now if you just paint the new flares without prepping them properly it will definitely show in the final product. So for our next installment we will prep and paint the new flares, grill, and front spoiler before they find their new home on the Kenmeri in part 4.
By Eric
I’m pleased to say that the RA21 has found a cozy new home in Southern California. It was picked up by Al, a nice, Celica savvy guy who knows a good find when he sees one. Take care of it Al, I know you will!
By Eric
Woot!! More teardown! Before we get to the fun stuff, there is still a lot that needs to be removed from Celica before we can start stripping the the old paint, making repairs and bring it back to life. So let’s go over a partial list of what still needs to be removed: All the glass, trim, brake lines, fuel lines, engine, transmission, rear axle, doors, hatch, fenders, bumpers, steering rack, radiator support, suspension, wire harness etc. etc. etc……. Am I boring you yet? Basically anything not attatched to the shell is going to have to be removed, organized, and stored. So let’s get that motor out! Here’s a look at the left side of the engine bay, as you can see the master cylinder was pretty leaky resulting in brake fluid running all over the place which strips the paint making it vulnerable to rust. Hmm….. we’ll have to see how bad this gets.
Here’s the other side, this is what happens when you leave a leaky battery in a car. I’ve dealt with this on a couple of occasions and as you can imagine battery acid is even worse than brake fluid and does quite a number on the metal.
Upon removal of the gas tank it looks like some sort of woodland creature had once made this his home, looks cozy right?
Needless to say when doing a restoration of this scale make sure to take lots, and lots of pictures because it’s probably going to be a while before you start reassembling everything again. And what may seem pretty straight forward upon removal can get very confusing upon re-installation. Time to store all this stuff, a couple of shelves……
And one moveable rack. Anyone need some brown interior pieces?
After all that hard work it;s time for some cool stuff. Wheels man!! If you’re into cool old school JDM wheels then 4×114 is the bolt pattern to have, and lucky for us that is exactly what the RA29 comes with. With so many options in sizes and offsets we need to do a little test fitting to see what is going to work.
Ahhh….. It’s amazing to me how big of a difference a nice drop and fitment can make, even on a torn apart shell of a car! It’s all the motivation I need. What we have here are the classic of all classic JDM wheels in my opinion. Some may say they are a bit played out but I have never seen RS Watanabes not look absolutely at home on any classic j-tin. But as good as they may look we are going to go for something a little different with this car, I can’t say what yet but awesomeness is guaranteed! Yes, awesomeness.
These are 15×8.5 with -6 up front and 15×9.5 with a -19 in the rear. Pretty close to what I am looking for, as much as we can fit in the stock fenders without too much of a pull. And as tempting as it is to get caught up in the ridiculous fitment game going on lately we are going to keep this one aggressive, yet classic, and most of all daily drivable. Next up is to get rid of all that questionable yellow paint and take this thing down to the metal in part 3 so get your get your goggles and gas masks on because it’s about to get messy!
By Eric
When we had last left the Kenmeri I had showed some of the things we had done to clean up the top side of the engine bay. In this post I will show you a couple of things we found underneath the car that were unacceptable. First, let me say that just because your downpipes fit an RB26DETT doesn’t mean that they will fit and RB26 in a Kenmeri chassis. When the car was lowered there was only about 1″ of clearance between the rear flange and the ground and the pipes were basically touching the transmission. This was obviously not going to work. After a little cutting and fabrication of the downpipes I was able to get about 3″ of additional ground clearance and now the downpipes actually look like they were made for the car. Here are the down pipes after modification.
Sorry for the dark picture, but you get the idea. Next on the list is to figure out why the car kept leaving oil drips all over the floor, because nobody likes a leaky car. When I first had a look at the oil pan I was a little baffled to say the least.
What we have here is how not to fix your leaky oil pan 101. Let me give you a little insight as to what is going on here. For those of you that don’t know, the RB26 was only offered in an AWD configuration and the oil pan also houses the front differential. So when performing the RB26 swap in a RWD car, you need to source the appropriate RWD transmission and oil pan. When installing the RWD oil pan, the oil pickup is different and needs to be modified and that is basically what we are looking at here, how not to modify the pan. First I need to figure out how to remove this pan, notice how the bolts that attach the oil pan to the motor have been covered in what appears to be JB weld. This should be fun.
After removing some of the JB weld I found that someone had attempted to fix the leak by first MiG welding the hole, and when that didn’t work, fill the rest of it up with JB Weld. Obviously that didn’t work either. After I was able to remove the pan I was able to get a look inside and see what was going on. Here you can see the hole that had been attempted to be filled.
Time to fix this properly, I was able to cut out the area that needed to be widened, and fabricate some new metal to make room for the new oil pickup. Because of the additional width I needed to use a couple of threaded holes on the bottom of the RB26 that are normally used for the AWD pan.
A little paint and there you have it. No more drips all over your nice garage floor!
There is plenty more to do on this little Kenmeri before it reaches JDM Legend status, so check back for part 3 when we show how to properly install GTR fenders which is a lot more work than you may think.
By Eric
Alright, now that you have all been introduced to our 1977 Celica we have here at JDM Legends it’s time to get crackin’ on the build. As I said in the introduction post, this is a full on frame-up rebuild so that means this thing has to get down to the bare shell before we can start to reassemble it. So let’s start with tearing the guts out! Now I won’t bore you with every little detail about removing the interior of the car but maybe a few things along the way you may find interesting. The first thing someone more familiar with working on newer cars may notice when tearing down an old one is the complete lack of plastic fasteners, push pins, clips etc. Old cars are mostly held together with good old fashioned screws, and in this car’s case lots of rusty ones so make sure to have lots of good penetrating lubricant and an impact screwdriver on hand to remove the stubborn ones. Once I started pulling the interior out of the car it became clear why it smelled so bad. It’s very interesting in a way the kind of things that can be lost or left behind in a cars 30 year life span. I found everything from old toys, cigarette butts, spare change, french fries, moldy carpet, and even an ignition key that was wedged behind the gas pedal. I bet someone had a awesome time that day trying to find the key they just dropped.
So this is what I had to categorize and store after removing the majority of the interior.
After all that we are left with a big old hollow yellow Celica cavern.
Now lucky for us we haven’t found any real major rust issues in here yet, but the only way to be sure is to get rid of all that crusty old sound deadening material. This stuff can come out really easy in some spots and be a real pain in others. A lot of that come down to exactly how you go about removing it. There are many methods out there but what I have found works best is the dry ice method. Go down to your local grocery store and pick up around 7-10 lbs. to do an entire car and maybe if you’re lucky you won’t have to explain to the nice old lady at the counter that you’re not some young whipper snapper that’s going to go around the neighborhood and blow up mailboxes with dry ice bombs like I did. After all that, bust it up and spread it all over the area you want to remove, give it a few minutes to freeze and bang it with a sledgehammer and it usually come out in big chunks.
Shazam!!! Just like magic! Now we can get full access to properly patch and repair any rust issues we may come across. The inside is now pretty bare so it’s now time to move to the outside of the car in part 2.
By Eric
Yes kiddies, it’s time for yet another introduction of another fine piece of Japanese automotive history that we currently have in stock here at JDM Legends. This one is a 1983 Nissan Skyline RS Turbo as proudly dispayed in big, bold gold lettering down the side of the car. Hey man, if it was 1983 and you had two cams in the correct spot, 4 valves per cylinder and a turbo you would want everyone to know too. Remember, this is 83 and this was very cutting edge stuff and Nissan wasn’t shy about letting everyone know.
This one also comes equipped with the later updated and more popular Iron mask or “tekamen” front end as it was referred to in Japan. Thanks to the guys at Japanese Nostalgic car for the pic as they take much better ones than I do.
Under the hood we have a very nicely modified FJ20DET with an aftermarket HKS manifold with T04E turbo and custom front mount intercooler setup replacing the cute little factory fender mounted unit. After a little help from our part-time helper Branden, the engine bay looks much better now than we had received it due to a lot of relocating, re-looming and re-powder coating.
The interior has also been nicely modified with an adjustable Recaro drivers seat, Nardi steering wheel and an array of original HKS 60mm gauges.
The reason we chose to import this car is due to the fact that DR30 Skylines are very hard to find that are this clean and tastefully modified. We also really liked the fact that this car had a really nice 2 tone red and black paint job reminiscent of the Super Silhouette series race car that won the All-Japan Group A championship in 1986.
Also noteworthy are the super sweet “hot plate” taillights and RS Watanabe wheels.
This car is currently for sale here at JDM Legends so if you’re interested give us a call, or e-mail as this icon of 80’s Japanese motoring is sure to go quick!
