NEWS!!!!!!!!!!

October 21st, 2015

Ok, this is exciting!!!!

It suddenly appeared at the front desk of my work.  No name on the packing slip, and the phone number written down was missing a digit.  Somehow the New Zealand customs people let it coast through.  Those little mistakes saved me over $1k in GST fees.  Thank you News!!

The Hitachi HT-07 4A, in all it's insanely small glory.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, really... but it's super tiny.  The only thing funnier is the size of the headers:

Aren't these just the cutest car parts you've ever seen??  Anyway, I originally wanted to have a shop install everything to get before and after dyno runs, and also for tuning.  However, the ecu already has a map on it that works with the turbo, so all I would have to do is install the turbo and adjust the boost.  Seems simple enough that I may try it myself, but who knows what path I'll take in the next few months.  Stay tuned!

Silk Road Coilovers

October 14th, 2015

This is exciting....

Brakes and Bushings!

October 1st, 2015

While I wait for suspension and a new turbo to arrive, I wrote to Soichiro at Monster Sport who managed to find some engine mounts and suspension bushings for me!

The car doesn't have that many miles on it, but rubber degrades over 23 years.  My engine moves around a lot, and the suspension could use a little more stiffness.  Why not swap them all with performance replacements??

These should be awesome!  In the end, it'll be like a brand new car.  Here is the invoice I was sent, just for reference:

And if I'm making the car faster and handle better, I needed some better brakes:

I went with some Dixcel slotted rotors all around.  I hadn't heard of Dixcel, but it came up on a few AZ-1 build blogs in Japan, so they can't be that bad.  They'll at least be an improvement over stock.  Now I just need some pads.