NorCal Community Chat Thread v. 5.0- 2011
 

Don't know why no one else started this yet ha ha =D It may be late but lets start off the OFFICIAL 2011 thread with some of your goals for the year!


Mine - Get some work done on my Subaru =D

Get a clean title FD with a rebuilt engine that is all stock

twin charge the FC with the Eaton M90 supercharger combined with the MP T70 turbo.

oh, and finally take a vacation this year to the Florida keys.

Oh ben I like the sound of that :-)

Plans; Heads, cam and see if it satisfies me. If not, forced induction through a heads, cam LS2. I'm thinking TC78 right now. But if I do that I think I will start over and strip this car down and put it on a rotisserie and repaint every inch of her.

Hopes; to be running 10's NA this year while still having perfect drivability and reliability.

Sell everything I own and move to a tropical island.

Successfully rebuild my engine and have it ruining

Start my harem.

Sell my Rx7. Get out of debt and become financially independent.

pass smog lol...then MAYBE, sell in the near future.

Also sounds amazing!

Good luck bro!


Vids bro!

I've had that idea in the back of my head before. Though its up there with my 6port turbo with functional aux ports. I'd love to see that beast though =D

Do it.

Good luck bro!

As much as it'll suck, and what other people say, that is the BEST choice. I mean sure if you find a way to keep it do it but priority should be getting out of debt.


A little addition to my plans, is taking it to autocross and doing some minor mods (Intake exhaust etc.)

Plan's -

Move into the newly found 16,000 square foot shop with 6 acre parking.

Get my 1973 240Z back together as well as my 1971 240Z using the part's from my newly aquired 3rd 1972 240Z.... Addicted much? :lol:

Aquire a Ferrari 348 to build and use as the Exotic Motorsports Garage promotional car.

Find a street bike for this summer... possibly an R1 :egrin:

Set everything up to be able to compete in the 2012 race season in the American Le Mans GT class with either our prototype V16 race car based on my business partner/mentor Cizetta V16 powered super car or a partnership with lotus and their new race car.



And the one thing that should be on everyone's list is to either win the lottery or somehow fall into a pile of money or gold.


Not in any particular order of course haha.

Nice goals there Apex

Apex,

I wanna clarify on your shop: Do you guys primary just work on Super Cars, Lambos, Ferrari etc... Or do you guys build kit cars,...?

Thanks


We work on Exotic / Super car's, no kit car's allowed in my shop :)
Lamborghini, Ferrari, Cizetta, Maserati, Porsche, etc...

I work on Z's and Rx-7's on the side too.

The 348 will be a modified promotional car for the shop to drive around and use as a "what we do" sort of thing.
Twin turbo V8 and some other goodies are my plans for it... Should be in the 480ish hp/trq area but completely reliable for daily driving, just in case you were wondering why I was building a Ferrari 348 haha.

my goal is to have 0 electrical problems with my seven.
have her sanded/primered/painted with new kit.
finish gettin the interior as JDM as possible.

oh and have more money than bill gates!

All of your goals sound really do-able.......................


Minus that last one.

Good luck!

Now that I finally got this Turbo II. Maybe I can find enough money to get rid of these klunky noises from my suspension, find a good person to rebuild my motor locally, and get a paintjob!

Hows the shop going man? How ya been? When I get back into the states we need to throw down a NorCal Meet man!


Sounds like a good plan of action. Bushings then replacing the struts and/or springs is always a good start.

[QUOTE=Mutaku;10556858]Hows the shop going man? How ya been? When I get back into the states we need to throw down a NorCal Meet man!
QUOTE]


It's going really good, just been really busy with all the different thing's i'm doing at once.

Definately need to do a huge NorCal meet when you get back, how are thing's over there?

[QUOTE=Apex944;10557801]Fantastic man! Been meaning to hit up a junkyard to look for parts but my job had me on standby all weekend.

Other than that, I may not be on mainland but this Island still has a lot to do! The best part (besides the views) is the food! So much amazing food here!

Nor cal meet has not been like how it use to be 5-6 years ago:(

Back when me and Zach set them up, ahhh those were the days!

yeap.. I agreed. I still remember that very first post you made back then that got everybody including Zack motivated to help escalated all the meets. Awesome bro:)

Well hurry up and get another Montego Blue FD and start organizing meet. lol.

Part of it is the rise of gas prices and economy. People don't want to travel as far for anything anymore. We had some decent ones going when I just started posting monthly meet interest threads and people chimed in on what they wanted to do, and some people even ended up taking over the meets themselves. BBQ season is coming up one of you guys should throw up an interest thread! I'd do it if I was in =P

that was also back when the norcal guys first started. after a while people sold their cars and left the club and it just wasn't the same with a bunch of new guys and only a few old familiar faces. of course better organization would help but i think the original meets had a more special feel because everything was new to everyone.

what i suggest is more barbecues, i get bored just looking at the same old cars time and time again. i don't mind BSing about the cars and everything but there should be more to meets than just driving or showing what you got. get a case of beers(just don't go overboard), bring the charcoal and dead animals out to the lake and sit back and enjoy a day off.

Ya 2005/2006 were the good ole days! feel like an old fart sayin that haha

Well the Irons are with in spec so my build continues, still looking for a front iron though...

One day...we'll have some sort of reunion.

The thing the ruined it is, we cant use treasure island any more. The rotor fests were the best. Zach put on the first one and Jackie and I put on the second year then they made a new rule about gatherings on the island. I would love to keep having a big summer meet but I don't know of a good spot to do it. Nothing that can compare to treasure island at least. Anyone know of a good spot for a meet? We have some awesome spots up here in the hills but its to far for a lot of people.

There's a few places I can think of.

At one point I talked to the Santa Rosa PD about closing off a whole parking lot and street in Historic Railroad Square for a meet. They were totally cool with it as long as the local businesses were okay with it as well. I went as far as getting verbal permission from two of the four businesses surrounding the lot. Both of which said they'd be willing to help out if needed too.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_H7kmMSRI7v...0/IMG_1412.jpg

There's enough room for 50-75 cars. There's bars/pubs/sushi/messican food within 15 seconds walking distance and it's right off the 101.

The other option is Coyote Point in San Mateo. BBQ action over there!

Just got to get the interest in. It can't be just a one month notice kind of thing. There are still plenty of spots out there to hosts meets its just finding the right spot where not too many people have to take too long a trip.


Thats exactly it. My meet at Lake Chabot turned out pretty decent. I think a great recipe for meets is 2 BBQs and then a cruise. Keeps things fresh. Throw in a random unique event here and there. Hell going out to restaurants isn't too bad of an idea either.

Just throw out an interest thread and see where people want to meet. Heck make it open to all Mazda's or hell even other makes.


Hey Nader you should totally try to get that one going, That looks like a great spot.

Got an email about someone interested in my car, HOPE THEY BUY IT!

Any meet sounds good so long as it is in a few months so my car is back together :)

Jake, Good luck dude!

Thanks :-)

I don't mind long distant. A cruise/Caravan would be awesome. That's how we used to do it few years back...Cruises is part of what makes these meets so fun IMO. Bunch of nicely 7 on the freeway with neckbreakers from left & right. :)

The only thing that inspire me to keep modding my FD back then was because of the meets and the cruise. heh

Thats why you got to mix it up. Some people can't afford to cruise all the time let alone keep their cars running!

The last big meet I went to was the one Icemark and I had organized. BBQ and cruise to Highway 1. It was a good time. I've been to a few other ones here and there since then though...

If you guys don't get one going by the time I visit I'll be upset =(


XD All you former meet organizers need to get together for something big.

Yea...we'll see about all that bidness. :lol:

When are you comin to visit?

November should be the month. I'll have a meet thread down when I'm more sure of the dates I'l be in. I'll actually plan this one out too instead of winging it ha ha.

Yeah I hear you on that! But it sounds like you guys just want a permanent local meet that's why I brought up it's ok to do a cruise once in a while...

Try to convine Paul at Rotorsport to let me do an LS swap once my engine blows (should be any day now.) He refuses to work on Piston FDs, but I love that shop and it's like fifteen minutes from my apartment.

He says he can easily get his hands on a three rotor, though...

finally i found a real parts washer for a reasonable price to help automate the rebuild process without sitting for hours scrubbing all the parts by hand..

https://images.craigslist.org/3k63pa...c7729510a2.jpg

maybe i can get the rebuilds down to 4 days now.

Nice bro!

Yeah but if you put pistons in your car you wont have to have your worked any more. So its a even wash.

If its done right anyway lol

Lol Casey I was thinking the same thing.

If you can't fix a Chevy small block with all the resources on the internet, you probably shouldn't own a car. And you probably won't ever have to work on it anyways. haha

I already know my plans for a future FC is some sort of V-8 maybe even supercharged. Then, depending on what I find here, possibly a 3 rotor or just a ported REW in an FD. All this assuming that shit doesn't hit the fan. Otherwise I could settle for an FD as a project and a subie as a daily.

in all honesty thats a load of shit, i've seen new vettes blow motors on the course and at the strip, have a friend who has the same wiring issues with his walbro 255 pump in his pontiac superchicken as the S5 and FD guys have, he also had a timing chain eat the rollers up and dump them into the pan and luckily he noticed it before the chain completely let go or his WS6 would have been junk too.

so lets not kid ourselves and it irritates me that people make the rotary sound so much more horrible that V8's don't ever have issues when they do, quite often when modified to make anything over stock power levels..

they just have the advantage of displacement and not needing everything ideal due to the lack of necessity to be forced inducted. you can make an n/a rotary pull in 300whp but it obviously wont have the torque or fuel mileage of a V8, but they can compete when pushing air through them, because they're smaller weed wacker motors.

i've made over 300WHP for the better part of 5 years now, untouched tune even after swapping to the new turbo, makes about 23.5 mpg and is one of the most reliable cars i have owned to date in that period of time. closer to 350WHP now and pushing about 70k on the engine, the car itself now has 208k original miles on everything except the suspension, tires and brakes.

if you want to compare naturally aspirated i can build a semi pp n/a with ceramic seals that will go 200k flawless miles while pushing close to 300WHP with the lacking torque and fuel mileage, but again, because it's a smaller motor.

just wait though, i smell more machine shops putting out 3 and 4 rotor kits in the near future(not me, at least unless $30k fell into my lap magically to buy the necessary machinery). at that point then you will see a naturally aspirated rotary that will keep up with the V8s in some ways but still lose in others(fuel mileage being the main one).

rotaries are actually very simple engines and i still have no idea why so many people are reluctant to attempt to build them on their own. i never even hesitated to break mine open after only owning the car for 2 weeks and not having any rotary experience, it helped having mechanical knowledge but almost none of that helped me to learn these motors aside from watching the atkins video(they all give the same basic concept of engine rebuilding just different techniques). the issue is mainly getting over your reservations.

i have even had to rebuild one on a back patio with a portable air compressor and basic hand tools when one of my customers had a bolt get dropped into the motor while installing it and i was 5 hours from the shop(obviously not a warranty job). the whole process took about 6-7 hours, though i had the parts already pre-cleaned. that itself should tell you that most of the rebuild of these motors is spent in cleaning time, which is why i'm so relieved to have found this $5k 150 gallon stainless washer for $300, they don't fall out of trees as i have been looking for months for used washers for anything less than $1k.

having all of the parts cleaned, engine fully disassembled it takes me about 4 hours to fully reassemble an engine.