May 29, 2008 in Will Ankur Fit?
Since I don’t like posting about failures (unless there’s a lot of pics), I’ll post a success story follow up! This is what inspired the whole “Will Ankur Fit?” idea, hee hee. After seeing the exige pictures, Bernie looked through his old albums & found these lil gems.
Karen’s Dryer: SUCCESS
Smaller Dryer at Lake Tahoe: (more…)
May 27, 2008 in Will Ankur Fit?
One of our good buddies brought this little gem by on Memorial Day. Forget about the test drives, gawking at the engine bay & super dooper functional vents, or discussing the pro’s & con’s of being able to kick ass straight from the factory, we wanted to know if our little Indian cabana boy Ankur would fit in the trunk.
He’s fit in tiny spaces before, but alas, the Exige trunk is completely useless for transporting a 3rd passenger of mediocre size :P.
More pictures available in the gallery.
May 26, 2008 in Cars Cars Cars, DIY: How To's
Another fairly straight forward write up, but I figured at least one person may be interested in it (I was looking for one to no avail these past couple of months). This is a rear bumper exhaust heat shield install onto an aftermarket 240sx coupe rear bumper, but should be applicable to fastbacks, s14’s, oem/aftermarket, and other cars.
The motivation for creating this heat shield came from my exhaust warping the stock rear bumper - and melting/bubbling the paint on my aftermarket rear bumper. This was mostly due to the overly rich tune from the ecu install, but it was easier for me to temporarily install a heat shield, which may be useful later as well, than to tap the downpipe & tune everything now.
I bought a sheet of aluminum (.090″ x 12″ x 24″) for just under $20 delivered via eBay. I got this thickness because I read about how some were too thin - this may actually be a little too thick for some applications, but worked fine for me. I held it down via 5/32″ long aluminum rivets & 1/8″ medium & short aluminum rivets (you may also get away w/ medium, and possibly short, 5/32″ aluminum rivets).
Total Project Time:
This took me about 2 hours taking my sweet ass time with the hand / hack saw & 30 minutes of which was spent going to Home Depot to pick up rivets since I forgot where I put my other pack of rivets from way back when.
Tools:
- Dremel, jigsaw, hack saw, or any other cutting tool you prefer
- Drill w/ 5/32″ & 1/8″ bits, or whatever size rivets you want to use
- Rivets & riveting tool
- Cardboard/paper for creating a template
- Aluminum sheet (again, mine was .090″ x 12″ x 24″)
- Dry erase marker or something to trace the template onto the aluminum
- Optional: I also used a section of aluminum heat shield barrier with adhesive (used for protecting areas in the engine bay from turbo installs)
Step 1:
I found it much easier to remove the rear bumper than to work with it on the car.
Step 2:
Create a basic template of what you want your shield to look like with cardboard or paper.
May 25, 2008 in Cars Cars Cars, DIY: How To's
I finally had time to do this mod - as it turns out, it’s VERY simple. Looks tons better than the plug in single led bulbs, and also costs significantly less than the “custom made-to-fit” led boards, which seem to be only available for higher end cars anyway.
To get started, I purchased an led interior dome light panel (3×6 leds - 18 total) off eBay. My particular light came from bliss-star for just under $13 shipped to my door. On to the write up w/ pics!
Note: I also test-fitted this same led panel into the 240sx convertible trunk light - fits perfectly w/ no modding at all!
Tools:
- Philips and flat blade to pry off the dome light and remove it.
- Dremel w/ sanding disc or equivalent tool to cut the plastic in the dome light
- 18 LED Dome Light w/ 194 bulb adapter (the one I bought comes w/ several adapters), or whatever size you like
Total Project Time:
I believe it took me about 15-20 minutes, most of the time moving from my car to the house, setting up the tools, and going back to the car.
Step 1:
Remove your old dome light
- Use a flat blade to pry the plastic panel off, be careful as the cover is probably pretty old & brittle
- Use a philips screwdriver to remove the dome light; unplug the connector & remove the 194 bulb at this time.
Step 2:
Trim the plastic panel so that the led light can fit comfortably with the plastic cover on. I had to trim off about 5-7mm either side of the housing for the light to be able to recess far enough into the housing so the plastic cover cover slip over. YMMV. (more…)
May 22, 2008 in ROBOTS!
Super dooper robot thingy - I forgot what this lil guy was called, but you can get him at Target or whatever. Ankur found this lil gem somewhere - sometimes I find it better not to ask. Wrestler & a robot dancing, priceless!
What will next week’s robot be? WHO KNOWS!
May 21, 2008 in The Interwebs and PCs
Ankur got bored of finding robots for me, so he found this instead (actually, his friend Girth Brooks found it):
Iono what’s more disturbing, that we (or at least I) find a picture like this funny - or that someone took the time to edit this picture and add in all sorts of comments… that coming from the guy who made a photoshop of loldowney, hahahaha.
Thanks Girth!
May 20, 2008 in ROBOTS!, The Interwebs and PCs
Best robot this month… or EVERS! Iron Man! I’ve been meaning to compose this image since Ankur & I went to watch Iron Man opening night - “I want a cheeseburger” - OH NOES! Can Robert Downey Jr. haz cheeseburger?
The movie, despite not having enough action (I thought there was enough; crazy dramatic fight sequences involving thousands of CGI people are overdone, imho), Iron Man is the best super hero movie so far.
I really can’t believe I haven’t seen more of these photoshops - loldowney anyone?
Yes, Tony Stark, you can haz as many cheeseburgers as you desire. Quoc-Viet approved!
May 13, 2008 in ROBOTS!
This time, it’s a robot on a shirt, yay!
Ankur’s hard @ work, so this month, we may be getting robots every week… or not.
Poor robot :(. Maybe he just needs a lil WD-40 to loosen him up. T-Shirt available from Threadless.com
May 11, 2008 in Cars Cars Cars
Mother’s Day… spend time w/ mom or go race @ Willow Springs International Raceway? How about both!?!
So, my stupid self decided “hey, I should fit my brand new painted body kit the day before I do Horse Thief.” Got everything on pretty decent. Slept @ about 1:30-2am. Woke up @ 4:30am, got to track @ 7am, prepped, bla bla.
This is my 2nd time going (first time was with SRT Motorsports guys). This time around, there wasn’t as much lap time because the 626 drift crew were holding a grip competition. In between the sessions, the drift boys would run.
Anyway, we started off with an hour of practice runs. Mostly 240’s, s2ks, one Neon SRT4, and a Civic (EK I think?). There were few enough of us that it was mostly empty for me during the practice. I think I was the only one who stayed on track for the majority of the session - everyone else either got tired, wanted to adjust some settings, etc. I stopped once for tire pressure & stiffening of the suspension. My driver side tire was rubbing the fender REALLY bad @ the high speed sweeper/kink where the chicane is located.
After stiffening her up, it was pretty solid.
The car felt really nice in 2nd with the Power FC (on stock n/a KA, mind you). However, I felt like I had absolutely no 3rd gear. I was going @ the straight about 65-70mph full throttle. The first time I went, I was able to easily hit 75mph or so on the straight. In 3rd gear, when full throttling, it felt like something was off. I most likely need to get it tuned since the map is for a turbo s14. In any case, I started shifting back down to 2nd gear during the straights, which helped, but I could smell my tranny again.
My stock bumper got warped from the combination of hot weather + running rich @ El Toro. This time around, I decided to try some aluminum heat barrier material used to wrap things in the engine bay to protect from header/turbo heat. The exhaust blew the heat barrier clean off my bumper sometime during the practice, along with a good chunk of paint. To top things off, further up the bumper, the paint bubbled from all the heat :(. I tried making a crazier heat shield, which faced the same fate during the way home.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly… or so I thought. Too bad I only recorded the practice runs and not my timed lap.
After the drift session, we all lined up for the qualifying runs: 1 warm up lap, 2 timed laps. I decided that it might be more beneficial if I just forget about 3rd gear & stay in 2nd the whole time - the taller gearing of the J30 vlsd should keep my transmission oookkk. I started building up speed pretty quick, wasn’t concentrating like I was suppose to, missed the apex, and understeered right off the sweeper/kink area - the whole time thinking “fuck, I hope my body kit is okay… and not flipping over would be nice.” I tried to take it easy and slow down gradually, but then the car slid across the track and onto the other side of the dirt/dips - BUMP BUMP BUMP! FUCKKKKKKKK!
Car stops. Only one car at a time during timed runs, so no big deal. I regain composure and continue on my way. Everything seemed fine once again until I went one round around HTM & “Hey, that’s my rear bumper @ the hair pin!” I ignored it for one lap since it slid out of the way of the driving line. On my final lap, I decided to stop @ the bumper & pick it up. Stopped the car, then realized, “Crap, if the Willow Springs safety ppl might be mad that a driver left his car in the middle of the track.” So I proceeded to the timing guy as my lap finished and told them “My bumper is in the middle of the track!” Got it afterward.
The masking tape did very little… well, basically nothing. I believe my first lap time was 1 minute and 11 seconds and average of something higher since I stopped the 2nd timed lap, which put me dead last. The other guys in the group were running between 1 minute and 5 seconds to 1 minute and 9 seconds or so. Top contenders at that time was an S14, a few S2000’s, and the EK Civic - man, that guy was fast (sure he had r-compounds, but he was outpowered by EVERYONE). Cars already fucked, let’s take a rest, then proceed to next elimination round (only 10-12 ppl, so everyone qualified, haha).
Elimination round I ran 1 minute and 13 seconds rear-bumperless, which was 1 second too slow to advance. Now that I got eliminated, I had time to put Candy (my 240sx convertible for those who don’t know) back together. Left @ 2:20pm, got some hybrid lilies for mom, & arrived home around 5:00pm, just in time to give mom her Mother’s Day flowers & partial rent for the month.
No one even questioned why I was gone @ 5am, SCORE!
Complete album can be seen by clicking on one of the images above.
Also, got a video of the “Flaming S13 Driftos!”:
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More pictures, info, videos available on Zilvia.net: http://www.zilvia.net/f//showthread.php?t=181124&page=39
Also found a decent map of the track: Map of Horsethief Mile @ Willow Springs
