Let's begin. July 2007, I got my 69' Datsun 510 stolen. I collected my insurance money and bought an S13 to replace it. A 510 is a cool daily driver, but not exactly reliable when it comes to making it to work or school on time everyday.
I bought this car in the 626 area circa October 2007 for $2500. Junior year of high school I believe. It already had Megan Track Series Coilovers and a welded differential. I had been searching for months by then, so I settled for this car overlooking it's faded paint and mediocre body.
Hah. Looking at this next picture makes me really mad.
I wish I kept all that stuff. It's annoying sourcing good condition interior parts, and that fabric seats are impossible to find or so it seems.
Stock Single-slammer. I didn't even know what it was at the time. The only motors I knew of where the Dual Cam KA, SR20 and CA18. It pulled strong when I test drove it so...
I drove the car around like this for awhile. It was fun, definitely some good memories of it when it was new to me.
But I eventually went and picked up a full Silvia conversion from Panda Garage in El Cajon, CA for a steep price (I didn't know of Zilvia's classifieds at this point, nor the average price of a Silvia front clip). Of course, I chose the "brick" dual halogen headlights because they looked the coolest and were all the hype on the internet.
I was so proud to drive this car regardless of the mismatched front end.
After doing extensive research on Nico, I bought my first set of wheels. Sportmax 501s 16x8 +15 and put on some Dunlop DZ101 195/50R16 tires on them.
When I look back on it, this point in my car's life is probably my favorite. It was so simple and "street" styled, it couldn't go wrong. Full interior was comfortable, I could hear my music, and I had my cool Sil-front. I wish I could go back to this.
I thought this was a cool picture at the time because you could see me behind the car in the reflection from the store window.
I drove it like this for a long time, but eventually my good friend Devin and I decided to paint the front end to match the rest of the car. I found a pretty good match with Rustoleum, so we started prepping the car and painted it that night.
At the same time, I had picked up a pignose lip from somebody for like $40 and some Nismo replica skirts from a local drifter for $40 as well.
By that time I had also bought a Sparco wheel and NRG hub and quick release setup. So I went to the local mall parking lot to shoot some photos of the car in one color.
A few in higher res (I know some people like these pics)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com...b.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com...b.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com...b.jpg
Anyway, I'm going to pause this here because I'm tired and it's time for bed. To be continued soon.
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I added some more pictures to the first post..
Anyway, as I was saying...
The car looked pretty neat now.
My gas door wasn't staying latched, and I used electrical tape as my temporary fix. Eventually I just removed the latch altogether. Stupid S13s....
Finally, after anticipating it for years and years since I was only a boy, I attended my first drift event with 626Drift in March of 2008.
Go figure that after 1 1/2 years of drifting every month, my favorite picture of my car is this one, from my very first event.
After this event, I realized how much it HURT to drift with a stock seat. My legs were bruised from hitting my e-brake handle and my window lever.
And as luck would have it, I came across this legitimate Bride Zeta II bucket, my favorite seat of all time, for a whopping $300. This thing was close to being new.
I remember when I was putting it in the back seat after paying the guy for it, I was so happy. I never thought I'd own a real BRIDE seat, just like all the D1 driver's and all the guys in Japan. I knew they were expensive, so to come across such a cheap deal was miraculous to me.
At the same time that I bought the rails for the seat, I picked up these fluorescent pink 5 point harnesses from RJS racing. Way to be gay!
Please look at the idiot in this picture. That's me. At the time, I was giving a thumbs up because I thought this idea was 100% full proof. I was going to rattle can my car to match the front end. Genius right?
Slap me upside the effing head if you ever see me. This is possibly the worst idea to ever have crossed my mind. This is why it makes me angry when I see cars with perfectly good paint, or even salvageable paint get ruined by being sprayed over with an aerosol can.
Look at how happy and confident I look. Stupid f*cking idiot.
I was actually surprised that it came out so bad. Hah!
Anyway, soon after, I joined the boso craze that came out of nowhere and had these idiotic-looking exhaust pipes made. These things made the car famous for some reason, and created an uprise of discussion and contradiction.
This sound clip video I made just for NICOclub got the Youtube population hating! Read all the comments if you have time, very funny!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQO438qwNY
Then I took the car to the Stillen meet with these on the car. Altima owners were wondering what the hell was going on..
I quickly started getting better at drifting, hitting up all the 626Drift events I could, which at this point was every month...
We were doing 10 car trains at Balcony.
Eventually I became a staff member for 626Drift. So Awesome!
I bought this KA turbo kit for around $1500. It came with a t25 turbo, unknown manifold, all the lines, front mount kit, HKS blow-off valve, 370cc injectors, an APEX'i SAFC 2 and exhaust system.
Well I sold that. With the money, I bought a neon underglow kit, strobe lights, disco ball, more wheels and tires, and paid the entry fee for the Socal-Drift night event.
What a cool event. It was definitely worth selling a COMPLETE turbo kit for.
Not.
By this point, I was very confident in my drifting skills. I was driving very consistently and doing some pretty cool stuff. I started street drifting with a bunch of friends, participating in 6 car trains at our infamous spot. It felt like I was in Japan, drifting on the streets door to door with my friends. The adrenaline rush was exhilarating, licking the curbs with my exhaust everytime.
One night, I came into a corner way faster that I should have, as I was leading, and ran my car into a curbo at nearly 45-50mph. My car literally jumped up into the air about a foot or two. I bruised my arm from hitting something inside the car..
The police came that night while we were fixing the car to get it driveable to the nearest gas station. I remember us all standing in front of the damage. He told us all to leave and that he would follow us out; last one out gets the ticket. Great. I putted out of that place with the cop behind me, spare tire squealing from the excess curb alignment specs.
I'm surprised that wheel didn't break more than it did.
Gas tank lost about 1 gallon of capacity that night... Haha. Very nice.
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So I crashed. I actually took a nice chunk out of that curb. I should go back someday and take a picture.
I think I have a picture of the first object I ever hit while drifting. Let me see if I can find it... Ah here we go.
The story behind this one is stupid. I had never drifted before, and I clutch kicked into this intersection of an industrial-esque area on my way home from work... The car went the right way, then it shifted the opposite direction and sent me head-on into the curb, nailing that plastic thing you see there. My car was halfway on this lawn and halfway on the street, teeter-tottering. I managed to back off and sped away as a car was coming. I was anticipating the oil light to come on, but it never did. My oil pan was actually untouched. Nice.
Anyway. They fixed that thing within a few days. Haha.
DAMMIT Photobucket is doing site maintenance. WTF they just did it like 10 mins ago. Oh well. I'll just post this for now.
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Found this cool picture from the Oxnard Bash 2 years ago.
Anyway. Let's continue the story.
After the crash, I took a look at the damage: bent RUCA, traction rod, toe rod, lower control arm, broken axle, broken wheel. So I picked up a lower control arm and traction rod from the junkyard, and ordered RUCAs and toe rods from Powered by MAX in San Diego.
Shipping was outrageously fast on these. I distinctly remember ordering these on a Thursday night, and receiving them that Friday morning.
Around this time I also bought this GP Sports replica front bumper for $40. I tried it on, but it was ridiculous.
I remember making a thread on NICO with a poll asking how long you thought it would last. Then I remember going right back outside and taking the bumper off. Haha. I took it around the block once and I'm pretty sure if I kept it on permanently, it would have been cooked within a day. Ruthless.
After this I got the idea to start pulling the SR20 out from my first car and building it up a little to throw it into my coupe. I was starting to feel a power restriction when I'd go drifting so I figured, I already have the motor and this other car is worthless.
It didn't go much farther from here. Lol.
Well I got into the mentality of building a full on track car. I'd gutted an interior before, but it was half-assed and looked terrible. I decided to put the time into gutting this car correctly and making it look clean, which included not only removing the sound deadening tar and painting the interior, but also simplifying the factory wire harness.
And so it began. I removed the front seats, rear seats and plastics.
Then came the carpet.
I used dry ice and a hammer to remove the sound deadening. It was relatively easy, compared to the chisel and hammer method.
I was already starting to regret it, but I had to keep going. There was no turning back at this point.
Around here was my mom's birthday party. She's pretty tight in the 626Drift group, so she invited all of the community to the party. This was right after Ryota (kamikazestorm420) had his car recovered from theft. Two SF heads, Robert and his buddy came to town to buy Ryota's shell. This was their last night in town before heading back, so we invited them to the party.
Robert saw the hatch and said, "What's up with this?" So I told him my plans to pull the motor and throw it into the coupe. He asked when I was pulling it out, and I told him "someday over the rainbow", but I really didn't know. Before I knew it, he turned to his buddy and said, "grab my tools from the truck." I was like wtf? And told me to go get a cherry picker...
So... I drove to my friend's house right down the street and picked up a cherry picker. I was gone for 10 minutes MAX, and by the time I came back, he was smoking a cigarette and asked me what took so long.
The motor was already ready to be pulled. No less than 2 minutes later, it was out. This guy was a BEAST. And so the motor was pulled out during my mother's birthday party.
Ri-god-damned-diculous. So I let the motor sit in my garage for a while. After all, I never expected this to happen!
I continued my interior work. I had removed all the sound deadening in the rear and primered it to get an idea of what it would look like. I installed some S14 belts to remove the whole auto seatbelt system.
I also pulled all the wiring from rear of the car and cleaned it up. I removed the antenna wiring, defrost wiring and speaker wiring. And re-ran in in between the outer and inner quarter panel metal.
Much cleaner.
This was getting all done day by day, with this car still being my daily driver to school and work EVERYDAY.
Removed more and more tar residue, using gasoline in a spray bottle and a wire brush. What a biitch that was.
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Ah yes. This was the life. We were terrorizing the streets on a night-to-night basis, caravaning just to get food or to hit up the local meets. In Socal, there is a meet for every night of the week.
We would have 20 person tables, and do this a few nights per week. Driving into the parking lots was always an interesting task.
Everybody would always come to my house just to hang and whatnot. We'd have get-togethers all the time, and it was great fun.
Then the morning after our outrageous 4th of July party, we trekked out to El Cajon once again for a super sale going on at Panda Garage. Just 4 friends, a large pick-up truck, and a grip of money to spend, we set out for the magical store of JDM parts...
We found some awesome deals there. Josh picked up some JDM zenki signals for $15, Kouki 180sx valences for $90, Bryan and I both picked up some LEGIT Chuki sideskirts for a whopping $90 per pair...
We rushed straight home and had an "install party".
After awhile, I got tired of my 501s. They were cool wheels, but would have been better if they came in a lower offset... So I traded my brand new 5 lug for some new wheels, in 4 lug of course. What a genius plan.
I picked up these Sportmax 002's in 16x8 +0 and threw on the same tires, DZ101 195/50R16 in the front, and some crappy tires in the rear.
Then I finally finished my interior.
I painted it by scuffing it briefly with sandpaper, then used Rustoleum gloss white in a spray can and layed down about 3 thick coats. I did this with a fan in the car, but no mask.
It's no wonder I got a sinus infection the next day.
I remember taking a shower right after painting the interior with ONLY Fast Orange, the hand cleaning soap you use for heavy grease after working on a car. I used it as a soap and a shampoo, and let me tell you, I felt like absolute crap when I got out of the shower. At least I was semi clean.
Since the old, super cracked dash was already out, I replaced it with this nice clean one, out of my other car. I was selling the black hatch soon anyway, so I didn't really care.
Everything was now in. I was going for the minimalist look, with only necessities of a track car.
And I relocated the disco ball to a better spot.
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Then I made I traded my nice Sparco steering wheel for a JDM white one that I had shipped from Japan. This was before the stupid "JDM colored wood wheel" craze that's going around. Now everyone and their mom has one of these and it pisses me off. I've been trying to trade it from something else. If anyone wants it, ask away.
Anyway. Back on topic.
This picture is of me driving my fine automobile to the End of Summer ZOMG BBQ Bash.
And what a fine automobile it was. Still had a single-cam KA24, still reliable, still a good drift machine.
And then came hell... we pulled that mighty single-cam out from it's nice cozy home. The ultimate home where it belonged. The home where it withstood so much agony, so much pain, so much abuse from it's father but still continued on its mission to propel 2 wheels with enough momentum to break the traction of the rubber on those wheels and hold a gangster drifting line while doing so.
Goodbye forever.
Oh yeah. See why my wheels look like that? That's because I forgot to pull off my strut bar before putting my car on jack stands. Then I was too lazy to lower the car back down to pull it off, so I did so while it was in the car.
But I forgot that they were the same bolts holding the coilover to the strut tower. Noob.
At first, it would not start. we tried and tried and tried. It would only crank, never one tiny spickle of life would show... So we called Henry Schelley. Right away, he said, "Your fuel lines are on backwards."
Wtf?
So we swapped the fuel lines around, crank the engine and BAM! Started right up. What a genius that Henry is.
That night, one of neighbors came out and yelled at me and my mother saying we were irresponsible and this was not a "garage". What a biiiiitch. She can suck my right nut.
And so... the mighty SR20 was in.
I drove it around like this for awhile, open downpipe because I had no exhaust.
I wired up this sick dome light too. For some reason it stopped working recently. Gotta fix that.
I went to some cool meet at Superior Nissan.
So then I sold my 002s to a local Miata guy and bought these Falken Hanabis in 17x9 +20.
So I re-test fitted this bumper to check the ground clearance. It was much better. I would save this bumper for later yet, though.
Then I ordered some bolt on spacers in 4x114.3 from Powered by MAX. One pair in 15mm and one pair in 20mm. The 15's were destined for the front, and the 20s were destined for the rear, which would have been perfect stock body fitment all around.
Everything in this plan would have worked out perfectly, except that Falken Hanabis have a flat mounting surface. On most wheels, there are indents after every stud hole, which would allow for extra studs from a bolt on spacer a place to go. But in this case, the Falkens were flat. This meant that the 15mm spacers would not allow the wheel to be mounted because the actual wheel studs were too long and would hit the wheel before it would be flush with the rotor.
So I sold the 15s and bought some 25mm ones.
20's mounted up front.
25mms in the rear would obviously need a pull. So I did not mount those right away.
Well then my good friends Nieko and Danny got their cars impounded for street drifting in Costa Mesa, and had a car wash to raise the funds required to get their cars out of hell.
A few days later, Norm (usdm180sx) came over to my house and helped me pull my quarter panels.
I also got these ugly sideskirts. Ewww. Car was so ugly at this point.
Then I trekked back out to Horse Thief Mile for a private test day with the Norwegians and the Japan Auto Supra that competed at the Red Bull World Drifting Championships.
It was this day that my car started heading downhill.
---------------------------------------------------------------------Okay okay. Here we go. I'm still slightly intoxicated from last night's Halloween party, but after a nice hot chocolate and some butter creme cake I think I'm good to go.
Now, since it's been a few pages since I've had any time to update the next part of this thread, I think we should do a quick recap of the last part.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------S13Teddy wrote:Then I trekked back out to Horse Thief Mile for a private test day with the Norwegians and the Japan Auto Supra that competed at the Red Bull World Drifting Championships.
It was this day that my car started heading downhill.
That day at the Horse Thief Mile was quite uneventful. Early in the day, one of my front tires debeaded from the wheel and sent me off the track.. I bent one of my tie rods, and now I no longer had my Dunlops in the front. We went to a local auto parts store and picked up a new tie rod. Nieko helped me throw it on (I'd never changed a tie rod before) and I threw on a pair of Nexens in the front.
God what a terrible idea that was.
As the day progressed, my car was still running just as crappily as it always had. Sputtering at any rev over 4500, no power. But I was still trying my best to drive the stupid car. The sun eventually started setting, and my helmet had no sun visor.
As I came down the water tower section, I missed the apex, over corrected and spun out into a pile of haybales. Bummer.
Well night was starting to fall and I still had to drive the car home. But with a broken radiator, two broken headlights and the nighttime starting to fall, it was time to get to work and fix my no longer "perfect" automobile.
Good thing all my Norwegian buddies were all here to help, and let me tell you, I never would have gotten home without them. They fixed the radiator with a piece of plastic and a lighter. And so I drove the car home like that at night, with only one working headlight.
So my buddy Devin (wow-thats-a-cool-car) came to my house and we started fixing the car to our best ability.
It didn't come out tooo bad. At least it was driveable again.
Right after fixing it, it rained a few nights later and I had this spot where I wanted to take wet pictures. So even with my car in bad condition, I went and took some pics.
Then I pulled these tension rods from my other car too.
I also still didn't have power steering. Remember? I had a competition coming up in a few days, and by golly I was determined to make it there with a properly working car.
So I changed out my steering rack. What a biiitch that was! OMG. I never want to do that again.
Then I went and got my car aligned. Wow. Either the alignment rack was seriously fubared, or my car was seriously fubared. Caster was at 13 on one side and 7 on the other. The closest they could get the caster together was 11 and 9. So now I had different caster on either side. Front camber was at -1.5 and -2.3, rear camber was at -3.5 on either side.
Terrible alignment specs. But whatever. For some reason, I wasn't really worried.
Coming up was the 626Drift Top Gun competition. I was ready. My car looked ready.
This Topgun event was seriously like the end of my car. But I'll save that for another time. I need to clean my thrashed house.
Modified by S13Teddy at 5:50 PM 2/25/2010
