I keep hearing the ad on KORL 97.1 soliciting volunteer test subjects for an experimental vaccine for kafunshou. Kafunshou is japanese for hay fever. Anyway, is it only me who gets an odd gleeful reaction to hearing the word kafunshou and saying it? Kind of like the Beavis & Butthead reaction to Lake Titikaka!
Author Archive for taro
Page 46 of 88
Received my full custom drive shafts from The Drive Shaft Shop. I got the short side installed on Wednesday night. The long side was being stubborn so I got a heavier convincer and tried tonight. It ends up that no amount of convincing would work, the spring clip was jamming and now was mangled. I tried bending it back, but no good. Tried without the spring clip, of course it doesn’t work, one trip around the block and I’m dumping tranny oil out the seal. F! The rally FX will not be ready for tomorrows(todays) event, I work on swapping the rally tires onto the street FX. 1:30AM and its done. So much for my $800 shafts. I’ll have to get in touch with DSS and see if I can get a replacement retainer clip. Ugh, wake up in four hours!
OK, first nice weather since picking up the car, here’s first beauty shot. I need to get PhotoChop so I can clone out those poles in back. Kinda weird having a car that gets looks and comments from normal folks and even chicks, not just Toyota geeks. Thanks Mitch for the quickie wash last night, it managed to stay pretty clean till I took this. Got a chance to get a little spirited into some turns and that brought an instant grin to my face. It’s been kind of frustrating having to restrain from pushing the engine, but this finally gave me a taste of what the car is about, and it’s yummy! Speaking of the engine, keeping it down makes me sad. The engine note is not very nice down low, I know it’s a four cylinder, but even so it sounds pretty buzzy, I think an exhaust well help.
So the first 100 miles have gone by for the FR-S. It’s still too early for much of a performance and driving review. It’s pretty frustrating to wait for the “break-in” period to complete. But the 100 miles is enough to form some thoughts on the ergonomics and daily operation of the vehicle. There is very little to complain about with the driver cockpit. I’m sure much work went into that. The seat have good side bolsters, and is thankfully narrow, it actually is effective in keeping me snug! As opposed to the FX where the seats have aggresive side bolsters, but are at least an inch too wide on both side. Driver seat has basic back tilt adjustment and fore-aft slider and also a height adjustment. All are simple mechanical lever actuated.
Steering wheel is “leather trimmed”, I’m not sure which portions are actually leather and which are pleather, but the wheel thickness is good and the diamter is actually quite small. It’s actually the same dimensions as the 350mm Momo that was on the street FX. It features palm bumps on the inside at the 10 & 2 o’clock positions. Fairly small range of tilt adjust, good telecoping adjust. I can achieve a good driving position, as opposed to the Yaris where I can’t quite get an adjustment to give nice leg and arm distance at the same time. The turn ratio, is a bit quicker than the FX, but the radius is bigger. The plastic finisher on the bottom spoke of the wheel looks a bit cheesy. Conventional Toyota light, turn, wiper, interval, washer and cruise control stalks. No steering mounted controls for anything other than horn.
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!
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’
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’
Ugh, Crunchy Roll just started streaming this movie featuring karate cutie Rina Takeda. I’ve seen two other films featuring her, the recently reviewed Dead Sushi, and the one that brought her to attention, High Kick Girl. High Kick Girl suffered from many problems, the worst of which was the gratuitous monstrous overuse of slo-mo playbacks. Karate Girl suffers from as many problems, the only one not is overusing slo-mo. The worst offense is the story is plodding, totally unimaginative, played out. All the characters are shallow and uninteresting. Continue reading ‘Karate Girl – Yes the head minion is gaijin’
Part of a Samuel Adams Harvest Collection box, I’m reviewing this one a little late, you might have difficulties finding this on shelves now. Pours with a moderately strong head, dark brown with a hint of red. Aroma and flavor of the hazelnut is definitely there, adds a bit of bitter bite too. There’s a pretty strong roast flavor, but not too smokey. It’s got a medium mouthfeel and pretty clean finish but with a lingering bitter. I’m a little undecided on how much I like the strong hazelnut flavor. In the end it’s a pretty decent beer.
Just makes 3 out 4 nutty monkeys.
Well now, what a surprise, guess who’s back? Another morning job on the Koko Crater stairs. Guess they needed to mix it up a bit and break uo the routine, this time around in addition to dropping off the stretcher to the ground crew, 
HFD swung back and a guy did a rapel down the line! Hey man, gotta get everyone in the action as long as we’ve got this bird burning fuel, they came around again and did a second rapel!
Then they got the victim hooked up and pulled him/her out. Kinda wonder if this injury was a bit more serious than the others, they seemed to be taking it slower.
