Archive for the 'car' Category

Page 12 of 39

FRS – Do You Say Like Furs?

Published on November 15, 2012 in car by taro. 1 Comment

Picked up the FR-S tonight, thanks Dave for the shuttle service, in a BMW M Coupe no less! Getting home after dinner and picking up the FX, I decided to break-in the brake pads. Of course when I go out and get into the FR-S, there would be a freak 1 minute downpour. So now the roads are all wet, oh well, car’s going to get dirty sooner or later, sooner I guess! So I go through the drill of getting up to about 20 mph & coming to hard stop a few times, then gradually increasing speeds trying to keep it as close together and smooth as possible, and most importantly avoiding coming to a complete stop. There isn’t space enough to get all the way up to desired speeds of 60, only to around 45 , but I do smell the brakes get stinky so I know the temp got high enough to bake them. Good enough for now. Next was to just cruise around to gradually cool the brakes, again avoiding complete stops. The whole point of this is to heat cycle the pads to the point where the resins and stuff get baked and it also creates a film of stuff transfered from the pads onto the rotors. You don’t want to come to a complete stop because that could create a thick spot of “stuff”, and you want to cruise around to gradually let the rotor cool to avoid warping. Anyway, that’s what I did for the EBC pads on the FX.

Stay tuned for pics and thoughts on the new car later, it’s only got like 30 miles right now so it’s a bit early!

The Dark Side

Published on November 10, 2012 in car by taro. 2 Comments

I went and did it, gone for the dark. Went into Scion at lunchtime (I ended having to work today) and told them let’s do it. Signed the papers for the last FR-S from the most recent shipment. I stopped by wednesday to check things out and they had a black automatic FR-S out. Before, I was saying I didn’t want to deal with black, but when I saw it in person I really liked it. I stood in the lot looking back and forth between the white and the black and I had to admit I thought the black looked better. And then I found out they had two black manual transmission ones in stock. Decided to give it a couple days and then figure out what to do, so today I’ve got one with my name on it! They’re supposed to be pulling it out of inventory monday and prepping it so it should be in my hands sometime next week! Continue reading ‘The Dark Side’

PTuning License Plate Relocation Kit

Published on November 10, 2012 in car and Review by taro. Closed

Tuned by P? Anyway this is a kit to mount your license plate to the front tow hitch, application listed for this part # is for the FR-S/BRZ. This avoids having screws jammed into your front bumper. Pictured is the base kit that consist of machined steel rod that threads into the cars tow loop fitting, aluminum back plate that your license bolts to with the provided stainless cap screws, and a steel joint that goes between the plate and the steel rod. The join is curved in one plane so allows tilting, it’s not a ball joint though, so if you need to tilt the plate other than strictly horizontally or vertically, you’ll need to get creative with rotating the piece. The aluminum plate has a myriad of slots so it can be mounted off center at just about any desired position.

There are other similar kits available, but one of the reasons  I went with this one is it features some add on options. Continue reading ‘PTuning License Plate Relocation Kit’

White Sells

Published on October 29, 2012 in car by taro. 1 Comment

Dang it, didn’t get to servco in time. They called this afternoon, their allotment of white manual FR-S’ sold out in less than 1.5 hours before I could get there. I suppose I could be different and do black seeing as how there’ll be a gaggle of white ones running around. Oh well, gives me a month to wait and get stuff like the front license mount.

Ouch! My Wallet

Published on October 25, 2012 in anime, car, Culture, Gear, Manga, rant and Travel by risu. 2 Comments

Shopping days will do that.  Caught the subway out to Shiroishi and went to Shuugakusou Shiroishi to turn about $270 USD into things made out of titanium.  Their Snow*Peak signature store is pretty awesome.  They also have various other domestic titanium backpacking cookware and tableware manufacturers that don’t carry as heavy a price tag, but the stuff is still not cheap.  Nice thing though the mystery Japan ti brands are not much more than mystery China ti stuff like GSI Outdoors. Continue reading ‘Ouch! My Wallet’

Bye Bye Dori Dori Dreams

Published on October 23, 2012 in car by taro. 1 Comment

It’s done, a disembodied zombie has bought the AE86. No actually he seems to be a nice guy, even if he does look like a zombie. He actually had a SR5 AE86 that he sold in order to pick this up. Hopefully he learns from Ed, the dude who kind of brokered this deal. Ed is a gear head and knows his stuff, this guy is still a kid and pretty wet behind the ears, but hopefully he will grow with this car. I think it’s awesome that he scraped together the money and I think this car is a great way to get started. He’s not some snot nosed unappreciative punk who’s parents bought him a “fully tuned” Evo or something. Build it to the car of your dreams, zombie boy, enjoy!

No Tofu Boy Anymore

Published on October 22, 2012 in car by taro. 1 Comment

So I put up the AE86 “Hachiroku” Corolla up for sale. Put up signs in the window and took it to auto cross on Sunday. Have a taker already, will try meet up tonight, he said he’s got the money and if we can do the sale tomorrow. I drove it for work today and as I was driving it I was almost having twinges of regret! It was certainly fun to drive, the punishing rear suspension not withstanding. I love how the engine winds up and the quick gearing. It’s not fast but it does put a smile on the face. As I think more about it, the dude will be getting a hell of deal considering the work that’s gone into it. Mechanically it’s solid, rebuilt tranny, all new bearings, seals & synchros. Rebuilt rear end, again all new bearings, seals and the KAAZ 1.5 way LSD. All new polyurethane bushings. New front ball joints, tie rod ends. New P/S hoses. Full bling coilover suspension. I did pull the flywheel and clutch. I think I’ll go pull out the micro Momo steering wheel too. Anyway, I’m not going to back out of this, so if he shows me the money, it’s out of here! I sure hope he’s not some yahoo, he’s a friend of one of the auto-x & rally-x dudes who is cool, but you know how friends of friends can be, but once you let it go, gotta let it go!

Shouldn’t This Be in a Political Ad?

Published on October 10, 2012 in car, Culture, rant and SUAR by risu. Closed

Funny how the current Acura MDX ad says that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, trying to intimate that theirs was the first non-box, non-truck-based crossover SUV.  The Toyota Harrier/Lexus RX beat them to the egg-shaped game by three years.  The only thing that Honda has an exclusive over is developing SUV’s and a “pickup truck” from a minivan platform.  This is like Audi’s “cookie cutter” ad when their Q7 is a badge engineered VW Touareg/Porsche Cayenne.  Don’t these kinds of deceptive campaigns belong in the political arena?

(0)

Car Crazy

Published on September 16, 2012 in car by taro. 1 Comment

Saturday was the first race of what is the third season of RallyCross. Three? Wow! Anyway, they’re doing a bunch of work at KRP and us being the orphan racing event that kinda gets ignored by the track owners, we don’t pull in spectators after all, we got stuck into  a small space. We made the best of what we could and it was a fun day. The back corner however was uncompacted and soft. It quickly turned into a rutted moondust silt fest mixed with rocks and mini-boulders.  One of my first runs I managed to do this number to the front driver side rim. Didn’t blow the bead though. After the morning heat, I rotated it to the rear and aired up the tire. It held for the rest of the day.

Continue reading ‘Car Crazy’

Obscure

Published on September 12, 2012 in car, Culture, rant and SUAR by risu. Closed

Weird.  Saw an old Mitsubishi Montero Sport that someone went through the trouble to rebadge “Nativa” which is what it is sold as in the Middle East and Central America.  That’s even more weird than kids rebadging their USDM E120 Toyota Corollas with Southeast Asia “Altis” badges.

(0)