Popular Post cute wee gem Posted April 16, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted April 16, 2020 I got a random facebook message from a local guy saying he was off to Australia and he wanted to know what I thought his Gem was worth so he could sell it. I went and had a look but it was hard to tell how good it was as it was completely full of parts and tucked in the corner of his shed. Long story short I offered him my entire savings at the time. 700 bucks, which he accepted and in his words "knowing it'll go to a good home" We came back another day with the money and a tow rope. Kym not totally impressed with the purchase. I started with pulling the motor and all the parts out of it so i could see what I was dealing with. I made a start with sanding the engine bay, fixing any damage and getting it in primer. The lower radiator support was made from 25x25 rhs and pretty ugly so I cut it out and made a new one to replicate the original, then painted the engine bay I then started on the body work. I didn't spend too much time doing this as I expected the car to get beaten up being a track car, so it's rougher than it looks in photos Got moisture in the last 2 coats so I left it at that for a while. I cut the front floors out and replaced them with rare spares pans, then started on making the roll cage. I was nervous about this but it was all signed off by MSNZ and I also got a scrutineer to come out and look over it. He was really good and we also went through harness mounts etc while he was there. Sprayed the interior I had previously been building a turbo g161z with sr20 pistons, forged rods, mls head gasket etc. I even started on custom manifolds for it, but decided to go for something a little more modern. More body work It was about this time that I decided to change engines. I picked up a manual beams 3sge and promptly started making it fit. Built an ms3x to run the engine I swapped the salisbury diff out for an early Isuzu diff as they have larger axles, then welded the center. I also strengthened the torque tube and added generic coilover size springs to the front and rear for ease of spring rate changes and slight adjustability of ride height New bushes, rack ends, ball joints and any other wear items replaced. Small wilwoods to fit under the 13" hotwires with R31 (I think) skyline rotors - coilover adjuster and spring setup in front I cut and modified the lower arms. Placing the lower balljoint 13mm further out to get some camber and 10mm further forward for wheel clearance against the wheel tub at full lock - at this point planning to take it drifting. Rack spacer I machined out of 4340 iirc - for more steering lock. Slapped some paint on the rest of the car. I continued to have water trap issues and also the body work was very much rushed so it's not perfect. I also built a car trailer. 15" wheels for extra clearance at full lock with normal tyres for drifting. Hotwires have semi slicks on them for going fast You can see the 2-3 degrees of camber it now has up front - this is adjustable via the top ball joint - stock was 0 degrees at ride height Stripped the beams 3sge and rebuilt it. Then got it up and running on the ms3x with a custom loom The engine is very basic. It has Chinese forged rods, factory pistons, Kelford valve springs, ARP head studs and just a general rebuild - It's a manual engine so it has the titanium valves and more aggressive cams. Turbo manifold I made to mount the Mamba gtx2863r - I thought it would be cool to do a tubular low mount in stainless, but it was a bit stupid as it burnt the paint on the bonnet. It made 197kw on 12psi as it's very knock limited on pump 98 due to the original 11.5:1 CR - Pulled 3 degrees from the knock limit and made 180kw to be safe with 4 degrees of timing up top. I have set it up with flex fuel and will do an e85 tune eventually to make use of the compression. In saying that, it is heaps of fun as is. Here's a video giving it a quick squirt First event was Powercruise 2019 and we had a blast. The car went really well until we lost VVTi and had to re-tune it in the cruise session - it was really rich without it and lost a lot of torque - It ended up being a pin not fully engaged in it's connector which I found once we got home. The clutch was slipping in the drift sessions as well, limiting me to 2nd gear only (chinese puck clutch) On the Sunday it was raining but we went out anyway and it blew the driveshaft universal on the back straight. The only piece on the car I left up to an engineer to modify - I got a new one made by someone else (W.A.G.S) and replaced the clutch with a decent one from Drews. Too much castor made the steering quite difficult to drift but I have since fixed that issue. 2nd event was Drift Antics in January 2020. Epic event with rolling pits all day and the car took the abuse of 60 odd laps. Here's a video from that day - my driving isn't very good but definitely made improvements during the day The next event was summer Drift Matsuri just before the covid-19 lockdown, I made an effort to learn how to transition and also to be able to grab 3rd gear out of the hairpin while still sliding, both of which I managed to do before the car had mechanical issues after only a handful of laps. Kym reckons I was going a bit faster than last time too, so I wasn't completely dissapointed. 23 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cute wee gem Posted April 22, 2020 Author Share Posted April 22, 2020 Reshaped the ends of the front sway bar to allow for more steering lock. With 6mm total toe out it now has 39-40 degrees of lock. Big improvement from 33-34 degrees that it had before. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cute wee gem Posted July 5, 2020 Author Share Posted July 5, 2020 Had another track day go badly - 2 laps in, an o-ring on the oil cooler pushed out and pumped a sump load of oil on the track, without realizing we did a lap with zero oil pressure. I put it on the trailer and took it home, pulled the sump off and thankfully the crank looked ok, so I put a fresh set of bearings in and fixed the oil cooler issue. This weekend we made another trek up to Taupo for Drift Antics. The car went well all day with no hick ups, which meant I could focus on learning to drive instead. Here's a video showing a few laps. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cute wee gem Posted September 1, 2020 Author Share Posted September 1, 2020 Here's a couple of videos from the last 2 events. All of this seat time is starting to pay off now and I am super stoked with how my driving is improving. Had the best day ever on Sunday with a few attempts to link track 2 reverse Matsuri video from last month. Drift Antics from Sunday. (Probably made this a bit long) 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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