Snoozin

Jeeez man get some sticky tyres on that, put a piece of railway iron in the back for a swaybar and go and 3-wheel like hell around all those lovely roads around your way.

That silver KP Starlet at OS Drags last time, had a sprint car Winters in it.

Yes, good!

Cert achieved! Next step is to make the exhaust a little quieter and then get a wof

Haha, I am ok for center caps, I have original ones for all the sets of wheels I use on the car. I do have a KP62V grille with the deer badge on it though.

Those pics were shot for this. It was a compromised shoot, as it was during L4 lockdown and I'm not totally chuffed on the photo results but here we are. I'm a bit embarrassed about it, there's a handful of other cars in the issue that probably should have been cover, instead of a lower cost lower power KP Starlet. But buy it if you feel like you'd be interested in reading the story, I tried my best to get the point across that I didn't really do anything on this car, I just made a bunch of decisions and was lucky enough to have a small group of very talented friends who sacrificed their own time to help me put this thing together. 20211019_154109-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr So, 6-ish weeks ago I took this in to see @cletusfor it's cert as mentioned above, and have been working towards attaining this. Overall, the initial check went pretty well, and was a good example of why you should probbaly talk to your cert guy prior to undertaking any sort of project of magnitude. In the interests of transparency and maybe helping other people, it failed on the following: Tyre rub on all four corners (fitted the Star Brights for cert and they're just a shade too wide at 6.5J -2 with a 185) - new set of 14x6J -10 SSR Longchamps XR-4 fitted Skid plate required for modified or custom fuel tank as it's less than 200mm from the ground - sheeper helped out and we've knocked up a little skid plate to cover A few extra fuel and brake line clips required - ew yuck I had to drill holes for rivnuts Return spring required on brake pedal - small bracket made up to fit a spring that goes to a small hole drilled in brake pedal webbing 2 of the 6xM6 bolts in the Recaro bases were missing so needed to replace those - bolts installed Seat rails to floor adaptor M8 bolts required nyloc nuts in lieu of threaded plate - nuts installed Heatshielding required for fuel line on diff (close to exhaust at droop) - DEI heatshield sleeve added to the diff, really neat velcro-baced split sleeve that makes life easy Camber to be corrected to maximum of -1.5 degrees - realigned by old mate Kieran to comply Right rear shock just fouling on 4-link bracket - bracket clearanced with ye olde flapdisk and repainted Trim adjustable platform threads on diff to allow bump stop to contact properly - again, ye olde flapdisk came to the party Here she is on her cert feet which are yet to be restored and shinied up, I've also given my stock KP fender mirrors a lick of factory charcoal and reinstated these. 20211107_195603-01 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Recheck is tomorrow so wish me luck.

Bloody hell, so much plazma man you need to exclusivey refer to them as #plazmaman for all the influencer hookups!

Without it though, how will they know you are the Plazma Man?

I love the dedication to that washer bottle, beauty!

This is pretty much the finished car. I took it to Clint for a cert. It didn't fail on too much, just some additional fuel line clips needed, a smidge of camber to be wound in, heat sleeving on a brake line on the diff, some nyloc nuts for the seat bolts, and a couple of other very minor things. Anyway here's finally, some proper camera photos of it. 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (369)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (383)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (327)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (350) by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (356)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (311)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (294)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (403)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (58)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (66)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (83)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (48)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (160)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (175)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (238)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (263)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (440)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (408)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (306)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1981 Toyota Starlet KP61 4AGE (494)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Thanks for looking, for the past 15 years or so.

Interestingly that car has 12 injectors on it, staged at different points of RPM/load.

Here's some race car setups I have shot, should give you ideas for splitting it for access. 1996 Honda Accord Super Tourer HART001 (70)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1996 Honda Accord Super Tourer HART001 (80)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1996 Honda Accord Super Tourer HART001 (190)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 1996 Honda Accord Super Tourer HART001 (196)-Edit-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Honda Integra DC2 K24 Endurance-38-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Honda Integra DC2 K24 Endurance-42-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Honda Integra DC2 K24 Endurance-12-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Been tinkering away on this, engine bay is even tidier but I'm pretty hopeless and haven't taken any pics. However, I went for a drive the other night and took a few neat ones. 2000 Honda Integra Type RX-196-2-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1258-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1219-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2000 Honda Integra Type RX-1286-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

You may need to reapply it shortly, but it's cumulative and lasts super well

The following day (Those were Saturday's updates above), I set about getting my Hayashis out and giving them a wee spritz with the metal polish to bring back the brightness. Then, fit them up I needed some slip on spacers for these (and some other 13s) to clear the calipers, on wheels with very flat spoke faces and 3-piece bolts it JUST tags the edge of the caliper. No biggy, John van Beek (he with the badassiest Cedric of ever) whipped up some hubcentric spacers for me, I will organise a grub screw and threaded hole in the hub to secure these, just in case I wish to cert later. For now they're perfectly safe, and fit like a glove. 20210919_114316-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr On with the Streets! 13x7 -6 offset for those playing at home. So with the spacer on the front, we are effectively a 7J -11 offset, pretty hefty for a standard Starlet guard but with the 175/60 it just covers the tread. 20210919_131430-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Realistically it's probably a little tight, although with a test drive it showed no serious signs of rubbing. But to be sure I found some +7 offset 13x7s on Yahoo for next to nothing (rare to find these days with the way prices have gone) so used buy now through Jesse Streeter to get the ball rolling on those. But here's how it's looking on the Streets. I reckon it just looks so good on 13s, they visually lower and lengthen the proportions of the car. Really enjoy just looking at it, at the mo. 20210919_114754-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20210919_115151-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20210919_130445-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Last job on Sunday was securely mounting the rear speakers. The TS-X9 are one of the top-end Pioneer units of the day, these and the TS-X11 both used cast alloy housings are are absolute nuggets. They sound amazing too - I've had these hooked up to my home amp inside, and for their tiny size, the results are unbelievable. These ones I've had stashed away for a while now, so I knocked up some large plates to bolt through the parcel tray to the speaker to prevent them going anywhere, and also spread the load across the old wooden parcel tray material. It's some sort of almost cardboard crap - I should really make something more sturdy. This still flexes and bounces around a little bit when driving so it may need some sort of additional bracing moving forward. Looks hot though/ 20210919_151048-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr None of it is wired yet - although that won't be too long. Thanks for looking. Even though we're locked at home I'm very chuffed with the car and it's got me in a good mood.

Well then, I've been tinkering away. The car was booked in for a WOF check on 19/08, and cert inspection on 27/08. As we all know, everything got fucked up again cos of the Cov, so none of that even happened. What I did do prior, was get the engine bay in a state ready to cert. Basically, LVVTA rules require the crankcase vent to be routed back into the intake, and my catch can setup/open trumpets was not going to work I'd always intended to run my big ITG filter over top of the trumpets, and the cert man confirmed it was OK to run a cam cover vent straight into the filter backing plate. I have spare cam covers to allow for this, and the net result was as below. Unfortunately, some bad measuring on my part meant the filter won't fit around the trumpets in situ - meaning I either need to put 50mm trumpets in, or just run without. For the cert purpose I chose to just run without. 20210918_105417-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Anyway, I never got a cert, or a check, or fucking anything because diseases and shit. I'm still at home, not working, not earning, not happy. But I went and got the car anyway, and made some changes with a view to heading out and finally taking some proper photos with my real camera instead of the phone. First thing I did was install the Pioneer tape deck with the mounting kit. This thing is wonderful, it's hands down the rarest, weirdest most interesting 'off the shelf' part this car has on it, in my view. Everything fit perfectly, clipped and bolted in to where it needed to. 20210918_131215-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr For the most aesthetic photos, I figured it was best with the blue cam covers, open trumpets and catch can lines reinstated. I'd ordered some TecArts trumpets way back in March, these finally arrived in June from Japan and I took the opportunity to fit them up. 20210918_164209-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20210918_165815-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20210918_165822-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr These are 100mm long vs the 75mm we tuned on, have that great looking 'merged' bellmouth look to them. I'm smitten. It's also louder. Gave the interior a bit of a spruce up. Painted the kick panels and some other plastic trim, using an SEM product specifically designed for refinishing plastics. Custom matched by Carcolors on the shore. It's epic stuff! Overall the interior has come up well, it's a really nice light, airy place to be, kind of the vibe I wanted it to have. Black interiors are dime a dozen - it's nice to choose something different and actually have it come together. 20210918_170929-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20210918_170940 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20210918_171300-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Final wipe down, and it was ready to tuck under its cover for the night. Nice to just have a cold drink and stare at it for a bit. 20210918_175516-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Solution finish is legendary. I use that, also.

Damn I'm all full of regrets for selling my BR-X now. Tasty as.

No feature, it's too basic. Builds need to be a bit more powerful/performancy these days, 148hp doesn't cut it haha

A few things have happened since the above post, like reassembling and putting the engine and box back in the car. That happened maybe 3 weeks ago, and this weekend we tuned it. Long story short, it made 148hp at the hubs, it peaks then holds flat until limiter at just over 8k. Feels great in car. Here's some videos. This is on the local test track A quick 3rd gear motorway pulll from about 90km/h. Huge huge thanks must go to @Lithfor making the trip up to fastidiously tune the car, it drives really nicely, behaves well at all loads/conditions encountered so far and is just generally a pleasure to hoon around in.

I mean, we might be getting close to the "you have a problem" stage!

https://lvvta.org.nz/documents.html#consultation

When you say hubcentric, does that mean centering rings are permissible or the actual wheel must be hubcentric? Because I don't know of any aftermarket wheels that are even close to most Japanese hub spigot diameters! Mudflaps would be a sick burn.

Damn, mine ALMOST got honours for most gutless.

It came to NZ before it made its way to the UK. Was campaigned as an endurance car down South, at that stage it was less about "letting it get away," and more about it just being an obsolete old race car.