For this second part of my TAS coverage, I’ll be posting up some of the drift cars found outside of the venue. I’m not really big into drifting so I didn’t stick around to watch as I had way too much to cover inside, but the cars were pretty wild as expected.
I’d love to build an S15 one day…
So it’s been awhile since I posted, and it’s also been nearly 2 months since going to Tokyo Auto Salon. I guess it’s a good time to go through my pictures again to appreciate the quality there, before the season starts in Toronto. I’ll start it with my absolute favourite car at TAS 2014: the Nishino Body Repair x Weld FRS. Custom metal widebody, swan neck mounted Voltex wing, great choice of colour for the paint, and an amazing engine bay. What a car.
The ITB’s are lovely. Really gotta give it up to the owner for the attention to detail with the small replica of his wheels there too.
And a couple shots of the car in progress taken from the owner’s instagram:
Changing things up for 2014… To be honest, I was getting bored of the show scene and having a rather impractical car that I don’t drive very often.
I decided upon the change after sitting in a friend’s S2000 early in the year, whilst he was booting it around corners, corners that I’d have to take extra slow in the Fit. I just miss the feeling of driving the car hard, and of course going to the occasional track day.
The ball was rolling in June, I had already acquired a set of JDM 1.5s front and rear bumpers, so it was just planning out the rest of JDM swap for the next couple months. The SSR MS3R’s were fairly new and I didn’t want to put them to waste with a mid year change up, so I rode out the year on them.
By the end of the season in October, I had started dismantling the Fit, for storage, and also to start test fitting parts. I was able to source a set of kouki Fit headlights as well as the brackets and supports needed for the JDM swap, thanks to the LEVEL one fam in Japan, specifically Hiroki. Couldn’t have done it without his help. Big thanks go out to him.
So here we are. A dismantled Fit.
First thing I tried is fitting the jdm bumper brackets under the headlights. Didn’t fit. lol.
That piece cut out was hitting the mounting point where it should be going.
Next up was test fitting the bumpers themselves, which require removal of the front and rear rebars. I’ll have to get a shop to fab up a tube based rebar that’ll fit the [much shorter] JDM bumpers.
OEM quality so it fits on pretty well. Definitely digging the rear bumper, though the Greddy Evo II will have to go. The canister is HUGE when it’s exposed with this bumper. Not so much with the old Kenstyle kit.
Next up is the front bumper. These bumpers came off the AJ Racing time attack Fit which had an intercooler already, so thankfully the trimming they did also fits my Greddy intercooler & piping. Just a bit more trimming should do the trick.
And the last thing done with the car so far was a test fit of my friend’s 15″ TE37’s. I wanted to make sure 15’s clear before buying a set for track. And luckily they do clear, though his set of TE37’s would require a bit of spacing, but that’s no big deal.
Also got a couple of parts delivered. 😉
Lots happening with the Fit lately, haven’t posted any progress here though so I’ll get on that soon. For now, enjoy this video!
gawa. 