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for February, 2010.
By Eric
We could definitely have had many more build posts on the 73 Ken & Mary Skyline that we have here at JDM Legends but what I have tried to do here is give you a little bit of what I feel you guys might think are some of the more interesting parts of the restoration, and also to give you a bit of insight into what goes on when we receive a car here at JDM Legends and our attention to detail. Aside from what some may think, we don’t just pick up the cars for dirt cheap and flip them to some poor unsuspecting client only to find out they have a rusted out jalopy with a laundry list of electrical problems and no brakes. Trust me, there is plenty of J-tin that falls into this category which is exactly why we feel we provide a very valuable service to anyone looking to pick up a classic Japanese car. This very business came about from buying cars that were sold as being solid cars only to find that when we received them that they were almost undrivable. There is a very thorough 140 point inspection process that goes on with each and every vehicle that we import, and if something with the vehicle is not up to our standards then we fix the problem. And if we decide the problem isn’t serious enough for us to fix, the problem is noted and the customer is informed prior to purchase.
So enough of my ranting, on to the build. We last left off in part 3 with our fenders being modified to properly accept the new flares. I thought I would share a bit of the preparation process of the parts we received before painting them. I’m going to start off with a picture of the poor quality over fenders that came on the car, and why we decided to redo them. As you can see the finish is very poor, and it looks as though they were taken directly out of the box, painted with a spraycan, and screwed to the car with whatever hardware that could be found after sweeping up the shop floor.
They’re worse in person, trust me. Now even though the new over fenders we received were substantially better quality than the old ones, they still need a bit of preparation before painting to get the finished product we are looking for. Mostly some minor filling of imperfections and air bubbles and a good overall scuffing to make sure the new paint adheres properly.
While we were doing the over fenders we decided to also install a chin spoiler on the front of our Kenmeri, because lets face it, chin spoilers make almost any classic J-tin look instantly ten times better. And to be honest when I see them without them they look kind of naked, like Kenny Rodgers without a beard. Anyway, the chin spoilers only come in fiberglass as well and I have yet to see a long piece of fiberglass not have a serious case of wavyness to it, that if not taken care of will be obvious in the right light. You can see here the low spots that have been smoothed out in the preparation process.
And also while we’re at it, the front fascia/grill area needed some attention with all these nice, new parts going on. The grill was not as bad as the fenders and just needed a little bit of tlc to be up to par with the rest of the parts. I also removed the grill and had it powder coated satin black for a durable, OEM finish.
Now with everything painted it’s time to mount the parts to the car, and in my opinion the hardware used in mounting the parts to the car has a big affect on the overall presentation and quality of the car. I have seen some very nicely prepped and painted over fenders that look really nice but when it comes time to mount them to the car they just screw in some self tapping screws and call it a day. So after mocking up the fenders on the car, drilling holes, and making sure to paint some rust inhibitor/primer in them to prevent future rust I decided to use some very high quality stainless steel, button head cap screws with locknuts on the back to prevent them from loosening up in the future. You definitely don’t want to remove your entire rear interior to tighten up your hardware if it becomes loose over time.
Muck nicer than the old half-painted sheet metal screws right? I also decided to use the same fasteners in the front spoiler.
One more thing that always needs to be addressed when installing a twin turbo motor with at least 3 times the amount of power that the car originally came with is the brakes. Even with 4 wheel discs all around the brakes on this car were never quite right. All the bleeding and pedal adjustment I could throw at it did nothing to help the situation. That’s when I realized the situation was a bit more serious than just some minor maintenance. It turned out that over time condensation had caused the seals in the brake booster to fail over time inhibiting it’s ability to hold vacuum. So I figured if it’s worth replacing, it’s worth upgrading so I set out to find the largest booster I could fit in the location with hopefully minimal modification. I ended up using one out of a later model S31 Z that can easily be found here in the states. The further I got into it appeared that this wasn’t the first time the booster had been replaced and it looked like someone had to fabricate a new adapter plate to get this one to fit. Hmm… not what I was hoping for but that is what the welder’s for right 
Here’s a pic of the original adapter plate.
This is the new one I had to fabricate to get the new booster to mount in the car.
Not too bad, then I mounted it and realized the actuator rod that mounts to the brake pedal was way too short. Not a big deal if you have the resources. Here’s the finished adapter plate and lengthened rod. Heh heh…. I just said lengthened rod. Sorry, to much Beavis and Butthead in my youth has apparently rotted my brain just like they said it would 
And boom shaka laka we have brakes!!! Which are a nice addition to any RB26DETT I might add. One last thing I decided to do was make a spare tire cover for the trunk area as this car never had one and I felt it left it looking a bit unfinished. Here is the design drawn onto the same fiberboard used in the OEM spare tire covers.
Finished product cut, upholstered, and ready to go.
So that’s about it for Mr. Ken and Mary. Like I said there is a lot of other work done to the car not shown here on the blogs but we feel like we have fixed all the major problems with the car and it is now ready to wear the JDM Legends badge of honor and hopefully make some J-tin aficionado very happy and me very jealous At the end of the day it all comes down to feeling like you have put heart and pride into your work and done everything that you can do to make sure that whomever is the next owner of the car will be happy with the caliber of service they have received. I try to treat every car I deal with here as if it were my own, and that is exactly why we do this. Not to make a million dollars, for the love.
By Eric
Nice line up of Hakosukas in their natural habitat.
By Eric
While some of you lucky schmucks get to drive your classics year round, here in SLC Utah we have to wait patiently for winter to pass before releasing our beloved classics from captivity. And by the way, I apologize for the lack of content on the website but this car is actually still for sale, unfortunately I am a grease monkey, not a computer monkey so I have to rely on others for that E mail eric@jdmlegends.com for more info.
P.S. I figured out how to make these clickable for your full size viewing pleasure so click away and be whisked away into wallpaper wonderland!!
By Eric
So now that we have taken all the old beat down and worn out stuff out of the Celica, it’s time to start putting some cool stuff back in it. When we outlined the way we wanted to build this car we had a few goals in mind. The idea is to update the car from it’s tired state into something a bit more modern and reliable while keeping that all important classic Toyota DNA. We new we wanted the new motor to be fuel injected and we had a goal of 300 whp, not too much that it became unresponsive and overpowered the chassis, but definitely enough power to make it more than fun to drive.
Now you can’t expect to throw in a new motor and call it a day, we also needed to update the braking and handling to keep up with our new motor setup. This is going to call for front and rear disc brakes, an LSD, coilovers, and rack and pinion steering conversion. If you have never driven an older car with a “recirculating ball” type of steering with a good 2″ of movement in the steering wheel either way before anything actually happens you know exactly what I am talking about, far from precise.
So now what do we use? We threw around a couple of ideas on motors, wanting to retain a 4 cylinder for balance and keep it in the Toyota family we thought about a 16v or 20v 4AGE, or 3SGTE. Both legendary motors in their own right but we wanted something a little different so we decided to use the 3SGE Beams motor out of the JDM Toyota Altezza complete with 6 speed transmission for our starting point.
Yamaha tuned and rated at 210hp @ 7500 rpms, individual velocity stacks inside each runner in the intake manifold, and a redline of 8000rpms the Beams 3SGE to me is the pinnacle of the normally aspirated 4 cylinder Toyota motor. And to get to that 300 whp goal we will also be installing a Trust turbo kit.
Cool, that was easy. Just drop it in and fire it up right? Umm….. no. This is far from a drop in swap and will require an entire custom subframe to house the motor and rack and pinion steering. Now lucky for us I have been working on acquiring a new daily driver that I had to build out of two cars and just so happen to have a spare chassis with rack and pinion steering rack complete with donor subframe. Here it is, a 1982 Toyota Starlet (KP61), pretty sad right? Its okay though, it had a bent frame and it’s guts will live on to see better days.
Here is a side by side comparison between the RA29 subframe and the KP61.
As you can see they are actually pretty close in dimensions and will make a great starting point. But before we can pick up the torch and star hacking things up there are a ton of measurements that need to performed to assure that the suspension geometry will stay as close to stock as possible.
So far everything appears like it should work pretty well, but we also need to make measurements of the RA29’s suspension. Starting with the height of the lower control arm mounting point.
It’s location in relation to the frame rails, and the length of the lower control arm and tie rod end.
There are a lot more measurements and procedures that need to be made but I won’t bore you with all of that. With all the measurements made and recorded we can get to business! The first step is to cut out the spot welds and remove the factory KP motor mounts.
Next, mount the subframe in the chassis in the correct location and drop the motor in so you can get an idea of where the new motor mounts are going to need to be located. The goal is as low, and as far back as possible for the best possible weight distribution and handling characteristics.
We decided to use Toyota Supra mounts because we new they would be able to take all the abuse this little 4 cylinder could throw at them. This is the mount starting to take shape.
I cut out the top of the subframe in order to be able to weld the inside of the mount where it sits on the lower portion of the subframe to more evenly distribute the load.
New plate welded to the top, note the slotted holes on the top of the subframe to allow me to temporarily mount it in the chassis.
Next I welded a 1/4″ thick steel plate where the subrame mounts to the chassis for more strength.
Here is a shot of the underside of the subframe. You can see the hole that needed to be made to access the nut on the bottom of the Supra mounts. The lower control arm pickup point on the KP61 subframe also needed to be cut and widened to accept the RA29 pieces. I also decided to stitch weld the entire subframe in between the factory spot welds to increase strength and rigidity.
And the finished product, just needs some paint.
Here’s the motor sitting happily in it’s new home.
Next up is completing the rear transmission mount, connecting all the steering linkage, and making a new hole for the shifter as it sits a bit further back than the old 5 speed. So check back for part 5!!
By Eric
If money wasn’t an option, which straight 6 would you put in your Nissan? L series with 6 carbs?
Carbureted RB20?
Fuel injected RB30?
S20?
OS Giken TC24-B1?
Or RB26DETT?
Decisions, decisions……..
By Eric
For some of you who don’t know, the JCCA is the largest annual meeting of nostalgic cars in Japan. It is to the Japanese what the JCCS is to us yankees. Every year there is a featured marque and this year it was was British, so while there may have been as much JDM goodness as usual there was still plenty to see. I waited a couple of days to see what showed up on the interwebs before I made a post so I could put up a decent collection of what was there. Unfortunately I don’t have all day to search for all those super cool unseen pictures so this is just a little collection of pictures I have put together from some of the blogs I frequent that I thought may be of interest to the JDM Legends type.
Let’s start of with some Hakosukas,
Of course the obligatory works replica…
Nice gold one, I’m a big fan of Hakos running wide wheels up front as well as in the rear. Is it me, or does it seem like everyone in Japan daily drives on R-compound tires? One more reason I love the Japanese style.
Here’s a pair that I really dig, I’m not usually the biggest fan of red cars but I love seeing it on Hakos because they always seem to be white or silver. The gold and bronze Watanabes also differentiate them from the crowd, and once again wide front wheels and R-comps ….. straight nasty!!
And if it needed to get any better, look under the hood! That’s an L series motor with a super rare and $$$$ OS Giken TC24-B1 twin cam cylinder head. Apparently these were designed because there is a serious lack of flow with the 2 valve per cylinder cross flow heads above 7000rpm so they decided to build an entirely new head with 4 valves per cylinder that makes power up to 9000rpm. When I win the lottery it will be hard for me to decide between this Frankenstein or a real deal s20
One more…. see what I mean about the wide front wheels? I guess to me it’s more of a grip style or drag style thing, and I’ve always been a bit more into grip.
And a sedan with a nice stance.
How about some kenmeri love, this one in a nice color and some Panasports.
And this one with some seriously wide wats.
And some really nice Yonmeri’s have been turning up lately, here’s a nice one on some Works.
And this is one of my favorites of the JCCA, love the color combo, stance, everything!!
I haven’t seen too much from the Toyota camp except a few nice TE27’s. Simple and clean….
You can’t go wrong with TRD tosco wheels on any classic Toyota.
I’ve always wanted one in moss green.
Especially with this motor, twinspark baby! that is 2 spark plugs per cylinder. You don’t see a whole lot of these.
Nice row of Bluebirds but I didn’t find any single ones worth posting.
Sunny’s have a huge following in Japan.
And this is probably one of the best ones I have ever seen IMO. Super wide Techno Phantoms and nicely done flares. Yes please.
And remember those British cars that were there? Not really JDM Legends material but I did find one worth posting, a Lotus Europa on some MK-III’s.
And an amazing engine bay, look at the headers!
And a big reason I would love to go someday is the swap meets. Manifolds galore….
Some random Nissan stuff.
Need some titanium exhaust parts? One day I need to take the time to learn how to weld that stuff.
Or a legit Nismo KPGC110 grill? Wow! I believe it due to the quality of the mold, and trust me I know what replicas look like
2T-G header. I love that you can make something of this caliber and actually sell it for what it’s worth in Japan. They really respect craftsmanship over there which is more than I can say for the knockoff ebay mania that goes on here.
That is all for me today, back to real work!! Check out http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/blog , noriyaro.com , and choufukai.blogspot.com for more pics.
