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4/12/2011

While I was in the carless period between the death of the 180sx and building the Skyline, I still made the trek out to Meihan a bunch of times to see what I was missing.

Every now and then at Meihan, a crew of around 10 old Toyota guys would turn up and completely dominate a particular group. The sessions would comprise of at least 10 of these old Toyota’s (mostly AE’s) doing what ever they wanted really. No helmets, no seat belts, stopping mid session and starting to drive the track in reverse, flipping each other off and throwing things from car to car was the norm.

I didn’t take enough photos at this day, but they attended loads of days later on in my trip, so I’ll dig out some video of the mayhem.

All the cars were 4-AGE, had straight pipes with no mufflers and hurt your ears if you were anywhere near the track. It sucked.

When their session was called, and the 4-AGEs started firing up everyone would stop talking (there was no use trying) and just kind of wait round until they would get off the track, so everyone could conversate like normal again.

This brown notch was my favorite by far. Not the best driver of the lot, by easily the best looking car.

The first parts from the 180sx to be stripped and sold were the wheels.

I had always loved G7’s, and had picked up quite a few over my ownership of the yellow 180sx.

At a final count I had 4x 17×9″, 2x 17×9.5″ and 2x 17×10.5″. 8 all up.

These were packaged up and shipped over to George Marstanovic in the U.S. for him to run on his RX7. I regret not sending them back home to NZ, but more money allowed for more track time which was the ultimate goal with my 1 year working visa expiry date getting closer and closer.

A few photos and some background on the new (now old) R32.

My flatmate picked up this car the same time I brought the yellow 180sx. It came stock apart from a tidy SR swap, and the  GTR aero. We had spent the past few months slowly getting it driftable, adding suspension, arms, factory R33 GTR wheels etc.

I brought the car off him with the aim of swapping all the good stuff from my 180sx into it, and getting back to drifting as soon as possible. All of the work had to be done in the car park seen below, and with winter coming – and it not an uncommon occurance to start snowing mid way through a diff change – work was tough.

Also, a quick snap of our Honda Life. This car was a life saver, as it kept me mobile while I was in the process of swapping gear between the two cars.

I was pretty happy with the car after all the work getting it back to a driveable state again after the crash at Meihan. It was starting to look ok and still drove decently, despite the twisted chassis.

After testing the car one night in the mountains with some friends, I was stoked with how the car was driving (4/5 car touge runs were beyond fun). The next trip out wasn’t so successful however. After a few runs the engine developed a knock. The oil was full and wasn’t hot, but I always knew this motor was tired as hell, and was just happy it got me this far. The car was nearly out of registration and I was now left with two options; fork out the extremely expensive shakken fee (registration) and chuck in a replacement SR – which I didn’t really want to do on a bent shell, or part the car out and start again on another car. It just so happened that my flat mate was selling his r32 couple that we had been slowly building for the past few months, so I took the logical option and started stripping the 180sx to gain some money to put towards the skyline.

These are the last photos I took of the 180sx looking complete before I pulled it apart. I was definitely going to miss this car.

The two cars parked up next to each other in our parking area.

Parting out a car in a car park was never going to be a fun job, and it was made even less enjoyable by the fact that I had to keep the shell rolling so that we could roll it to a position that the tow truck could get to it.

I had a lot of fun learning to drive in this car. I spent more late nights and hot track days driving it than I can remember.

I had been collecting body parts for a while and was trying to hold off fitting them until they were all collected and ready for paint.

But after going through the effort of getting the car mildly straight again, I decided to fit up what I had to get a look at how it was coming together. So far I had the 326 power rear bumper, side steps and an early URAS front bumper.

Even though the drivers side strut tower had shift quite a bit, it still drove ok with a bit of castor tweaking. We also managed to get the majority of the panels lined up good enough to be seen from the side of the track, so I was happy.

The initial plan was to collect a few more parts, then spray the whole thing white. I had always wanted a 180sx and it finally was getting close to what I’d wanted.

But alas, my future plans were not meant to be. A few problems meant that this shell was soon parted out in favor of a new car. This ended up being the best the car ever looked, so I’m glad I took the time out to wash it for once and take these photos. I’ll go into more depth on the rest of the cars life soon.

A quick video I just edited up of Jesse back in April. This was one of the 3 Meihan days Adam and I attended while he was over visiting, so there’s still a lot more footage to go through.

23/09/2011

One sunny afternoon after the crash, I took the car down to Shane’s workshop so he could work his magic on the rear panels. First of all we stopped by the local hardware store and picked up a sledge hammer and some wood.

I stripped the rear down and it wasn’t looking very flash at all. With it now about half a meter narrower, the rear hatch, taillights and obviously the rear bumper weren’t finding it very easy to fit at all.

After a solid afternoon/evenings hammering, we managed to get everything lining up pretty good again.

I was amazed how the rear fenders came out, some bog, or a pair of overs and it would have been back to normal.

The front took quite a lot of pulling to get it anywhere near back to normal, but after a few snapped strops and some borrowed front guards from Shane it was good to go. The drivers strut tower was still pushed back pretty far, but with some corrections to the castor to make up for it, it seemed to drive ok.

What better way to test the repairs than a late night run to the mountains.

I don’t think I’ve ever put up a photo of Shane’s rear engine Honda Vamos.

Apparently this thing was off the road for quite a while before I arrived, with Shane doing loads of suspension/wheel/body work, and swapping in an 660cc Honda Beat engine. The Beat engine comes with individual throttles, which made some pretty hilarious  sounds as the van flew by you on the expressway. With the rear seats stripped out and Shane installing a flat wood floor setup, it was the perfect support vehicle.

Easily my favorite van of the whole stay.

I can’t thank Shane enough for his help. The 180sx seemed to drive well enough that night, and I was pretty excited to have it all in one piece again.

 

A few photos of the car looking a little worse for wear after the drive home from Meihan.

The passenger side from the initial hit to the wall, which straightened the car up…

..into the far wall. The front took the brunt of the impact and managed to flicked the car around..

.. hitting the drivers rear as well.

All in all, a solid effort for a single crash I thought.

Here’s that video of the Bihoku round of MSC I promised to go along with the previous posts.

I just chucked a bunch of the best clips from my phone together, then got sick of editing so it’s 7 minutes long. Remember to click HD too.