the review

as this year comes to a close, i look back and i have to say i have been truly blessed. things i thought i was never able to to do, i did. i think i should start a list of 101 one things that a car junky must do list.

I dropped by and visited Japan. definitely an uplifting experience for the japan motorsports aficionado. and yes i do like greddy

Competed in Pro-Am. with not so good results. but at least i tried my best.

went to a ton of driving events. no i didn't drive in all of them.




Had the opportunity to see the filming of Top Gear USA pilot show. It's actually pretty good contrary to popular internet belief. too bad they're going to cable.


Viewed the Monterey Historics. if you wanna see some old stuff this is it. next time it'll be goodwood.

including a vara event earlier this year.


Attended the Jim Hall Karting school. i should give up cars and race karts. it seems alot less maintenance.


decided to make the race car into a show car and entered my car at TORC. didn't win anything, but it was the easiest event i entered. maybe i should start doing these from now on.

Visited the toyota and datsun museum.

enjoyed a few import shows of with the old school flavor of course.

sevenstock

spring fling

jccs

torc

west coast z nationals

picked up a new race car

early 90's volvo 740 turbo wagon. and no i don't smoke meth. maybe my neighbor

as this year comes to a close let's wave one last good bye to 2008 and say hi to 2009.

Project Volvo #2 In shorts and slippers.

The past few days was really strange weather at least for the southern california natives. From lots of rain to freezing cold temps. Today was just perfect, i'm definitely glad I don't live the on the east coast anymore. What better way to spend it, than with the Volvo. Yeah I always prefer to work on cars in shorts and slippers, to the dismay of my neighbor. After about a 2 days of finding and reading wire diagrams and running a bunch of tests. i've finally come to the conclusion...




That it finally runs. Took it out for a spin to see if there's any issues. There's a bunch of little things like annoying leaks, etc. But so far everything seems to be sound. Soon the wagon will be carrying and bunch of boost and laying the smack down to all who may oppose.

4AG Tip #86-4.5 oil pan continued.

prevously i dabbed into the use of the 7A oil pan into the for use into the 4AG. for 16v block owners you'll need to obtain the adapter plate from Ukia Shokai. The 20v guys are very fortunate and will have it much easier since the bolt pattern between 20v and 7A blocks are exactly the same. look for the previous post to see the pics. unfortunately it' s not a bolt on process if you plan to use the windage tray.

due to a reinforcement bar that goes across pan it hit. as pictured it will not sit flat onto the oil pan. you have the option of modifying the windage tray or the bar.


i milled the bar down and you should be able to fit the combo as shown. it's a nice tidy fit.

since it's gong on to my turbo setup, initially i thought this plug, right under the motor mount bracket would be used for the turbo drain. but i deemed it inadequate for use. and i found it would be too difficult to route the oil line for a smooth flow back into the oil pan. but for those who are manly enough actually use the factory gts oil cooler set up, you can bolt the factory fitting to this and retain the original factory oil cooler setup.


a different location for the oil drain was chosen and 3/4 NPT barbed fitting was used. it avoids the motor bracket and should be more than enough for oil drainage.

the 7A came with it's own baffle plate which it didn't come with my pan. it's probably lost in the back somewhere. it was a good chance to make my own.

home depot style using thin gauge steel cut up a piece that would be even better than the original.




i was in a bit of a rush to get things done so i didn't create a shroud that would have gone ground the oil pump pick up, this would have been an added measure in keeping oil near the oil pickup. i plan to do this at later time which will be an easy upgrade since it's a 2 piece pan.

well you may wonder how much oil it uses? well due to the large cooler and remote oil filterm on top of the oil pan, the combined total ~ 6 quarts of oil was attained, and more is definitely better. this should could keep the beast well lubricated and much cooler on any given track day. this setup has worked on my rear drive setup, but should be able to work front, rear and mid engine setups.

airborne

video compilation of DTM racing back in the 90's well put together. love the 2 wheels off when hitting the rumble strip. used to love doing that at the esses on the back side of streets of willow before the change.

fo' shizzle

something i came across while Christmas shopping. have a merry Christmas.

cleanup time

i've been the accumulator of quite a bit of junk. i admit i'm pretty much a 4ag/ae86 packrat, and not of the rare japanese parts and it's gotten pretty ridculous at times. but my reasoning is why throw it away if it's still usable. cause you never know when you may need a simple part that's usually discarded.
but it's gotten to a point i needed to get rid of stuff. as you may have seen earlier i created some interesting trophies for the 4age time attack, from stuff i had laying around in the garage.
this time around i decided to do a little bit of clean up.

flex

time and time again i always run into people with crack headers. every time i always recommend a flex pipe but they don't listen. this poor sap had his header pipe crack not once but twice. you may think it cracks cause it's an ebay special. but that is not the case, the pipe above is an actual trd piece. so no one is immune, all th vibrations and engine movement has to transfer. since the header is basically solid with the engine it's also soaking it up. so if you plan to track your beast consider adding a flex pipe to the header. save yourself from headaches, unless you just like welding.

4AG Tip # 86-4: Large Capacity Oil Pan?

Being the pack rat of 4AG parts, always isn't a bad thing. I get to play around with stuff and see what really works and what doesn't work. I came across an ad in one of my japanese corolla books for shop Ukiya Shokai. The ad pictured a 7A oil pan adapter plate for use on 4A blocks. Since I've built a few 7AGs already, I already knew of the larger pan and also knew it wouldn't fit. Even with some filipino creativity it'd be some work to get it done aka CNC machine pare. But I don't roll that way, let's keep things simple.

I ask good friend Taka Aono if he can help translate what this part does. Basically it does 2 things, 1 it serves as a main cap reinforcement for those high rpm blasts. 2 it adapts the the 7A oil pan, which holds more oil. This means more Shell Rotella T goodness.


Anyways rummaging through the garage I came across a 20v windage tray. Since I never owned a 20v, never liked them, after installing a few them, they just weren't impressive enough. I noticed that it looked similar to a 7A oil pan.


i overlayed the windage tray over the pan and surprisingly it actually lined up.

the only problem was this bar that held the 7a baffle plate. this must be removed or milled down. i decided to mill it down since i'm still planning to use the baffle plate and wanted to retain for strength.


here you can see the profile of standard 4A pan and 7A pan.

I estimate it'll at least hold a quart more oil. But i'll follow up with an install on this in the near future. But for now this is what it should look like.

weenee tot

one thing i never was letting cheetos sit for a day. makes them hella chewy. i wasted half a bag, well not really i still ate them. yeah whatever at least i'm not into hot cheetos



anyways i picked up m y bumper from richard r. he did a great job can't tell it was broken.


here's what it looked before the surgery

filler up

this week my truck actually got filled up and i got some change and bought some beef jerky. no, i didn't change how much i gave habib. gas prices dropped so much that it's under the $2.00 mark. am i happy yes, but as a society what have we learned? it doesn't look like much. we seem to have gone back to our wasteful ways. i've seen 2 kodiak trucks cruising the streets, probably going to sonic to impress the high school kids. people seem to be buying new trucks. the whining about high gas prices senator, barbera boxer isn't praising anyone for the cheap gas prices. and the morning traffic has gone from bad to horrible again.
but it seems the only way people will curb their habits is to bump up prices. i didn't mind paying extra, cause i normally cruise in the gas sipping corolla. and compared to the rest of the industrialized nations we still have cheap gas prices. anyways let's enjoy for now cause who knows what next year brings.

yeah i fill the ford up with the cheap. it's ford tough it'll consume anything.

castaway

today i got my cast removed and had it replaced with a splint. a few more weeks and i'll be 100% capacity. won't be missing the cast any time soon.

though when i look at it looks like Mr. Trump's 'You're fired!' gesture

or like i'm about initiate the pinky promise wth??!! or austin power's arch enemy Dr. Evil.

it's just been difficult to adjust not driving corolla. at least gas prices aren't eating me alive since i've been driving the truck around. though i'll need to start making plans to get the car fixed for next year.

look at me.

2008 Formula D Pro Am at Redbull

i haven't seen too much coverage of the pro am event. which is a bit sad since it was the grassroots drivers who brought drifting mainstream. but then again there wasn't much coverage before that either. props to wrecked magazine for the coverage of pro am that everyone else seems to turn the other cheek. now i can actually seem myself smash into the wall. @ 1:21 baka....

art or junk?

i haven't been able to do much lately for obvious reasons. though i had some time weld up some new stuff. don't know if i can call it art, but i'm sure whoever claims it at the time attack this weekend can call it what ever you want. it's spare parts i had laying around which i probably won't be using for a while. glad it's out of the garage. i can finally move around garage again.




yeah it's a bit on the rough side. just threw together from what i had layin around. though i must admit they are interesting.