I am neither and...
...you are doomed.

 

yep. hence my feverish activity lately. theres a deadline now. well, to be more precise, i thought it would be prudent to get the worst out of the way before day zero.
but there is hope! one of the advantages to me moving to this country rife with "the dreaded socialism", is that here, dads get maternity leave too! basicly, when a child is born here, the parents get 480 days that they can share as they want to. they work out what you have been payed over the last year/six months then they pay you 90% of that when you take maternity leave. yup, i thought it was crazy too but im not complaining im absolutely certain that my progress will be slowed but not brought to a grinding halt. that said, ill only know when it happens. the true talent will lie in my ability to adjust...and to survive on one hour of sleep a day of course

 

Congrats on the upcoming kid, man!

-sean

 

Is there a minimum amount of time that each partner must take from the 480 day total?

 

thanks sean! it was totally unplanned but im sure its gonna be fun!

we have to take a minimum of 60 days plus 10 days each when its newly-born. im really unsure about all the ins and outs of it but its will definately come in handy. i didnt know when i started this project that the final modification would be a baby seat hehe. at least i know my little girl will be riding in style!

 

So you're getting that blue hot rod after all.
I knew it.

 

ill admit it. im of the generation that got into cars because of video games. i think a hell of alot of people in my age are. (which means of course, hat theres a hell of alot of people that found out that modifying cars wasnt exactly as easy as it was in gran turismo) around that time all the fast and cool cars were jdm. it kinda sowed the seed for alot of jdm freaks nowadays. im probably one of the few that isnt ashamed to admit that anyway, the point of my ceaseless blathering is that theres very few usdm cars that get my pulse racing, if at all. before you guys put out a hit on me i will hasten to add that i dont really get that much from english cars either.

usdm is reeeaaaally popular here so im a minority in more ways than my ethnic origins hehe.

another 16hr nightshift. yay for me and im bored out of my mind. just want to be in the garage. anyhoo im still entertaining the idea of making my own rocket bunny type rear wing and have been reading a bunch of crap on the net but not found any answers. im not really worried about improved/diminished performance because at the speeds ill mostly be driving at, the wing wont be doing much anyway. the only burning question i have is....if i make my own one would it be dangerous?

 

Once it murders your sense of aesthetics, it'll be fine.

 

theres a silver lining to the cloud. if i like my new wing you get the duckbill

 

hey man, as long as it doesn't end up looking like this when you're done



then you go ahead and do whatever you want to your car ha ha

-sean

 

That's very kind but I already have a duckbill.

Which I'm probably going to remove and go commando.

But you could take it, flip it over and use it as a BRE-type spoiler for the front of your car.
Very oldskool and bonus points for recycling.

 

hahaha i love i love he whole shakotan/bosozuko/ kaido thing but mainly as a voyeur. i promise i shall be conservative with my artistic freedom though. and of course i always have the metaphorical "reins" that are my wallet

ooo i like! didnt know it was called BRE but always thought it it looks rad. especially on the 1st gen rx7's, old skylines and similar 70's cars. after reading a whole bunch more on aerodynamics, fabricating stuff out of fiberglass and so forth, i dont know what i want anymore. that combined with the fact at this very moment have been awake for 23 and a half hours, means that i probably dont even know WHO i am anymore. but theres a reason for that.

i had many ambitious plans for today, but when i left work a friend answered a rather desperate cry for help i had put up on facebook in the middle of the night.

meet jarno and his press..



his press does this..



and he let me borrow it! i spent a good part of the day there and he helped me to pop em all out. hallelujah! i seriously didnt want to do that **** the hard way.
i didnt take any pics of the parts with bushings removed but i succeeded (as predicted by clokker) in ruining all the nice paintwork i have done. well worth it imo! thats basicly all i got done today. 16 hrs tmrw and on thursday so i dont know if ill get a chance to get down there in the near future. i spoke to robban today and he has sent his measurements to his cylinder dude so he's in the process of making them up. i'd better get my *** in gear..

soo sleepy....

 

I was less "predicting" and more "stating the obvious" as you now see.

You might consider a test fit of the bushes now.
Do they even require force to install (the Z's did not)?

If they drop in, bingo! you're set...just redo the paint, push in the bushes and you're done.
If not, you face a decision:
Is it easier to fix the paint and then hope to preserve it during the bushing install or is it better to press in the plastic, then mask it and paint?

Have fun with that decision.

 

i got lucky! the pushings can be pressed in by hand so thats no problem. worst case scenario would be a tap with a rubber mallet and i can always put something soft under if i even need to do so. ill be giving them a little touch-up when i get to the garage next. ill be getting my coilover next tuesday and ill be trying to get a hold of some brake pads by then too. then i should have everything to begin putting everything together again. just need to get down to mekonomen tomorrow and sort out these caliper rebuild kits.. really want to get everything back together again. the weather is quite nice at the moment. i dont see why i shouldnt be able to start getting out and try to do the last bit of troubleshooting with the engine soon.

 

Says the man with his suspension either in transit or in pieces on the floor.

 

why oh why do i say stuff like that? i totally jinxed it. it snowed yesterday.
anyway. one and a half hours left of my shift. got a nice tidy "to do" list written up and friday and saturday are mine all mine...

 

Wednesday night Denver got "thundersnow"...lightning /thunder/snow.

And people wonder why we legalized weed.

 

Ha ha aw, you guys are cute. Up here in northern Canada we won't even see the road until April

-sean

 

There's nowhere to go in northern Canada, so roads are mostly pointless anyway.

Eh?

 

thats how we usually have it here.. this winter has been showing record leniency (and im still complaining!)
on the subject of weed, i had no idea that it was legal anywhere in america untill i started this thread. that actually blew my mind. i know its been decriminalised in spain and i think denmark, if not you can always go to christiania in copenhagen. (google it its pretty cool. a social experiment of sorts)
i personally resent knowing that my tax money goes towards wasted police time arresting people for weed. its ridiculous.

i passed by mekonomen to find out what had happened with the caliper rebuild kits. turns out that i must have not realised the toll these long *** shifts have been taking on my general alertness and given them half of the registration number to my nissan micra and half of the sevens! failure. thats probably why i ended up with a kit for an audi a3. anyway, they didnt have the right ones, so i went to mazda. they could have got them from belgium in 3-4 days but considering it would have cost me about 1500 crowns (228 dollars) i decided that im not in THAT much of a hurry and will be ordering them from the states. (which i should have just bloody-well done in the first place)....

 

I feel your pain brother. My situation is not as extreme as yours obviously, but in my part of Canada very few things are available locally, and have to be ordered from the U.S. 2-3 week shipping times, no such thing as free shipping, and unreliable import fees are common. If we can ever find parts in Canada, they are usually 20-30% more expensive than the states, and shipping times not much better (this country is huge).

Those Yankees south of me have it great, cheap parts, free shipping sometimes, 2 or 3 day delivery..

I'm jealous. At least we beat them in hockey today

We play you guys on Sunday!! :O Good luck

sean

 

I will happily cede you ALL the hockey victories in exchange for cheap, readily available parts.
I'll even throw in curling- go ahead, kick our asses in that too, consider it a bonus.

Why aren't you guys playing with machinery more suited to your environment...like snowmobiles ("snow machines"?) or lunar landers?

 

Ha ha if only you could see my town... A ford f150 is considered a compact car here. The average is some 3500+ dually turbo diesel with a 12" lift, 3 grand worth of mud tires, aluminum flat deck with 2 snowmobiles on the back.. And always parked across 3 spaces at the mall. Big trucks, quads, sleds. That's all anyone cares about in this hillbilly oil town.

My daily driver/winter beater is a subaru wrx and that's as close as I'll ever get to a truck. Needless to say, I don't really fit in.

Driving my fc around in the summer is terrifying. Most of those things have tires that are taller than the roof of my car

-sean

 

Why not buy they caliper kits from ebay? It's from the uk so no tax either
Mazda RX7 Rear Brake Caliper Repair Kit 3504 | eBay
Mazda RX7 Brake Caliper Repair Kit 3614 | eBay

 

yeah it definately slows things down alot. if i had a bmw it would be no problem to get parts but then i wouldnt exactly have a unique car. i appreciate more and more everyday that i have had the chance to own one of these its definately a special vehicle. (my bias is defianately growing hehe)

good luck to you guys too! both are really good teams so itll be an exciting match!

because they dont come with rotaries sayingt hat im considering a lada niva if i can get my hands on one cheap enough. perfect car (tank/apv) for this climate.


i'd take real hillbillies anyday over the wannabe hillbillies we have here. a most special bunch indeed.

thankyou tomat! i actually had thought of looking around in the uk but i didnt find anything. my search skills suck man.. this is great m going to definately order them. just got to wait for the 25th (payday )

i didnt really get much done during the last two days off that i was so excited about. on friday i was completely DEAD. slept all day and woke up with zero inclination to do anything whatsoever.. i felt much the same yesterday but dragged myself over there. there wasnt any flow though.. started with the bushings and knocked out the sleaves in the trailing arms. the bushings went in fine on those. i started spraying up the parts that got scraped up during the bushing removal then started on the dogbones. for some reason they just did not want to sit in place! i cleaned them out properly and greased them up but they just kept popping out! i must admit i was getting pretty annoyed so i decided to leave them until i actually install them so that theres something to hold them in place.
i put together the bracket for the gearbox and put it in place. what was simple to remove had turned into some kind of nightmarish puzzle which was benton driving me crazy. i really should have done something to remember which order i had taken them off in. lost a couple of hours on that one and used up all my swearwords.
then i put together the most of the subframe in readiness to re-install it and by then it was midnight.

sleep is really underrated...