Offset ain't everything.

[C2_mad]

awsome update, was wondering the other day what had happend to this... glad to see its moving along. cant wait to see more.

[h3llk1t3]

Well fuck.

This's been coming for a long time. Lemme catch you up on what's been going on over the past year and why there's been a lack of updates.

The TL;DR version is: I've simply done fuck all on the cars.

The full version is as of the following:

Last time I've posted was just before the cars have arrived at the port in Zeebrügge, Belgium.

The cars finally arrived, we loaded em up and hauled them back home. After a clusterfuck of paperwork we had em properly taxed and everything was taken care of. As a side note: If you're in Europe and you import a vehicle from Japan, you're best off shipping it directly to the destination country. We were idiots and shipped it to Belgium because that port was closer to us than Bremerhaven, but in hindsight that was a dick of a decision.







In the beginning we were rather motivated thinking we'd get shit done quickly so we got to work on both cars. Plan was to black out the interior on both as well as fixing up the body kit that came with the X81.

But Tom does nothing before making sure that the rev limiter is working.



I've gone ahead and ordered a couple of liters of Fabric dye to see if they can improve the looks of the shitty stock seats.







Turned out okay but I'm gonna ditch those seats anyway fairly soon.
The Big Win body kit was fairly bashed up, mainly the rear bumper had a massive crack in it. Tom quickly fibered it up and gave it some TLC. Subsequent fresh lick of paint made it look like new.









Tom also got to work on interior trim with a special coloring paste because due to the MT swap in the X81 all kinds of trim pieces are with mismatched colors, some are brown, some are grey. But in the end they turned out quite nice.



That is literally about what we've done the entire year on those two.

I've ordered my Cross Factory kit for the R34 in April and was told it was gonna be here in 12 weeks, 6 weeks production and 6 weeks shipping. The blue eye'd motherfucker I am I figured everything will go according to plan.

You guessed it, it did not. I figured getting German papers done would take a week, two tops so we gonna wait until we give em to the guy that sorted out the papers for my R32.

Still in April Tom had the glorious idea he also wants a JZX100... for his fiance. A day later he found one in Ireland. We booked our tickets and met up in Ireland, he flew in from Germany and I came from France. While we waited for our ride we went and did what any sensible Irish man would do at noon in Dublin.





A short while later we were brought to the car, paid up and made our way down south to the port from where we'd be taking the 18h ferry ride from Ireland to France. By the time we got there we were fairly intoxicated, which is why Tom was behaving accordingly.









Substantially more Ale and a headache later we were in France and made our painful way home.
We slapped some coils onto the x100 and popped on some 3sdms that were lying around. Not ideal, but enough for cockin' about with.





So that's where we stood at in May/June.
During the summer had a bit of a timeout with the cars because nothing was happening on the Cross Factory front and my wife and I took my parents over to the States for a couple of weeks of vacation.

Before that though I took my brother on a surprise bachelor party trip. I took him to the airport with a couple of friends saying we were picking up his cousin, which he believed until we were suddenly standing at the check in. We flew out to Hungary which was just too good not to share quickly. You should know it's customary in Germany for the bachelor to be a slave for the day essentially. Meaning we point to a store/bar and he has to get us beer. You should ALSO know he was not quite conventionally dressed. I'll let the pictures do the talking.











Things escalated quickly. Let's leave it at that.

Vacation time.

We decided road trip was the way to go and rented a car in San Francisco, drove down Route 1 to LA and spent a couple of days in Malibu. We moved on the Las Vegas to spend a couple of nights there and check out the Grand Canyon. I fkn love Vegas, every time. On our way back to San Francisco we drove through Death Valley and Yosemite. Pretty awesome vacation and I'm glad we got that outta the way before the political shit show that's goin down right now.

Right after our vacation next up was Tom's wedding, worth mentioning because that got us at least a couple more car pics:











Back to the main story which is way too long already so I'm gonna cut it short - by August 4 months had passed and the kit still hadn't arrived. That's when we gave the two cars to our guy to sort out the TÜV papers. Unfortunately the guy is a pathological liar and went on to waste nearly half a year of our time continuously telling us he'll have it soon sorted out and he is just waiting for others.

In the meanwhile the Cross Factory kit arrived in Ireland in October essentially taking 6 months to fucking build. As pissed as I was at that it didn't matter because we did not even have road legal cars, still. So, another excessive trip via ferry to Ireland and we had the Cross factory kit home finally. Gonna get you more pictures in a couple weeks.



So, In January Tom contacted our guy once more asking what was happening with our cars and since he continued bullshitting us Tom could no longer contain himself and ripped the fella a new one. Over the Phone. That was that and we picked up our cars and brought it a to another shop that specializes in imports. The new shop got things taken care of within a few weeks only and is the reason why I'm writing this update now. Most parts on my shopping list are ordered, I've booked my vacation and in 2 weeks we'll build the R34, at last.

Let's talk parts; apart from the usual stuff like HKS shroom filter, FMIC kit, steering wheel and fuel pump I spent most of the last 12 months thinking what I'm gonna do about wheels.

Where do I start?

I've been thinking up and down and I've decided I wanted to go for a 6 spoke design, it couldn't be TE37s because I want 3piece wheel with some massive lips. So I started looking into options and all I found was that there is a shitton of 3p wheel manufacturers out there with tons of designs. These are some of the 6 spokes I found, including RF's SIX and Work L1's that came out last year:











While they all look pretty cool, none of 'em satisfied me 100%, even when I found a picture of a TE37 converted to 3 piece it left me somewhat unsatisfied.



So that pushed me even more towards something we've been wanting to do for a very long time:

Matt and I have been dreaming about making our own wheels for years. Matt has background in the CNC business and I studied design meaning we're both fairly proficient when it comes to 3D modeling software.

We've been planing this for years and we've finally decided we're gonna invest in a CNC machine!

Months down the road we've arrived at the point where we believe we can build our own wheels.

We got to work and started on a standard classic mesh design. We figured we start with a mesh because we wanted to test our limits with all the small corners and edges.
I'll show you a couple of shots of the stages we've gone through to the first finished product.

First we did a few test cuts and tested if Matt was able to program highly detailed small items.





Then we got to work on a design for the mesh and proceeded to cut. We use 6082-T6 aluminium which is essentially the EU version of 6061-T6 which we can't get over here.









A couple of broken tools and issues here and there later we had the first complete wheel.

We soldiered on with another simple design.







At this point we were confident we could start creating things we've always wanted. So I got to work on a 6 spoke.

Back to the 3 piece TE37, there was simply too much that bothered me about it. Then I started thinking towards why no one has ever made a bigger version of the SSR Longchamps. It turned out so bad I'm not even gonna show you, so I started from scratch coming up with a 6 spoke and it took me essentially the past 6 months and 100s of revisions to get to where I'm satisfied enough that I would put it on my car. We've even done FEA testing on them already as my brother in law happens to be in the CNC business too!









We call em the Akoyas and will be cutting them within the next few weeks which means I can soon show you guys how they look on the 34. We also made some renders because why not!





So yes, exciting time ahead with hopefully many updates come. I realize as I'm writing this, this is a post with 50+ pictures and I really could have written something much earlier for which I apologize. However, there is a ton of plans down the road for us and I hope you like what you see. As always, lemme know!

[becausephilchow]

GTR Bonnet.

Look into AirRex Struts, they may have something for the R34.

Also look into AirRunner. Both expensive, but, I've had good experiences with AirRex.

Hadt hem on my MKV GTI, 987.1 Cayman, and now my W204 C63.

Best of luck!

[cblock406]

I have a couple E36's, but I approve this thread! looking forward to updates.

[190Evan]

That chaser in that colorway is what my dreams are made of.

[P78]

interesting read, yet again

[h3llk1t3]

Your article on WW is actually really great. Nice pics and great story. I think I'll might go to Japan once and do the same. So inspiring...

Thanks bro, appreciate it. There is nothing I can recommend more doing!


Today, I’ve got for you a tiny update, a dilemma and a history lesson - which is also a dilemma in fact.

At this point you must be thinking things like “Third ‘update’ without even having a car yet?”, “Wtf!” or “Douchebag.”. Well, the fuck can I say? I’m bored. Stick around, you might learn a thing or two!

Unfortunately, truth be told, all I’m doing for the moment is drive around my 32 and obsess over what I’ma do to the new cars.


Anyway, let's go from back to front, starting with the history lesson which is a result of me being annoyed to shit. I'm looking for a nice air suspension for the 34 and is the reason why this comes up.

It revolves around the company "D2" and their logo.

There are 2 cases in which you're unlikely to know any of this: 1. You're born after 1990. And 2. You're not German. If you knew afterall go pat yourself on the back after reading.

I'm sure you have seen pictures of oldschool DTM mercs like this one before:



But did you know this D2 logo has literally nothing to do with the company that calls itself D2 today?

Back in the days when you've seen the big ass D2 logo on cars like in the DTM they were referring to a mobile telephone network provider. It was founded in 1990 and was the second mobile network in Germany - hence the "2" following the "D" for, I pressume, ‘Deutschland’. In 1999 it was acquired by Vodafone and subsequently renamed.

Yet you still see the logo from time to time on cars still, not because they're from that era, but because there is a company in Taiwan that calls themselves D2 as well.

This D2 based in Taiwan was founded supposedly in 1996 and is using the very same logo today. On cars, products as well as their website.



This D2 is essentially trying to profit from a logo of a company that ceased to exist and was used originally in a renown touring car series in the 90's.

The issue I have is that it works. When an american kid goes on youtube and watches an old DTM clip and sees a car with a big D2 logo on it, he may automatically think "Hey shit, D2 parts been used already back then, they must be fkn awesome!" … Yeahno.

And in order to have you never look at the logo the same way again and share my suffering, I'll let you in on a little secret if you haven't figured it out by now: The red part of that logo is supposed to be a freakin' telephone handset.



That's right, the company that makes all kinds of car parts for your ride is using the logo of a goddamn telephone company. You're welcome - once more.



A fucking handset...



All that said, it does not necessarily mean they make bad products, there is plenty of split opinions about their products.

Tom and I had D2 coilovers once, back when we had the 350Z. Tom slapped 'em on and drove it for a day... and uninstalled 'em the following day and sold 'em off. They were utter dog.

Certainly because we've had a bad experience with their coilovers it doesn't mean all their products will be bad. Because it is of interest to me, let's look at their air suspension.

While I don't fancy their air management system it seems that their struts seem to be doing the job. As I'm sure you knew not only D2 uses their specific struts but also K-Sport as well as TWR.
These 3 are all virtually identical as they're built in the same factory, only the colour schemes are different depending on the brand name that is slapped onto them.



The interesting thing here is that TWR = Accuair. Accuair uses TWR struts in about every modern car application from what I know, which must mean something, I guess. Issue is the 34 kit has been taken out of their online catalogue sadly.

And looking into what Airlift has to offer - they've never built a 34 kit in the first place. I wonder what it would take to convince Airlift to build a kit for it; unfortunately I reckon due to no market for it in the States (thanks 25 years import law) will mean that ain't gonna happen.

Any input from air suspension superstars is welcome at this point.


Moving on to the other dilemma.

The reason for about every sleepless night currently is the how I wanna build the intersection between bonnet/hood and front bumper.

This is where I'd like some opinions!



Left or right?

Here’s what I’m thinking:

Left, standard GTT bonnet, normally they look awful in combination with most bumpers, this combo however appears to be decent, just not fully convinced if the GTR look ain't the way to go though.

Right, standard GTR bonnet, while great looking, the parts just to get that look cost another grand. Bonnet, hinges and latch catch. I guess I could build some adapters and just go for a GTR bonnet, but stock ones are becoming rather expensive now and the aftermarket ones are mostly Z-Tune style which I don't exactly want.

An alternative is cutting off the lip on the standard GTT bumper. I have seen a couple people attempting it but never finishing it, so I ain't sure.
A guy that ran a build thread over at driftworks tried it but ditched the cut up bonnet for not lining up perfectly.



I reckon it can be done but certainly would be some work. I never liked the massive gap on stock GTRs between the bumper and bonnet so I might as well try.

Whaddya think?


Now to the actual update part; we’ve received a video of the 81 before it was being loaded into the container!



Needless to say we’re over the moon with this ride but we’ll definitely have our work cut out with that car. The paint is in rather rough condition, rear bumper cracked and we gonna black out the entire interior. Can’t wait to get started.

Told you the actual update part was gonna be tiny lol

[nishy]

I completely agree... the insane amount of BMWs that are just slightly lowered with different BMW parts is getting really really old. I fkn love your R32 and I'm already in love with your plans for the next yotas

[Pauluzz]

... Calling your double-middlefinger-smiley-sticker'd Suzuki Swift JDM? Gitthefuckout....

Are we gettin' personal here? No serious, I don't have a sticker like that and I don't call my Swift JDM... But my '86 swift is 100% genuine Japanese! Same goes for the wheels that will go under that car!

Also the first post in my build thread quotes:

Everybody’s doing bmw’s, honda’s, audi’s.. but stuborn me is going for an old swift.

[loekaaz]

Your article on WW is actually really great. Nice pics and great story. I think I'll might go to Japan once and do the same. So inspiring...

[kittenpuncher]

Please keep this thread current, nothing worse than a great opening, exceptional plans and then minimal to no updates. It's like blue balls and nobody likes blue balls.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[h3llk1t3]

Genuinely appreciate the love.

I fear I might have come across a bit too.. criticising, lol

Fact is the SW crowd is some of the most respectful people around, I appreciate that and that's why I'm here. I'm just saying the Germans are the same way obsessed with their German cars like the Aussies and Kiwis rather make horsepower (or should I say kilowatts) than stancing their car and the same way the Brits like Rota wheels, hahah.

I'm really kidding mostly and it's all in good spirits, do not ever be offended by any bs I write. I appreciate good work regardless of origin, location, make and whatever the fuck else you can come up with!

And I've said it before, just because I like Japanese cars it does not mean I like all these JDMy0 shitcans, 99% of all proclaimed 'stanced' Japanese cars in Germany suck the donkey's balls. Calling your double-middlefinger-smiley-sticker'd Suzuki Swift JDM? Gitthefuckout.

Mind explaining what the grade system is? Not heard of it before

The grading system is used at Japanese car auctions to describe the overall condition of a car.

5 is incredibly hard to get and must be near perfect condition
4.5 is very good condition
4 is good condition
3.5 medium to good condition
3 medium condition
2 bad condition

There is a couple more like R for an accident repaired car but then unfortunately does not describe the rest of it as well as I think 6 which is reserved for essentially new cars - along those lines anyway.

What video game company do you work for?

Blizzard!

Anyway, in order to make this not too boring until May/June I'll try to go into detail with our plans as well as what each step will involve (and where on the Internet I've learned about it lol (you wouldn't believe the amount of shit I got off youtube)).

But for now only a video of my R34 just before it was getting loaded into a container so you can see what I'm starting with.



Also btw, I love Bas and Bas loves me.

[alexandermjoyce]

Don't **** me because I drive an Audi.
I'm excited to see what this thread turns into.

What video game company do you work for?

[Shepherd]

Sehr geil!
Das kann ja was werden

[P78]

subbed.