That was fast! Just as I was hopping into car to move out of driveway, our maillady pulled up, gave a toot, parked, locked her front doors, and pulled a box out of the back of her truck. Could it be my parts already? The box looked smaller than I expected, but judging by how she moved, it had some heft. I’ll be darned, it was my order from Weir Performance! So what was in this box of goodies? Continue reading ‘KAAZ’
Archive for the 'car' Category
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Saw a white Land Cruiser 80 with crazy lift by the airport. I’ve actually seen this thing before out on the West side. I couldn’t really make out all the details since it was bouncing around like crazy, but the axle linkages and coil springs had all been removed, and leaf springs hacked in. The stock outboard shock mounting positions had been abandoned for dual inboard mounted shocks set at 45-degree angles, such that the top eyelets of the innermost shocks were almost adjacent to each other! This is of course because functionality aside, duals “look more cool”. NOT! I wouldn’t be surprised by the unnatural track if semi-floating GM axles had been swapped in instead of the stock full-floaters. Also wouldn’t be surprised if there was a carbureted GM V8 in this Frankenmobile instead of a proper, torquey Toyota sequential EFI inline. Remove the salient Land Cruiser features and hack in lame, inferior substitutions. Good job!
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So whats the status of the AE86 Corolla? I’ve actually been driving it, kidney bouncingly it every day. Here’s the story behind that. Last I mentioned the AE86, I believe it was running and autocrossing. Was having rear end traction issues, so it was in my plan to work on the suspension. Debating piecing together a cut and weld kind of arrangement, but found a complete coilover system just released from Stance. The rear is not really a coilover, but is still adjustable. That was ordered, along with a complete Prothane polyurethane bushing kit. Suspension was taken apart, old bushings removed, cleaned up, 
and repainted with POR-15. That POR-15 is tenacious stuff, even taking a torch to a piece we needed to extract a metal bushing from didn’t mess up that paint much. The rickety mystery Chine hydraulic press once again came into use. Got the job done, but it doesn’t instill much confidence! The bushing replacement was pretty straighforward and easy. Only the rear panhard presented some challange as it had metal bushing/sleeve that needed to be extracted, and one side had a wasp waist single piece bushing that required the press, liberal lubrication, and some worrisome looks at how much the bushing was squishing and squirming jamming it into place. Continue reading ‘Auto Progress – AE86’
Pukad windscreen frame
OK, it’s been almost 4 months since I’ve posted anything about my cars, so I’ll write up on what I’ve done to them in that period. With the white FX16, I believe I last left off pulling the windscreen out after cracking it looking for the source of water leak. Following that, we stripped the frame down to metal and I went at with a whole assortment of fiber wheels, wire wheels, grinding wheels and took down what rust I found. Revealed a number of rust throughs, good to catch it now as most of them were not yet hugely major. It was actually a number of weeks and stretched out over months before I progressed with this. Inbetween was a combination of working on other car, bike riding, and lazyness.
Saw a 4-door Toyota Yaris sedan today with the “Yaris” nameplate on the low liftover bootlid replaced with a “Vitz” nameplate. Fool JDM tuner wannabe n00b! 30-seconds of web time would tell you that you sedan is called the Belta on the JDM, and the Vitz is only the five-door hatchback! The JDM doesn’t even have the 3-door hatch, so technically there is no such thing as a three-door Vitz. The three-door is only available in North America and in Europe as a Yaris.
(0)What a long day. My weekend scavenging plans were thrown for a loop when I drove out to ABC used auto parts out Pearl City way on Saturday, to see a dumpster truck and HFD ladder truck in the road. Looks like the dumpster had snagged the lowest cables on the overhead powerlines and pulled it down. I think those are typically telephone and cable TV, no tazer sparks flying, but they weren’t taking chances. I wasn’t going to be hitting that SR5 AE86 I had spotted earlier in the week when I spun by on a lark. So now what ended up happening is I woke up early on Sunday, headed out to Aloha Stadium, and signed in for the SCCA Solo II autocross. Once that was taken care of, I then headed of to ABC. Continue reading ‘Scavenging’
Last week Saturday was something of a historic event for the local auto racing scene. After years of abscence of a track and much infighting and what not, they finally managed to open a parcel of land in Kalaeloa for a racewat park. Currently it’s still dirt surface, which was just fine for this event, the first ever Hawaii SCCA Rally Cross! It was being kept low key, intentionally, since this was a first for everyone, and the field turnout was thirty soon to be dusty, grinning, laughing, and giggling racers. I have to say I had an outrageous good time. Sliding around your car in the dirt amd not get in trouble? Yeehaw! Don’t tell me you never skidded your tricycle, BigWheel, BMX, banana seat bike when you were a kid? Same thing, except with big people sized toys now. Yes, dirt everywhere, I’m still cleaning it out. Anyway, I’m happy to report that it went of without a hitch. No major problems, a few hicups to iron out, but that was expected. And everyone is looking forward to the next one! More pics here.
How do I spend the day after Valentines? By doing bodywork on my car and going for a mountainbike ride, hah! Actually it being the day after VD doesn’t mean much to me, but it is Presidents Day and I have the day off! So after putting it off, finally got around to start working on the windshield frame area. Jay came over for some of the fun and we hit the antenna hole first with the stripping wheel.
So cruised over to Fab’s to help him work some more on his smushed hood. He had an altercation with a Jeep spare tire which unfortunately crinkled his aluminum hood. Fortunately the damage didn’t go too much further than that, top radiator support crossmember got bent and some plastic clips for his grill broke. But with the center of the hood smashed down, the outer corners were turned up. Fabio reported that at speed they would start flapping, trying to make like an ornithopter. He’d already attempted to bend them down as well as he could by himself, but we figured two monkeys are better than one! Initially went at it with a block of wood across the radiator support, but then figured that was flexing too much. We then McGyvered this setup.
Saw a overly tinted black Hilux Surf today with one of those grossly deformed, overly stylized Hinano girl rip-off copyright-infringement diecut stickers on the back glass. Not out of the ordinary, except for the subtitle, “Respect the Culture,” below it. Huh? What? Really – what the F is that supposed to mean? Which culture? Are these words related in any way to the Hinano girl, or do they just coincidentally occupy adjacent space?
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