Minty.Fresh Boosted Altezza

[Pete_the_Russian]

Hello gentlemen, and ladies of course. I have been around the forum for a while now and decided that it is time to create a build thread at last.

I might insult the previous owner(s) of this car slightly but what the hell....here goes


First off, i got the car back in August 2011 from London. By the looks of it the car wasn't really looked after by the owner since he changed his cars like socks. It didnt have the cam belt changed, the fitment was terrible as it was rubbing catching and making a whole ton of weird noises. The turbo was over boosting and the injectors were maxing out. So being straight out of uni, I found it really hard to sort those things out so first things first... I had to find a job to pay for the car


Here are some pictures from when i first got it.








The first drive, the level of happiness can not be expressed in words

And some more pictures taken later that day.

First thing that bothered me was the wheels rubbing on the arches, so the following day the car was raised a few mm until I came up with a permanent solution.


The permanent solution involved waiting until all the tyres were worn out and replacing them with narrower tyres running a bit of stretch....I needed a job!


Once that was done, the car was lowered even lower than before. This lasted for about a week, until my heart started breaking over the sound of the exhaust scraping on the ridiculous speed bumps around where i live. So up it goes again


I ended up with this.

And with some 5mm spacers on the rear

Havent had any rubbing of the tyres and only a few scrapes here and there on the speedbumps. So winter was spent with the car in the current state as I really had no money

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

Feb 2012

Then some problems started. :? The car started to run extremely rich so that caused it to fail its MOT. In to the garage it goes...perfect excuse to change all the bits I wasnt happy with. Luckily I had a job by this time

The solution was to have it remapped, I didn't want to go to a mapper empty handed, so I ordered some bigger injectors.

Then since the car was in the garage i decided to change the clutch release bearing. So ended up in taking the exhaust off and the intake manifold to get to the gearbox.
This once again ended up in another mission. :lol:
The cells in the cat had a massive hole in it, from the engine running rich, so out comes the cat and in goes the decat pipe. ( didnt take pictures)

While the intake manifold was off, it was given a good clean and made shiny

During the process of changing the front ball joints i had another idea of fitting some camber bushes to the rear arms...(got pretty tired of having extreme tyre wear on the inside)

that rusty arm is from another car that i have as a spare, so no need to say that the car is left outside to rust :lol:

Few other bits were done, such as a welded diff.

Kept my open diff as well incase i ever got fed up with it...doubt it i will though

Next step is taking it in for a remap and finally getting it back on the road and on the track.

The car as it currently stands

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

May 2012

I might have forgotten to mention that the main purpose that this car was purchased was to drift and this is where I started to prep the car for the first drift day

Went to B&Q, got some T-brackets and drilled them out to get the holes in the right place. Proper bodge job...but hey...it works. This was the result

Next... the remap

Straightaway managed to solve the injector problem i have had since February and towards the end of the session she was pushing around 264bhp at the flywheel @0.5bar.
So at last she is driveable and all is left is a timing belt change and she will be ready for some track time.
It felt like a completely different car now, i must admit i was even a little scared when i got in after the dyno run. The engine response and power delivery was unbelievable...what was i driving before?!?

Before and after

I think the actual first dyno run pushed around 190bhp :lol: the 223.1bhp figure was done after some tweaking as the car wouldnt rev past 5k :lol:
223.1bhp was pushed with completely screwed up timing, which resulted in boost spiking up to 0.8bar with the torque curve being all over the place. The car was driven on that map by previous owner and god knows how many before him.
Now its pushing 222.5hp at the wheels, which is....very, very, very fun to drive to....tescos

June 2012

So it was time to do the timing belt. I was very surprised when all the garages I asked to do the timing belt said no....(I just didnt have the time to do it) But in the end I managed to put a few hours aside. It took about 4 hours in total...3 of which involved removing and changing the water pump :lol: :lol: All i can say is that it is a pain in the arse!!!

Never done anything this fiddly in my life!

Got the timing bang on the first time and car goes like a dream!

While i was on a car mission, i decided to fit the spacers i picked up from a friend.

Initial offset

After

Had to raise the rear slightly as i havent rolled the rear arches yet, but so far on the worst roads it only rubs a tiny bit.

Happy birthday to me Picked up a little something Got very fed up with having my arse cheeks on the handbrake most of the time...not my type of thing

Got a set of bride rails and managed to bolt the seat to it. Pretty happy with the result.

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

August 2012

Finally made it to a drift day and i must say, the car pretty much drifts itself. Feels so planted and the turbo adds a nice bit of torque in the low end.

a bit of cone munching

It didnt stay dry all day

Damage wise the car held up really well. The engine, gearbox and suspension felt solid all day....Had a little squirt of power steering fluid though. Looked like it was overheating bad. Still dripping on the drivers side when its parked up, haven't had a chance to look where exactly its coming from though.

Anniversary present yes, I am sad

Strut brace

Dont need this

Fitted the power steering cooler.

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

And then the girl was garaged for the winter until March 2013... here we go

From the day that I fitted the bucket seat, I was constantly unhappy with the seating position. The seat was too upright. The steering wheel was too far away....
So I decided to get it sorted.

First off, a nice pretty OMP wheel

The bride rails that I had before, were chopped down and fitted with some side mounts

I nearly went down the route of mounting the seat without sliders....but couldnt bare the thought of not having the adjustability :lol:

So this is my new home

Next....remove these excuses for coilovers

And, in go the HSD's

K-Sports used to bottom out on every second bump. Not sure what the spring rates were on those. But the new 12/10 setup sounds good to me.

HSDs are so much better....but the k sports used to go so much lower. So I am stuck with the current ride height But at least the handling is mediocre.

So I went out to test the new suspension and got a little too carried away

S14 wheel to the rescue!

I had to occupy myself somehow.

Like this

Primed

Not a performance mod, but should keep the interior nice and neat

This seasons focus, is definitely suspension

25mm RCA's. Cheers Dale

6mm rack spacers -> 3.5 turns lock to lock

Took me a while , but here is the end result



Looking a bit sorry for herself



And finally ready to come out



Lets see what Pembrey has in store for us

My first cripping point



Pembrey turned out to be a very nice little track. Im going to miss it



Im sorry, I dont smoke

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

So as I said earlier, its all about the suspension..... I was a little bit worried about the kink in them not being as large as altezza ones. They are meant for a jzx100, but as it turned out I had no reason to worry.



If anything it has more Still got a bit of clearance



Using the stabiliser links as a guide , I dialed in the max amount for time being.

Before

After


So that pretty much a short story of our relationship over the past two years....

Currently in the works...Short steering knuckle + 30mm RCA

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

Before my move up from south wales to Aberdeen.....A few purty pictures

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

These turned up after a looooooong wait from Japan



Just need to modify the hubs now so the top arm runs more parallel to the ground.

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

Locking collars fitted



And waking up to find out that the wheel has finally shat itself



one step forward, two steps back.

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

Hello new wheels

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

Battle mode

 

[C1arke]

God I love that car

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

A very very quick update

Buy boot wing


Paint boot wing






Ruin boot wing with fuel spray while changing pump



Destroy backbox



Melt cam sensor



On the upside...the knuckles are nearly finished

 

[Jites]

looking good peter man, your exhaust, subframe and pretty much the entire under side of your car took a beating the other night, that was scary shit, so many sparks haha!

got the spoiler fixed yet?

 

[DtheBUK]

I can't believe you raised it. Poor show

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

Hahaha! Yeaaaaa, the subframe wasnt enjoying it.


Gonna raise the rear slightly for this weekend, so I can actually get to the track with the full car

Spoiler....havent had the time....or the money to buy paint maybe get around to doing it next week. Its all prepped though, just needs a few coats of paint

- - - Updated - - -

I can't believe you raised it. Poor show

Oi! I havent raised it yet!

 

[twiglett]

My exhaust is the same.
And I have some braces under the fuel tank that have nearly worn through.
The sparks light up the road when there are no streetlights.
I'm making an exhaust with no flanges apart from the downpipe and no silencer boxes so it has nothing to catch on then I'm going to bolt some steel blocks to the subframe where it rubs on rough ground. Sparky sparky.

 

[Pete_the_Russian]

Since fitting the locking collars, my subframe has dropped a few mm, so that didnt help And I know what you mean about braces. Some of the bolts on the small subframe braces have worn through

You mean an exhaust like this?



Got one, but it doesnt fit since my downpipe is at least 50mm further forward than stock. Got caught on a ramp when i was reversing and mangled the shit out of it.

 

[Jites]

get wallace to sort out the downpipe dude, that new exhaust looks decent. and loud!

 

[twiglett]

You got that from Craig didn't you.
I was going to buy that but decided against it because I can make one for about £80.

Did you use jzx100 locking collars? As thats all I can find.