Yeah, we know it's been a long time since we've updated you on this project, but we have a very legitimate reason. For the past few months, all we've been trying to do is get it ready for SEMA's International Auto Salon in Los Angeles. Believe us when we tell you that it wasn't easy. First we had to drop the motor back into the car with the help of Bobby and William Law from Blitz North America. Then we had to load it up onto a trailer and tow the car in the rain to Raceline Development to have Elton Lo fab up some intercooler piping.
Remember, we swapped in an HKS GT2835 turbo, which sits differently than the stock unit. We ended up missing a few small parts because that's the way life goes. Luckily, Superior Nissan in Puente Hills, California, was able to special order any strange components we needed. It actually stocks a lot of Japanese Nissan parts, too, for all the Johnny Come Latelys out there who just decided they should convert their 240SXs into Silvias or 180SXs. What a grand idea. Who'd have ever thunk it?
We even stayed up until 3 a.m. the day of setup for IAS while Danny from S.I.X Autoworks applied the roll call for us. We think he hates us now, but who knows. Other than that, we gathered a grip of parts and managed to get them on in time. Wow, we actually did something right for once. And we're still not done yet. But at least we're getting closer.
Work Meister S2R Wheels
After the new paint job and kit, we really wanted to go the extra step to make the car look different. Some phat wheels were in order, so we called up AKH Trading to see what Work wheels it could get for us. The Meister S2R rims have always been one of our favorites, especially with the Burning Black face finish, which complements the new color adequately. The forged two-piece design keeps the wheel light and strong for when we finally take the car to the track. We figured we could go with 18x8 +32 on the front to clear the big brakes and 18x9 +29 in the rear to get a fat lip. Unfortunately, those sizes were on back order. Luckily, Ali from AKH made several phone calls to Japan to track down a set and air ship them to us. Talk about service.
Falken Azenis ST-115 Tires
We're not planning on drifting this car, but who knows. What we are going to do is take it to our Time Attack races and other track days. We needed some sticky tires, so we hit up Kelvin Tohar from Falken. He recommended we go with the Azenis ST-115 tires to get the best performance. Kelvin is a pimp, so we do whatever he says. Our first plan was to run 235/40R18 on the front and 265/35R18 on the rear. However, with the special offset on the rear wheels, the tires started to rub. We dropped the rear tire size to 245/40R18 and they fit perfectly now.
Bride Ergo II Racing Seats
There are tons of seats we contemplating using, but we thought the Bride Ergo II fit best. Not just the car, but us too. Face it, we're not getting any thinner, especially Jonny. There's not much we can say about these seats except that they're pimp. It's good that Tees USA is bringing in Bride seats from Japan. Back in the day, we wouldn't have the first clue on how to get these seats. We'd just have to drool over them in Option2 magazine and then cry quietly in the corner of our bedroom.
Supposedly, the daughter of the Bride president went to the same college as Rikdaddy. We still haven't confirmed that, and we still give him a hard time for not taking one for the team. One thing, though: the bracket mounting is kind of hard to figure out. Set aside a couple hours to get this done.
A'PEXi Power FC D-Jetro
We've been using the regular Power FC for quite some time now and it worked great. For a plug-and-play stand-alone unit, the FC is very versatile. The only problem we would run into was with the airflow meter. Even though the FC allowed us to upgrade to a Z32 or bigger airflow meters with a couple of clicks on the Commander, we'd still hit some snags. The Power FC D-Jetro lets us get rid of the airflow meter and completely replace it with a manifold absolute pressure (MAP) sensor. This should be very helpful when it comes time to tune. We'll be doing a full story on how to do the conversion, so make sure to check back.
MB Quart RCE 216 Speakers, Lightning Audio X1.800.4 Amplifier, and Pioneer P7600MP Head Unit
Out went the extremely bulky system in the trunk that we never listened to anyway, but we still needed some tunes to keep us awake while we sit in LA traffic. We went with a Pioneer P7600MP single disc head unit. There are more functions on it than we could ever think of using, and it plays MP3s. Not that we download any songs illegally or anything like that. We improved the lightweight audio setup with four MB Quart RCE 216 6.5-inch speakers, tweeters, and crossovers. These are from MB Quart's Reference product line, which is pretty much the caviar of speakers. They're the cream of the crop and have more class than the queen of England. Fortunately, they fit right into the factory locations in the door and rear deck, so it wasn't too much work for us. Remember, we're lazy. To top the whole system off, we used a Lighting Audio X1.800.4 amplifier. It has total output power of 800 watts. That'll wake up some neighbors.
By Ricky Chu
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