Chassis harness is all removed from the bay, along with the fuse boxes. I’m going to try to remove the dash tonight or tomorrow and start connecting it all back together.
Plan of attack is to pull the dash and reconnect this stuff, extend wiring for headlights/motors, pull the motor, place Chase Bays order, and then get this bad nasty painted up. It’s going to be a somewhat slow process through the winter, but hopefully it is worth it and comes out looking nice.
Damon
Friday…
Hoping to spend a good chunk of time on the chassis harness this weekend if I get the time. Really getting excited for the engine bay and I am feeling super motivated right now, so I am trying to harness that. (ZING! lol)
In other news, we got our first snow flakes here yesterday. Major bummer- it is starting earlier than it did last year. Time to spend some quality time in the garage and get to work! Have a great weekend and thanks for checking in.
Damon
It has been three years today since I bought the car- pretty wild how fast time goes by. I can’t believe how much fun I have had with this project and how much I have learned. Truly an awesome platform to build and learn on. I think I have put about 30,000 miles on the car since I bought it- almost 14,000 of those coming from this summer. Thankfully, it seems to be getting a bit more reliable every season, haha.
I thought it might be fun to take some current pics of the car as it sits today and compare them with the photos from the day I bought the car. Since I have already started tearing it down for the engine bay rebuild this winter, I took these shots on Tuesday of this week. You’ll also notice that the Ganadors, door panels, and DMax mats are missing from the shots. Sadly, I was in between mirrors (got S13 specific blue-tint Ganadors now), door panels (switching to red Bride fabric), and mats (switching to black/red DMAX) at the time I took the shots. I still thought it would be cool to look at though. Enjoy!
Happy three years! I really tore into the car last night, so I’ll post an update about that as well shortly! Huge thanks to my wonderful wife Alicia for putting up with all that has come along with my car habit over the years- and all of the friends I have made along the way.
Here’s to RATRIDE 2012! Thanks for reading.
Damon
Alicia and I carved some pumpkins this weekend…
lol
Alicia carved one in honor of Tomei-san:
Pretty stoked- we had almost 300 trick-or-treaters last year. #oldpeoplelife lol Happy Halloween!
Damon
Just some snaps I took with my cell phone while Kyle was taking dope pics. These have a more period-correct vibe, haha.
I removed my Ganador mirrors and door panels last night- but don’t worry! A set of blue tint S13 specific Ganadors are on the way to my door today. Looks like they are already black in the pics too, so hopefully I don’t need to paint them. I think I am going to try to wire them up over the winter as well- would love to have them actually work.
Blue Tint! Photo from the importer.
As for the door panels, I think I am going to try to sell my set of black logo panels. If they don’t sell, I will just rip off the black fabric and install the red fabric the next time I am in Illinois over the winter. Should be pretty cool! I’ll probably snap some final pictures next week before I really start tearing into the car. I don’t want to just yet, but with the alternator down for the count and this going on, I think the time is just about here:
Yep, that's in Fahrenheit. 
Have a good weekend and thanks for reading!
Damon
So I’m sure everyone has seen the FT86 brochure images that leaked today. I decided to take a crack at the car with my mediocre Photoshop skills…
Pretty cool! I think it will have potential for sure. I am nowhere near baller enough to be in the market for a brand new car, but this gives me faith. I am super bummed it will be sold as a Scion in the states though- I’ve always been a Toyota guy, but the Scion brand can be pretty lame sometimes. Would much rather see this thing rocking the Toyota badge in the states!
Damon
Such a bummer seeing this thing just chillin’ when I roll out in the morning. 😦
The battery light came on while I was driving to a friend’s place last Thursday night. I was able to make it home on just battery power, but it was too dead to start the car when I made it into the garage. I checked the fuses and whatnot after reading some threads about the subject, but everything was good. I tested the big plug going into the alternator with the car running and it is getting power, so I am thinking the alternator is toast.
A friend has one for me that I can toss in for the mean time, but he lives two hours away. With high temps falling into the low 50s and the season coming to a close, I’m probably just going to take my time getting it from him and let the car chill for now.
It’s going to be a long winter!
Here are some snaps Kyle took last weekend…
I’ve got Bride tuning pads, GANADORS, and D-MAX mats for sale- come at me bros!
My alternator stopped charging last night after a rain burnout. I’m going to try to diagnose it tonight to see if it is wiring or the alternator itself. Car is probably in the garage for the season either way though. Bummer.
Have a great weekend!
Damon
I left Michigan after work last Friday and headed down to Normal, Illinois for the annual Nissan BBQ at Toby Broadfield’s house. The event was actually on Sunday, but I drove down early to hang out with Kyle and Toby for the whole weekend- makes the almost six hour drive a lot more worth it that way. It was cloudy when I rolled out on Friday evening and just generally sort of gross out. Naturally, it didn’t take long before I broke out my favorite road trip items- Red Bull and Teriyaki beef jerky. It does your body good… 
I think I was in southern Michigan near the Indiana border when I drove through a pretty cool thunderstorm- especially for mid October. There was a ton of chain lightning across the sky- I tried to capture some with my phone camera, but I am still new to using it. I caught some of it in this video, I just can’t figure out a way to rotate it lol. It’s not like you guys have never seen lightning before- if nothing else, at least you can hear the exhaust and my dope tape player/stock speakers:
Pretty cool sunset after the storm passed...
Once I got to Indiana near the state line, I met up with Max (s0apgun) and Tony (Midwest Myriad) for dinner at a brewery in their hometown. It was pretty cool to meet up with those dudes- chill guys for sure. I am jealous of how close they live to Toby and Kyle, haha. I ended up getting to Kyle’s place around 12 AM, blinding him with my headlights, and crashing out a short while later after checking out Forza 4.
On Saturday, we hung out with Toby at his shop for a good chunk of the day. In the afternoon, we headed back to his place and washed the cars in his baller garage.
We test fitted each other’s bride-fabric-wrapped glove boxes and arm rests in our cars for the hell of it, and ended up trading. I think both cars look a lot better with the colors swapped.
I don’t have any pics of the arm rest and glove box in the car yet, but I will grab some later this week. When I am down there next I will buy Kyle’s red fabric he has left and do up a new set of door panels to match the rest of my interior. That will probably be in January or February. In the mean time, I will probably sell my door panels with the black fabric on them.
On Sunday, we cruised over to Toby’s in the morning for the BBQ. Kyle’s car had a bad MAF sensor, so we had to limp it over there blowing smoke like a turbo diesel. Thankfully, Daoud and Ryan both brought us MAF sensors they picked up from junk yards the day before, so we were able to get the car running so that we could cruise a bit on Saturday night after the BBQ. The cookout was awesome and the Forza contest was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I can’t play XBox to save my life.
Kyle's car had an upset stomach after the bad MAF and pooped on Tob's driveway.
It's even crazier in person... nuts.
I hit the road pretty early on Monday morning when Kyle left for class. About ten miles down I-55 from his place, I got pulled over by an Illinois State Trooper. Sweeeeet. He ended up being a super cool guy and only gave me a written warning for my exhaust. He had me sit in the police car and chat with him about it while he wrote the warning, which was pretty weird… can’t say I have ever done that before. It was really funny though- he said it sounded like an airplane when I drove by and asked why I had so many bars in my car, lol. With my warning in hand, I was back on the road. Thankfully, the rest of the drive home was uneventful and the weather was a lot better than the drive down. It’s crazy how different the landscape is just six hours from where I live- its all flat corn fields out there with very few trees compared to Michigan. They also have a ton of these wind generator things everywhere that are wild looking- I saw trucks hauling the individual blades going the other way on the freeway and they were about three semi trucks long. Pretty nuts- nothing like that in Michigan that I have seen.
Flat.
Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie...
I lol every time...
So yeah, it was an awesome trip! Kyle took a few snaps with his nice camera that I will post up later this week. The weather here feels like it is taking a turn for the worse, with high temps in the mid to low 50s for the next ten days and a lot of rain. I will probably only get to enjoy the car for another month at the most before she gets tucked into the garage for the season. 😦 I’ll update as much as I can before the season’s end, though. Thanks for reading! Damon
Fall is here!
An update where I finally do something to the car should be here Thursday- then a trip to Normal, IL to visit Toby and Kyle all weekend! There will be lots of TYPE X.
Damon
CamryOnBronze 