Words cannot express how stoked I am to finally start an actual build thread. Spent so much time lurking on zilvia and vwvortex growing up but by the time I was grown and had something to actually post it was too late. Forums were dead. Not that there's much to talk about when it comes to my car, but one day there will be.
Edit: I realize now that I'm a few posts in on this it's not exactly a typical build thread. Putting in a lot of experiences and memories and not a lot of changes to the car itself so it's more of a driver&car build.
Little background on me which I'll keep short and sweet: grew up in Iowa, joined navy, get stationed in Japan, buy fd, buy jzx, finally start drifting, drive lots, move to va, drive lots, get out of navy and move back to iowa where I've now been for about 6 months.
So onto the car. These photos are from the first time i saw it in October of 2018. I had been obsessing over drifting since I was fairly young but up until this point I never had the means to afford it. At this point I was just finishing up my second deployment and had a shit load saved up from that sweet sweet per diem I got to enjoy as a cod guy. Having tagged along with some friends from Yamaguchi style (not that anyone on here except runmatsuo would know them) I started the search for a car. Found out one of the guys had this for $8k at which point I didn't even care about the condition and practically threw him the money.
Afterwards I honestly felt robbed cause 8k for a jzx in japan was definitely not the going price at that time.
I still remember finally getting the keys a driving it home for the first time. Sounded insane to me, and rolling down route 2 along the coast back to base I just felt euphoric. I was finally achieving something I dreamed about for so long. Dropped it into second, gave her the beans until it began stepping out in that narrow ass lane (tires were already dead).
I'll end this post with this photo. My fresh jzx and a friends r32 at the barracks. A couple of dweeb ass y platers who thought they were hot shit for driving and living in Japan.
Smoking that wall would be one of the last times I drove that spring. Somewhere between that day and when I left on cruise again I had a conversation with Yamaguchi style Eric. I looked up to him as a driver and valued his opinion so of course the conversation was about where I could improve. One of the things he mentioned was that he thought I had progressed enough that it may be worth putting some more angle on the car. At that time and to this day I'm a big proponent of building a car to suit your abilities as you learn so having that validation was enough for me to finally do some work.
While away for work I'd do as much research as possible and get everything together so I could hammer it out when I got home. After far too long I finally decided on kazama +25 lower control arms, dmax tension rods, and odyssey fab cut knuckles.
When it comes to knuckles very few people will give you good info. Most of what I got was "I run heyman 800 and they're good" but they couldn't tell me why or how the changed the car. I ended up just pulling the trigger on the cheaper/ easier to get option.
Yamaichi would be the first event on the new knuckle set up and also my first competition. There was another competition I tried to enter however it hit driver cap before I could. Having attended the event the year before it left a magical impression on me.
Somehow all the photos I took of the install are gone. However I purchased the incorrect rod ends and had to last minute cut up the stock ones to make it work. When I got on track for the first time to try it out, it genuinely made me core tears of joy. The relief I felt when everything worked was unreal.
I would be competing in beginner class which was made up half of dudes from base and locals. Feeling super confident and having had a few guys tell me they thought I'd win I'd quickly be humbled again. It was just solo judged runs and I had made it to the final round(top 5 or 6 drivers iirc), trying to push my self I wound up going too wide on both runs. I wouldn't even make it onto the podium.
Regardless of the outcome it was still an amazing day. Hadashi, the locals and the gaijin. There's truly nothing like this place. It's very tight knit and is something rarely seen else where.
How many can say they were in a drift tengoku magazine😤
Rarely is there anyone outside of Japan that knows of hadashi. Though it creates some insane drivers it doesn't get the spotlight that meihan, ebisu, or any other track gets
Coty would also go on to win middle class in his girlfriends s14. Having started around the same time, leaving for cruise, then coming back to him throwing backies and jumping the hill was a bit discouraging.
At this point I was feelin myself.
Driving tandem for my first time, my friend Coty in the sil80 chasing me. He had just started driving about the same time I did. Judging by the cherry blossoms I'd guess these photos were around March or April of 19.
I was getting fairly comfortable, I had no problems running the proper line into what we called short course, and I could do it consistently. I always felt the need to push myself and didn't think the skill gap between me and the drivers that were jumping the hill was as large as it actually was.
But soon after I would humble myself. On a Saturday morning all by myself I decided it was time to go faster and learn the long course entry. Tried a few times to do it in 2nd and realized it wasn't enough, clicked third for the first time on an entry and I clearly wasn't prepared because I slapped the car right into the dirt wall. Turned around and did the exact same thing the second time around though harder which resulted in the picture below.
Quarter is still pushed in to this day🙃
The Yamaguchi cats (Bryce and Eric) were super cool and hospitable when I spent a month there from atsugi! The homie Taylor owned that red 32 sedan as well!
After this first day of drifting and a month of daily driving there were a few glaring issues that needed to be addressed. Somewhere along the lines I decided I needed some spare wheels and fortunately a buddy sold me these reps for dirt cheap. In addition I decided that for some reason the bride brix was not adequate enough, I needed(wanted) a full bucket. Fortunately with croooober becoming a thing I could just find a part and go to the local upgarage and have them ship over stuff from other stores. Which led me to buying a nearly brand new bride zeta iii xl for just under $700.
Next, all of the exhaust hangers broke off. Likely from a combination of the drifting, the gnarly road that led to the track, and the gargantuan speed bumps on base. I would ultimately just use safety wire, zip ties, and wire hangars to hold it on for the next year and a half until it shipped home.
Last headache would be the worst one. When I purchased the car the previous owner had mentioned that they thought the fuel pump was going bad. After awhile of driving it, it began hesitating and back firing heavily, sometimes it just wouldn't turn on, sometimes it would just die. I went through 2 supposedly new wall pro pumps until I finally spent far too much money on a oem unit from Toyota only for it to still not work. At this time not many people stateside had jzxs, the facebook group didn't have the knowledge it does now and the forums were all dead. Eventually someone said to look at the ecu, I had no idea what I was looking at so I just sent it to drift motion to fix while I was away again in Australia for work. Sure enough it came back and worked just fine.
Back to the track it went
Fast forward about four weeks, the ship was in port, cruise was over, and I finally got my weekends back. Obviously the first thing I wanted to do was go drift.
I was very fortunate being stationed where I was. That track is almost always open which meant there was always plenty of opportunities to drive. Most of the time it would just be me and my group and occasionally some of the locals would show up. A very easy going, low pressure vibe to learn in.
It didn't take me long to figure things out. Between drifting in the snow as a teen to sliding around parking lots in the z not to mention the countless hours spent drifting on forza and other games. I knew what to do in theory but this would be the first time truly applying it.
Was that Doug's JZX at some point? It's awesome that you actually learned how to drive though. Too many guys get stationed in Iwakuni, buy a drift car and then never actually get on the track. Hadashi is only 30 minutes from base. There's no excuse. Can't wait to drive with you at USAIR in the near future!