Forever Simone

Almost there!

2023-03-14T09:36:00.002-07:00

Just gonna do a random photodump and just chat about some things. Embedding some you tube shorts as well. I previously mentioned how I was going to upgrade to hid's and led corner lights and turn signals. But I also wanted to black everything out, light output at night shouldn't be affected. May be a bit harder to see things during the day but I'm not too worried about it. The oem stuff was already pretty hard to see during the day anyway as shown in the example below.

So here is the final result of the headlight and corner light tint, I still have my old oem signal markers in. I was waiting to pick up my led ones from paint as there just was no way I was going to be able to wrap them. Going to try and retain the ability to plug in oem stuff rather than discarding the wiring for strictly led items in case I need to replace anything with off the shelf parts.

This is the oem connector for the corner lights, I have my chassis harness sleeved and loomed in the engine bay and am in no way looking to rip all of that apart until I completely replace it. So I'll most likely cut this back a bit and just wire in another 2pin or 3 pin connector in here so the wire for the turn signals and corner light come to the same place.

That's pretty much that, nothing significant here, just need to clean up all of the wiring.

RX330 Projectors, Dancing Led Signals, and Blackout Tint

2023-03-08T11:52:00.002-08:00

This is going to be a three part blog of some sort. I had been traveling to the 240 tuesday meets which are about 60 miles away from me and I head home to a lot of freeway and road construction so I can't see a damn thing. Normally I've never had any issues with my halogen projectors on the kouki headlights. But I've always been curious about doing an HID swap.

After seeing Hugo's s14 with dancing leds on his Zenki I was curious about getting some done for my car. I've always wanted some kind of led lights, but clearcorners.com lights were just never in my budget even though Mike Mamos is an acquaintance. I don't ask for discounts at friends businesses, I spend money elsewhere like a true piece of shit. HAHA

Hugo's S14

I really like the look of the blacked out headlights mainly because the led corners and turn signals are built in a manner where there is like a piece of tape that's put over the area where the oem light would sit and holes are poked in it for the leds to sit on top of. It doesn't look horrible but aesthetically it doesn't match the oem headlight at all.

I'm really weird about symmetry and flow, blah blah blah. Even the black of the stickers not matching the black of the headlights if you were to paint the trim would be enough to set my OCD on fire. The blackout tint is reversible vs painting. So there's that!

Lets begin with the parts list and how much I am invested in this.

The dancing lights were roughly 700 dollars

All in all I don't think this was too expensive of a project. Minus the tools I ended up buying (needed)

HID Bulb D2H 4300K Pair Diode Dynamics was $65.65 on ebay
35W / 55W DC Digital Slim HID Replacement Ballast Conversion Kit Universal $15.76
2x OEM 04-09 Lexus RX 330 / 350 Xenon Headlight HID D2S Lightbulb Projector Set $87.59
S14 Jdm Black Crystal Headlights 97-98 $214.61
9005 9006 H1/H7/H11 Relay Wiring Harness HID Headlight DRL Conversion Adapter $13.13
LS20 Lense : Black Series from the retrofit source $65.93

grand total of $462.02... honestly the clear headlight covers are what cost the most out of all the things I bought. The clear lenses are recommended to increase your light output.

This is the expected result of the work. Which looks leaps and bounds better than what I can see currently at night.

The Teardown

First you want to start off by removing all of the clips on the headlight holding the glass to the housing, they're relatively easy to get off, put them in a little baggie for later.

Once you have those off, remove your bulbs from your headlights and preheat your oven to about 200 degrees, you want to put the lights in there on the bottom rack for about 10 minutes, start to work the glass off of the lights once you pull them out of the oven. If needed put them back in for about 5 minutes or so.

Once you get your glass off, you'll need a phillips screwdriver to remove the light shields/dressing. It's about 4 screws in total, be careful removing the projector shield as it has two plastic pegs up top pressed into the light.

Once you get all of that loose counter-clockwise hit the 3 adjustment screws on the back of the lamp to release the projector housings.

Pretty straight forward, I just so happened to have a 5/16ths magnetic bit in my milwaukee bit set that fits perfectly for this. Once you have the oem projector housings out you pretty much will be looking at this. There is about 4 phillips screws on the back to remove the shield for your high beam. It's recommended to pull them off so you don't damage them.

Everything disassembled.

Here is everything removed, and a quick video just reiterating that.

Here is the oem projector lense on the left and the clear lenses on the right. Something this small can drastically increase your light output and I'm all for it. Same with switching to plastic headlight covers from the oem glass which is designed for the halogen projectors.

Another recommendation but not 100 percent necessary to increase light output is to take the cutoff shield out of this housing which you can access from the back and it's just two phillips screws to get it out. Just open up the holes a tad. I used a sharpie to indicate how little is needed to remove.

that's it, drop them back in and they should sit a hair lower than they originally did. You can kind of see a ring in the lower left hand corner here. It's a cutout from a cereal box, I was making an o-ring gasket to sit on top of the oem gasket that sits under the lense (not pictured) But in the projector picture above you can see where the lense normally would sit. But I found the oem gasket to be too small for the new lenses I bought so they were jiggling a bit. I just stacked the cereal box cutout on top of the oem gasket for the lense to fit in the projector housing a bit more snug. Again OCD is a bitch.

I guess this is where things get a bit confusing, I originally had the projectors on the side of the headlights with matching letters. So R for Right and L for Left, but in the build of these I saw the projectors were on the opposite sides. So I'm guessing the rising cutoff goes on the outside and not the inside which makes sense. There's a huge possibility I have them mounted backwards, if anything it's a pretty annoying mistake to deal with. But I guess We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Painted the projector dressing (there is a small shield on the inside of the projector housing which I removed and did not paint, later re-inserted)

And drilled out the back of the light covers to slide our grommets through, funny enough I bought a 100 dollar step bit because I'm a Milwaukee slut only to have over drilled the hole size on both caps. Not that I am worried about weather sealing the lights, I had cut the backs of them open a long time ago to fit my mid mount intercooler. But I digress!

Moving along, sticking my ebay lights in the oven at 200 for 15 minutes to get the covers off and sticking the finished lights in there to re-heat the glue. And I put the covers back on, and when they cooled off I added some extra clear silicone to the backs just in case I missed any gaps. My new Junyan corners and signals also needed to be sealed so I did that and let them sit a few days before trying to tine them.

My signals I sent off to paint because I could not for the life of me wrap the tumor of the signals lol.

I posted my results on Zilvia and someone recommended I get different ballasts instead of the paper thin ones I purchased. But I have yet to find any good recommendations on what to use. Hopefully I get that sorted before I begin wiring this stuff up. And I'll be re-doing the tint on the headlights as well.

Took the lights apart freaking out thinking I put the projectors on the wrong sides, swapped them anyway and both shields cut up to the right. For some reason I thought they looked like this -_(l) _-(r) but it's more like /-(l) _-(r) I guess I won't know if I got two left hand projectors until I hook everything up. I didn't really see where I could buy replacement cutoff shields and really I don't feel like opening the headlights again. Just at a "it is what it is" point with this project.

I'll post a part 2 with the electrical portion of installing my lights. And what I plan to do to sort out the ballast situation/suggestion

Finally checked some items off

2022-11-28T01:44:00.003-08:00

Hey ya'll been a hot minute, aside from pictures I've posted on IG I've thrown a few youtube videos together if you didn't get a chance to take a look or just don't care. Either or haha!

While some create content for some kind of fame or clout I can honestly say. Blogging/vlogging things I've done to my car are like a maintenance checklist, there may be something I'll have to take a look at years after I ddi it and I may have forgotten everything under the sun concerning what I originally did or what not.

I cannot tell you how many times just blogging/vlogging this shit has SAVED MY ASS.

Anyway! I'll post the last two videos I dropped here and move on with this post.

For today, we changed the master cylinder, last time I got all of the brakes on the car I was going to try and knock this out and noticed none of my lines would even fit or orient properly into the z32 master, so I just ordered some replacement lines from GKTech.

I get pretty paranoid about softlines and putting them by the turbo, just brake fluid next to a turbocharger period. Seen way too many cars go up in flames, speaking of which I should put a fire extinguisher in my car.

Popped the old bugger off

Didn't take many pics of the new one, me thinks. I did hit the vacuum line bracket with some black trim paint before putting it back in. Not sure why the oem one is some weird greyish green.

I think if I was running these lines along the top of the firewall I probably wouldn't of put the fire sleeving on them, it just so happens I had some left from my turbo drainback and decided to make use of it. The lines are running along the steering rack. I will need to get some type of mounting clamps or such to prevent them from vibrating.

Speaking of which I saw the turbo drainbacks screw clamps have been making contact with the steering rack yoke for some time now and started to eat away at the material when I turn. Guess it could be worse (no pictures) but just goes to show you the smallest things can cause the biggest inconveniences. Glad it didn't cut it down enough for the yoke to break.

Anyway I didn't want to drop 30 dollars on a junkyard molex connector for the brake reservoir, although I think at the end of the day it would've made me aesthetically happier cause this shit is *barf*

For 30 bucks this isn't a bad tool, but I still don't feel like the brakes are bled properly. Pedal feel requires some pumping to get firm, although it does look like all of the calipers have reacted to said pumping. Next time I go back I'll make sure to put some silicone paste on the threads of the bleeders to seal them. The PSM bleeders are hella wonky so I think all of the air this thing was sucking out was from the threads of the bleeders more than the lines themselves.

Welp there is a video of the day, its' like 10 minutes, if you don't want to listen with someone who has ADD ramble on about their car, just skip it or skim it. Up to you.

Ordered these blanks to replace my coin holders and they just so happen to be the perfect item to hold the air tank buttons for my front and rear air cups, I used a dremel to fish out some space for the support nut to fit (silver thing at the base of the cylinder) and then just drilled a hole at the center of that and used a stepper drill bit until I was able to slide the button in and twist it into place.

Seems to be super secure and money, I will be removing the dash again pretty soon, just a lot of other odds and ends before going down that long and shitty road since my interior is a complete disaster at the moment.

I am also delusionally tired so I'm going to end on that note, thank you for reading if you did. Check out the vids if you want. Always love feedback, shooting the shit with other people and so and such!

-Wayne

November 240 Tuesdays

2022-11-02T00:28:00.006-07:00

Made it out to 240 tuesdays today, took my camera with me to attempt to shoot in the dark. I think I have done a pretty decent job this time around although moving one of the dials I'm assuming this is how long the shutter is open or closed so I had it set more towards "tripod" speeds rather than action so some photos where I wasn't 100 percent perfectly still came out blurry. Stuff like this is the motivation I have needed to start working on my car again.

The last post I made I was griping about stuff not being here and my weekends being taken up being a father, so it's hard to make time for the car. It's not a priority by any means. But I do miss just being able to go for a drive every now and then.

I have an updated work video of where we're at with the car, so hopefully I'll edit that this week sometime and post it to my youtube. I don't want to gripe any further regarding the last video I posted because I finally got my shit back from the powder coating spot and I am not trying to start drama.

So without further adieu here are the pictures. These are unedited and untouched! I'm posting all of my blurry pictures too, I could tell some of them were blurry on my viewfinder but I still don't know much about photography or shutter speed settings. I locked my iso to 100 lowest and 3600 highest, anything higher and I've seen a lot of noise in the pictures and the a6000 goes up to like 12400 iso or some shit.

This dude in the benz showed up for 420 tuesdays lol

Purple s14, seen this one before but only had the rear wheels on. Finally had a chance to speak to the owner Nelson (instagram.com/unhappyangels14) had a little crowd here, will come back later to shoot with the hood closed.

Dan the man!

I kept trying to take pictures of fredo's (instagram.com/freshfredo) car and it's so hard to tell in the viewfinder if they're blurry or not. that shutter speed thing really had me not wanting to take more pics. Everything on the blog at it's current size will look normal but if you double click on any picture it will open it's unedited size and you will see it's blurry. I'm going to get crisp night pictures down!

Ally's (instagram.com/allyschassis) vert! I think I saw in her stories she's been looking at paint samples. if so very excited to see what she ends up picking.

I started screwing with the shutter settings while taking pictures of this dudes s13. I didn't catch his name or IG handle, but it slowly started to stabilize so I had confidence to keep shooting.

Digging the oni's or whatever wheels are on this coupe

I know what it's like to go to a meet and not see any pictures of your shit online from that meet LMAO so I tried to take pictures of everyones cars regardless of whatever build level they were. The point of the meet is for S-Chassis folks to come through and find their people!

Fredo and Nelson should park next to each other at the next meet. Zenki and Kouki both midnight purple. I like parking next to Hugo (instagram.com/stancenation.farruko) cause he's a comparable black zenki to my kouki.

I'm guessing someone with a truck backed up into this person, or they ran into a truck. At least the hood isn't damaged. But what a bummer, hope the owner eventually gets this fixed.

Ya'll motherfuckers are making me want underglow, and I got enough bullshit to deal with already.

Twisted Tea mascot car

To be fair FC's look like s13's so I fucks with it.

The man himself, stance nation bad bunny.

I deadass thought this was a zenki s14. But it was a two tone GTST or one of the GT designations.

Owned by shutter speed again, sorry Vic (instagram.com/viktor.s14)

I took the same photo twice, I felt the first one was blurry.

Moneyshot, of course it's fucking blurry.

Love the s13

Kim Kardashians s14. been all over instagram like paid ads for rick carruso. But seriously Henry's (instagram.com/fairladyz_) s14 came out dope

Lots of cool stuff, and more clean cars, I didn't catch most of the rest of the owners names, I'll edit this and eventually tag everyone else. Just wanted to get this online so those who wanted pictures of their cars that didn't come out blurry could download them.

till next time!

Carbon Fiber Gurney Flap for Kouki Wing

2022-10-17T20:12:00.002-07:00

Been a while, still waiting on some odds and ends and mainly motivation to start working on the car again. I'm in no rush to get it back together and with the holidays coming up I'm not trying to get in too deep with spending any cash and stretching myself thin into the new year.

Ordered a Greddy Diff cover, and a bunch of odds and ends since it's time to finally service my diff, it's been almost a month and nothing has been heard regarding my order. I'm bout one more cancellation away from just giving up on owning one.

Here are some bigger and hopefully detailed pictures of the Gurney Flap I got from some aero shop down in the Dominican Republic, took about 2 months for them to make, it's made off of a mold. I mean structurally it looks pretty good but there will be a lot of massaging on my part for it to fit the way I want it to fit.

Still not sure what my mounting solution is going to be for it, wish it kind of had some recessed mounting holes on the bottom. may have to nutcert the wing, I'm not going to strictly rely on double sided tape or rivets.

I tend to have a problem with getting into one project and starting another, I remember I tried putting digital climate control in the car while I was in the middle of re-doing the entire chassis harness. That was stupid, it only took 10 years for me to re-do it pin to pin and document the whole process since forums are a thing of the past. Even if information is there most of the time it's expired.

superawesomeracing splitter supports showed up as well. Just been too exhausted to try and meddle, was considering making an airdam for the splitter where it meets the bumper, I hate the little gap, but maybe I just need to nut up and finally shave my bumper down. May possibly end up buying two more of the splitter supports to go just slightly in front of the racebred brackets but still behind the bumper.

You know, aesthetics.

Been thinking a lot about starting to go back to the gym as well, don't think I'm going to be all gung ho, social media hoe about it. Comes in waves, just dislike the culture and the environment, but also don't like being 260. We'll see, I always get motivated and life and how I deal with it have it's own plans.

But other than that hopefully we're good to go soon.

Racebred Components Splitter.

2022-09-17T00:53:00.006-07:00

I saw my friend edgar had a splitter made for his car and he used some rx-7 brackets and retrofitted them to his Nissan Z32. I weighed some of the options from their site and figured the rx-7 brackets were the way to go. I originally offered to bring my car down for them to scan it or whatever they do to design their brackets and they just sent me instructions on how to get a custom splitter made.

I took a tracing of my bumper and mailed it off to RBC after finally biting the bullet to make this purchase, I also added a set of the tire spats. I just figured it would look cool and they're not too annoying of a modification. Below is the proof they sent me based on the tracing I did, I asked for them to make mine 2 inches, I think they do upwards of 4-5 inches for their splitter blades. Just keep in mind you'll most likely have to go pick your splitter up and they don't drill any pilot holes in custom splitters.

Unfortunately my little vlogging camera was not doing to hot taking pictures, I'll eventually have a video up by the end of the weekend. I'm too pooped to throw anything together tonight.

this image is not double posted, I took a slightly different picture from the same angle.

vibes and my inspiration. I'll probably do a tow hook on the shock tower too someday.

There is still some gaps between the bumper and the splitter so I ordered a pair of these and I'll mount them to the oem bumper support, towards the edges of the bumper but behind the bumper. I don't want exposed rods, the splitter isn't long enough for that.

https://professionalawesome.com/product/professional-awesome-splitter-support-rods

All in all the install just took a lot of time, a lot of eyeballing, removing and putting items back on the car to figure out where to bolt things in, where to drill stuff and even after making the holes. I had to use a router to elongate my holes on the splitter so I could have some up down play with the elevator bolts as well as left right play.

You'll see the video soon enough. Need sleep

-Wayne

Cluster Vent DIY or don't

2022-09-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

I had this footage of me modifying my cluster surround to add the vent for the digital climate controls cabin temperature sensor. Only to find out after I spent hours working on this that someone made a 3d printed insert I could've just put in my cluster surround instead. Now that I've kind of done the work I'm proud of how it came out for my first attempt at plastic welding so I'll just keep it as is since I've already spent the money and time.

I don't think it looks horrible or too out of place, and as always I'd like to try a different interior texture paint with the leather stamping method to eventually refinish this piece.

Slapped this quick video together for those curious about plastic welding because I know a lot of 240sx owners end up getting cracks in their gas tanks and this is how you would repair them. By plastic welding them shut. Or using bondo or whatever, I just feel plastic welding fuses the existing material back together vs adding a foreign material.

If you're not already subscribed to my youtube and could do me the small favor of subbing and dropping a like I'd appreciate it.

-Wayne

240 Tuesdays

2022-09-08T21:35:00.007-07:00

It's kind of cool that there is a 240 meet now, trying to make it more low key and 240 only so they stopped advertising when it goes down. I've got some photos from the last 3 months that I've gone, they're not in any chronological order, consider this a photo dump. I wanted to make a little vlog but it was my first time shooting with my new Sony EV-1. Not familiar with how shallow it shoots, it's almost like having a 50mm lense built into it or something in between a 30 and a 50. anyway here are the pics, I'll probably drop a comment or something on the pics as I go down the list here.

First I'll just get pictures of my car out of the way, since this is my blog, my buddy Matt Eugenio www.instagram.com/thedrivingemotions/ snapped these photos of my car about 3 months ago. I always tell myself to bring my a6000 with me but I'm no photographer and I get all mad when I get home and a decent amt of the photos got shit on by autofocus lol. So I just let the photog peeps that come out and take pics.

Matt loves taking vertical photos, plus everyone is posting photos like this on social media again thanks to tik tok, instagram stories, reels, yada yada.

hard to think that my car basically has been unchanged since 2013.

I'm gonna have to raise the car up a tad when I get the splitter installed.

I also have quite the collection of stickers on my rear quarter window, it eventually just started as one or two, to really give my homies their roses. Everything has some kind of sentimental value. Especially if you've seen the Nisei sticker on the back of my rear windshield.

The BET sticker at the top is a tribute to our friend Damien Payne who took his own life, I have lost more friends than I would like to in this lifetime to their own demons, so now he's watching over our shoulders in a way. The voting sticker is self explanatory, and some recent additions from benson hsu. Need a NOB sticker as my car is inspired by Nobutero Tanaguchi, aka No One Better.

Raymond, Me, Damien

I always get in my feelings about having the same wheels on my car, wondering how other people can afford to just have 4-6k liquid to keep changing their shit up or have multiple pairs of wheels. But at the end of the day, this is a popular wheel, I've yet to run into another car with the same specs I have straight from weds. I am the original owner and don't really see myself ever offloading them. I do wish I could run a wider tire up front however.

It was cool seeing this car outside of Wekfest LA that recently occured. I want to say this is a vertex kit and fenders on this car but I could be wrong. I don't think they made a lang variation for the zenki like they did the kouki. Love the carbon hood with the accent for the scoop. This is a full on drift car, think the owner recently got it painted, has a cool exhaust haha!

I didn't know who's car this was, there was a whole little tailgate crew in front of the car and I didn't want to disturb anyone to get better pics, turns out the woman sitting on the hood owns it and drifts it, pretty cool.

This dude has come out a few times, he just got his car painted, and blew up the front bumper too. I feel his pain. Hate that this came out blurry. Shit looked dope!

Nice white hatch with a black roof, can't go wrong

Nice root beer brown s13 on Minervas i've seen roll out with this crew from my hometown Fontana. His center caps are red, pretty unique. These are probably the two photos out of the bunch I would've liked to edit. The pearl was popping under this light.

This is Marco's dog, he has air suspension. Marco is the organizer of the 240 tuesdays meet

These are Bener's pups, he has a dope ass s13 on Blitz 03's dude has these dogs with him almost all the time

Another Random Pup

The last 240 tuesday my car made it out to before the teardown.

More doggies!

was dope this car showed up, but a lot of non nissans started to blow up the spot since the last meet my car made it out to.While I appreciate the shit out of this car, we kinda want to keep it to just s-chassis so it doesn't get shut down.

Ending the post with some puppy love!

it's 1:48am enjoy

2022-09-05T02:12:00.004-07:00

Sup, just going to do a random photo dump today, semi related to the video above, but not really.

Don't use a sledge hammer to knock your ball joints' loose kids... if I can't rethread this, I'm replacing a ball joint which sucks even more. I threaded the nut on here as well, but halfway and bashed it with the hammer. So I think the nut is toast too haha.

The Driftworks C2 in all of it's glory with the stanceparts air cup kit, this was very necessary. Gotta put some holes in the shock tower hosings to run the air hose.

Normally how most installs go, from a huge bag of parts to... installed

Honestly bless Stanceparts for this. I like big pictures

Don't really know how important this is or where I'm supposed to mount it, the good news is, it was broken, brand new in box lol.

I figure once I sort out my ball joint issue on the other side and assemble at least 1 drum brake then I'll be able to break this axle nut loose, since I decided to be Mr. One Side At a Time.

I'm going to hit this haggard ugly ass wheel hub with a wirebrush and some spraypaint. Even if it never sees the light of day again. This is gross.

This was really a big brain move for me. Pro shop noble bumper buddies with a quick latch drilled into it.

EnglishTune dipstick hold down - https://www.english-tune.com/product/dipstick-hold-down

Put my valve cover dressing back on

Finally got OEM bolts for this instead of the harbor freight special I originally had that rusted out.

Soon, had to mock it up 1 time

Yeah, this is the move, just wait till the gurney flap arrives too.

Thanks for tuning in.

Laundry List of things to do

2022-08-30T01:32:00.009-07:00

Getting a bunch of modifications for your car sounds like a great idea until you're slaving away for hours installing said modifications instead of driving the car.

I'll tell you I'm the first to admit that I neglect this car. I need to replace all of the major oil seals on the engine and the transmission. And from the looks of things this weekend, the diff needs to be serviced as well.

But here is the car with it's cover on after another 8 hour day of trying to accomplish a lot.

Overview of my current workload with the car

Braking system refresh

New fluid (Motul 600?)
new front pads
new rear rotors and calipers and pads
powdercoat rear calipers, front calipers, and front rotor hats
stainless rear lines
r33 e-brake cables
z1 motorsports anchor bolt
all new hardware for the rear drum assemblies

Drivetrain refresh

Remove JIC suspension
Install Driftworks C2 coilover suspension with stanceworks air cup kit
Install airtank and wiring
add cusco quick releases to rear and front strut tower bars
Electric Power Steering conversion

Body Work

make mounting hole adjustments for hood pins
refresh and repaint front upper core support
paint new masa motorsports hood, bn sports fenders, vertex sideskirts, vertex front bumper and rear.
Paint Protection Film application
install racebred components front splitter

Electrical Work

Relocating fusible link from dashboard fuse panel to trunk using 10g tefzel wire
installing new fusebox under dash
wiring up electrical power steering unit
wiring up air suspension tank and controls
wiring up disco corner lights and turn signals from shota rock
wiring up hid headlights

Plumbing

Installing porsche 911/boxter a/c condenser currently evaluating fan options would prefer brushless progressive load so oem wiring can be utilized. Will be controlled by the aircon system.
creating an air dam for the condenser unit

After writing it all down, I didn't realize how much of an undertaking or burden I had created for myself, on top of collecting parts here and there to build an sr20det / ve hybrid engine as a back burner project.

There is just so much more to do. I take whatever little free time I have to accomplish the work, obviously a lift and an extra hand would make things go faster. However the catch 22 with getting things done fast is that it will normally bite you in the ass more than just taking your time. The car has been on hiatus since 2015 and barely made a reappearance in 2019 with 2022 being the most active year for the car yet.

So being down for a few months isn't going to kill me, and it's just a realization that there are a lot of small things I need to take care of general maintenance wise. While performing some of the work currently we run into some setbacks, but that's always going to be a the result of neglecting a car. I'm just thankful at least the horrible suspension clank will finally be making it's exit from my life and the car will be on a potentially more dialed in setup with the new coil overs. It was time to retire the jics.

Either way sorry for the wall of text, enjoy the video as it's all over the place.

Saturday Scoots, Royal Origin / Kuruma / 90's forever / OC Product Photos. And secret Chino Hills Meet

2022-07-24T01:13:00.002-07:00

I am by far not the blogger you remember, I am not a photographer so I am posting unedited shots only. Just simply an old dude hanging out with other old dudes seeing what the youth is up to and how much I can tolerate driving a sports car without air conditioning on an 84 degree day down to Orange County, CA

I made it down to OC Product Photos which is right around the corner from my Therapist's Office, such a nostalgic drive lol. Thankfully I'm in a much better place mentally than I was in 2019 so I haven't visited her in quite some time. But anyway enough of that, let's get into the car photos. I guess I'm going to post what I took pictures of and if I have something to say I'll say it.

This is Marlon's car from City Garage Customs. I have not personally met or spoke to him, this is the second time I've seen the car in person. A lot of my mutuals know him, seems like a cool dude. I absolutely love this car. Deep 90's / 00's Wheels that aren't step lipped, fender arches, big fat intercooler. I don't know enough about these big body sedans, I always call them Chasers, sometimes they can be Tourers. I'm an S Chassis nerd so I don't know all of the body codes and such, I just know these look damn good when done right and not a lot needs to be done to them imo. So forgive me if this isn't a chaser lol.

I've seen this car getting built by a mutual of my homie Rodney, don't know the owners name, met him today but literally will take meeting him and hearing his name like 10 more times before I remember it. I like his car, not a huge fan of his rear overfenders, but it's what he likes and that's ALL that matters.

We've exchanged dm's here and there, it's got a monster RB25 build under the hood and has been in more rap videos than my car. So tons more street cred than me! Period correct Volks, overall solid car. I dig it.

Joeys is300 wagon, I remember he was on the hunt for one of these for years, I mean YEARS. So glad he finally found one, hasn't gone apeshit modding it compared to his Q45 (which I would like to see a lot more) I dig it man, these are great cars. I think his Honda Pilot pretty much has been his default rig for as long as I known him, funny how I forget he has so many damn cars.

I'm dyslexic, I spent like 10 minutes looking for JP's instagram, because it's JJP so the 2nd J is silent as far as my brain is concerned. I'm not sure if his actual name is Jeff, most people who put El Jefe as their name usually go by Jeff and think they're clever... we're onto you. We're ig / biking mutuals, was nice to see you again buddy. But this is proof as I mentioned before unless I hear your name 10 times I'll call you what I think your name is, so enjoy this candid picture of Zaddy Jeff. LOL

This thing is cool, I honestly can't tell you why it's cool. I'm guessing it's some kind of skyline or toyota celica. I didn't really get the panties off of this one so I don't really know what it is in and out. I just know it's an old car with some choice stickers on it, some watanabes and they really like boss coffee products. (Which I've never had btw, not enough coffee for a junky like myself)

This thing was cool, I don't know shit about BMW's I'm guessing this is like an e30 or something. It's on work Emitz I think haha look at me trying to sound like I know what i'm talking about. I honestly don't know what wheels these are but they work. There were quite a few euro cars with jdm wheels that just worked. I just didn't take pictures of everything because I wanted to post my pics on instagram, but since I do the whole artsy fartsy white frames for "aesthetics" it fucking takes forever and fills up my one drive with both pics so I gotta go back and delete them when I post them.

Not that you gave a shit, you're just here looking to see if I took a picture of your car I'm sure! j/k but not really.

There are no pics I could take of this benz to do it justice, this thing was hard as hell. The TE's were two different colors too, it was like this matt bronze on the faces but the lips were like a polished bronze. Weird, they just worked with this cars color.

Big man on campus, I was following the body work on this s13 recently, came out pretty good. I didn't get all up in his shit to check the quality of the paint but definitely not your typical freshly painted orange peel ridden car you'd see 10 years ago. The owners name is Franco I believe, and was painted by this young cat I hit up to paint my kouki wing. Wanted to see him work his magic but unfortunately for him and luckily for me. My brother finally got this car he's been working on for the last year finished so I can bug him to paint my shit.

The man, the myth, the legend. Jay Cray, I swear to god I have run into this dude like 3-4 times in my life due to our mutuals and everytime he always has some crazy ass car. Feels like yesterday we were under the LA Bridges at 1 in the morning taking picture of whatever the fuck he was driving then, some kind of lexus. Then the TC or LC or whatever came out and he modded the ears off of that, then the NSX Dropped and he dropped that car faster than... I really don't have anything witty to say

I'm just glad I finally got to see one of these in person, and it's a hybrid. I dunno how that even works but shits cool. Massive fucking carbon brakes. Wish they would've made the e-brake a little more attractive rather than a dinky ass caliper.

This is Peters S13, I'm pretty sure his girlfriend brought a snake to the last car meet I went to. That was... different, pretty cool. I'm sure riding in an s-chassis without a/c is like being in a geranium anyway haha! I dig the car, really like the rear wheels too ;)

This is Alberto's S13, my brothers name is Roberto, so this is an easy name to remember, he's also got some gnarly hair so that makes it easier to remember him haha.

Dan the man! 2 s14's I imagine if I owned 2 240's my cars would be exactly the same, stock. Because who can afford to own and mod 2 s14's let alone s-chassis these days?

Lights Camera Action Hugo's s14 is so nice. OEM Rears, Chargespeed fronts, I believe JDM Navan front bumper, slammed all to shit (it's on air, but he never airs the car up unless he works on it.) Our paint would look extremely similar if I bothered to wax my car. I just can't be bothered with it, something about spending 5-6 hours detailing a black car in a world where pollen exists.

Always nice seeing Kognition stuff, these wings create crazy downforce. He retired making wings and makes watches now, good for him. Forget the name of the owner of the car, 2nd time meeting him lol.

This is proof I am no photographer, I had my camera set to 1.4 AP and used autofocus, so the focus put the window frame as the subject and bokeh'd the interior I was trying to shoot LMAO!

I still had my 16mm lense on across the parking lot trying to capture this shit, static problems, dude came up the driveway and made his front bumper disappear. It was nice seeing everyone being so supportive and helping him get his car back together.

I'm telling you I really don't take pictures of my own shit when I go to meets. I already don't like showing up with the front bumpers paint in the condition it's in. Sometimes I forget what running 265's up front did to my car when I see the 245's on there now and constantly want to square my sidewalls up. Maybe I should've bought 9 1/2 inch wide front wheels instead of 10's. Either way this is the price I paid for lip length.

More of Hugo's s14. It's so simple, yet so good. Really making me considering actually getting tint and ripping all of my stickers off.

I don't know if this dude is running a bash bar, if his bumper is held up by hopes and dreams and 14 zipties. All I know is I never want to have the feeling of driving somewhere and the shame of driving over my own front bumper going through a parking lot ever again.

For reference... you will never catch me riding dirty again, I bought a core support that week.

Took a couple more pics of Jay's NSX man this thing is so cool. It's not a huge car at all, this is probably why I am so bent over the new Civic Type R and Acura Integra. How can the same company who designed this be responsible for all of those ugly children?

Anyway, did my Irish Goodbye and got invited to check out this meet in Chino Hills, CA. I guess the location was "discreet" but there was a whole fucking parking lot of cars, I don't really know how to take night pictures. So I set my camera to Jesus Take the Wheel and this is what I was able to snap.

Love this

Ivans s14 on Air and the hottest hotboi wheels right now. Fresh paint, tinted windows, green underglow. This is how simple it is to build a good looking s14. It's really not that hard, people be doing the most. Hi, I'm people.

It was really cool seeing this s14, or Nissan Maxima out in the wild. Crazy, for legal reasons I cannot confirm nor deny this is what you think it is. I was unable to speak with the owner to ask what it registered as.

Nissan Hard body, winning if there is an sr20 under there. Or something else cool.

Green Z, what's not to like.

City Girls Up!

Hey let me stand in the light while your photo is processing, cool? cool.

That's all, was a nice little tea spot which I cannot name because that would expose the spot. All in all was cool nobody burned the spot. I saw an is250 there mad max style with no front fenders, a tire rack with 2 wheels on the roof and bozoku exhaust pipes about 4 feet tall off the back of it.

And it makes me even more thankful I don't live anywhere close to the fucking 909 or 951 anymore. I just don't understand some of the dumb shit people do with their cars, but again to each their own.

By the time I got home and off the freeway I heard a horrible vibrating noise in my engine bay which only occured when the car wasn't under load. So I was thinking maybe my clutch is telling me it's closing time. Who knows, luckily my tower brace just came a little loose and was rubbing against my valve cover causing the vibrating noise.

I threw my car cover on and called it a night and here I am posting this blog because I figured this would be way better than spending an hour editing all of these photos and making 4 different ig posts for 8 likes.

-Wayne

I need to stop buying stuff v. 2022

2022-04-26T04:41:00.232-07:00

I've started so many mini projects on my s14 it's hard to keep count. I figured they would all make for great blog posts, youtube videos, etc. I just recently had my adobe creative cloud license revoked for the time being so I can't really edit any video footage.

Not that I had anything crazy in store, along with parts for projects I've bought tools, storage for those tools, and materials to use those tools on.

It all started with me buying a double din headunit...

The headunit was fairly cheap, I also ended up getting a stealth am/fm antenna for the car which I shoved up by the roofskin in between the headliner. Works awesome, I don't even remember having am/fm radio in the car previously. It also came with a little backup camera (which is kind of ugly, I may get a different one) and I thought that would be cool to hook it up. Not that I need it, but putting a front and rear camera on the car to see how close I am to curbing my front lip or exhaust would be rad.

Only one problem, the reverse cam is activated by the reverse light in the car. Which for years has never worked, swapped my engine and changed the sensor pigtails to match my lower harness. To no avail, reverse light didn't work. I swapped the reverse light switch in the transmission when I installed this radio. Confirmed it should be triggering the reverse lights to come on, still no reverse lights.

I ended up pulling the dashboard off. That's when the rabbit hole of hell started.

I figured while the dash is off let me go around and see how much it would cost to have it refinished... cheapest I was quoted was 2500 dollars and a 4 month lead time. The other shop I spoke to the owner and he straight up said, just buy a new one, it would be cheaper than having me work on this.

Found this video from polyvance on restoring a dashboard, I've seen many other people attempt to do this on zilvia and other places, using baking soda, bondo, and a host of other items. The worst is most of those people when they're done, they just "flock" the dash. Flocking or wrapping in suede and not re-doing every other panel is just off putting to me. To each his own. I bought everything to restore my dash and had started that project. I'm in no rush to get the car back together. I also saw another cool video from Kalvin Malli which was quite the tease, around 6:14 they talk about restoring a dashboard and 2 seconds later it's magically repaired and they don't ever revisit it lmao. I just dm'ed him on IG and he said it looks great, but it's sticky as hell and hard to clean. They raffled the car off so not his problem anymore lol.

My dash is sitting on my balcony basking in the sun as I continue to grind out all of the cracks on it, while also re-wiring my entire digital climate control setup so I could refresh the how-to for that. The DCC project lasted a lot longer than I anticipated because I deep dove on that and if you can see I am currently in the middle of another fabrication project. Oh the joys of having high functioning ADHD.

In the middle of the dash restore project, this popped up. Sigh, I had to text Johnny directly instead of waiting for him to check his IG DM's to snatch this up. He posted the interior of this car for sale and every single piece sold the same day. I honestly wouldn't of minded the door panels as well but I wasn't trying to push my financial luck given all of the other random things I've purchased.

So yeah dcc install, I finally got a new in-cabin temp sensor, and then on a whim bought a rhd s14 cluster surround from a car that had dcc so I could retrofit the vent into my s14 cluster surround as seen in the first dashboard photo!

While I had the dash out to troubleshoot the reverse light not working in my car I discovered that my car was missing the pin in the super multiple junction that comes back from the lower harness to the smj that closes the circuit to trigger the reverse lights. Needless to say it took me about 1-2 weeks about an hour a day to pinpoint what the issue was. The whole DCC debacle came after. While all of this shit was apart I figured it was a good opportunity to replace my haggard fusebox since I'm not going to be in the realm of PDM anytime soon. And everyone who has installed one refuses to even talk about putting air conditioning on one LOL.

Fun Fact I haven't labled a damn thing on my previous fusebox relocation. Other than ignition relay, headlight relay, and air conditioning relays I dunno whats going to that box. So I got this 12 position box to replace the one in my car. It didn't really come with any instructions, just these cool stickers. I don't think I'll have to wire up that negative terminal, but we shall see. Also contemplating leaving this where my passenger side airbag was or shoving it in my glovebox so I don't have to agitate my dashboard to access it.

Lets see what else did poppa spend money on. Oh that's right. I had been looking into aircups for I dunno like 3-4 years. I saw fortune auto had a nice set, not sure if they were also utilizing the stanceparts aircups. All I know is their setup was about 4 grand and magically sold out during the pandemic.

Driftworks however had a full coilover set, aircups front and rear controller for 2100 shipped to me. I've had JIC FLT-A2's on the car the entire time I've owned it. One of the upper pillow mounts on the driver side shit the bed quite some time ago and I don't know what size part I need to replace the upper pillow ball mount. Either way JIC doesn't respond to their emails unless you drive a Porsche.

Anyway super stoked to begin getting this installed, and guess what, since the dashboard is apart I can install the tank and do all of the wiring before actually installing the suspension.

Got a z32 rear brake conversion, ordered new shoes and hardware from Z1 peformance, brake master and new lines and e-brake conversion lines from GKTech as well as air diverters for the top of my kouki headlights. And some dope ass rotors from Disk Brakes Australia.

Hrm, what else, bought a fixer upper s15 steering wheel and column, figured if the column is similar to the s14 steering column I can use it to fabricate an electric steering column conversion. In case Zilvia takes a shit again I'm just using the following document as reference.

I purchased the two following items, a potentiometer and a chevy equinox electric steering motor, ecu and plugs. Part number 991-22303-1

I have a friend who has his own metal works company so I'll most likely reach out to him for the fabrication work. I want to make the steering shaft match oem as much as possible. I am also going to try and relocate the steering control box just to give a little more clearance by my pedals. The other guy who put this in an s14 said he didn't even notice. I just want the option to clock this in a manner that makes sense for me and if I ever need to service it, I can simply swap the motor on the left rather than re-fabricate an entire column again. The electric aspect of things seems to of not been mentioned in the install I saw, but countless others have apparently been utilizing this setup and it's great.

This means I get to eliminate the power steering pump, power steering cooler, I get to depower the rack and just eliminate all fluids in it and just fill it with grease. Should be fun!

Also picked up a replacement steering cover for the s15 wheel, so I'll be sewing that on. Doesn't seem too hard. I just really don't like any aftermarket steering wheels besides the classic nardi wheels.

Anyway there are a lot of tools and a lot of random things I've purchased to work on all of these little projects, and the costs are constantly adding up. I try not to pay too much attention to it but I don't want to end up with a huge credit note either. I've been relatively purchasing things that are cheap.

The s15 steering wheel, column, etc was about 298 shipped, the potentiometer was 68 shipped and the power steering unit above was 145. The deals are there you just gotta look for them.

I like cheap with a side of elbow grease.

Oh yeah, I got a roof wing, that's cool. Apparently it's cheaper to buy certain aero parts from japan instead of from the states. Capitalism baby! Origin Lab V2 carbon roof wing for 205 bucks, was about 130 shipping, but it also showed up in 5 days.

Anyway I'll continue chipping away at my projects and will provide some updated blog posts as we go through all of it. Maybe or maybe not there will be some accompanying youtube content to go with it or even some twitch streams.

My digital climate control install 12 years later revisited just kind of ignited me to not do things half assed anymore. I'm still laughing that after writing that holier than thou how to, that I misread my own pinout and that's why my mode door motor was always operating backwards.

There's a lot of people doing cool stuff in the s-chassis space. I obviously am leaving out so many other random things I've added to my project list, probably should make a whiteboard lmao.

Anyway thanks for reading. ttys - Wayne

Refreshing the S14 Digital Climate Control

2022-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

The S14 Digital Climate control, is definitely a cool piece to have if you have a non gutted s-chassis and didn't decide to run gauges in your center vents like most people did in the 90's and early 20000's.

I think one of the biggest gripes about this piece is that it does not match the color of the center vent panel at all, it's a completely different shade of gray. I am not sure why the manufacturer Zexel did this. But I tried various things to try and spruce up my unit and I think it came out pretty good. Just came at a cost of a lot of trial and error.

It's mentioned in the Climate Control How To but this is what I did to re-seat the buttons on the unit as it's 25 year old plastic and they will break.

First mistake I made was trying to mask the buttons with painters tape and taking an xacto knife trying to mask the icons. I ended up gouging all of the buttons, This ultimately caused me to buy a second unit for 50 bucks on ebay to have as parts.

Soooooo that sucked, I contemplated having stickers made to put over the buttons. But because it's a one off job and my buddy was honest and said they probably wont be great but it's doable. I figured since we've already got a spare unit, lets see how far we can abuse my original one.

At least I got to paint the surround and that came out pretty good, but it really highlighted how shitty the buttons looked.

My next bright idea was to try and spray the paint into a dish and try to paint it on with a brush... That went horribly lmao.

here is the one I've been working on, on top and the spare unit on the bottom. Really not sure what to do at this point about the buttons, the bezel came out pretty good, I ended up taking an 80 grit sanding block to get the bulk of the paint off and to see how far down I could go on the buttons before the buttons went completely white on me. I guess the way they were made it's two colors all the way through. So you can sand to your hearts content. I went in with 120 grit after, and then 1000 grit to smooth them out.

I tried a matte clear, so it still looked like "plastic" but it was ungodly sticky.

I mean the buttons looked a lot better but seriously felt like the unit was dipped in honey. Maybe it takes a really long time for the matte clear to flash.

So I sanded the unit down again, this time I slowly did light mists of the matte black paint and etched the paint off of the letters on all of the buttons. It was going great, I now needed to fill in all of the letters. So I bought some nail enamel, turns out whatever is in nail enable doesn't play nice with whatever is in this interior paint and it started to eat it. So I sanded all of the buttons down, AGAIN. And just tried to put gloss nail enamel.

It's not perfect, and I guess I was striving to make it that. It still has a weathered look to it, but at least it matches the center vent panel a lot more now.

the finished one is on the bottom here

this is the stock gray against the center vent panel. Almost has a hint of brown in it.

here is the final product.

I would've liked the panel and the buttons texture to match, but I guess with the lcd screen it kinda goes with the buttons being darker and more of a shiny plastic while the surround is more in line with the color of the center vent panel.

I dig it, most people won't even notice something like this let alone the fact the digital climate control isn't an oem part in the US.

It's more of a IYKYK mod.

S14 Digital Climate Control 2022 Redux

2022-03-30T18:05:00.511-07:00

Introduction

Hello,

So you wanna install one of these. I'll try to be the voice of reason in 2022 and tell you it's probably not even worth it. 10-15 years ago, heck yeah go for it.

But if you're insistent like myself, I'll give you all of the tools needed to get the job done.

It's been a while since I've installed this. 12 years in fact. I've contemplated making youtube videos but to be honest I am ungodly lazy. This blog post at this point is more of a diary for me as well as a how-to because if I ever have to troubleshoot this crap again I know that I've unnecessarily over-documented this install for the final time.

I will say that, I originally followed the write up here: chuonthis s14 dcc write-up I don't want to plagiarize and flat out copy the write up, but I'm going to stage the information very similarly.

I have it available in PDF format and have uploaded it here in case their website ever goes down. I recommend saving that.

Other Useful Documents. I took the liberty of OCR Scanning the manuals and uploading them if you need them.

S14 JDM/UKDM FSM which you can download here,
S14 JDM/UKDM HA (Heat and Air) section for you to download here.
S14 USDM HA (Heat and Air) for download here.

I want to make sure you don't make the same mistakes I did while installing this.

Note: If you want to do live testing of your wiring section by section, you'll need to wire up Pin number 11, 12, and 20 following the guide below.

Realistic Expectations

While this photo looks bad, expect the buttons on these units to be broken. And if they're not, expect the price of the goods to be higher, either/or there is a solution for the lack of quality available. This is what I did to repair mine

Recommended Tools

A terminal removal tool. I just use a really long jewel flathead screwdriver.
Wire Stripper of some sort
Wire Crimper
Electric tape

What you should purchase

Ideally you want to buy something like the photo below. Almost every OEM part you can buy for an s-chassis is discontinued. Some of the alternative Maxima and Altima sensors suggested have also become harder to come by due to those models having their parts discontinued.

If you buy one of these units and you're unable to source the sub-harness with the pigtails. An alternative is to buy new connectors and wire terminals. I found this website https://connectorexperts.com and it looks like they have the plugs on their site.

CET2031 for the 20 pin plug

CET1682 for the 16 pin plug

TERM432 for the terminals that go inside of the plug you'll need roughly 8 of them they're sold only in packs of 10 (most wires you can just re-pin, for any additional wires this should sort you out)

Note: If you're not running the airbag system the airbag control unit is under the rear passenger seats. Those pin's will fit. That's where I sourced two pinned flying leads for the air-mix motor.

For replacement led lights for the digital climate control unit I bought NEO5-NWHP: 5mm NEO5-xHP Natural White from SuperBrightLeds you will need to trim the little locking hooks on them to actually get them to turn and lock into place. I was also unable to use any screwdriver I owned to lock them in place. Just an fyi, there is a positive and negative terminal so if your lights don't come on just take the bulbs out and rotate them 180 degrees clockwise and re-seat them.

Wiring

I can't really remember where in the fsm the wiring descriptions are. Most folks who have scanned them never upload those pages, or the super multiple junction pinouts. Either way I will just say B = Black always and L = Blue

Also I will reference plugs using both their JDM/UKDM and USDM counterparts so if you're using the plug location guides posted just a bit down from here. It will make a little more sense where you're looking.

I've revamped the pinout guide including a color guide. I recommend checking things pin to pin anyway you can download the PDF Here of the charts below

I also want to say since we're focused on doing a USDM to JDM Climate Control swap here. I kept the wiring chart centric to the jdm sub harness plugs. So while the abbreviations below still work I didn't want to confuse anyone by using the plug names for the USDM plugs since they're named different in the JDM/UKDM FSM. I couldn't imagine how frustrating that would be 🙄

FS = Fan Switch (M35 referred to as M33 in the JDM/UKDM FSM for LHD)
BM = Blower Motor (M54 referred to as M53 in the JDM/UKDM FSM for LHD)
ICS = In Cabin Sensor / In-Vehicle Sensor (M26)
SS = Sunload Sensor (M46)
FCA = Fan Control Amp (M50)
AMDM = Air Mix Door Motor (M33 referred to as M27 in the JDM/UKDM FSM for LHD )

circuit diagrams side by side

You need to remove your dash

Others will say it's not necessary, one way or another it's gonna come off. I'm just keeping it real. This is also the best way to troubleshoot the system before you consider it completed. Good opportunity to clean everything under there too, lots of dust bunnies in here. *barf* The video below is probably the best how-to I found.

Component locations

Here are the sensor or component locations next to each other. Pay attention to the component name/numbers as they will be referenced throughout this write up. I will try to post reference pictures again in each section.

Sensors

Sunload Sensor

I'm just going to start out by linking this. If you can get this thing off and put it back after drilling a hole in it. and then pressing your sensor in. You deserve an award, the sunload sensor has a little retaining clip on it to help it snap into place. So be mindful how big of a hole you put in your defrost vent. You'll see below on the dashboard there is already a pre-cut hole you can run this through. (Altima Part Number 27721-0E000). The one I have pictured is the S-Chassis sunload sensor.

The sunload sensor wiring for this install is as follows.

(M31 JDM/UKDM 16pin) pin #26 OR to (M46 JDM/UKDM) pin #1
(M31 JDM/UKDM 16pin) pin #29 B/Y to (M46 JDM/UKDM) pin #2

Note: Sensor Grounds for M46, M26, and E46 will meet at M31(16pin) pin #29

Ambient Temp Sensor

Just pointing this out the USDM S14 has an ambient temperature sensor in the engine bay already. The one installed is E36 pictured below. It cannot be used or utilized. It's ground to the engine and it has a L/W wire that goes through the driver side firewall body harness grommet, to the super multiple junction M9/E101 that runs to the M63/F3 plug at pin 29. It contributes to the control of your car's idle based on ambient engine bay temps. You need both wires to make it back to the DCC unit.

E36 right by the hood latch is the USDM Ambient Temp Sensor.

The Ambient Temp sensor wiring for this install goes as follows.

(M31 JDM/UKDM 16pin) pin #34 OR/B to (E46 JDM/UKDM) pin #1
(M31 JDM/UKDM 16pin) pin #29 B/Y to (E46 JDM/UKDM) pin #2

Note: Sensor Grounds for M46, M26, and E46 will meet at M31(16pin) pin #29

This pigtail harness from wiring specialties should fit this sensor

I have mine mounted just outside of the engine bay. I'm just referencing fsm colors, the wires can be any color you want as long as you know what pin is which color.

In-Cabin / In-Vehicle Temperature Sensor

(M31 JDM/UKDM 16pin) pin #25* OR/L to (M26 JDM/UKDM) pin #1
(M31 JDM/UKDM 16pin) pin #29* B/Y to (M26 JDM/UKDM) pin #2

Note: Sensor Grounds for M46, M26, and E46 will meet at M31(16pin) pin #29

Altima Part 27720-31U00 pretty sure I bought the last one in america

For the in-cabin air temperature sensor I originally just taped it down where the cruise control switch would go in our cars since I don't have cruise control. I purchased a jdm cluster surround with the sensor after buying a brand new oem altima sensor as well. Just to have options. I'm going to look into possibly retrofitting the sensor here so it looks oem.

I will try to provide some more information as I progress on this one about getting a hose that fits the sensor as well. I purchased the suggested aspirator (Altima, Pathfinder part number : 27726-0P000)

Will probably make an entirely different blog post documenting how I plan on retrofitting this vent.

(a) BI-Level Door Motor***

* This is speculative at this time. My pinout chart contains the original recommended wiring.

TLDR Original pinout is up top, reversed pinout was suggested by another zilvia member right below.

(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #2 R/B to (M77 USDM) pin #19 LG/W
(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #1 R/Y to (M77 USDM) pin #18 PU

(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #1 R/B to (M77 USDM) pin #19 LG/W
(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #2 R/Y to (M77 USDM) pin #18 PU

This one seems to be a hot topic that was commented on multiple times on Zilvia. And looking at the FSM's side to side, I'm not seeing what everyone else is seeing. It looks like the wiring is spot on. However, the only logic I have for this particular item is the JDM BI-Level is on the left side of the cabin and the USDM one is on the right side. So maybe it has to be wired backwards? Doesn't make sense to me.

(b) M31(20) pin #9 Fan Control Amplifier

(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #9 branches off to pin #1 on both M50 (FCA) and M53
(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #10 L/Y to (M50 JDM/UKDM) pin #2
(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #20 B to (M50 JDM/UKDM) pin #3 and pin #17 (M77 USDM)

Depending on where you sourced the fan control amp and pigtail from your wires may not match any FSM colors so I'm only referencing the JDM/UKDM chart and pin numbers here. As long as Point A goes to B and C you're gucci.

reminder: all fsm pinouts are from the front of the plug

M50 Fan Control Amp

(c) M31(20) pin #16 IGN (+FAN)

(d) M31(20) pin #11 Fused Battery Power

The OR/G wire here needs to be on a 12V source with a 7.5A fuse. The other guide had success running this to the white wire from the ignition with an inline fuse. I have a fusebox in my passenger side airbag area so I just ran fused power from there. If memory serves me correctly this saves whatever your settings are on the dcc.

I wouldn't recommend piggy backing off of the stereo wiring personally. Every car is different, would hate chasing down a blown fuse in the back of the headunit, kick panel, etc.

(e) M31(20) pin #14 -ILLumination

The JDM S14 does not have an interior dimmer switch like the USDM model. -ILL is ground out on the DCC Unit. For the record I did attempt to wire up +ILL and -ILL and the lights of the climate control will not turn on. #mythbusted 🤯

Repin (M77 USDM) pin #15 R/L to (M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #13 R/L
(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #14 B should be joined to (M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #20*

*In the event pin #14 is not joined to pin #20 on your sub-harness, make sure it is. That pin is covered in (b) it's your main ground. The R/Y wire left over from (M77 USDM) pin #16 you can just tape it off and secure it.

The blank yellow square on M31 is pin #20 ground

I also came to realize that that bulbs have a positive and negative terminal. I did a video testing my unit and the lights weren't turning on and it didn't make any sense since there were no possible breaks in the unit circuit wise, simply taking the bulbs out and clocking them 180 degrees and re-seating them resolved my issue. This was mentioned earlier, but we'll bring it up again.

(f) M31(20) pin #17 Water Temp

With your dashboard removed the wires from your hvac and ecu are running right under where your defrost vent is, if you remove some of that protective tape you should be able to access them. The solid yellow wire in here should be running to your gauge cluster and your ecu plug. If you're unsure poke it with a sewing needle and put your multimeter tip on said needle. Take your F3 plug loose and tap the M63 connector pin 28 to check for continuity, but this is the only yellow wire in this bunch.

Note: There is a yellow wire on plug M77 from the usdm climate control. That is covered in section (h)

Here is where I tapped the yellow wire to the guage cluster. Next to it is the L/W for #16.

(g) Mode Door Motor M34

Below is the JDM and USDM layout of the respective climate control units and the mode door motor plug

We're strictly going to reference M31 from the JDM FSM picture on the left going to M34 Mode Door Motor. On the right rather than M76/M77 because you're combining some of these wires.

MODE 1: (M31 16pin) pin #21 L to (M34 USDM) pin #5 L/B
MODE 2: (M31 16pin) pin #30 L/W wire branches out to (M34 USDM) pin #3 L/R and #6 L
MODE 3: (M31 16pin) pin #22 L/R wire branches out to (M34 USDM) on pin #1 L/O and #4 L/W
MODE 4: (M31 16pin) pin #31 L/B to (M34 USDM) pin #2 L/Y

Reversing the polarity on the mode door motor, is that necessary?

TLDR

(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #5 G/Y to (M76 USDM) pin #7 G/OR
(M31 JDM/UKDM 20pin) pin #6 G to (M76 USDM) pin #8 G/Y

If you care to read...

I want you to pay particular attention to the wording. for pins 7 and 8 on both the JDM/UKDM fsm vs the USDM. (referenced above)

This is modified so the usdm side reads def / vent instead of vent / def

While there is a section dedicated to troubleshooting I found this is what I experienced the most difficulty with.

If you get the random "click of death" after doing the install. Turn the car off, then turn it back on, hold the off button for 5 seconds on the dcc and press the hot ^ arrow until you get to diagnostic number 3. It will go through all of the mode door positions, let it go back and forth and if you get 30, you're good to go. If you get 31-35 or anything in between error wise.

Turn the car off, then back on, turn on the dcc and set the position to blow air in your face, if it's blowing air through the defrost vent you need to switch your wiring around in two places. Pins 5 and 6 need to be flipped. The mode door motor will stop responding, you'll need to repin the mode door motor itself as well so instead of 123456 take note of what color your wires are, then flip them 654321.

Turn the car on, go right back to the diagnostic mode 3 if you get 30. Turn the car off, then back on, turn the dcc unit back on and try cycling through the modes again, air should be blowing in the correct positions now.

Remember every pinout is from the front male end of the plug, not the rear of the plug. That is most likely the mistake I made here.

(h) Intake Door Motor

Option A

If you don't pull your dashboard and have no plans of wiring up the 20% position wires in highlighted in yellow. Just follow this formula, you'll get errors on the diagnostic but according to the chuonthis write-up this will work. 😥

If you followed the easy wiring for the intake door motor, then you will see errors 36, 38, and 39.

INTAKE 1: (M31 16pin) pin #32 Y/B from (M77 USDM) pin #24 Y
INTAKE 2: (M31 16pin) pin #23 G/Y - depin
INTAKE 3: (M31 16pin) pin #24 Y (M31 JDM) pin # 20* combine this into the main ground
INTAKE 4: (M31 16pin) pin #28 Y/R from (M77 USDM) pin #21 Y/L

The two yellow highlighted wires need to be added for 100 percent functionality. The USDM Plug M51 these would be 22 and 23 respectfully.

Option B

INTAKE 1: (M31 16pin) pin #32 Y/B from (M77 USDM) pin #24 Y
INTAKE 2: (M31 16pin) pin #23 G/Y to (M51 USDM) pin #23
INTAKE 3: (M31 16pin) pin #24 Y to (M51 USDM) pin #22
INTAKE 4: (M31 16pin) pin #28 Y/R from (M77 USDM) pin #21 Y/B

There are no colors listed for M51 #22,23 because that is dependent on what color wire you decide to run. Funny enough I documented how I did this back in 2009. So here is that video filmed with a potato. It covered where I got the spare 2 wires from. If you pulled your dash and want to get this working 100 percent, follow the information below.

The two yellow highlighted wires need to be added for 100 percent functionality

I also want to note, I get 30 on diagnostic mode indicating this is working as intended, but it never seems to open half way, it's always full shut or full open. Not a huge dealbreaker, just seems unfortunate after adding the extra wiring.

(i)Air Mix Door Motor

I will say for the record, this has never worked in my car following previous guides. So I made it a point to check the wiring on this pin to pin. 😤 You can leave the AMDM power positive and negative as is, but only expect either full hot or full cold when adjusting temps.

TLDR

(USDM M77) pin #22 L/R to (JDM/UKDM M31 20pin) pin #7 R/G
(USDM M77) pin #23 R/W to (JDM/UKDM M31 20pin) pin #8 R
(USDM M77) pin #26 P/L to (JDM/UKDM M31 16pin) pin #27 P/L
*(USDM M33) pin #25(+) L/OR needs to go straight to (JDM/UKDM M31 16pin) pin #33 P
**(USDM M33) pin # 27(g) B needs to go straight to (JDM/UKDM M31 16pin) pin #29 B/Y

The wiring on this had me McFucked up...

*The L/OR wire that is in your usdm car is referred to as + which technically would be pin #25 on your AMDM (M33) branches off in a few locations (see map below). -cont

click for huge picture

-cont. I'm not sure how 5v was measured to this in other write ups. You'll have to unwrap the harness at this motor to the DCC, clip it and bridge a wire to M31 pin #33 P and call it a day.

just pretend m27 doesn't exist and only m33

** Same goes for the ground, I'm guessing the logic is all of the fancy sensors are ground together for a reason and this ground is also added to that group if you check the JDM FSM HA-105 and HA-106.

If none of that made sense to you. Just double check the fsm's yourself.

Caution: I highly recommend not trying to take apart this motor as it's a pretty intricate piece of clockwork. If it's not put together exactly as it was taken apart, it will be off and function partially. The piece on the right does not separate from it's arm on the outside of the device. If you see the crescent copper under the gears on the left. You need to get that in the proper position touching the little hands on the half moon gear on the right while somehow getting the little spider gears onto their posts. The 3 metal leads you see are 5v / 12v | PBR | Ground. The small gear right above those posts also has a copper spring that rotates it based on signal. I believe it needs to be keyed a certain way to be at it's starting point. I would assume as it is in the picture, but don't quote me on that. I've taken this thing apart 3 times so far, and each time I put it back together and cycle through hot and cold it always ends up in different positions. Either does incrementals of cold, or hot, or full hot, full cold with random stops in-between. I gave up and just bought a replacement.

After putting in the replacement motor, the behavior switching from hot to cold was almost similar. So servicing this unit wasn't a total loss. I haven't tested voltage to confirm the pbr aspect of things works properly. The way this motor moves, it seems any incremental adjustments don't make a huge deal, this also may be linked to the various temp sensors for this install. But don't take my word for it.

Closing

That's all there is too it. Again I just wanted to break down specific areas of this install in detail and arm yourselves and myself with as much information as possible.

You can completely get this all installed with just the pinouts at the beginning of this document if you're capable and familiar with electronics and such. When I first did this install I was relocating my fusebox, doing an s13sr into an s14 swap and took on installing this unit. It never dawned on me any of my work was incorrect.

Instead of trying to strictly rely on colors, they're just a guideline. At the end of the day validate your own findings.

Troubleshooting

Even Nob isn't safe from the dreaded mode door clicking!!! Reminder while in "Auto" mode the door positions will change as well as the temp in your car and outside as well as sunload fluctuate.

This is the discharge air flow diagram from the USDM Manual to give you an idea of what position all of the doors should be in depending on the setting on the climate control. In the JDM/UKDM manual HA76-99 (PDF Pages 749-772) will have all of the troubleshooting information but does not include this discharge air flow section.

I would say pay attention to the door positions, if something isn't matching with your install the motor wiring on all of these units is defined by a Circle with a big M in the middle of it. You simply should be able to reverse the wiring if something is going the wrong way. It won't make sense reading this until you see it for yourself.

I'll be adding more videos and such to here down the line as I deem necessary!

Thanks for reading.

Wekfest LA 2014 Part 4 - The End

2014-06-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

What seems like a few days since I've posted last, is the type of vacation I needed after wrenching on the car itself. Unfortunately like many others grinding it to the last minute, there was no sleep to be had.

I got home from Jeff's shop around 7am, I couldn't get a hold of Mikey which was to be expected. So I'm like do I go to the Queen Mary, maybe everyone is meeting up at HQ, but I've never been to hq, who the fuck is awake right now to even check their phones. Luckily I was able to get a hold of someone, because if not I was just going to roll into my bed and say fuck it haha.

Hell I wouldn't of minded an extra set of hands last night, besides Jeffs, but he came by just to make sure I was not in need of any help to focus on our buddy Robert and his uncomfortable sex groans he kept making.

I guess it's only natural for Robert since he was handling two black long shafts at the same time, noh8.

I was covered in grease, my back and toes were sore as fuck from standing under the lift all night, and I cursed myself for dropping almost 300 dollars on a greddy oil filter relocation kit, but not spending 200 dollars on the proper drain tube and new oil lines while I had the chance.

This is what lurks under the hood now. Still a very simple and effective setup.

I think I would be lying if I said I'm going to replace my lines with black ones, because the only way that T28 is coming off again is if that motor comes out of my car, or it gets replaced with the borg warner setup I want to buy from full-race.

I honestly hate taking anything off of the hot side of my motor.... But I can always rant about that another time.

I didn't even have time to fuck with the suspension, the car definitely needs to be corner balanced and re-aligned. passenger front was rubbing pretty bad, I never had to hammer in the wheel tubs up front. But they started eating at the tire trying to turn it. So that can be addressed another day!

Made it to HQ, rolled out with the homies waiting for everyone else to show up. We made it down to the Queen Mary, rolled on in. Kenny from Wekfest hit us with the admission stamp like dude from oldboy hit everyone in that hallway at the end with an axe. (after we paid admission of course). A few start and stops later, we here....

I honestly have no idea who took this picture. I would love the original.

There really was no media documentation after this point, my car was dirty, I was running on fumes, everyone else was running on fumes. The rest of the day seemed like a blur, I spent 2 hours cleaning the car with microfibers and quick detailer and picked this time to install my window visors, all in front of the Rays booth.

Feeling all types of nostalgic since my previous wheels were volk's haha!

Salem and Murdok wanted to hit the breakfast buffet, I was going to return with a vengeance, last year I missed the buffet and ended up getting a sandwich. This year apparently was no different only that we ALL MISSED THE FUCKING BUFFET!

I did however score these bomb ass fish tacos

Smashed some calamari and fish tacos, then had a hot coffee, walked back to the show with the homies, car was finally moved into it's place. We decided to skip the drivers meeting, I guess that's where you filled out forms for your car to be judged or some shit.

Thank you Doug for moving my car for me, you're the second person I've let drive it.

Who cares about all of that shit, I've been going to these things for years. I've seen the cars that win shows, and the cars that should've won at shows, and the cars that downright didn't fucking belong at the shows.

My car, is my car, it is not a magazine car, it is not a trophy car, it's not a track car, it's not a drift car. It simply is my point of zen. I enjoy it as it is, and I felt the car in it's current state was presentable enough to show with the likes of all of my Phaze2 friends. I don't have unnecessary seats to have seats, I don't have really nice polished bits (although I would LOVE THEM) I don't even have an aftermarket steering wheel. Everyone thinks I have a boost gauge on my steering column, it's a temperature gauge for my radiator because the oem one stopped working.

And while I may seem like a huge asshole on the internet, I am very humble about what Simone is, and what she isn't. And I've never expected to receive anything for the work that I've put into my car, a nod from a fellow enthusiast is all the recognition I could ever ask for.

@phaze2christina was someone standing over my lifeless body to take that picture on the upper right? lol

With that said, I found a nice spot in the grass next to Mikey after everything seemed to calm down, shot the shit with him for a few minutes and talked to Christina about wod cheating crossfitters and that's about all I can remember for a few hours.

I woke back up, Mikey was up and at em, he asked me if I had some judging something on my car of if it was entered or whatever. I remember saying "my car ain't going to win shit, I don't care." and another few hours of blackness passed by.

The sun finally decided to take a hike, I woke up and zombied my way around the show for a bit, took pictures of cars of interest and every other damn car that had a set of LXZ's. I said if I could find 10 pairs I would put my wheels up for sale, shit is getting ridiculous.

Flat Faces, EWE!!!

While this one doesn't have the biggest lips, at least they got it right and got the Concave faces.

Flat in the front, concave in the rear. Totally could sacrifice a half inch of lip up front for concave faces.

LXZ Combo Breaker, this is like showing up to a party and you both have the same shoes on.

Unfortunately I couldn't find 10 pairs of LXZ's at the show, so I guess we'll run these a little longer. Should have a few more years before everyone jumps on the next cool wheel.

Oh is that a blanket, don't mind if I do.

I think they were giving out awards at this point... I'm over here just trying to take a nap in all of this trash haha.

I couldn't even remember who it was that woke me up, they were like oh man car looks good, great to see you again, you look tired so I'll holler at you later. And we exchanged daps, whoever you were silhouetted person with the glaring sun behind you. Sorry the answering service was in full swing lol.

But the best news was that the show was almost over, yay!

Congrats Everyone

After my tirade about awards, turns out damn near everyone walked away with something.

VW got best euro or something
Mike got best 3 something Z of show
Mark got best ass fucking of show and honorable mentions for best cream pie.
White dude got best sunburn of show.
Noel got best TRA Rocket Bunny car of show
Salem got best graffiti of show
Mikey got first place for the least fucks given about getting an award at the show.
That hand got best manicure of the show.

I'm sure I got all of the categories for all of these wrong. I'm not mocking wekfest in any manner for the awards given, but rather the controversy behind who wins what at shows.

In short, who fucking cares, if you went and had a good time. That is the point. Superstreet and Honda Tuning both no longer exist so the chances of anyone getting their hands on an article of how great your car is or what's going on over here, in this scene in general are slim to none now anyway.

You will only read about wekfest on blogs like this or stickydiljoe, or fatlace, or naritadogfight. And you still may not end up seeing your car, not due to bias alone, but the sheer fact that if you're not paid to give a fuck.

Then you won't be donating fucks to charity.

Wekfest LA was a godamned blast, and while I don't have a bazillion pictures of every waking moment for you to vicariously enjoy. It will go down as one of the best automotive events I've been to in YEARS.

After the show we headed over to Gen Cheese Sauceless BBQ for dinner... I ate until I was uncomfortable, and then I ate some more.

I don't even like to drink anymore, but how could I say no to Hubert, I love that guy...

Kanpai

- the end -

Wekfest LA 2014 Part 3

2014-06-06T14:12:00.001-07:00

A day at Jordan Innovations (Literally)

Picking up where we left off, it's now about 12:30pm Friday May 30th, the day before the show. I hit Jeff up earlier in the week to see if I could use his lift, my primary goal was to go in, change all of my cars fluids, swap the turbo, and have lunch with my boys...

Lunch cut into a good chunk of our time to do actual work.

Eddie sends me a picture of an Ahi Tuna Burrito from Brody's Hawaiian BBQ in the morning and was like "THIS IS YOUR INVITE".

Poke, you don't have to tell me twice...

As I wrapped up as much detailing with the time I had, I just skipped waxing the whole car with the mentality that I was going to have some time to do this later.

Let me run you back on my time table here. Tuesday I tell my boy Steve I will buy his T28 to replace my turbo, although I did not want to spend the money. My car was blowing smoke like Snoop Lion because of bad seals.

Before I even saw Steve, I put in a hefty order with FR Sport while scouring the internet for information on what was needed for the swap. I knew for sure a clocking kit would be required, but what else. What else did I need, there is always fucking WHAT ELSE, there is no worse feeling in the world than going somewhere to accomplish something, and then having to make 3-5 more runs in the middle of a wrench session.

This is why I primarily chose to do this swap at Jeff's shop, and I'm really going to touch on that towards the end of this post so we stay on track.

I ask Steve: "Does the turbo have an oil restrictor?"

He didn't really know, he just said it has lines and a drain tube with gasket. (which also was modified by the installer and did not work on my car, can't fault him for that.) Okay cool, the motor wasn't necessarily put together by him, I know who put it together. Which kind of threw me off why the lines were the way they were, but then again the turbo was on a CA18 before.

I've been lagging it on buying wind visors so I threw those in the cart as well.

Now you're looking at this invoice above and you're probably thinking the same shit I am. Hell yes, free shipping...

I placed this order on May 27th, normally anything I buy from FRSport gets shipped to me like anything from Newegg... THE NEXT DAY, I guess I missed this part (WILL CALL / PICKUP) since I place so many orders for parts with them, how in the fuck that was selected. I don't know, but all I could think about was.

Fuck, fuckity fuck fuck... I didn't catch this until Thursday when I noticed my parts still haven't shown up at my door and no shipping notifications followed the "your order has been processed." emails... So I had to drive down to their shop to get everything I needed to install the turbo.

1:30pm showed up to the shop, time to hit up Brody's Hawaiian BBQ

But before we go, Jeff had to turn on the race car for my girlfriend... Shortly after we have arrived at Brody's BBQ BRUDDAH!!!

Say hello to the first and last thing I eat for the next 18 hours.... While eating, I am in a pickle. Because I also ordered some new tires for the front of my car which I had to drive over to Raceline USA to get installed...

The trip to FRSport alone killed 3 hours of my day, Raceline Killed almost 2.

So let me wrap this around your head before this post gets into the meat and potatoes, because 15 hours of the day goes undocumented at some point. It's now Friday afternoon, I need to go pick up parts to install my turbo, then I need to have tires installed, then I need to drive back to Jeff's shop, move a bunch of stuff he's working on to get to his lift. Then begin dismantling my car, I knew it was going to be a long night. But I really mismanaged my time today, and I cannot thank Jeff enough for his hospitality... And for me to basically kill any of his productivity for the weekend.

My girlfriend and I make it to FRSport, bringing my girlfriend and my Sentra along was a good call, the 240 wouldn't of made this trip in it's current state without coming back with a state ref ticket. I'm amazed I didn't get one on the way back from Raceline to be honest.

So now I got big boy tires up in the front, they hit everything, car needs an alignment and a corner balance BAD. Problem for another day!

It's almost 8pm here at Jordan Innovations I finally got my car on the lift, and Robert Kochis aka Stay Crushing also had some major work to do on his FR-S, apparently he blew his rear axles. So not only if Jeff staying open late for myself to wrench on my car, Robert is working on his.

This is literally the last time I posted anything on social media, but in short it ended up being another night like this.

Yes, that's a sunrise...

Fast forward to where that instagram clip left off...

Changed all fluids
Installed Greddy Oil Relocation Kit (which I bought on a whim)
Removed t25
Installed Oil Restrictor (there was an adapter in the fitting being used)
Inspected all hoses (I should've bought new ones)
Both my oil drain, and Steves oil drain didn't fit. Jeff cut, re-clocked, welded, cleaned. Damn near impossible to install now that turbo was in car.
Almost every line with the gt28 didn't work on my car, ended up throwing them all away.
cranked the car with CAS unplugged to cycle oil through the relocation kit and to make sure the turbo was dumping into the pan.
ran the car on the lift to ensure we didn't have any leaks.
Drove home, wiped the car down with a wet towel I washed it with the night before
Texted everyone from Phaze2 I could frantically because Mikey was on zombie mode as well working on his car.
Finally got an address, finished wiping car down, hopped in the shower, it's now 7:30am
Rolled out to Phaze2 HQ It is now 8am

And that for the most part is the end of this entry... Jeff came into the back every now and then to help me turn a wrench, or to listen to Robert make the most uncomfortable sex groans I've ever heard anyone make while working on a car.

Along with telling me how much he fucking hated me in the nicest way he could....

In closing I would really like to say all things aside from Mikey getting me a spot, if it weren't for Jeff I wouldn't of made it.

I honestly from the bottom of my heart appreciate everything you've done for me. Which leads me to the closing of this blog post.

--- IF YOU READ ANYTHING, READ THIS PLEASE ---

Old video vlog of the first time I met Jeff

I've been into cars for a long time, this is the first time where I've taken a car build past a set of wheels and adjustable coil overs. This was a full on do it yourself project, there is no shop that can take credit for what I drive (well kind of if you count Jeff's).

Jeff has given me so much advice through private messages on Zilvia, to telephone consultations, to aol instant messenger convo's at 2am to figure out switch wiring. To actually coming out to my home himself to overlook my wiring, he didn't give me the toy to the happy meal per se. But he let me know where to look for my problem, what to fix.

And he never asked for a single dime (because I was unemployed at this time as well, so I couldn't of given him a dime).

If you've ever put a car together and had someone you barely know come and help you with your car, and devote countless hours of their time for nothing more than the satisfaction to help someone out. You've experienced a great thing.

Jeff has always been, and always will be like family to me. After I moved from this home and now living that apartment life, if I needed to work on my car, it had to get to Fontana to my parents house. It was the only garage I had available to me to do any work now.

That was until Jeff opened up his doors to me to work on my car in his garage out in Baldwin Park, told me he wanted to open up a shop one day. I have one of his original stickers he made for himself on my rear quarter glass and I won't take that off because it's a reminder of how far we both have come.

Now not everyone may be a happy customer's of Jeff or could say they've had the same experience with him as I have. I could probably count those people on my right hand, and I'm also well aware of the stuff. People take shots at shops all the time that they didn't get it their way at by trying to slander businesses on blogs, on facebook posts. And someone taking shots at Jeff, to me is taking shots at one of my brothers.

Especially when they've had NO DIRECT EXPERIENCE DEALING OR WORKING WITH JEFF WHATSOEVER. I get it, you're trying to stick up for your friends by being the third wheel in an interaction and then taking what you don't know and what you do know about the situation and then posting those feelings with no assumption of consequence on facebook pages...

I'm not the only person that Jeff has made house calls to, he spent the first year of his business going back and forth through the STATE of California to help out various race teams, and has done an impressive body of work. If he deprives himself of his social life, sleep, and general health. He'll take that time to work on his own car, he has never put it first over anyone elses stuff.

I see one guy in particular who runs with a group known as No Rush, which hosts quite a few people I PERSONALLY know. He runs around the internet posting his feelings towards Jeff, not even knowing him.

The same way I was met with similar malice from someone else who said :

"no wonder why every time your name comes up, someones talking shit about you."

And I'm over here like

"how the fuck do you know me?"

That aside, my little beef with Jay T. was cleared up super quick, but he's not who I'm talking about...

Jeff was an Aircraft Electronics Technician for the United States Navy, you're some kid who got a hand me down racecar from your daddy and you're going to post up on someones facebook:

"oh I hope he doesn't fuck up this persons car." Like who the fuck are you? Or randomly posting that he does shady ass business transactions with a mutual friend and I'm over here like

yeah you're leaving out an important part of nobodies business on this redline time attack post that has nothing to do with your boredom or willingness to share things that do not concern you at all.

On top of calling him a pussy for not running his street car in the unlimited class on a post where Redline was giving him props for setting an amazing time on his first cars outing to the track?

Do you even make less sense than me?

I'm not going to use my platform to name any names, because I have no problem saying this right to your face... You seem like a really cool dude, and I've never been into this scene to make enemies.

But I would take care of how you present yourself as a friend to people, falsely and are quick to turn to social media and use your platform and newfound "popularity" as a means to spread bullshit about someone who I know would go over and beyond to square out a situation... (let me rephrase that : the situation you think you know about Jeff to this day has offered any and all help to square things. Teddy is just being Teddy and can't acknowledge he let a machine shop fuck him over.)

Jeff is and has always been a stand up dude, and I've been right beside him where not every situation was ideal for him or in his comfort zone. But he seems to make it work, as a one man show.

Nobody is driving out of their way to help him turn out customer work, or coming to pit for him during redline time attack. While he continues to consult people over the phone, be a stand up dude, and still manage to maintain some of his sanity.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for Jeff, and the only reason why I wouldn't refer someone to him is because I know he's too fucking busy as it is to take on any major work. Especially during Formula D season.

So to finally close out this directionless rant of props, and smite towards overprivileged children with social media and too much free time on their hands.

Jeff is the man. Period, my next post will be the last one concerning Wekfest LA, so stay tuned for part 4.

Thanks for reading,

Wayne

Wekfest LA 2014 Part 2

2014-06-05T21:40:00.004-07:00

Back at Nisei '11 and probably like forever since I really don't know how to wax or claybar a car properly I've had these nasty swirl marks on my trunk, hood, and bonnet from daily driving my car. Of course I wash it, use microfibers, and nice towels, I even scrub my wash sponge off in the bucket before touching my paint again with it. But to no avail, Fontana atmosphere and multiple weather conditions put a beating on my finish. So one of my goals was to at least try to polish this shit myself, I would've liked to hire a detail person but time was something I really didn't have at this point.

Look at the haze on the trunk. It only got worse

Fast forward to Tuesday May 27th, I purchased a brand new s15 T28 from my friend Steve, I headed over to sears to grab some offset wrenches, which I ended up not even needing. But I'll get to that later. I also grabbed something I've been looking for, for a very long time for my own tool bag, and it was a socket retainer for my ratchet bits.

Holy shit I hated digging through my fucking bag looking for a 10, grabbing a 1/2 11, then a 3/8ths 11, etc. I have a bastard mix of tools I jacked from my dad since he had extras, my delusional mother thinks she bought me my own tool set, but she also thinks I am my brother Bert.

Also another story for another day...

I watched a really shitty 480p video on youtube about how to polish black paint, because I guess that is what I wanted to do, remove swirls and polish. Obviously waxing was not getting rid of the swirls, so it was time to buy a polisher.

I wanted to keep this very budget friendly, granted some people will be like "I only buy the best, and use the best." You can best believe, hell will probably freeze over before I pull out that polisher and do this shit again... I didn't even hit the whole car, I literally only did the trunk, the tops of the rear overs, the roof, the bonnet, and the upper fenders. The paint is so reflective you're not going to notice any of the deep scratches unless you try to take a macro shot of it.

So fast forward to May 30th, it's now 8am, and I am downstairs trying to knock this shit out before I head over to Jordan Innovations in Irwindale California to whore out my friends shop to work on my car. The next entry is going to really talk about the adventure that transpired afterwards, but first. I just threw together this video of how my morning went.

I will give a disclaimer now, I am a huge do it yourselfer, I urge people to at least do something once yourself before you hire a professional. It's the only way you're going to learn, it's already in my head I'm going to repaint my car so if I fuck my paint up. I fuck my paint up. YOLO!!!

The video is long, I cut down half an hour of shit into 10 minutes. Had some trouble editing the audio, but hey that's imovie for you. I really touched on some basics if you don't want to watch it.

If you have black paint, and you have chips in your paint. Rustoleum gloss black enamel is your friend. Grab a shitty little art brush set and a little slab of cardboard or the lid of the can. And just dab it into the holes, because it's an enamel, by the time it dries it will have flex, it will match pretty fucking well with your paint, and again unless someone busts out the binoculars. Nobody will notice that shit when taking pictures for their stance blog.
I don't think claying a car is necessary unless you fucking live in Fontana or Santa Clarita where there is high winds, tumbleweeds, and other things that can get into your paint. Well maybe if you drift and have nice paint. (Yeah, haha oxymoron right.) That scratch on my roof you see in the test area is from a tumbleweed that hit my car... in Fontana.
If you really want that baller ass look for your paint, buy baller ass shit like Chemical Guys, they got everything you need really to take care of your paint. While 3M is good shit, I've always used Presta on my car since it's original paint job for any cutting and buffing. 5 years later and still a mirror finish with daily abuse and half ass paint care says a lot about their stuff. I feel CG's applications are more specific, especially depending on your paint colors.
If you can afford it, and you have nice paint, just pay a professional detailer and go enjoy your fucking day.

That's it for this entry, next is wrench rape which deserves a post in it's own.

Thanks for reading my mayhem.

Wayne

Wekfest LA 2014 Part 1

2014-06-04T16:53:00.002-07:00

I tend to spew a lot of thoughts out when I have downtime at work. I have so many people to thank for the wonderful Saturday that transpired..

It all really started at Eibach in May. I was telling the homie Willy that I wanted to roll to wekfest LA this year and show my car, but I had no idea registration even took place. I know I saw a blip in my feed about San Jose selling out in minutes, but I never saw any mention of Los Angeles.

He told me that Mikey had a bunch of spots for Phaze2 cars, because when he grows up he wants to be like James (Floss Designs) and have all of his cars at the show, so to hit him up and see if I can take one.

Myself aka 137 or Om1kron, Ben "Stunnaben" Howard, and Willy "Salem" Garcia at Eibach 2014 in Lake Elsinore, CA

So as I was standing in line at Chipotle that next week, I hit up Mikey to see what's good. And sure enough He had some extra spots left, Phaze2 has gotten so damn big since I was introduced to them back in the Honda-Tech days, I still have no idea who the hell isn't a member.

It's such a cool thing to see, when I was active in the car scene THE crew was AMSEVEN. It was my goal to be a part of AMSEVEN back when I had my EM1, that never came to fruition. That's really a long story for another day, originally the first time I met Mikey Christi and Henry Mendez (according to my knowledge are the original two members of Phaze 2) was at the local Camp 1320 Motorsports meet in Northridge California. Like back in 2004 10 years ago to this day.

I clicked with Henry right off the bat because we're both Panamanian. What's funny was I always thought him and Mikey were really brothers LOL!

And now, man... Phaze2... I'm really proud of these guys and how far along this family has grown...

Thats really all I need to say about that, there is never any fakeness in the air when I hang out with these guys. Some real life fast n' furious life bonding shit going on without all of the racing and gtr gear shifting.

Meeting all of the new members like Mark, Joey, Dougie, Salem, Murdok, Mauricio, Noel, Hubert everyones significant others. It brings back so many memories of why I really got into cars in the first place. It never really mattered what you drove, it was always about the friends you make along the way.

Anyway, before I get all fucking sappy and shit. I had a lot of things I wanted to do for wekfest, one was just to wash the car, repaint my tail lights, and buy some front tires that fit my fenders. The last time I did a show was Nisei in 2012 (the nisei race), I've done "meets" since but not really any shows. It doesn't matter if it's a meet, a big show, or whatever. You don't want to be the guy who shows up in a neglected piece of shit.

I had a lot of things I was debating about getting done before wekfest, one of them was replacing my t25, which finally wore out it's bearing and started burning my oil. This was something I was not looking forward to at all, options were also severely limited due to time and budget.

I didn't want to put another used t25 on there, rebuilding wasn't an option due to a possible imbalance of precision balanced parts causing early failure, and I honestly didn't want to buy a t28 because that would've required a re-clocking kit, along with a few other items.

But once I dropped 700 dollars on my friend Steves T28 that's been used all of 3 times all for dyno pulls. I knew it was all downhill for my wallet from this point, mainly because I wanted to buy a new television with the money in my bank account, but I also neglected the fuck out of this car due to my daily. And now I'm paying for it with failing parts, once that itch starts up again, you start sliding that card and throwing them greenbacks until you go to buy dinner and ask yourself where the fuck all your money went so fast.

I'll jump into my friday in the next entry because this shit is already too long for my own attention span.

Thanks for reading!

Cars and Donuts

2014-05-17T19:08:00.000-07:00

posted up in front of the local donut spot. I am not a photographer, so I don't know how to use my camera's best settings or photoshop.

Cars and donuts are a must, if it's a hot ass day or even a cold ass day where you're posted, go stop at the local donut stop and support a family owned business. Not those chains run by people who are just there to fill shelves, but mom and pa joints, them cash only places you hang with your boys!

Extend your car family, and help work on our doomed health. Or you can just have a black coffee, any bit helps!

- Wayne

Take care of your SR20's and they will last a long time.

2014-05-11T21:16:00.001-07:00

Shit, just take care of your car in general.

Don't be like myself, after buying a daily. I really only fire up my 240 to drive to work because I can, it's weird not having Simone be my daily, her initial purchase back in 2008 was for that purpose. And I think through the years I've had her, she's performed those duties well.

With smog this and smog that popping up, random ref tickets being handed out. And I've gotten my fair share along with being pulled over for modified exhaust, etc, etc. It's nice not to have to drive and look over your shoulder. I can just leave the car be, and know I can hop in it, turn it on and cruise whenever I want.

Granted I'm motivated enough to wash it.

That's the downside of having a black car I suppose, and parking it in a port and not a garage. I don't really worry about it going anywhere where I live, some guy has a pimped out 370z he leaves out in the street where I live. Some other kid has a few decked out, riced out, stickered out Hondas he leaves in the street. Unless you know where I live (hoping my photo's aren't geotagged lol).

It's not like the car isn't without problems, and gas at all times.

I leave it for 3 weeks, and it's covered in dirt. Hell I wash it and in 3-5 days it looks like this. It sucks

Anyway let me get to the point of the post. I've noticed a strong smell of oil from the car driving it lately, one I took a pretty hard turn and heard a bit of ticking. Could've been a million things, but I know all of the noises this car makes, and after spinning a bearing in a car before. I'm not down to test my luck again, It's been about 2 years (yes you've read that right) since I've changed the oil.

I actually laughed out loud because I thought I changed the oil in March of 2013. Fuck, luckily I keep track of this stuff, see the date at the bottom of this post. (don't even read it, just scroll down to the date)

Slow oil leak at the top of my valve cover. Some of these holes were drilled completely through when tapping this valve cover. I've since sealed them, but I guess it's time to pop this bad boy off and have a look whats going on in here.

I've been watching this particular area of the car for quite some time. From the looks of it, I'm almost 100 percent sure the seal on that oil filter is rotten, much less that filter isn't doing much filtering. It's just there.

This is going to be such a pain in the ass to clean up. Fucking oil everywhere, going to have to tear the cold side of the motor down.

I mean a lot of 240sx owners build shitty cars to begin with, lets not kid anyone. They're supposed to be cheap fun weekend cars that you drive and beat the hell out of. I've been on the same t25 since I've purchased this motor with almost no motivation to upgrade it. Going fast breaks things, and if you've followed this car for any period of time you know...

Simone loves to break things, it's very rare that I get to enjoy the car for any sum of miles without having to replace one thing or the other, so the fact that it's run this long with me neglecting it. I think it's time to put those replacement spark plugs I purchased a year ago in the motor. And maybe even consider putting some money in the rebuild cookie jar for the spare motor I have with upgraded pistons, rods, and an apex-i headgasket.

While most of you are scoffing at the fact this car has had the same oil in it for 2 years now. It still hasn't even come close to the amount of use the first run of amsoil went through... While that's not an excuse, and I'm not telling you buy amsoil, never change oil. Spend it on other cool things, if your car is a daily. It's nice to not have to worry about oil every 5k, especially since the odometer in this car has NEVER worked lol.

So next weekend, I'll knock out motor maintenance and cleanliness. I do have to admit, not knowing the history of this motor besides it previously was in a track only car. Even the previous owner is amazed this thing still runs, he's gone through at least 5 sr's in his replacement track car.

Moving Along

It was so nice to clean this area of the car with the tail lamps off. It's the little things.

I always think it's funny to see how much you can mask up a fucked up car with aero. From when I originally bought this car, I knew it was a Zenki conversion. I knew the kid who owned it put one car into a rock at GMR (another s14, big surprise) and picking up another Zenki, and having it as a display vehicle for a shop after it received a Kouki conversion. I didn't question much, it's hard to find a '98 with the parts this thing had on it. Had the wheels I loved on it, It was a fanboi bandwagon starter kit car for sure. I've since made it my own car.

But this chassis is far from clean and without it's stories, from the replacement roof I've put on it.

The repairing of the half assed rear wheel tubs.

Yes when I bought the car the fenders were pulled, it also smelled like sweaty balls when it rained for some reason.
This was the reason.

I've always wanted to do something with the trunk area of the car, I just never knew what it is. I think it's funny the kid who I bought it from sweared up and down this car wasn't in an accident. The car has a clean title and it has allowed me to insure it. But I sure as fuck would never sell the car as a clean title car without expecting some jail time. Especially if they had someone come and look at the structural damage.

Whoever did the job of fixing the exterior was good, too bad they hid things like the broken seam sealant and damaged spare tire well with the interior trunk panels. (I wonder what happened to that shit)

Here is where I asked if the car had been in an accident, it's definitely seen some corner impact.

I really need to get off of my ass and have this car realigned by a body shop and replace all of this metal.

I never really show my engine bay, not because I'm ashamed of it by any means. The car has a story to tell, some idiot would probably think that damaged area is rad.

I still love this car and can definitely see myself dumping money into it. The thing I love the most about going to some big car event (it's definitely not seeing the same fucking cars unchanged.) is the people who've had their cars for the long haul and continue to do new things to them. Perfect example would be Arn Reyes' integra, he got bored and made it a hybrid fuel vehicle.

I'd love 10 years down the road to see what innovations come out for these cars, minus an LS Swap. They're cool and reliable, but it's also just lazy. If you have one, more power to you, I've been tempted to go down the darkside, but other than not being harassed by the police and losing the heart and soul of the japanese fanboi bandwagon car I've wanted to build.

I just have no need after everything I've been through with this car, to take the easy route.

nomsayin'

Anyway, thanks for reading my rambling. What kind of history does your car have, and why did you decide to stick with it, or not?

Comment below.

So your kouki tail lamps are faded? You want to fix them. Well that's good!

2014-05-09T15:59:00.000-07:00

THATS REAL GOOD

OEM s14 tail lamps in all their glory. This as dark as they come. They're painted on the inside.

Many of you out there know the struggle, zenki owners who want to upgrade to kouki tails, kouki owners who went from black to whack. That the kouki tail lamps fade over time, they're such a timeless and simple upgrade.

In my personal opinion they're the 1999 civic type R headlight of the 1996-1998 Nissan 240sx. I could go into a whole segway about the differences in references for newer and older parts we use over here and how things are described. But in short Zenki refers to a first gen design of a car model and Kouki refers to a later model so you have an idea why I am calling them Kouki tail lights rather than 1997-1998 tail lamps. There is nothing JDM about these, they're not an exclusive part, anyone who refers to them as jdm is a fucking idiot.

MS PAINT KING!!!

Anyway, I mentioned in my previous entry that I was going to get these re-finished. I've seen people use enamel spray, but I don't want the lights to lose their natural shine, or become dull. And I've also seen some people repaint the lenses with a candy red mixed with clear, while also refinishing the black, but they were lazy and painted the nissan emblem as well. So it doesn't look factory, and there is no way to clean that up.

I'd love a throwaway set of these lights to tamper with to see if the lamp design itself can be modified (getting rid of the oem paint behind the lenses). Also another story for another day. I really just enjoy the layout of these tail lights a lot, you won't see an exact aftermarket replica mold of them either because of that nissan logo badge, and the design is trademarked or some bullshit. Instead you see a huge unnecessary indent where the keyhole is, and the badge area is.

I don't know why they didn't just taper out that keyhole like the oem lights. Would've looked 10 million times better, upon further inspection, this is just a shitty and cheap job period. Despite all that and me really wanting to jump on the led tails wagon, there is a lot of things I hate about these lights, main one is if there is any type of rain where you live... these fucking things are doomed, if your car doesn't rest in a temperature controlled environment, these are fucking doomed.

The lights I dropped off on Wednesday of this week have already gone through the first few stages of being re-finished.

This is the gray the lights will fade into as opposed to that original picture at the beginning of this post.

Here is the black area's masked off, similar to the article I linked at the beginning of this post as well. There are a few different kinds of painters tape out there. For rounded corners and such I believe you want pinstriping tape, I'm not painting these myself, just elaborating.

I'm not sure if the one above this block of text is before the picture below or after. I know a few passes of red had to be done over the amber corners. All of this is being painted with a legit spray gun, and I don't know ratios or mixtures. If you know how to paint, you have a basic idea of what Richard is doing to achieve the effect.

The candy red is either diluted with a clear, or thinner. Probably a clear in this case so the red is still see through or crystal like rather than solid. We still want to be able to see the lights through the paint!

Amber be gone! All red ertang!

Depending on what kind of mix you put in your paint, I think it's called flash, or something and there are different speeds for it, it's mixed in paint to determine how long or fast it will dry. I again am not a painter, I have no idea what Richard is using, I'm just sprouting off shit you may or may not need to know in case you try to tackle this yourself.

The reason for even bringing it up is shortly after these few passes were done, maybe an hour or two, the lamps and the nissan logo were masked off and now the black was applied. No thinner needed here, going full black dynamite.

Once that is dried, he may or may not have not given the areas a quick little color sand. I guess that would depend on variables, or he may have gone right into the clear.

I'm making the images as huge as possible so you can see what they'll look like after the clear is sprayed on them, this obviously isn't the final step. You can spray more clear on them if you want at this point because you'll have to cut and buff them to finish this whole extravaganza.

Wekfest LA : It's On

2014-05-06T16:53:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to another entry of Simone, the basic 240sx owned by Wayne T. Edwards, in this entry we'll talk wekfest. By chance I am going to parlay with my friends from the Phaze 2 camp, so I'm happy for the opportunity as I have yet to do a WekFest show in Southern California, the only one I've ever registered for was in Nor Cal back when Adam Luong was associated with the camp.

So it was more in support of him, I don't really keep up with everyones personal lives but I know he's not a part of it anymore so there was no motive for me to really attend. However; a lot of my friends that I've known over the years seem to really like this venue and are big supporters of each other. I believe Joey Lee is also a guest judge or something not that it even matters. I'm just talking out of my ass, whats important is I can hang out with my friends, and bring what I feel is a quality 240sx to the show.

Aside from the company car, that has company money into it, and Leon Casino's Falken Tires sponsored s14. There really were no hard hitter kouki s14's at wekfest, a lot of zenkies, some half assed s14's. (you know who you are.) And a lot of other model nissans.

So that is mainly my motive behind bringing my car. Instead of just myself, I'm not one for trophies, or anything like that. This isn't a show car, it's a slow car!

Some things I would like to get sorted before the 31st.

GETTING RID OF THE 225/35/18's up front

Originally these were purchased back in 2013 I believe when I finally mounted my Kranze LXZ's before I purchased the BN Sports fenders, the rims were wider than my 12mm vertex fenders. I only had 3 options here. Buy another pair of less aggressive LXZ's for 1800 dollars and sell the ones I had. Spend 800 dollars on bigger fenders. Or buy aggressively stretched tires and run some decent camber and keep my fenders.

I went with the least expensive option at the time, that worked for a bit until the tires ate the fender.

But now that I have the bn sports fenders, I have way too much gap. It looks gross, like I didn't know what I was doing when I purchased my tires.

This can be alleviated by purchasing some new rubber for the front. It is absolutely not necessary to do right now financially but, it's been an eyesore to me for way too long. so 265/35/18's will be run up front. Some REAL rubber for 10in wheels, I imagine it's going to make the front of the car look even more aggressive, I cannot wait.

NUMBER TWO : FADED ASS TAILLIGHTS

Second on my list of eyesores is the faded ass stock tail lights, I've gone back and forth multiple times on the options I would like, tails from clearcorners.com, ebay leds, a new set of kouki tails that will eventually fade again.

While I think the gray adds a nice color contrast to the rear of the car, it just looks dated, and takes away from the paint especially when I actually bother to wax this thing.

So I will be dropping off the taillights to my good friend Richard Rabe to hit em with some black trim, and candy red clear. (I won't be painting the nissan logo or the reverse lights), in all honesty if it were up to me I'd love to get together with someone who makes taillights and just completely re-design the s14 taillights. I've seen like 50 different taillights come out for the fr-s that sell like hotcakes, everyone is already buying those shitty led ebay tails for the s14.

Why not make something new for this car, nice led lights similar to those new bmw's with the led sweepers in them? I love those taillights!

I think something like this would add a really fresh look to the s14 paired up with some other features like that crazy ass s15 bodied s14's led lights.

Oh well, maybe someday someone will start designing cool shit for our cars again... Till then I guess I'm stuck with a boring re-finish of some faded black vinyl...

Nothing crazy or complicated, right? I guess the car could use some touch up paint and a decent detail job, so I'll have to schedule that as well for the month.

Lets see how it goes.

- Wayne

Motor Union 4

2013-08-19T21:57:00.001-07:00

Man what a weekend. I don't know how car show dudes put themselves through this every other month.

This wasn't even like a show, show type of deal. It was just a kickback that I decided to register for per recommendation by Jay(jdmego).

I modified their flyer btw.

For the most part I'm really happy with how the car came out. I've had some ups and downs financially that caused some fall through on plans with the car. And when it came time to put the car together again and things weren't lining up right. I knew that I'm going to have to put a new front core support on the car, again.

But do it right and measure everything out. When I put the kouki core support on the car I made a rookie mistake and just re-used the old spot welds I drilled out. It doesn't look horribly off. But I could gain an inch or two of clearance and eliminate all headlight/hood/bumper gap. Then I can do the bash bar, and the quick release fasteners and the air damn, vents, brake ducts. Etc.... anyway enough blabbering. Here is a video chronicling my day with my brother and cousins.

My day started around 4:45am, woke up to go meet up with friends to do my weekend hike up Ecco Mountain!

Then I got home, showered and was on my way.

This pretty much outlines everything, apologize for my huge potty mouth.

Fresh paint, always puts a smile on my face!

My couzins project! Gotta wash the s14 before we detail it.

I'm personally thinking of throwing 265's up front now. The 225's are no longer needed. Thoughts?

The first thing I normally fuck up is my fenders putting my fastenal hardware on them. So I leveled up with Downstar

Took a small break out of our day to pick up 5 guys for everyone. I was still in diet mode so lettuce wrapped for me.

The day was really long, after my brother finished going over some hazy area's on the s14 that we didn't color sand last year for nisei. I kinda bitched him out into finishing it up haha! He was not too happy about it but I am really glad I didn't settle this time around.

Not bad, it's not no crazy ass level 3 stage 2, grade aaa, blessed by jesus, fully kosher wax or anything stupid.

It cooled down and I was able to wash the car and wheels, still needed to do so much detailing. Figured I'd finish it up at the show. I got home maybe 11 or 12, ate more lettuce wrapped burgers. And the pain and dehydration set in. I went to bed around 1am to wake up almost 5 hours later for the long day.

It's now Sunday morning, halfway down to SD, stopped to get some energy drinks and some bubble gum.

Automobile Uploads Marvin and Ozzie trying to snap a shot of the MU4 bus.

This would be the first car show that I've been to, where you could potentially get a DUI lol

Trippel - real tangy

I did it in a rental, lincoln con-ti-nental.

RS4

Third round of beer called for pies following a hot pocket hot dog thingie lol.

One last shot before leaving the show, really love the profile of my car now.

Had dinner at Vallarta with Phaze 2 fam before making the drive back up home. It was hotter in here than it was outside
this was not the best choice in drive home food. Was mad blowed, sun burnt, tired, omfg

Never, EVER, EVER, EVER go to a car show without applying copious amounts of sun block, no matter how greasy it makes you feel. - I am in some serious pain right now!

All in all, great weekend, was really under the weather, dehydrated, sore throat, sore everything on top of being burnt. Ended up having to take the day off of work. I was in no condition to leave the house!

Dope!

Candid

2013-08-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

Someone spotted my car parked at autocon and took a picture, looks pretty cool. Weird randomly seeing it pop up in a facebook feed.

One last run of Black Money

2013-08-02T09:48:00.001-07:00

Off to paint, canards will be repainted as well. If the car is finished by motor union then cool, if not? I ain't got no worries, will show up and enjoy myself. No matter the condition of my car, might as well drive it while it's still legal to.

The bumper repair is a sore spot for me, I'd like to repair it, at the same time I need to have the bash/mounting bar made and still need to make the splitter for the car. So right now the bumper's condition is un-important to me.

- Wayne