uzumaki

I setup up the coilover ride heights and last week I got these and installed them before getting an alignment.



longer than stock





fitted some more bracing too

uzumaki

More tidying engine bay.

Replaced most blue silicon hoses with black silicon. Replaced blue Ralliart radiator hoses with black Mishimoto hoses and thermostat.



Replaced all engine bay hose clamps with awesome new Turbosmart clamps. Highly recommended upgrade.

New Ralliart 3 point aluminium strut brace.



Painted black (soon to be powder coated black) and installed over a new Ralliart brake stopper.





New Timing belt cover



New Fuse box cover



Flame proof paint on silver heat shield. Not happy with it.



Yes, lots replaced or painted

uzumaki

Im working on the interior a bit too

New steering column trim



New scuff plates. Blue protective film still on reminds me of my grandmas plastic covered couch





and a very rare Ralliart Carbon fibre mirror cover

uzumaki

Didn't really like the shape of the wide body fenders





I did a little grind down on these J-Speed mounting bolt heads as they were touching on the widebody fenders. Not sure if it was going to be the same issue on the OEM fenders but I trimmed them down a little just to be sure.



Replaced with new fender liners too:





Replaced the front wheel speed sensors and brackets and clips. Replaced lots of suspension bolts, brake parts and clips.





OEM guards look much better. iPhone photo sorry

uzumaki

Replacing my old M&W Coil on Plug kit with my mates SparkTech COP has fixed the engine breakdown at high boost problem. I have ordered a SparkTech COP kit from the US but it might take a while. So until then I got a really nice Australian made kit with brand new genuine DENSO coils. There's a lot of fake ones out there but this is made by a Sydney guy Jeff Kan is genuine DENSO and beautifully made.

Until my SparkTech arrives this one is working very well.







I also got my Tuner to replace the Aeromotive Fuel Pressure Regulator with a new Turbosmart FPR2000 as he had them on the shelf and I had concerns about the old Aeromotive one. My FPR needs to move a lot of fuel and the FPR2000 is up to the job.





Tidying up everything i can. Engine side cover, plug and radiator fan bolts. I still have lots of new parts like this to swap out.







repainted the grille badge too. I used calliper paint hoping it wont chip easily

uzumaki

I test fitted some RE30 17x8.5 +30 that I had lying around and although they don't fill out the guards enough the style and colour suits the wagon. These will stay on until the new wheels arrive.

Went out yesterday evening and took a few snaps.

uzumaki

My mate John from Alchemy Paint and I had a goal to get the wagon paint correction finished in time for yesterday's Japanese Car show in Canberra. We worked until 4am on Saturday night and got it mostly done but decided to attend the show with the bonnet closed. Over the past few weeks we stripped bare and repainted the front bar, rear bar, bonnet, guards, door, rear wing plus heaps of other work to the Carbon Fibre front lip and rear diffuser. Some cold weather lately delayed drying times so the finish is straight off the gun. Polishing and diamond coating front bar and bonnet will happen soon.

Anyway even though it wasn't finished we took out the "JDM AS F*CK" award at yesterday's Show! So Stoked.

Here's a bad iPhone photo

uzumaki

I bought a Mitsubishi Ralliart Sports 3 point alloy front strut brace to continue the OEM engine bay theme. As they only come in a raw silver aluminium finish I took it to a powder coater to get it refinished in satin black. My new Sparktech Pro COP kit arrived about the same time too but the only one in stock at Sparktech USA was a pink/purple anodised one. So I had it powder coated satin black too.

uzumaki

The wagon badly needed some new paint, some paint correction and carbon fibre parts refurbished and installed properly.

The carbon fibre rear diffuser fitted really badly as most bolt on carbon fibre "bolt-on" replacements don't simply bolt on. Another reason why it didn't fit well was probably because it was made for an Evo9 sedan rear bar and the e9 wagon has a squarer rear bar.

So I had these bits stripped down and repainted: Front bar & carbon lip, Rear bar & carbon diffuser, rear wing, LH front door, RH fender, bonnet, bonnet vent and Garage HRS carbon fibre radiator cooling panel.

I also had the bonnet, front bar and front lip painted with a product called KBS Diamond Coat. This stuff is like a super strong clear resin that protects from stone chips. It makes Carbon Fibre parts look amazing too.

The bonnet had lots of stone chips, swirls, scratches and weird little 1mm wide craters that covered the bonnet, roof and rear wing. Maybe caused by acid rain when it was in Japan. dunno?? My painter had never seen them before.



I thought the door mirrors would need repainting too but I used my little Milwaulkee sander polisher with Juice Super C to bring them up like new.



Rear bar with dent removed. Its amazing how good a heatgun can help bring the plastic bar back into shape.



While the rear bar was off… I replaced some missing rear bar brackets, I moved the surge tank forward a bit and replaced all the rusty bolts and brackets on the AYC pump. All the alloy rear subframe and suspension arms and bolts had been coated with a silicon rubber (i think) maybe rust proofing in Nagano Japan. I also spent many days under the car with paint thinners and a spray gun cleaning brush to remove it all. I still need to replace some suspension nuts & bolts with new OEM ones.



front bar





new paint



To be a bit different we repainted the bonnet mesh and vent with OEM X42 black pearl body paint. and of course replaced all fasteners with new OEM parts.



Test fitting the Beatrush underpanel as the carbon front lip needs to be modified to fit it properly. Also note all the deep scratches under the lip. These will also be repaired.



Lip after



Custom made inspection panel



Scratches gone



and lip fits bar properly now too

uzumaki

Overspray protection while repainting LH front door



Overspray protection while repainting RH fender. Tried just a spot repair on bonnet but ended up repainting the whole bonnet anyway.





rear bar and diffuser done.



Bonnet strip







Its cool when paint stripper works like it should.

uzumaki

Still working on the engine bay... the airbox fitted really badly and bonnet vent bolt would hit it when was bonnet closed.
Firstly to clear the radiator and intercooler pipes i trimmed a section from under the snorkel.



To clear the bonnet vent bolts and to mimic the OEM snorkel I cut a banana shaped section out of the top and sunk it it about 6mm then fibreglassed it in place





Trimmed the lid down and countersunk it's holes and fitted washers into position in the holes. This was so when the lid is removed the washers would stay in place.



Shaved the snorkel down so it can slide underneath the Garage HRS CF radiator cooling panel instead of on top as most people do it. This was to make it look neater as the CF panel lines continue right along and the front edge of snorkel is hidden. I used black anodised aluminium dome allen screws from Pro-Bolt.

Outside of the airbox is painted satin black. Inside of airbox painted gloss black and the sunken carbon fibre shape is coated in the "KBS diamond coat" for its super high gloss carbon fibre enhancing ability.





Engine bay now after I also replaced the grey Tomei exhaust manifold cover with a much better DM part. Stainless steel finish currently but i might paint it black.

uzumaki

I bought some brand new Advan Racing RSII wheels 18"x9" +25, from Leon @ "Race Division". After they arrived at his shop I quickly picked them up in my Cube.






I always have a chuckle at Engrish…



After a lot of research on wheel and tyre combos I ended up choosing these Hankooks RS3 tyres for the RS2 wheels.



I couldn't wait to get them on the car.



The new tyres scrubbed a little on the rear bar and quarter panels as the previous roll and pull hadn't been finished off properly. My mate John and I went to work hoping that a bit more panel beating past the rolled area would fix the scrubbing. I went for a drive and the scrubbing was improved but still there. I took some pix as the car was climbing my driveway. They tyre was hitting the rear bar too so that needed trimming back and I also reshaped the quarter panel liner with a heat gun to give more clearance.



I could also see the tyre pressing up on the bolt which attaches the quarter to rear bar. I didn't really want to remove it completely and do they old "cable tie trick" but i was ok with relocating it backwards about 25mm.



Where the yellow pencil mark is above I drilled a hole and urethane a slide on Chimney Nut.



We removed a section of the quarter panel and a matching piece on the rear bar about 30mm x 12mm



After a test drive to make sure the tyre rubbing was fixed we sealed the rolled quarter panel area with urethane so no dirt or moisture could get in to start rust. And then primer, X42 colour paint and 2K clear. Very happy with it now.

uzumaki

Exhaust.

Needed a new tip for the exhaust so went to see my friends at Fyshwick Exhaust/ Notaras Motorsport

I also wanted to update the CAT. It was an old SARD cat that was installed back when the car was in Japan. I wasn't even sure if there was anything inside the CAT so I took it out to my mate's workshop and got it up in the air.

I removed the old cat which hadn't been hollowed out, but it was a 200 cel cat.



So we upgraded it to a new 100 cel metal cat. Should flow a bit better after the tune.

uzumaki

The Aeroflow website says I should have a 100micron stainless steel filter before their pumps, so I ordered an Aeromotive Filter P/N 12324 and fittings and installed it. I'll probably install a 10micron filter before the fuel rail too but haven't yet.





Ideally I will replace or restore every part on the car which shows any signs of corrosion or discolouration. I have been working on this since owning the car. Even though the wagon was from Nagano I suspect it was never driven in winter on the salty roads as it's in awesome condition underneath but some things did look a bit tired.



I installed new rear swaybar brackets, bolts etc. After I re-greased the swaybar bushes I noticed the swaybar slides left and right about 40mm when driving so I installed the Whiteline swaybar lateral lock kit part number KL124 suits 23mm-24mm swaybars.

uzumaki

Next was an electrical update. I wanted to monitor the engine more but didn't want to mount gauges all over the dash so firstly I had to add a new Haltech CAN Hub to my setup as I didn't have any free CAN ports.



And a Haltech Racepak IQ3 Logger dash. This thing is awesome and shows warning lights, shift lights, AFR, boost, eflex, temps or whatever you want to see. It even has GPS so it can log lap times and let you know if your on a faster or slower lap and projected lap time.



I mounted it to the steering wheel column trim with a little alloy plate underneath. Later I also added some Q-Bond to secure the alloy plate to the trim and added Nyloc nuts to the top.



I fitted two buttons to access the dash without needing to plug a PC into it.



Wired the buttons up



Looks pretty cool. I may not leave it on permanently but maybe just for a while after the tune to keep an eye on things and for track days. not sure???



Plugged in all the cables and it works. I still have some programming to do tho



Video shows me scrolling thru the default 4 pages of screens. I will modify these display screens though

[youtube]watch?v=EkLHc3p3Vhg[/youtube]