.......BEEN A MINUTE

The work life is beginning to keep me quite busy nowadays. A month and some more has already passed and i havent updated. Finally managed to squeeze out smth. i cant say if a lot has happened this month or if not, so i'll leave you to decide that xD. Lets start then

NEW YEAR SHENANIGANS!

As you may have already seen, good lads Rifky (Shez) and Yuan (BigSmoke) came over all the way to Tokyo just to hang out for New years! And ngl, them popping into the garage made new years eve more fun than it would be! They both pulled up on the same day a week before new years. Both with Jolly faces and good moods, and one with some, *clears throat*, "liquid"

Smoke was the first to arrive, all the way from Tsukuba. Came in at about 10:30a.m. in the morning in his, Like AJ quotes "Pure Function" Evo 3! Car looks pretty EPIC in person. From the 16" WedsSport NTC105N's wrapped in some rather fat MEAT, to the nice and clean Grey-silver paint. It screamed simplicity, while of course, being the monster that it is, an Evo. sounded great when pulling up to our garage too!

2 hours of gossip, catching-up, showing smoke our rather messy garage, having some Ramen and coffee later, MAN #2 PULLED UP!

and THIS is the man responsible for blessing/spoiling us with the "liquid" i spoke of. not being transported in a shady black hiace, but instead under the back seats of a BEAUTIFUL Integra! (pls dont call cops on him thx). theres just SOMETHING about this car that makes it such a pleasant sight, even though it mostly retains stock body, hell, stock wheels too as of now! it just surprisingly flows very smoothly! but, when you're done looking at its smooth flowing lines, Shez starts the K20A up and your eardrums are in trouble xD

By the time Shez arrived i had gotten some more Ramen, some Burgers and Coca Cola for lunch. After the food was downed, Both smoke and Shez decided to take a nap. AJ got back to working on his S15, while Marc and I took my Supra out for a spin (more on that coming in a bit).

The rest of that week was just casual, yet fun. Both the guest bois got to know Tokyo bit by bit. We even went to the Sega Joypolis for a few hours of enjoyment at the Initial D arcade stage 4 unlimited. Yes, you must have seen this crazy arcade in Tokyo that utilizes an AE86, A GC8 and an FD3S decoy for the full driving experience, along with suspension and all sorts of simulation. Yeah that was a lotta good times ngl!

...FAST FORWARD TO NEW YEARS EVE

Ah yes, the happy occasion. this was a bit of a wild night. well, a VERY wild night. It started off with us parking some of the cars right outside the garage for some photos. The bright Yellowish Red lights by the Garage, accompanied by the dark night sky resulted in a sort of sandstorm-like environment. Except if you pan the camera towards the street, all you see is, well, Japan. Not Dubai lmfao

Didnt stop at just photos! we had a BIG PHAT firecracker lined up just for 12:00 A.M.
And when the time came, off it pops!

The REAL party began afterwards. Like Smoke said on his thread, we were all DEVOURING Ramen, Onigiri, Sushi, Ramen, and WHATNOT. Eurobeat, Hardbass, Hiphop, all sortsa music was being blown on the Speakers AJ had brought over to the garage. AJ and Marc were consuming UNHEALTHY amounts of Sake. Me and Rifky joined in, but well a small amount got to me rather badly. Smoke stayed away from the Sake cuz apparently just Tea got him high XD

The rest of the night, i honestly dont remember fully. Smoke says Marc surprisingly kept himself straight, wasnt speaking all jibberish, but did give off the "DRUNK MAN" aura. AJ? he lost his shit basically. NO CLUE WHAT EVEN he was saying. Literally unable to form sentences. Myself, decided it was a good idea to wrench on the E46 while being drunk, and actually BROKE a piece, as expected. Before collapsing right on the garage floor. (Thanks for bringing me back to the Couch Smoke xD) Shez also kept himself pretty straight cuz he didnt actually drink a lot. Him and Smoke played some horror-thriller movie (i think it was Bird Box??) on Smokes laptop. Marc joined in to watch, i "barely" watched, and AJ like i said, was basically ded at that point.

But yeah, all in all, it was a pretty WILD start to 2019! woke up with a Hangover not-so-bad (AJ's was 3x worse. Same for Marc). Aaaaand with some time, we're back to normal again. Thats basically our New years eve summed up in short. Smoke is still tagging along with us. Sourcing parts for his Evo 3 (which btw, is undergoing some PRETTY BIG changes soon, keep your eyes on his thread!)

LIFE GOES ON!

AND NOW, LE VEHICULOS.

Lets start with Mika, my E46 M3, shall we. As you may have, again, seen on Smokes thread, ive been daily driving it. Not much has changed on it from the last time you saw it. Apart from some small Cosmetics

Starting off with the Factory-chrome front grille. Now replaced with, you guessed it, CARBON FIBRE.

Then we have the little grilles on the fenders, also Factory-chrome. And THIS was the piece my drunk ass had broken off on the right side. Luckily i had enough conscience to try and remove a part that was gonna get replaced smh. and these also replaced with carbon fibre.

And lastly we have the front fog lights. To go with the new subtle black accents, i decided it would look best if i tinted them. And thats what i did

END RESULT (only subtle differences)-

UP NEXT, the SUPRA! and now i can safely announce, Phase 1 of my MK3 Supra build is COMPLETE! Backed with a fresh new look, fully tuned by none other than our friendly neighborhood high-intellect specimen, Marc!

For this rather impromptu new look, i decided it wouldnt be the best idea to give it a full respray. What you see here is merely a wrap job done by AJ's friends over at VStanced garage! albeit they only did the white. i did the other extra accents.

Peep that exhaust? yeah that was basically the result of the welding lessons i got from the Osaka trip 2 or so months ago (Thanks again Mackay, much love!)

And you didnt read it wrong. it now has a full tune! Not on the stock ECU tho, like i mentioned before, i was gonna give it an APexi PowerFC, and i did! kinda lingering somewhere between straight line speed and Streetability. I have yet to dyno it and see an actual power figure but the goal was somewhere above 550. Marc is pretty convinced we'll cross that goal pretty easily but we shall see!
I also got it freshly Aligned, and safe to say, in the meantime, SHE RIPS BOIS!

(guilty of earraping the neighborhood at 9 a.m. on a holiday morning. dont call cops on me as well pls thx)

Right then, thats whats up with the Supra and the E46. Supra awaits a dyno run and actually taking her for a full C1 route shakedown, and E46 awaits the beginning of actual track-build mods. th- OH WAIT, THERES MORE

And now i present a third build to my humble list of cars

2009 Audi A5 2.0TFSI!

This was a bit of an impromptu purchase as well. Mainly bought this because i found a seemingly good deal on it, and i could use a new daily tbh. i also have this weird love for the 8T A5-S5-RS5's. Actually argue that this chassis is the best looking modern Audi. only thing that comes on par, in my opinion, is the current gen RS6 Avants.

May i now point your attention towards that Ebay exhaust Muffler, which starts me off on how this car was a good deal. See, it was owned by a 17 year old. It was his second car and his first actual "sports" car and he was only getting into the car tuning scene. And for that reason i believe, he went for a German macine cuz he thought they were cooler than maybe like a domestic Evo or smth. He was the second owner of the car and, as a curious teenager would do, he started modding it by himself and with some money from his dad... The exhaust itself, is a terribly welded straight pipe mated to an Ebay muffler. probably has idk, 3-4 exhaust leaks? sounds kind of annoying i tell you. and the stock exhaust, well he sold it for some spare cash.

then theres the wheels. These are 18" SSR Type C wheels that the previous owners dad had bought him. they have a few curb rashes but nothing too noticeable. and, inside the wheel, what you see is stock brakes with yellow painted calipers and brembo lettering. i initially thought it had an aftermarket brake kit, but well i was pretty badly wrong xD

Inside, its not very bad ngl. in average condition, not a very high-specced model tho. The rear seats were pretty damn dirty tho. same for the rear footwell. maybe not as dirty as my Supra was, but still pretty damn dirty

heres another thing that probably contributed to its fall in value. The stock seats, along with their automatic adjusting systems and seat heating, were ripped off unprofessionally, and also sold for spare cash. Moreover, the passenger seat isnt even bolted in very properly. or maybe smth broke idk. Gonna have to check that. The seats themselves are Replica Recaros that arent in the best of shape. they have a lot of stains and shit that are visible upon closer inspection and i'll have to remove those/change the seats out fully.

The car has about 110k kilometres on the clock. Rather high for a 2009 car but eh it doesnt show any sign of tiredness yet. Well, maybe tired of its previous owner, yes that it definitely was i believe. And oh may i point out, the battery was dead when i went to pick it up from halfway across Tokyo. I had to come back once, Take my E46 and some jumpers, go again, charge it up and then go AGAIN the day after to finish the deal and actually take the car smh.

Apart from what ive listed already, the car is untouched. Probably needs an oil and coolant change ASAP too. and for this whole package, i paid the equivalent of V$ 4500. yes, 4500 for an AWD 2.0T german coupe. It was listed for V$ 6100, but bargaining with a 17 year old after having to come and go 3 times to take the car wasnt a very hard task ngl xD. Had it had about 30k kilometres less, and was in its unmolested form, it would fetch almost double the price. but thats where the term "good deal" comes in right? from what im seeing, i can only replace the seats, clean the interior out, change oil and coolant, change THE FRIGGIN HORRENDOUS exhaust (already have a new one in the garage btw OwO), and do smth about the false brake calipers. Afterwards, a new intake and a chip-tune and im looking at high 200's, maybe even 300 horsepower! all in good time. lets just hope the car doesnt hide any other unpleasant surprises.

This routes back to where i started this write-up. "work". Ive been missing for a whole month, cars arent getting as much progress. Could only mean one thing right? well, within about a week of my Graduation, which is probably a month and one week ago now, after having ran around submitting my Resume in different places, i guess God looked down upon me.

Theres no other way to put it, i binned a job at the iconic NISMO OMORI FACTORY! and no, im not CEO OF NISMO or anything. Just a Service-bay manager. What exactly does that mean? well my job is to task the Well qualified mechanics in the servicing area according to cars that come in for work, and ofc advise them what the car needs done, and by when it needs it done. Im basically the middleman between the Customers and the Mechanics, keeping the workflow efficient and organized. How'd i get this job? Well, i do have a Civil Eng. degree from University of Tokyo to deploy aside from experience of working on cars. Dropped my Resume off at APR, TRD, Nismo, and UpGarage. All but TRD clicked out well, and ofc, Nismo seemed the best way to go. Havent really posted anything about this till now cuz i wanted to see how i fit into the place first. See if this Job has ACTUALLY worked out for me, or if this is some kinda bad idea. I'll be honest i was finding it a bit hard to believe lmao. but now with a month passed, i can say im comfortable working here. it is by no means easy-as-pie keeping an eye on all the cars in the service area, but i got used to it. Thats what work is about!

Have some random pics from the place itself!

Here we have one of the Nismo Z-tunes hosted in display, among other iconic pieces of Nissan heritage. these are recently taken photos but when i saw this thing for the first time, my Jaw was dropped and my eyes fixed. Wasnt and still am not allowed to go too close to it tho rip.

And this here is the Sales Managers S15! On Glossy white TE37's and a Fairlady Z grey!

Well anyways, guess that concludes this update, and life only continues to get spicier!
As always, thank you for stopping by! hope you enjoyed