Due to the damage my front fenders received I decided it was time to do some more metal work so I hopefully don’t have to get them fixed again. I came to the conclusion I am going to have to give up a little aesthetics for functionality. Due to how upright the wheel is at full lock I had to leave some room between the fender and front tire, its only the width of my finger but it should be enough room.
You can see the tools I am using to do this – a hammer, dolly, and heat gun. I also used an orbital sander to sand down some of the paint/bondo after I beat on it. You can also see an old shot gun shell, it fell out of my fender during the hammering, must have picked it up at Driftwater, hahaha. You don’t get keepsakes like that at any other facility!
This season is going to be awesome, my car finally feels perfect, once I get my hydro ebrake in and working there wont be anything let to do.
Here’s a teaser video from yesterday – HUGE thanks to Jared Huston for sitting through the cold to capture lots of awesome video footage. Aside from some cosmetic damage…lets just say I’ll be redoing my front fenders…it was the best drift event I’ve done in a long time.
Here’s one shot of the damage to my fenders. This side is the worst – you can see my tire popped off the bead as well. I went off at the top of third and gravel was lodged between the tire and wheel, you can see the wheel lip got a little messed up too but its no big deal the lips were not perfect anyway.
I have been wanting to do a fall photoshoot since last fall when my car wasn’t done and the leaves were incredible! I was able to set up a time when both TJ and Jared Huston were available. TJ has an awesome blue S15 and Jared Huston does great photography and has been getting into videography. I did some shooting myself, but overall am not really happy with the pictures.
Below are four of my shots and four of Jareds, followed by the video Jared put together. Big thanks to Jared, TJ, and Xavier for coming out!
So I got the car back on the ground tonight, did a garage spec alignment and took it for a spin. I have a vibration up front…so I may not have tightened something enough, I’ll check that out tomorrow.
I was really pleased with the added camber slotting my camber plates gave me, it also lowered the car a little more up front.
Sorry for the radio silence! I basically have been boycotting getting my car back together because I feel like I deserve some sort of break from working on it non stop for the main build. I took a short trip to Switzerland in the middle of all of this (and that was an incredible trip), but with Driftwater 13 this Sunday I knew I had to bust ass this week to get it together.
Huge thanks to Andrew who came by yesterday and helped me pull the old steering rack. I spent ~4.5 hours in the garage today by myself getting the new one in and getting everything else in order to be put on the car. I, unfortunately had to drop the LH header to get the new rack in, but luckily that isn’t too bad at all (its actually much easier then an SR manifold, since there’s no turbo in the way).
I had to get my LCA studs machined down so they were the factory length, otherwise my new PSM knuckles wouldn’t be able to do their job. While I was there I got my camber plates milled out so I could get some extra camber up front. Huge thanks to Ramey Built (that means you BC) for the über prompt lathe and mill work.
Status as of tonight, new steering rack is in, LCAs painted extremely shitty, and the garage is in utter disarray. Tomorrow I have to wrestle the damn inner tie rod boots on, install new spherical bearings in the LCAs, and reinstall the whole front suspension and skid plate. Hopefully I can get all of that done in an hour or so. Then its a matter of getting an alignment, welding some bump stops on the LCA (+ repeat shitty paint job), and ideally I can get the hydro ebrake on and bled, but that’s not necessary to drift so that’s only happening if everything else goes according to plan (fat chance).
Before a few terrible photos, I’d like to send a huge thank you to Jason at Alliance Nissan. He has amazing prices and is willing to match/beat anything out there – he even drops parts off at my house. He can get just about anything, so hit him up! You can see his info in a picture below.
So I had a decent group of people needing fenders done (I roll fenders so if you’re in the Hampton Roads area of VA and need it done hit me up!) so I decided to get Part Shop Max’s (Powered by Max) new pro knuckle mod. It corrects roll center 45mm and provides up to 62º of angle! This knuckle change means I am getting rid of my custom tie rod set up and replacing it with Ikeya Formula inner tie rods and Tein outter tie rods.
While I had everything ripped apart I decided to upgrade the spherical bearings for my LCAs as I used pretty cheap ones the first time around. I ordered some Aurora COM-12 bearings and also boxed in my LCAs. I still need to get some C-clips, replace my steering rack, and paint my LCAs before I can go get an alignment and test everything out!
I was pleased to see the PSM knuckle mod gave me plenty of room between my brake rotor and LCA even with my ball joint modification – that was the limiting factor for adjusting my roll center more with my ball joint mod.
So I had a decent group of people needing fenders done (I roll fenders so if you’re in the Hampton Roads area of VA and need it done hit me up!) so I decided to get Part Shop Max’s (Powered by Max) new pro knuckle mod. It corrects roll center 45mm and provides up to 62º of angle! This knuckle change means I am getting rid of my custom tie rod set up and replacing it with Ikeya Formula inner tie rods and Tein outter tie rods.
While I had everything ripped apart I decided to upgrade the spherical bearings for my LCAs as I used pretty cheap ones the first time around. I ordered some Aurora COM-12 bearings and also boxed in my LCAs. I still need to get some C-clips, replace my steering rack, and paint my LCAs before I can go get an alignment and test everything out!
I was pleased to see the PSM knuckle mod gave me plenty of room between my brake rotor and LCA even with my ball joint modification – that was the limiting factor for adjusting my roll center more with my ball joint mod.
So I was able to attend Driftwater 12 this past weekend! My car felt like shit, mostly due to the fact that I slapped it together and didn’t have time to get it aligned properly. It also sucked because I still didn’t have my e-brake installed. I had fun though, hopefully I can get it dialed in properly for the next one and I wont have to worry about tank slapping on transitions. The front feels pretty good now with the added caster, I just need to get the rear alignment straight.
Here are some of the photos I’ve collected from the event:
Who would have thought 92 degrees would feel so good outside? I took advantage of the weather being slightly bearable and took some shots of my car in my driveway/garage. Nothing fancy…I’ll have to get a friend to do some rolling shots soon, and hopefully I can get some nice action shots at some point as well.
Big thanks to Nate for the Engineered to Slide sticker, Nigel’s work is awesome so I am happy to rock one of his stickers!
