Finally ditched the old seat and picked up this leather solo seat…but I passed on the springs to keep it low. Stoked with how it looks for now. Next up are new bars and tank paint. For some reason this seat change has made this thing SO much more fun to ride. Might be the kick-up in the rear keeps me in place better? Don’t know don’t care lets ride
I was finally able to get some time to throw the new Vance & Hines Short Shots on. I am not a huge fan of chrome, and I at first Scotch-Bright polished the tips. It gave it a nice stainless look, however I decided to just paint it all black along with the black exhaust wrap. I am super happy with how it turned out, and am happy that now there is space for the passenger foot pegs so the lady can ride too.
But you all have time, don’t you. So in late 2007, shortly before I moved to Japan, I helped long time friend Keith pick up a clean Cressida chassis that was local to me in Chicago. I knew the build was going to long, and done correctly so I have been following it closely. As soon as he got the car back to Minnesota, the tear down began:
Ryan, who now works out west at HotLine, made an amazing cage for the car. And you can see the MarkII front end coming along…..and oh hi cool Sparco 18s!
And of course the needed powers to make some of that smokey stuff out the rear end:
He got some fancy-smanshy fiberglass that nobody has ever seen since this picture! But thats ok, I’m not one for multicolored cars myself either:
Of course the interior got a tad on the crazy side too, full interior race cars….come on that just sounds funny folks!
A bit more fab work, included some custom pipe for the noise maker under the hood, and some custom pipe our front to push those pesky hay bales and Roto brothers out of the way:
Of course after all that hard work (over 2 years of it!) you gotta take the beast out for some testing. Amid some minor engine issues the car starting to get a good amount of track time, and more importantly Keith was getting seat time again!
Of course, I know your all wondering how this thing sounds. Wonder no more:
Congrats Keith, glad to see your project finally coming to an end…sort of. Can’t wait to see how she looks next spring after some shiny stuff and some final wrapping up of loose ends.
Removed the Origin roof wing that I never liked, sold it for $120 and found this Kouki already painted in black for $50…fair trade I’d say:
of recent progress
for the front anyway. 17×9 +15 215/40 Goodyear Revspec. Just needs more low now!
I need you in my life again:
But silver again…or some bronze this time…hrmmmm
Super nice bug from a fellow in Oslo, the color and steel wheels are perfect.
Super nice install of the air stuffs up front. For the whole build, check out the thread at VW Norge
Darren asked me to throw up some closer shots of my setup for the breather tank. I finally got around to taking some quick snaps. I decided to mount the tank near the front of the car for a few reasons. 1st, it’s close to the radiator, overflow tank, and water neck, so aside from the line going down under the fan to the lower radiator hose all the lines are as short as possible. It is also because I still am using my oem boost gauge and the oem sensor is on the shock tower were most people mount the tank.
When I 1st went to install the water neck fitting that pulls the air out of the cooling system, I forgot to use the supplied washer and broke the fitting off while tightening it. This was actually a little bit of a blessing in disguise. The supplied fitting was just a straight nipple for the line, but since I broke mine I had to order up a new one. Greddy also sells a 90degree fitting that I thought would work better given the close proximity to the exhaust manifold. So you can see the new 90degree fitting gets the rubber hose quickly away from the hot manifold and also makes the hose easy to work with going to the tank itself as it swivels freely.
I was at 1st worried about the location of the tank. I thought it may not clear the hood; but I have no problems with that at all. I also didn’t know if the tank would be higher than the radiator (the tank needs to be to work properly) but to my surprise it sat slightly higher and I can see it working properly.
Likely more than you ever wanted to read about this little part, but it can be a tad confusing and last I remember even the units shipped stateside only include Japanese instructions. These are relativly cheap and also saves you the hastle of always having to make sure your cooling system is properly bled. So my cooling setup now includes: Greddy 2 row aluminum radiator / Greddy breather tank / Nismo low-temp thermostat / Stance water pump pulley. With this setup even in the recent hot summer I sit at idle in traffic at 69-70 degrees C and at my last Meihan outting I never saw temps higher than 76. At touge, I see around 85 at the end of my uphill run wereas I used to see temps just roll over to 100 C at the last corner.
