I still can’t believe that it’s already 2016 and January is beginning to come to a close. Winter arrived a bit late this year (some might argue that it hasn’t arrived at all in Michigan) and it’s making me feel like it must be November, but the tax documents are beginning to arrive. Pretty wild!

It’s been a very quiet off season in my garage this year. I found out back in September that my employer decided to close down my current office and that I had two choices: either relocate my family to New Jersey, or find a new job. I ultimately chose the latter and will be starting my new job one week from today. It’s a pretty weird feeling as I have been at my currently employer for over seven years- since I graduated college, in fact. I bought my S13 just a couple months before I became a full time employer here.

Anyway, with the craziness of the holidays and trying to find a new job, any changes to the car have been put on hold. I haven’t wanted to get into taking on anything new during this transition period and while I do miss wrenching on the car, it’s sort of nice to avoid the cold garage floor and the anxiety that sometimes comes with that.

I got to thinking this past weekend and realized there has only been one other winter during my ownership of this car where I more or less left it together and didn’t attempt anything major during the off season. During the winter of 2010-2011, I left the car intact and only made minor changes including new wheels (which didn’t arrive until May anyway,) different coilovers, a new seat, and a Cusco roll cage. You’ll notice in some of the old photos that the passenger seat and most of the rear interior was removed at the time to prepare for the cage’s arrival.

The sun poked out this weekend and a lot of the snow melted so I decided to pull the car out of the garage to let it run for a while. The situation reminded me of the same thing I did nearly five years ago to the day in January 2011 and I thought it would be fun to take a few quick photos from similar angles to compare them (you know, because I am constantly doing nerdy things like that.)

Anyway, here are the shots from 2011 (on the silver CR Kais) and the new photos I took yesterday.

I don’t have anything planned for the car during the duration of the winter. If anything, I would like to change my rear tire size and play with some spacers a little bit. I’ve been debating messing with the engine a bit, but the simplicity and reliability of the stock SR setup thus far is just too rewarding to mess with. Things get expensive quickly when the engine comes out so I’d like to avoid that for the foreseeable future.

I’m looking forward to settling in at my new job over the next couple months and driving the car to the office when the weather breaks. It’ll be nice to have a staff parking lot to utilize instead of parking on the street 4-5 blocks from the office. Should be fun!

Thanks as always for reading. Best of luck with the rest of the off season!

Damon