BigWillieStyles

very nice!!!

Kotetsu

Thanks man!

kenn_chan

Kotetsu,

just read your thread, have not posted much in this section, maybe I should pay more attention to my own backyard!

Sweet car BTW.

Do you have any problems with the Kafun? I started having problems with it when I was about 30ish and it went in cycles after that. I always thought of Shizuoka as being the pollen capital of Japan..... Don't know if I could survive a springtime there

kenn

Kotetsu

Hi man,

Sorry, I've been away from the form for a while. My business takes too mcuh of my time and I'm mostly focus on Europe at the moment.

I don't have especially big problems with Kafun. Actually I had more allergies when I was living in Switzerland. Here it looks much better for me.


As I haven't gave any news about the car for a while, here are the latest mods:

I was definitely not satisfied with the fitting of the rotary Art pod as you can see on this picture.



The guy from Rotary Art were really nice and refunded my defective pod.
But I decided to keep it like this for a while until I find the "right" thing.

Someday, after several month without any news, I received a mail from Frank Lee Jr. who told me that the pod I requested back then was available. I was really surprised because I thought he totally forgot me.

Nice surprise indeed so I confirmed the order right away.

I have to say (no offense to Rotary Art) that Frak's pods are a lot better. Higher quality, no need to dremel the thing, allen key provided with a notice and explanations, rapid shipping and extremely nice communication. The best pod I've seen so far for this car and as it's impossible to find and equivalent thing in Japan, I'll also recommend thes products to my friends around here.

So enough for the bla-bla. Here's the installation (quite easy).




Say good bye to the old pod:




Add just a bit of tape on the meters, lock the small screws and that's it.




10 seconds later it's done.








Then I decided to arrange the interior a little bit.

My shift and handbrake boots were a bit "old":



Get rid of the old boots.
For the hand brake it's quite easy; juste remove the staples, adjust the new boot and put new staples et voila!

For the shifter, as there was not model specifically made for the FD I bought one for FC3S and modified it.




I took good cisors and a cutter.
I removed the aluminum base and cut the boot at eh right dimension.



With the cutter I made small notches (I hope it's the right word in English)



Then just reinstall normally.

et voilà!!!

Kotetsu

And here is the pièce de resistance:

I needed new brake calipers because my old zenki models didn't like too much what they took last time I went driving on the Fuji Speedway.

I was about to buy a used set of AP racing calipers with two-piece rotors but after taking with Mr. Nagashima, owner and pilot in the Okabe Jidosha Motorsport (which where my car come from), on his good advice I decided to go for stock Spirit R calipers. As a matter of fact, Okabe Jidosha race cars are set with this calipers and according to Mr. Nagashima and Mr. Yano, this is the best system for an FD on the track (better than any other after market brake system for this car actually). To get along well with these, I ordedered Dixcel FS rotors and Type Z brake pads (still like what OJM uses on their race cars).




I entrusted OJ for the installation of the brakes as I don't have any equipment to do it myself yet.

They called me when the work was done and I was invited to be there when the did the brake test on the bakre tester then we lifted the car to check together that there were no leeks anywhere. Dot 4 fluid was injected and the even replace the brake fluid reservoir's cap fro free. (Trust me, Japanese service is the best on the planet)







The feeling is perfect. Brakes effective as soon as I touch the pedal but really progressive and easy to control. Definitely a excellent choice for brake upgrade and more over, it's half the price of a used AP racing system which would have given me nothing more but trouble.