sorry dudes. behind on updates. I'll just paste this from the local forum I post on.
alright I'm going to type for a bit and then photo dump at the end here, a lot of **** went down this last week.
Went down with josh with the plan to hammer out the body work and paint the car the first weekend, Satty, Josh, Vinny and myself all bossed the **** up and hammered a **** load of stuff out the first night as far as getting any last welding, grinding and other metal work done.
Next day we got a good handle on the rest of the bodywork, loaded the car onto the trailer and brought it to vinny's house, where it was to be painted. Once we got there we did some more body work, but quickly realized it was getting late and it didnt look like we were going to be able to get it hammered out in time. We had to call it a night and come back the next day.
Sunday we came back and formulated a new plan. There was no way we were going to have time to finish the body work and paint the whole car, it just wasn't going to happen. so we decided to focus on the inside of the car.. If the interior was prepped and painted, there was nothing stopping me from putting all the business aspects of the car back together and getting it running and driving so that we could worry about painting the outside later. So we did just that, got the interior all set and called it a night yet again.
Then monday the plan was to move the car back to the shop and begin reassembly, however, we had lost our tow vehicle since we were previously using josh's Enclave. Since money was tight and renting wasn't an option, We decided to take our chances with vinny's slammed 2wd 4 cylinder S10, but it didnt have a hitch so we had to make one, which took all day pretty much, but the next day we moved the car and I spent the whole week putting it back together, all wiring, interior, aluminum dash had to be made, suspension crap, brake and clutch hydraulics, windows and to be glued in and mounted etc etc etc.
Once this was all done i got it running and **** and it was ready for a test drive. car was running solid, everything seemed to be working kosher, took it on a couple drives and it was doing well. Went for one last test drive of the night and was gaining some confidence in the car so i decided to give it hell on this twisty dead end road in the middle of no where. But then coming up to a corner at probably about 60, I went to brake and lost all pressure, I ripped the wheel to try to not under steer over a giant curb and into the woods and ended up starting to spin, I jumped the curb on the inside of the corner and then again on the outside before coming to a stop. Crashed that **** pretty hard, I thought for sure I had ripped my oil pan clean off and my exhaust as well. got out, realized i was right in front of someones house, checked the car over, seemed ok, no big pile of oil or anything, i started it back up, dragged it back off the curb and hauled ass the **** out of there, leaving my bumper behind to come back for it later. When I got back to the shop we saw there was brake fluid all over everything in my bay, apparently at some point one of my lines got nicked by a sanding disc and it ended up bursting. but luckily the only other damage was a dented pan, dented wheel, and some bent exhaust hangers.
Vinny had a spare OEM brake line in good shape, so yesterday we swapped it in and got the car running and driving again, everything seemed fine and we were running out of time so we had to get the **** out of kenosha. so we took a leap of faith and attempted to drive the car home. The first 80 miles to satty's place were totally uneventful and the car ran like a top the whole time. We relaxed at sattys for a while before venturing off on the second half of our journey. However, 5 miles in my front calipers decided to lock up on me, by the time I realized, I got out of the car, my rotors were glowing bright red and my pads were straight up ON FIRE, flames coming out of my wheels and ****. Wheels were even too hot to touch. Satty and I figured out the issue right away and it was a quick fix with some pliers and we drove the car back to oshkosh, where it is now in josh's hands for more body work before drift day.
The car seems to drive well and it's fast as **** when you get on it, so lets see how next weekend goes with it. i'm sure there will be some bugs to work out, but this thing survived 150+ miles on the highway the very first day I got it driving in three years. I have videos and **** that are on Facebook, I'm not going to post them here, so if you're not friends with me there, **** off, I don't feel like hosting to youtube.
Picture dump
then I got to take this thing drifting finally! it was really fun. Beans is really fast! Still figuring out the car and it could use an alignment, but it felt awesome to be back out there in my own car for the first time in like 4 years.
I guess i'll post some updates from this past weekend.
Since we had the 2014 meet planned, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone and get my car on the dyno at the same time. Armando at Ill Garage was extremely accommodating and even though they are not normally open on saturdays, he gave me the go ahead to bring it in first thing saturday morning. So i spent most of last week getting the car prepared to make the 400+ mile round trip journey to chicago. I didnt do much, however i was able to get my exhaust fixed and put back on, wideband data logger and input signal wired into the AEM, tach wired/pinned in properly (thanks kevin) etc.
I finished getting the car ready at midnight on friday, got up at 330am saturday and hit the road. Just by coincidence another Wisconsin drifter acquaintance/friend had also scheduled himself in at IL right after me so I met up with him in the milwaukee area and we cruised down together, he has a ka-t 13 silvia. I also brought my friend brian who drove my backup car carrying all my tools and jack and **** in case something happened.
Uggo on the highway, almost to the IL border
I can't say we made it without incident, as my exhaust did fall off once, which was an easy fix, and then after we fixed it and we were leaving the oasis on 294 and my steering wheel came off, and genius me tried to grab my steering column to steer myself away from the median and failed. Smacked the median hard and thought I totaled my ****, but my bash bar appears to have saved my ass completely and all I came out with was some popped zip ties, a crack or two in the front bumper and a cracked fender light. after I saw it was nothing serious i laughed about it.
finally we made it to Ill garage.
after AC's bitch ass had told me my car was high enough to get on the dyno without raising it, Armando immediately told me the opposite. Luckily I came prepared with my spring perches for the rear that I could put back in and get another inch or so of height. I put those on in the hot ass sun and got all sweaty, but it wasn't too bad, and the car hardly looks higher so i'll probably leave them in, my exhaust scrapes a lot less now.
anyways, got on the dyno. I could tell Mando didnt have a lot of experience strapping down live axle cars to the dyno hahaha.
and for your auditory displeasure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MKxab5WPKUThen, as you all know, our meet got rained out at Miami Woods. Which was terrible for me, as I don't have wipers or any sort of defrost function.. and my windshield leaks. Luckily after taking shelter next to a factory for a while, the rain let up enough for me to get the car to BWW where we all met back up to get some wings and wait out the storm.
Overall totally successful trip, had a blast and it was awesome seeing everyone. Hopefully next time we will have better weather.
and heres a photo from when I was on the side of the road after running out of gas trying to keep up with Kevin and AC being kanjo racers.
I'm hoping the car will be painted this weekend.