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.