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MACKAY
Posts: 712
Location: Japan Occupation: Ranter Age: 25 V$: ∞ |
#153092 2019-01-20 14:24 |
Hotline Tokyo It's been more than four months since last proper update and I don't even know where to start all over again.. A lot of things have happened both in my personal life and in the car scene, I basically opened new page in my life once again, but this time I had all means and possibilities too. Remember me saying that I was spotted quite few times cruising around C1' and Tokyo in general, which is very uncommon to me cause I am from Osaka? Well, there is a reason behind it. Long story short I moved to Tokyo with everything that I had in my possession and more but more about that later. It is no secret that I been struggling in my own ways for past six months or so, main reason being is that I was planning my move to Tokyo all this time, five months ago I got myself an apartment, loft, penthouse or whatever you wanna call it in Shinjuku, after that finding a proper warehouse for our activities and business followed and those HIGH ROLLER friends of mine helped enormously but more about workshop later on. The shop in Osaka still operates as usual but not under my supervision anymore, the main head Shao took everything under his management and will run it all by himself there, while I will be doing things in Tokyo, even though we are still partners I can't really say that we expanded, to put it simple - after burning myself out for the past year and half working non stop I just went into other type of market. From now on it will be basically like this - Osaka is the place to go solely for custom works on your car, while Tokyo is the place that we run our performance parts store, import and export business with car dealership from, while still being able to do any custom work on cars on demand. I wouldn't be able to run such things all by myself, so currently there is four of us who are responsible for everything with few employees. Anyways, lets talk about other things now.
 I am more than sure that most of you have seen or even participated yourselves in drift Matsuri which took place at the beginning of October last year, most of our local guys were there and even our worldwide squad members came down to Japan for some shenanigans, all I can say is that I am more than grateful to have such guys by my side whenever I need them, and especially when all the action is happening. But those things aside, after that event I disappeared from the scene and no one have seen me properly ever since, mostly because I was way too busy figuring my life situation and dealing with things explained above. So to say it that way, GTT haven't changed a bit since then besides that I only traded my Work Meisters for same spec' SSR SP3's which I think is a great deal. Also it is worth mentioning that the car has more battle scars which shows that the car is being used as supposed to instead of being garage queens like my other cars did. The car is completely functional as it is right now even though I have a feeling that my RB25DET' is becoming a ticking bomb that will blow up anytime soon due to it's stock aged internals and abuse, not a problem though, I am ready for some changes.
 GTR34' undergone few changes too, one of them being that I took the black wrap off because I couldn't stand the black color anymore as I felt like I was hiding something I ain't supposed to hide while trying to stay as low-key as possible for no apparent reason and being that black unknown R34 which is impossible to catch got me feeling some kind of way. So return of the white Mack happened and black wrap ended with those dark times. Another thing that I did to the car is that I replaced quite few body parts with Carbon Fiber ones, Nismo bumper was replaced by CF Z-Tune one, front Z-Tune fenders were strengthened with carbon fiber and side skirts were made out of carbon fiber too. Fiberglass Top Secret hood was also replaced by the same Top Secret carbon fiber one and the good thing is that I only needed to buy the hood itself cause I already had carbon fiber middle piece from the previous one. Oh, and I also ditched my proper headlights for more air intake and cooling of the engine, because my car is already far from proper street car which can pass inspection I might as well go the extra mile to increase performance and in the end I still have my fog lights when I need lights. Apart from those things nothing else has changed on this R' as I didn't had a lot of time to work on my cars not to mention that this Skyline was not a priority during those few months. Also I took a part in Tokyo Auto Salon show and here is two pics from event, I am sure I don't need to explain much about it.
  Long story short the M4' is gone, I sold it because this car was just a temporary thing as I said right when I bought it, had it, enjoyed it and beaten on it everytime I had opportunity, if you are wondering I exported that car to Russia as usual business. So after selling it I was in need of the car for my wife once again.. It is like third or so time when I flip her car for some money, but don't get me wrong, the new car always end up being better in every aspect. So this time I finally got one of her bucket list cars for her to drive. And yeah, it is 2010 Nissan 370Z Manual with S-Tune kit which was put by previous owner before. I have never been a true fan of 370Z's but this one somehow attracted me to check it out, obviously it lacked few things when I bought it but everything turned out perfectly when I installed HKS HI-POWER CAT-BACK EXHAUST, Tein Flex Z' Coilovers and put it on my old R19' BBS LM's which came from my R34. Ain't selling this car anytime soon as I don't want to be spending enormous amounts of time while running around the city and finding proper car for her to drive, so yeah. I also probably won't be driving this car as I have my daily too, so all I am left with is modifying it whenever I can haha.
 Right before we get into main thing of this update I want to talk about my lovely E36' which received most of my attention trough those months even though it doesn't run at the moment. Basically I am turning this car into my ultimate spec' thirty six which I been dreaming about since I got my drivers license. As you can see I installed MaxVelocity RS front splitter along with proper 4 piece fiberglass LTW' wing even though I am still trying to find genuine OEM one, so if anyone know where I can source one hit me up. Rear end got way more aggressive after I fabricated rear diffuser from 3mm 6096 Aluminium sheet which got powder coated to black color, it is also functional cause it goes till rear subframe which results in eliminating parachute effect caused by spare wheel well and area behind rear bumper. After HRE's were sold to Lagano, I got myself wheel studs and a set of R18' CCW Classics which were custom made to my preferences and shipped from USA. Along with new wheels I also installed brand new one of a kind coilovers by Aragosta, they are Aragosta Type-S with custom spring rates - 28kg/mm front and 24kg/mm rear, which brings them up to Type-SS+ specification, basically full blown racing coilovers. But the best things for this car is yet to come.. As I am preparing a built S54B32 swap for it, the S54' is already in my possession and I am already working on refurbishing the main parts such as block and head, later on I will older all the other performance parts needed. Before dropping the S54' engine in I will be overhauling my whole suspension and chassis first, gotta strengthen major points first. I am hoping to get it up and running before March. This thing gonna fuuuuuck hard when it's all set up, believe me.
  And here is our new workshop, our place is number two in this facility complex. Front of the building is showroom with dealership and in the back we have the main garage door to enter garage and workshop where most magic happens. Around the "backyard" there is like three meter fence and this whole complex is pretty well secured with gates and so on, so no worries about troublemakers. Also behind the shop there is quite big parking lot in which we could store up to 30 cars, so yeah, basically it is multipurpose building as I said above. Let's take a look whats inside.
 And here is inside of our workshop. Originally walls were black from the start, all we had to do is to get right equipment for it, with little bit of investments and hard work we made this place both eye pleasing and easy to work in. Even though black walls in workshops is pretty uncommon we decided to keep it and pulled it off just fine, red car lifts and other small bits works wonders with black color. But the most important part is that everything is at one place here, we have our offices, storage area, showroom, paint booth and everything else you could imagine for a workshop not to mention that this is shop is like five times bigger than previous one. So no more working on car in one place and then going to other for painting and etc, which wastes a lot of time.
  Room dedicated to building engines and fabricating things up, finally a proper place to work without worrying about banging things up or damaging any of our cars. If I ain't answering my phone its either because I am dead or working here creating masterpieces.
 My humble corner of the shop where I work and store all of my project cars. I can squeeze up to 5 cars in this room easily and there is still more than enough space in the shop for customers and other cars to put inside.
  I know what most of you are thinking, but hold up, wait a minute, we gonna get to it. Back in December when doing business related things with Russian guys from Tokyo I shipped one E36' along with few manual transmission parts that I needed from Russia to Japan. Long story short I got decent condition 93' 325i Coupe with automatic transmission for 1500$ and shipped it here for extra thousand dollars, still cheaper than getting something here in Japan. Anyways, few days later me and one of my guys swapped transmission from auto to manual, so now it has 5 speed ZF bulletproof gearbox. Along with transmission swap I also fixed some major issues with the car, redid steering knuckles and welded differential shut. I am sure that most of you get the idea where this car is turning to, yeah it's gonna be a budget drift car for one of our guys, which he will probably pick it up later this month. This car gonna be a rare sight here in Japan during drift days and matsuri'es not to mention that this bulletproof NA M50B25 is more than enough to fuck shit up around every track in Japan. Perfect entry level drift car in the land of mainstream S-Chassies, something more exotic here as I would say.
  Before you all start asking what is up with that white unknown R34' on TE's in your garage.. Yeah, I got myself another GTR' to drive around as a daily.. And once again it is all original 2002 BNR34 GTR V-Spec II with 50k KM's on it with Nismo bodykit, not to mention that it is also in Pearl White color, just like my first one which turned into race car status lately. Yeah, I guess now I am that guy who owns three same cars at once. Before getting this BNR' I was also looking at Fairlady 380RS'es and KPGC's with KGC's, been to see a quite a few and none of them attracted me like this GTR'. After getting to drive the 380RS's I dropped it off from my must own cars since it was nothing more special than the Nismo one I had, the only thing that car is special for is detuned race engine for streets but it wasn't a selling point for me, Hakosukas on the other hand was a tough choice, drove three different ones, enjoyed them a lot but decided to turn those cars down, neither I need such car at the moment or I am ready for it, but sooner or later it will happen. So back to this R34, originally it came with genuine classic bronze TE37's but me being me I powdercoated them to matching Pearl White and along with that I lowered the car on HKS HIPERMAX IV SP coilovers. Since the other GTR' is way too extreme to drive it daily, this one will serve as my multi purpose daily car, ain't going full send with this one, even though I have plans for it too.. Before real mods, first I need to get an OEM V-SPEC II badge for it, cause it was debadged at some point, but thats the easy task, the hard part is controlling myself not to spend all my money on bling and goodstuff for it.
 So yeah, that was kinda it for this time. New year started in the best way possible, everything settled down and all the bullshit I was encountering is gone. Business is up and running, so everyone is more than welcome to visit us at our new place if you ever need some custom work, car parts, merch or even new car, but feel free to drop by even for small chat and drinks. Big shoutout to all the OG' members coming back to the scene and newcomers, with fingers crossed we all hope that 2019'teen will be good if not the best year for our car scene and community because we have big plans to revive everything up once again, but more about those plans later on. So for now thats it, till later guys, peace.
 This post was edited by MACKAY (2019-01-20 22:29, ago) |
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