We'll you've seen the previous blog entries regarding nisei and if not you're more than free to just go through the older posts on here.
After getting all of the parts over to my Jordan Innovations we packed things up for the night and then I made my way back over with tons of
Savoy for everyone to get our days started. I ran around to autozone, lowes, then o'reily's, then to autozone, then to bolt king.
My brother said the clear was a little shy on the canards which I felt HAD to be installed for the show, I just wanted the car to be complete you know. Against his advise (because I didn't ask for it) I bought a can of gloss clear, wiped these guys down after finding hardware to mount them at lowes and went to town.
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| painting parts in 100+ degree weather is bad mmkay!!! |
The problem with not knowing shit about paint is you can't paint parts that have a surface temperature of 100 degree's being it was 103 degree's outside while I decided to partake in this. I got solvent pop all over them and pretty much have to be worked down to the paint and re-cleared in a PAINTABLE environment. And this is why my little brother handles any painting duties on my car and not myself lol.
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| these pretty much sat here for the remainder of the day. |
So after running all of the errands and deciding that no more parts needed to be sourced or picked up, we were done, time to start mounting parts and getting this show on the road.
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| This was the height i've been rolling at since upgrading the subframe. Got the overs pinned in ready for rivets! |
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| installing countersunk rivets, while brother color sands with 1000/1500/2000grit |
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| this stuff leaves a mess! |
It was about 6:30pm by the time the sun stopped being a dickhead and we got to work. There was another car in the shop the guys were working hard to get running. Another case of the owner not having everything needed or in place to get the car running. Such is life with 240's, Jeff and the guys were busting their ass making sure the customer was taken care of and at the end of the day Andrew ended up giving dude a ride home because the car wasn't ready.
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| black countersunk rivets in the aerocatch pins, no allen hardware to dick around with, and they wont rust. |
My brother worked as much as he could outside once we lost sunlight, I measured the height of the front of the jack pinch to match the rear jack pinch and took out about 2.5 inches of height on my shock collars in the rear and about .3 out of the front to close up the tire/fender gap (My intent was never to tuck rim/tire in the front). So you can just kill that argument, it will NEVER happen. This is the third and last time this bumper is getting repaired/repainted.
I had to take a decent amount of material out of the rear over fenders lip to get the wheels out back to tuck tire. I didn't intend to tuck rim when I did the lowering, it just kind of happened. And the way my alignment is doesn't allow much room for me to adjust the camber out, maybe by a few mm without the wheel making contact back there. I think to sacrifice "hell flushness/fitment/whateveryouretardscallit" for looks & maintaining functionality wins hands down for me.
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| 12:00am |
Jack was very awesome and stayed behind so I could finish the car, we needed light for things to get buffed out, and shortcuts had to be made so we weren't there all night. If you guys were curious why paint jobs cost so much. The magic is in the post production. Cutting and buffing takes a LOT of time!
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| My brother calls my paint "black money" because when the sun shines on it all you see is green! dolla dolla bills ya'll! |
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| It's 5:30 am, the sun is rising and I have to wash the car again. |
Lots of adjustments had to be done with the hood fitment, I had to re-adjust the pins for the aerocatch with this hood. Just a lot of unnecessary time being spent on small stupid things, the threads for the two front holes on the hood were stripped out (nice to discover that while trying to make small fitment adjustments) For the most part it fits as good as it's going to fit for a used track car's hood. The fenders and bumper have a small gap now because I decided to bolt the fenders to the front core support like they were designed. While this takes away from the looks a little bit I bet you I won't have anymore cracked or paint spidering on my fenders from the flex letting them reign loose with the bumper making contact with driveways and stuff.
And speaking on that, the ground clerance in the front is great now even though I have whats called a "reverse rake" look going on. It's the overs that give that appearance and I could frankly give 0 shits about it. Wheels turn and don't rub, rear suspension fully operable no rubbing, and I didn't scrape my front end going up any driveways which is what I feared the most about having it back on the car.
So now I'm home, covered in oil, dirt, fiberglass, on 2 monsters, starbucks, diet coke, and a gallon of arnold palmer.
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| we didn't even get to cut and buff the hood, you think it's shiny now. Just wait! |
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| Spot on, and yeah Jeff didn't have any deeper black rivets at the shop, I'll eventually drill that out and put a black one in. or two here. I'll have more on the rivets in my next post! |
Well I originally was waiting forever for a spot at the show, I initially had parked where the Honda Turbo II from jdm reverend is sitting. They told me to move my car, he swoops that spot, then the crew of cars to the right of him tells him he has to bounce because that's their area for cars. The parking dude said to let those douchebags park and then park next to them. They had 2 s13's that looked really nice but decided to make the parking spot I was supposed to have one of theirs while they set up a canopy in an available parking spot. Then on top of that the Mr. Cartoon guys started giving them shit for creeping into their space, so I now have nowhere to park.
I posted up here and just walked around giving no fucks.
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| This guy was a HUGE hit with people at the show |
So I made this joke of a center cap for the show while at work on some comic book backboard and a lamination machine, sad thing is it's doing a better job of staying put than the 50+ dollar one from Kranze that should be there.
I want to give a shot out to the guys at jdmzipties.com so far out of all of the pictures I've seen so far these two are absolutely my favorite. The black looks rich and deep just like in person. There is some haze here and there but like I said we hadn't finished cutting and buffing the whole car. Mainly did the upper parts of the body that people would take pictures of and kind of left the bottom lips of the bumper, side skirts, fenders, and overs. I have fought with the idea of getting replacement kouki tails to have the black match my paint a bit more but I like the fact the greyish purple kind of breaks the car up a little. What do you guys think?
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| spectator photo |
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| spectator photo |
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| here you can see the green and platinum pearl in my paint if you look above the body line. See album here |
If I find more pictures from the show, I'll make sure to post them. I want to give a few shot outs here since I don't really do that type of stuff. The biggest shot out goes to my little brother Bert Edwards, who does car stuff on the side. His main grind is for fender guitars, so if you play guitar buy fender as you will be supporting my brothers job!
Jeff and Jack at Jordan Innovations for letting me use your facilities to get my car ready for the show (just a heads up his shop is not an open garage so don't go asking him dumb shit like let me use your shop to work on my car.) Once I live somewhere with my own garage I'll never have to burden my friends again. But it's great to hang out with them and help out with stuff they're working on while working on my car as well.
A big and huge huge huge thank you goes out to my girlfriend Mary who doesn't ask me any questions when it comes to working on my car. Seriously I know how some people in relationships get that stress from not spending that quality time at home with their significant others. My girlfriend is done with going to car shows, especially if there isn't a bunch of hot models to gawk at haha.
Joey from the chronicles the honda line up was sick dude, I've seen most of the cars before and thoughout my time in the "scene" so it was business as usual for me, but I hope the goal was achieved of the people recognizing the amazing cars you got to show up. If you were Moses himself the whole AM7 crew would show up with their old cars that were sold and long gone. So great to catch up with my friends for a brief moment while baking under the sun.
Jay from JDMEGO, I finally got to meet you for a brief moment. I didn't want to interrupt your conversation but wanted to say hi since so many times I've run into that situation and go "I'll run into them later" and never see them again. And thanks for the grey/black dice caps man. Super fresh! I know it's like seeing a triple rainbow or something when you come out to a show so everyone was trying to holla!
Parnell, good seeing you dude. Chopping it up about crossfit, stick with it and heal up, thanks for the water and shade!
All in all as soon as my car got judged, and I knew it wasn't going to win shit because it's a car show. I've been to so many over the years that if it's not a well known honda then the judges look for stuff like unnecessary gold/crome plating, filled engine bays, bride fabric all over the place, tv's and sound systems. AND THEY LOVE UNPAINTED CARBON FIBER!!! It's just a fact, I ain't tripping because I never did this for a trophy and never will. I don't aspire to be in any magazines or any bullshit like that.
A simple nod and a smile on the face from people who love what I love about cars is what I do this for. I drive this car every day and I have my up's and downs so I think of it more of a pampering session for my bottom bitch!
That said... Nisei was cool, it was hot a fuck, sucks the canibeat/hellaflush event pretty much stole a majority of the foot traffic from this show. I think when Nisei phases out the fatlace thing will be coming around full circle. Either way doesn't matter, I'm not a big car show guy, I never really liked what they were about. I just like the nostalgic feeling of getting together with a bunch of your friends and having people see your hard work!
- Wayne
