S13 D&M

As much as i love this car, it has well and truly been living up to its reputation of constantly breaking things.
Some things to mention i fixed this week is a giant rust hole that came from no where in the boot, and a water pump that decided it wanted to purge the majority of my coolant out of its weep well.
Also now i think i need to buy a new 02 sensor because my fuel efficiency has halved... again.

That said, I've had shit cars before and sold them off for similar reasons, but from the fun this car gives me i definitely don't want to sell it anytime soon.

 

As shit as it treats me, I've really come to respect how much it takes to have a reliable, comfortable daily driven 20+ year old sports car. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of maintenance, and sadly a lot of money.

That said, i can already see the difference in the shitbox that i bought a year ago and the car i now own.

Just things like having matching panels all the way around, a proper Japanese exhaust instead of a gay Aus one, having a complete interior etc...

 

I've learnt something recently, interestingly from a car related cartoon, that when building a car you can only take things one step at a time. Eliminate the weaknesses one by one, and eventually you will have the car you will desire.

The car may not look like much at this point in time, but with the income i currently have I'm very happy to call it one of the cleanest S13's I've seen around. Hopefully when i finally get some proper money to put into this car it can become one of the cleanest badass S13's around

Dark Lord of the Stig

Well about a week and a half ago i finally made my decision of what helmet to buy, and i also ordered in an Iridium visor for extreme badass'ness'ess.
I finally got my new visor yesterday and i seriously cannot wait to see some photos of me rocking this in the Corolla!

Its kinda like an dark stig so i felt the title was fitting

Epic Third Gear

Well the title kind of ruins the surprise, but my 4.1's are in the car and working perfectly. At Queensland Raceway i can now use third gear comfortably throughout the entire course! Before hand it used to be very high in second gear or too low in third, now it is just perfect.

I will definitely post up some pics next morning session to show how its going.

Anyway, here's some shots of my progress throughout the day last thursday when i put the new housing in.

I'm definitely not the fastest worker on cars, so i started working on this about 9.30 in the morning... Just as well because i didn't get the car back on the ground untill 9.30 at night... Fun times.

I haven't used my camera as much as i would have liked lately so here's some random shots of the car. Love my Rays wheel nuts, seemed appropriate for wheels as special as Hayashi's.

Some of my favorite stickers on the car

Few more

Old diff out (rusty shit looking one), new one set to go in (painted). Basically i had a bit of dicking around with this. I used my current diff centre and axles, but i needed the crown gear and pinion off the new housing. So i rattle gunned the crown gear off so i could put the new one on. Anyway at this stage the centre with new crown gear was in the housing and set to go in.

If you look closely at the old housing the trailing arm brackets are bent... i actually had the rose joints seize on the old housing... Made for a fun afternoon XD

9.30pm... Finally done, took it for a slap around the block and it actually lit up 4th with a little rain.... hmmmmm

And a photo of my painful but lovable nissan. Thankfully this thing has been treating me well lately, so i have been trying to make it as clean as possible.

Photos from a morning session soon!

Tig

So a week or so ago, my beautiful japanese exhaust broke a hanger. The second of which that had broken off that holds the rear muffler up, the previous one having broken before i got the exhaust.
For some reason that is unknown to me they used some very cheap hollow stainless 12mm tube as hangers... and they are as brittle as glass.

Anyway, i had my hand at trying to tig again with Josh's welder, last time i couldn't use it at all.. It just wouldnt work for me. Having been so long since i last used a tig welder im pretty happy with the welds.
I also had to build myself a new hanger out of solid 12mm steel which was a steep learning experience.

Im certainly no artist when it comes to tig'ing (especially for stainless) but im pretty impressed how i went for not having tig'd for a year and a half.

4.1

Well it finally stopped raining today for once, not that i want the rain to go, but it gave me some time to pull apart this 4.1 rear housing in preparation for it to go into the corolla.

It looked a bit rough and ready so after pulling it apart i gave it a rough scour with a wire brush and some degreeser.
Just got to get some time to pull the old rear end out of the corolla now and swap everything over, that said i think i have to use the centre from this housing in order to retain the 4.1... so i gotta get my hands on a mig.

Jasons 86

So i hung out with Jase for a bit today. Perfect beach weather so Burleigh was the location... Almost drowned, good times.

Anyway, back at his we had a bit of a look at his car so i took some photos & some video...
Its playing up bigtime and overfueling and just generally being gay, but i cant wait to have it back out on track next to my rig...
I love this thing, even more so watching it drive... Its gonna suck when it sells.

Enjoy his turbo slut bucket (and my quality iPhone photos)