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for January, 2010.
By Eric
Lets talk gauges here for a minute. When it comes to installing aftermarket gauges in a car I think the style, make, color, and quality can make a huge difference in the overall presentation of a vehicle. For me quality is paramount in choosing a gauge. Not necessarily for the longevity or cool factor of having an expensive gauge, but I’ve installed many gauges over the years and what some people don’t think about when quantifying the cost is ease of installation and quality of sending units/hardware etc. One example is hooking 3 Defi gauges that all use one central unit, greatly reducing the amount of wiring and and clutter under the dash, compared to installing 3 (name your Autozone or ebay brand here) and having a rats nest of wiring and adapters and fittings all over the place that will all need to somehow be hidden.
The Kenmeri we have here came to us with about 5 of the type of gauges that fit into that second category. The factory dash was hacked up and the speedo and tach were removed in order to install the gauges. Not to mention an engine bay full of wire taps, fittings, and wires strewn about here and there to make them work. This might work for some, but we felt that the aftermarket gauges and install somewhat detracted from what we were looking for and didn’t fit the style of builds that we do here at JDM Legends.
So the plan was to order another factory instrument cluster surround and reinstall the factory gauges for a more classic, oem feel to the interior. Here’s where it gets a little tricky, if you have been reading some of the past kenmeri build posts you may recall this car has an RB26DETT out of an R33 Skyline and RB25 RWD transmission. So how do you get old gauges to work with a motor that is 20 years newer?
First off is the speedometer. This is not too difficult if you know the right combination of parts. The RB25 transmission has an electronic speedo sensor in the transmission and the kenmeri uses a manual cable-driven speedometer. First off you need to know what exact transmission you have, and what final drive is in the car as this will dictate the tooth count on the manual speedo sensor which can drasticly change the speedometer readout. A little searching around to find the right sensor and cable to go to the back of the gauge cluster (I can’t tell you too much, we have to make $ somehow 
) and you’re done. Here’s a little comparison of the electronic speedo sensor (top) out of the RB25 transmission and a cable driven speedo sensor (bottom)
Next up is the tachometer which is a little more difficult. Most older cars use the positive side of the ignition coil for the tach signal as opposed to newer cars using the negative side. There are a couple of companies claiming to make units that convert the signal but I have heard many mixed reviews as to whether they would work for our application or not. We decided to go with what we thought would the best possible way to get or tach working and that was to use the internals out of an R33 gauge cluster and install them behind the original face of the kenmeri gauges. Easier said than done. Modern tachometers and speedos are very delicate things and you must be VERY careful when attempting to disassemble and reassemble things as they’re not exactly cheap either if you break something. This pic shows the the R33 tach motor being installed behind the oem face, removing the needles is a little more scary than enjoyable.
While I was cleaning thing up I also decide to remove the abundance of notoriously intermittent wire taps in the car and hard wire everything. Please, unless they are for your L.E.D. hood squirters on your Geo storm never use wire taps as I will guarantee that they will eventually fail and cause you many headaches down the road. If I only had a dollar for every wire tap I’ve removed in my lifetime…..
Another thing that always bothered me was the way the ecu was mounted, definitely an after thought.
So after some looming and and remounting of the ecu, I decided to make a cover as it was now hidden up under the dash out of harms way.
Much nicer don’t you think?
And the speedo and tach work like factory now.
Now when you sit in the kenmeri you would have no idea as to what lurked under the hood, just a nice clean oem interior.
By Eric
Looking through some of my random pics I have cluttering up my hard drive here and I stumbled across this one and I thought I would share. I believe it’s from the Nismo festival a few years back. A row of works hakosukas ready for battle at Fuji circuit. Can you imagine what a pack of race tuned S20’s must sound like in person!? One day……..
By Eric
It’s time to get dirty!! As I had mentioned before, the “bananarama special” paint job on the Celica looked like it could have been some one’s highschool auto body project. And if that is the case, I hope they got a big fat F. It has all the signs of a shotty paint job, bodylines that mysteriously disappear, orange peel for days, dents that can be seen inside the car but not on the outside, moulding and trim overspray, and my favorite….. painted over factory stickers.
Can you see the GT? Needless to say, if we are going to do a proper restoration on this the only thing to do is take it all the way down to the metal. So the next question is how? There are many ways to go about this and I considered every one of them. First would be acid dipping the entire thing. The benefits being that is probably the easiest way to go and most likely the only sure fire way to get every bit of paint and goo out of every nook and cranny. The cons of acid dipping is that even if we had someone in SLC that could do it, I’m sure it would be way out of our budget for this car. I’ve also heard that the acid used can remain in the seams of the chassis and eventually seep out over time which, as you can imagine would probably not be the best thing for your new paint job. There’s also horror stories of entire rusty cars coming out of their acid baths in pieces!
The next method I considered was soda blasting. I think this would probably be the best route to go with this car as I haven’t really heard much bad about this method, and we could just drop off our yellow shell and pick it up in a matter of days. But with the cost ranging anywhere from $1000 to $1500 you have to really have a nice budget to play with.
Sand blasting is much cheaper in the $300 to $500 range, but it can be pretty brutal if the person doing the blasting isn’t careful. And if you end up with a bunch of pitted and warped panels the money you save will go right back into repairing them.
Now the cheap route to go is aircraft stripper. You can do an entire car with less than 2 gallons of the stuff and all you need is the desire to put in some serious work. Not being one to shy away from some good ol’ fashioned manual labor I said to myself what the hell, strapped on some gloves, goggles, and respirator and decided to get busy! There’s only one way to see if it’s worth it or not, and that’s to do it.
Now you might be wondering why I look like I’m ready for chemical warfare. Let me just tell you that this stuff is seriously nasty. If it gets on your skin you’ll know it because it will feel like someone is burning you with a hot poker. I can only image what it might feel like in you eyes, hopefully with the proper precautions I’ll never know. The method is pretty straight forward, use a paintbrush and spread a libereal amount one panel at a time and prepare for magic……
It will start to bubble up, and when it stops it’s time to get out your putty knife and get your scrape on!
It’s almost like unwrapping a Christmas present because on something like this you never really know what you might find. I guess I was pretty crappy this year because all I found underneath was a ton of bondo, a bunch of holes from a slide hammer, and rust 
Goop, scrape, repeat. Goop, scrape, repeat. Results may vary as it depends on how many layers of paint (or bondo) is on your car. This one had a couple of layers of paint and as you can see plenty of bondo. You will need to manually sand the bondo as the stripper only really works in the paint. A little DA sander action to finish it up and ……
As you can see I have my work cut out for me to get this thing straight, and this is the good side. You can also see quite a bit of surface rust starting to form under the paint that we would have never caught had we not taken it all the way down to the metal. I also did all of the fender wells, engine bay, and underneath the car.
Now that it’s been torn down, It’s time to bring it back. In the next installment we will build a custom subframe to house the new motor and rack and pinion steering. See you in part 4!
By Eric
As some of you may be aware of the Tokyo Auto Salon just came to a close in Japan last weekend and I thought I would share a couple of pics I’ve come across of some some j-tin present this year. First off a couple from the Legendary Rocky Auto, they brought out this kenmeri and S30 Z……
With this under the hood……
Mmmm……… I’ve wanted to get my hands on a setup like this for a while. Not sure if it’s an RB26 or an RB30 with itb’s as I have seen them do both. I will take either thanks. Next best thing to an original S20 in my opinion.
Here’s the S30 they brought, this one with an RB26 as well but this time force fed by a T04Z…….
Rear shot… there might be a rim inside all that dish 
My daughter would go nuts if I brought a car home in this color!
Insane motor set ups but a little too modernized for me. All the buzz is about the new TE37V’s this year and I found a couple of cars running them… First is a super clean C110 sedan running some gunmetal ones.
And another set on a 2 door Hakosuka in my preference of color, you can never go wrong with Volk bronze in my opinion.
Close up… Not quite right on a Hakosuka for me but I would run them all day long on an AE86! 15×10’s are downright amazing but I’m a little disapointed in the lack of 14’s or 13’s.
Speaking of AE86’s, here’s a spotless replica of the one Takumi made famous that apparently accompanied the much anticipated FT-86.
Star Road always has the coolest displays and restorations you could eat off of. Seriously.
Interestingly styled S30…..
There’s flush, and then there’s poke. This one is obviously the latter…..
And one last one that you’ll either love or hate. Nissan Stagea with a Hakosuka front end which looks much better than the rear. Trust me on that. I’ll take my Stagea with the R34 face please.
That is all for now. Thanks to Al’s car blog and Nori Yaro for the pics.
By Eric
I thought I would share a cool post from our friend Hechtspeed on JDM Legends that can be found on a site called My ride is me. The article can be found here : http://www.myrideisme.com/Blog/legends-from-the-land-of-the-rising-sun/
It’s a cool site that has a blog and a pretty large collection of articles that usually feature anything from customs to rat rods to bonneville speedsters. They also feature some content on the other side of the spectrum that I’m a little more familiar with, including drifting time attack and of course vintage Japanese cars.
The site is a breath of fresh air when it comes to automotive content. It seems that all too often people get stuck in their narrow minded scene of choice and fail to appreciate automotive culture of all kinds that exist outside it. There is really too much cool stuff out there to be stuck in just one specific brand or category.
So open your mind, and check it out. Who knows, you just might learn something.
By Eric
Sorry to post more 510 stuff but I was going through an issue of Lightning magazine which is a Japanese magazine that seems to specialize in the more modified types of vintage Japanese cars and I came across this 510 that stopped me dead in my tracks. I’ve seen many 510’s modified many different ways but this one here in my opinion is THE perfect 510.
Sorry for the small scan but you’re going to have to bear with me here. From the color, to the stance, to the wheels, even the choice of motor this 510 is on point. As you can see from the sloping c-pillar and shorter decklid, it is a SSS coupe which was never sold here in the states. The motor is an FJ20 which I believe is good for around 150hp stock and in my opinion is a good compromise between being a more powerful modern motor but keeping it carbureted makes it a little more acceptable to the purists. The wheels are Watanabe’s in a 13×8’s up front and 13×9’s in the rear under some very tastefully done flares. Check the leather straps on the trunk. Bonkers!! If I ever decide to build my own 510, this is what it would look like.
By Eric
I came in over the Christmas break to send out a present to someone that has apparently been very good this year. The new owner wanted to make sure the car he was about to purchase didn’t show up with with any unpleasant surprises that can sometimes happen when buying a used car online without being able to see it in person. We have a very thorough inspection process here at JDM Legends that covers 130 different points on all the cars we acquire along with a compression and cylinder leakage tests to make sure that all the cars are up to our stringent standards and the customer knows exactly what they are receiving. And when that isn’t enough, we can also have the car inspected by any outside source the customer chooses. Being very thorough with his decision, Elliot decided to have the car inspected by an outside performamce shop, and also a body shop. After passing both inspections Elliot gave us the green light and after one last wash and detail the car was on a trailer and on it’s way! Here it is on a snowy day here in Salt Lake awaiting it’s long voyage to it’s new home.
So where did it go? Sunny California, or maybe Florida? Ha! Try Canada!! Here it is when it reached the border… By the way if you’re wondering we also have the ability to ship cars in a fully enclosed trailer but we leave the decision up to the customer.
510 fanatics don’t be too concerned though, I’ve been told it has a nice cozy place to hibernate until it unleashes it’s fury on the unsuspecting locals. Almost there…….
So how does Elliot feel about his Christmas present?
I think that says it all. Much better than than socks and a toothbrush right Elliot? As much as I love providing enthusiasts with some of the finest vintage Japanese cars in America it always pains me to see them go. I will leave you with a couple parting shots as I wipe the tears away……
Be careful Elliot, don’t let her econo exterior fool you. She’s a beast!!!
