Monster Sport A Pillar Guage - decided to change from the ATI triple pod as it didn't love how it sat on the dash



Engine bay





I also ordered the ARC Burnt Titanium Strut Brace which took longer to make. Can't wait to see it on.

 

4th April 2009

Nothing too exciting to report, Lakeside sprints have been cancelled tomorrow due to the amount of rain this week so I have a couple of weeks where the car doesn't need to be in a driveable state.
Decided to remove the rest of the carpet from the interior so I can get at the sound deadening to get it ready for painting. wasn't that hard really, just had to remove the seats and both parts of the centre console.
Turns out the carpet weighs 6.8Kg

Garage



Interior

 

18th April 2009

Update

Today was a good day, spent it working on the Evo with the help of my mate Pang - got 5 hrs labour out of him for a bacon and egg breakfast and $4.64 worth off stuff he needed from Bunnings. Gotta be happy with that!

Anyway, the plan was to strip all the sound deadening from the floor so it's ready for paint next month.

First up I went and picked up a nice big block of dry ice from a local supplier. We figured it would work best broken into bits and put in a number of plastic bags so that we could get the ice sitting right up against all the nooks and crannies and so that we could have a couple of areas on the go at once...

First I cut it in half with my jigsaw...


Then we just used a hammer and chisel to break it into smaller bits to put in the bags. Didn't get any pics of this as we were having too much fun but you get the idea.

The main thing is that it worked an absolute treat. We could get it off in nice big chunks and it was coming away cleanly.




A bit over an hour later we had 5.2kg of the stuff out of the car...


And the floor looked this this...

 

I remembered when doing the other updates I forgot to do one for all the Okouyama Carbing stuff that arrived during the week.

Rear Bulk Head Plate...



Heel Adjust Plate



Passenger Plate



Foot Rest



Pedals



The lot

 

Now that I have done that I can get back to the work done on Saturday.

We wanted to fit the rear bulk head plate cause we were keen to see how it would look. Its only temporary at the moment as it will need to come out again for painting.

First we had to move all the unneccesary wiring for the rear speakers etc out of the way a bit...



After a trial fit we realied the hooks that hold the rear seat back up were fouling a little so we gave them a bit of a trim



All done. Fits up great and looks awesome. Can't wait to see it once everything else is gunmetal inside as it will be a great contrast...





Now it was time for a test drive to see how loud it was without sound deadening. Too our surprise it was actually a lot quieter inside now which we put down to the rear plate. it cut out heaps of the tyre and road noise which i was really stoked about.

Took a couple pics on the drive even though the car was filthy

 

24th April 2009

A couple more parts arrived today

ARC Burnt Titanium Strut brace...






It weighed in at 1.8Kg vs 3.3Kg for the std one meaning a saving of 1.5Kg. Based on the cost of the brace, each gram saved by swapping to it cost me $1.15



Project KICS 3 piece wheel nuts










ARC Titanium diamond badge




Before...




During...



After...

 

April 25th 2009

FP Green Turbo, ARC heat shield, Meek turbo oulet and LICP were all fitted up during the week @ Neal Lowe and the car was re-tuned.

Can't get any good pics of the turbo or LICP but here is one of the heatshield fitted...



And now the engine bay which is 95% finished... i think

 

24th May 2009

Got back from a holiday in the states this week. Had the car at Summit Collision Repair in Rocklea while I was away getting the floor sprayed in a gunmetal grey similar to the darkest part of the logo on the side of the car.
I love how it turned out and very happy with their work as usual.









And now that the floor was done I could finally get the rest of the Carbing stuff in.
In order not to scratch any of the new paint I stuck a strip a of rubber that is sticky one one side on all the areas that will come in contact with the floor. It came with one of my ARC parts and I had a bit left over but I need more now if anyone knows where to look for it?

Before...



After...



Fitted...



Heel adjust plate...



And a couple of the whole dash with the centre console back in and before the seats go in...

 

27th May 2009

The wheels I ordered from wheeldude.com in the states arrived today. Luckily I had the evo with me at work and only one seat in the car so I had room to fit the four boxes as well as the four Kumho KU36 245/35/18 tyres I got from Option 1 the day before.
Headed straight over to Ozzy Tyres and the boys wasted no time getting them on while I waited.

Im really really happy with the colour (Gunmetalic) and fitment and quality of these rims. They are Rota Grid in 18x9.5 +20. I do not plan on using them at the track so the 2 extra kgs in weight over a Volk TE37 is not an issue. Plus they were 3k cheaper!

Now for the pics...













And now the rims were on I could finally fir my KICS Project NoeChro wheel nuts, they r so sexy

 

2nd July 2009

Time for a small update. The car has been sitting fairly idle for a few weeks now but the next track day is very close so I figured it was time to give it some love.

First I took it to Nick at NA Autosports on Tuesday to have the brakes and wheel allignment checked. After getting a clean bill of health it was time for a detail which I had done today - both inside and out. Not that there is much left to do inside these days.
And finally tomorrow I'm heading out to QR to have a set of Dunlop DZ03G's fitted to the BBS rims. Part of the deal you get when buying tyres through them is that they let you scrub them in on the track at the same time which is cool. You even get a free entry into a QR sprint day

Here are a few pics I took after the detail. Sorry they are all from the same angle pretty much. I was in a hurry and lazy.

 

July 8 2009

Been ages since I have had time to do an update so I thought i'd go back in time a bit to keep the theme of the thread going.

Headed out to QR for another time attack day on July the 8th. The missus drove in the morning session on the Rota's and had a ball. She didn't crash either much to my relief

At lunch I chucked the BBS rims on with my new set of Dunlop DZ03G's that I got from Doug @ QR a few days before the event. They fit em for free for you and let you have 5 laps on the track to scrub them in. You also get free rotations every time you hit the track and free entry to a QR run track day. Gotta be happy with that! $480/tyre for anyone interested.

I loved the new tyres!!!! I couldn't believe the difference in grip between a street tyre and a semi and had an absolute blast re-learning how to drive the track with the new set-up. This was my first track day since fitting the Green as well so I had ****loads more grip as well as punch out of the corners and on the straight. I only ran low boost (23psi) all day but still managed to get under 1 minute on the sprint track (59.4x) and I knocked a missive 4 seconds off my PB on the national. Best was a 1:24. something

Here are a couple of pics from the day thanks to the boys at motorsport photography...

 

2nd August 2009

Open sprints were on at Lakeside today and I was dead keen to see what a difference the Dunlops and the green would make there as well. Previous PB was a 1:03.4x i think and in the fiirst session I had three laps under that time with a best of 1:01.2. Again I was running the lower boost setting so I was very happy with that time and confident of getting closer to a 59.xx by the end of the day.

The second session I realised I had let out too much air from the tyres as my gauge was faulty so i wasn't able to get enough heat into the tyres and the car was all over the place. I still somehow managed to go a little quicker again though with a best of 1:01 flat.

By now I was very confident of getting a sub 1 minute lap with the correct tyre pressures and full boost.

In the third session I went out first as I had been running quicker than the others in the group. The guy behind me in an Integra with a 30k engine told me he was keen to get under a minute as well and figured he would if he could keep with me. After the warm up lap I decided it was time to lose him and I stupidly went into turn the Carosel all full pace despite knowing the tyres weren't 100% warm yet.

As i was heading up the hill I knew I was going to put a wheel or two off and though it would be better to drive off completely than try n stick it with 2 on and 2 off the track. It was going well until I got back on the track where the lip up from dirt to bitumen must have caused a couple of wheels to get Airborn (according to the guy behind me) and then the car was all over the shop. I thought i was headed for the wall on the right so I corrected but went too far and started spinning the other way. Once the front wheels touched the grass on the left of the track I had no contral on ended up drining into the embankment front on. Luckily it has a nice slope on it and most damage was done under the front lip rather than to the front of the car.

I was probably only going 15 or 20 k's by this stage so I didnt get hurt at all. time for pics...













Front bar should be re-usable. carbon lip is smashed to bits. Intercooler and std oil cooler will be replaced, as will the LICP. should be able to bend the HKS oil cooler shroud back into shape as well as the bracket on the right of it. The oil leaking was only cause the fitting was a bit loose.

 

22nd August 2009

Been a while since I had a decent update thanks to work being crazy lately and my money tree isn't doing to well right now.
I haven't even started on repairing the damage from the off at Lakeside cause I just haven't had the energy. It's kinda depressing seeing it in its current state so I really need to pull my finger out.

I am already getting prepaired for my next crash though lol. Got my Bond Roll Bars full cage and Harness bar delivered last week :thumbsup:

Here's how it looked when it arrived...



now you see it, now you don't...



wanted to see how it looked with the pieces fitting together as they will when bolted in so 10 mins later I had this....



Gotta say I'm very happy with the quick turn around time from Bond and many have said before, the quality of the cage it excellent. Very happy with it so far. Just got to work out if i'm going to paint it black, paint it to match the gunmetal floor or have it trimmed in suede and be a true baller :biggrin:

While I'm at it I thought I should finally put the pics up of my new driving gloves the missus got me for my birthday :thanks:

 

16th September 09

Another small update today as I have finally been able to get the car in a driveable condition after the crash.

During the week I decided i wanted to get the car going so I could take it to have the cage fitted/painted. I went to fit the meek LICP that I ordered and while I was doing that I found that the other intercooler pipe was also damaged in the crash and the intercooler was worse than 1st thought. The good new though was that I was able to bend the shrouding for the HKS cooler back into place and confirm that both it and the std oil cooler core were not leaking. The std core is a bit bent but will still do the job fine. A replacement costs $460! so I decided against it for now.

I was able to get a second hand intercooler from Nick at NA Autosports for a great price and Trav (LAB15) hooked me up with the cooler pipe. Fitted it all up the other night only to find that the bloody battery had gone completely flat. Left it on the charger over night and was able to go for a drive around the block today finally .

Everything seems to be working well. :biggrin:

Now that I was on a bit of a roll I decided I would take the roof lining off to see if there was much of a weight saving to be had. To get it off the sun visors and the passenger handles had to come out as well. Once it was off I was a bit dissapointed to see that the sound deadening under it was only a very light thin mat. Now that I had gone to all the trouble of pulling it out I figured I may as well leave it out and have the metal under it painted to match the floor and the cage as the lining needs to be cut a bit to fit the cage anyway.

here is a pic of the lining out of the car. I managed to get it out without creasing it too badly...



and here is how the roof looks underneath...



In this pic you can see the bracket that holds the front interior light...



I thought it looked ugly so it had to go too...



since i'd removed that bracket I figured I may as well get rid of the one's for the passenger handles as well...



A couple of minutes later I had this...



I should look much cleaner after painting now but it sure is gonna be a pain to drive on the road if it wasn't already. Oh well, i've only got to drive it to the track and back.

 

25th September 09

Picked the car up from NA Autosport (Neal Lowe) this morning and as usual I'm really happy with what they've done and the price.

The pics are only from my phone I'm sorry as I didn't have my camera today and the car is headed straigh to the painters to get the cage and roof painted. I'll get some quality pics once that is all done.

I was really worried that I wouldnt be able to keep my Carbing foot rest plate as it sits right where the front leg of the cage comes down. Nick told me not to worry about it. Im really happy with the result...











He was able fit it up nice and close to the roof so even with my helmet on i'm not going to have to worry about wacking my head.

The first couple goes getting in and out of the car where a bit weird but i'm already used to it and its not much of a hassle at all.