Damn, where did a month go? I didn’t intend for it to take a month to finish this post. Let’s see…I don’t think there was a whole lot left. Just a few things to wrap it up. About the worst pics ever, but I never stopped to take some good ones so we’ll just go with it. Above, an glimpse of the cockpit.

An overview of the gauges and meters.

I managed to tuck everything in the center console area. I didn’t want to have a bunch of gauges hanging all over the dash and A pillar. Just a clean simple look and a nice reference for the engine’s vital signs – water temp, knocklite, wideband, and auto timer. They are awesome! I cannot adequately express the greatness of the Yashio water temp gauge. It has big bold easy on the eyes digital numbers so you can see the temp in a split second glance. No trying to read a small gauge arm. Also, it adds a sweet JDM bling factor.

To finish it off, I put the two most important gauges on the column – boost and oil pressure. The wideband and knocklite would be nice to have up there, but it serves more as a reference after the initial tuning.

To hold me in place and add some color, I bought this amazingly purple Crow five point harness. Also, I installed a harness bar to make it work. The seat and rail are the same as before – Bride Low Max rail and Bride coughknockoffcough Vios Low Max seat. (The faded washed out color is due to the sun light.)

That’s that. More exciting stuff to come.

So here it is in all its unaligned dirty goodness. It felt so good to drive this thing even though I wasn’t getting on it at all and it was pulling all over the place. Getting tuned and an alignment now! Can’t wait to really drive it!

Greg painted the my wheels this past weekend. Holy cow! I love it. Too excited to wait for the full update.

The title is two fold: 1) I hooked up my electronics and gave them a test run; and 2) I figured out how to embed Vimeo. Both a great success!

Just a quick teaser. Everything is getting put back together now and a full length update is in the works.

Stoked about having video!

I had a real “Frank” in Old School weekend. I got so much done. I don’t know how it happened. Here’s a recap starting with the pic above. The weather was finally nice, so I rolled the car out of the garage to have more room to work. My goals were passenger air bag removal, wiring harness relocation, wiring my gauges, and anything else that came up. (To defend my honor, there is a jack under the car in this pic hence the height.)

My first project was mounting my Earl’s oil filter relocation bracket. I am paranoid about having my filter (or cooler that matter) down low in an area that could get hit by random road debris or a good tap of a tire. What I ended up with was this. The hole below it was from cutting out the old battery tray a few years ago.

Next up was removing the dash to get at the air bag. No pics of that fun because my camera battery was dead. So, I put it on the charger and worked on the dash. It was much easier than I expected.

You can see I managed to get the airbag out before my camera finished charging. I also removed all the associated wiring and its control unit that is under the rear seat.

I then got diverted on a side mission: removing the interior A/C core. I had taken out the A/C components in the engine bay long ago and have no plans of putting any of it back. It was time to finish the job. This is in mini-write-up format for those looking to do the same thing. You need to keep the housing that the A/C heat exchanger(?) sits in since it connects your blower motor to your duct work.

Undo like three bolts and an electrical plug, then the housing comes right out of the dash area.

There are a few phillips head screws that hold the two halves together. There are also some stick on foam sealant strips that seal between the housings. As you separate the housings, cut this stuff nicely so it will go back together and still make a seal. With the halves separated, you are looking at the exchanger thing…covered in 15 years of junk.

It slides right out. Below it, there is a white foam piece that it sat in. I used a flat bladed screwdriver and scrapped it out. This is the finished product.

On the right half above, you can see the a little black wire with a probe on the end of it. This was mounted on the condenser before. I was unsure of its function in the grand scheme of the heating/cooling system, so I kept it. To do this, I RTV’d it to the side of the opening so the probe end was still in the path of the air flow.

Moving on, it was time to tackle the wiring harness relocation. Doing a full wiring tuck would be my preference, but I don’t have the time to dedicate to something of that magnitude right now. Need to keep moving forward. I opted to run the harness over the strut tower in the engine bay then back through the firewall.

Again, mini-write-up style. I undid the pertinent connectors and managed to pull the harness through the firewall. In the pic below, the connectors at the right are from the steering column; on the left are connectors from the drivers kick panel area behind the fusebox; and the long skinny black wire runs in the engine bay down to the power steering pressure sensor. It all needs to come out.

Photo break.

Back to work, I pulled the harness into the engine bay from the hole it passes through at the front of the car (can be seen in pic above), and then ran it over the strut tower like so:

In the driver side firewall corner, there is a triangle shaped hole. This has to be slightly enlarged to fit the massive square connector and the wiring harness. This is my winning shape after a little trimming with the cutting wheel.

I doctored up the hole with some black spray paint to seal the exposed metal, and then lined the “sharp” edge with some random hose I had. Finished product.

Before and after comparison: The before was from when I originally put the engine in almost three years ago. I thought I was so slick in the way I had it routed. Sigh.

If you are low, running big tires, or both; you really need to do this. Don’t let a chopped wiring harness ruin your track day or leave you stranded on a cruise.

Closing shot.

Update. Up to date. Bunch of small stuff going on. The engine bay looked all awesome – as shown in the above pic – after powder coating the pipes and installing the DEI Titanium turbo blanket/wrap…but, it was not to last. I prepped it for start up, started it, and my same mystery condition resurfaced. The car was going lean at idle. As it warmed up, the idle would creep toward 17 AFR on my AEM UEGO and eventually go to high to even read. Awesome.

Prior to starting it, I had boost leak tested it, and sealed up what I found. That obviously didn’t work. Brainstorming other possibilities, I became suspect of the PCV ports in the intake manifold which I had put rubber vacuum caps on ~2 years ago when I originally took it apart. At the time, I didn’t think it was the best way but figured it would “work”. For my piece of mind (and hopefully to solve the problem), I am sealing the ports more permanently. Now, the once pretty bay, is looking like this:

The original rubber PCV caps were looking a bit haggard, like this:

In their defense, they have what appears to be a silicone liner which seemed to be intact after slicing one open. So, maybe they were okay? Oh well, piece of mind, right? I plugged the holes with steel allen headed plugs after removing the stock ports. More on that in another post as I really got carried away with the intake manifold.

With the intake off, I figured it was time to finally install some parts I had been collecting, upgrade some others, and just spend a lot of money in general. What was a simple plan quickly snowballed. Firstly, an oil cooler setup – Skullworks oil housing adapter, Earl’s -10AN Ano-tuff fittings, Earl’s Pro-lite hose, Earl’s billet oil filter block:

Some things that I have been collecting – TurboXS Knocklite, YASHIO Factory Okachan Water Temperature Gauge with Parts Shop Max hose adapter, and STRi Auto Timer – will be going on:

I am really stoked to get the Yashio Fatory gauge hooked up. That is one piece of JDM goodness that I have been wanting for years! I also picked up some general maintenance items that I hadn’t changed yet – (left to right) distributor cap and rotor, tap and plugs for the PCV ports, O2 sensor, coolant temperature sensor, and intake manifold gaskets:

I bought a new “S14 Aluminum Radiator” off eBay. Can you spot the not? Yep, surprise! It’s for an S13. Damn it. It turns out they don’t actually make an S14 KA application, and the supplier gave them the wrong application information. The seller gave me a partial refund which made it stupid cheap. I will make some brackets, and it will work.

Finally got around to installing my Z32 brakes with a 1″ master cylinder. 26mm’s not 30mm’s. Stock rears. Hawk HPS pads and new stock rotors all around. Cleaned, painted, and rebuilt the calipers. I’ll be powder coating them gold (I think).

Rotor size comparison. Nothing new but impressive difference. Minty Fresh is looking so cute.

1″ BMC with lines re-routed.

Finally, Greg and I installed 15mm wheel spacers and Peak Performance extended studs which have the wheels fitting like this:

That’s all for now!!!!

With the car painted and the weather cold, it was time to reassemble the interior with some of the bits and pieces I had accumulated. This was February-ish 2009. A good job to do in a cold garage. Anyway, you can see it was an absolute mess. I put the S14 driver seat in my S13 but had something to replace it.

Knock Bride Low Max with real Bride LH rails.

Installing the hub. A bit more of a pain than I expected but not much to it. ArmorAll’ed and vacuumed. A vast improvement.

HKB hub, NRG ver. 2.5 Quick Release, Nardi Classic, Parts Shop Max Drift Knob, Nismo Shift Knob, ATI gauge pod, STRi Oil Pressure Gauge, and my little buddy, Hello Kitty.

Cool shot.

Hello Kitty. Meow.

Door panels and rear interior has also been put in. More goodies have been and will be installed.

I mocked up the intercooler and got it fitted in the core support area. However, I managed to take some absolute crap quality pictures of most of what was involved in getting it to fit. So instead, let’s look at the piping fabrication. The pic above was our starting point.

The intercooler fitted in place. There are two brackets on the bottom and two bolts that mount it to the core support at the top. It just required a bit of trimming here and there, but the radiator and headlights mount just like oem. You can see the area that was trimmed for the 90 degree couplers.

Hot side. 2.5″ piping.

Cold side mocked in place. Again, 2.5″ piping.

Intake pipe with recirculation inlet.

Overall. The hot side routes down and then up so its not really visible. The BOV mounts on the hotside and dumps directly into the intake. Due to the upward angle of the throttle body, the cold pipe routes down and then up around the radiator hose. Now, moving onto the exhaust side.

Wastegate and its cute little dumptube. 1.5″ piping. Moving on to the downpipe.

The downpipe with extra length for a cat-delete. It had to be welded as it sits under the car. Without a lift, it is kind of “stuck” in the car due to its length. Haha.

A quick coat of heat-temp black. Wideband bung and support bracket welded in place. The support bracket was modified from the oem bracket and mounts to a rubber bushing on the transmission crossmember.

And the best part of all, the clearance! Here it is mounted in place. You can barely see it! 3″ downpipe tucked in the frame rail. It doesn’t get any better than that!

More updates coming! Interior, electronics, brakes, etc.

Paint! Well, almost all there. Fresh out of the garage.

A couple more. This was the most sunlight I saw it in before storing it for the winter. 90% of the body was painted; then winter hit, and it quickly became to cold to paint. The remaining parts were put on hold until spring. Talk about anticipation!

Spring finally came and so did the sun! Here are a few shots of trying to catch the light. It was a really clear early spring day. That is when the above pictures were taken – early spring 2009. Hey, wait a second, we are now in 2009! Yay! I am getting closer to bringing Hulk Smash to current status.

You can see I spent some time reassembling a few things and making it road worthy…well…drivable. It is sad to say that at this point the front and rear bumper covers, door handles, and gas door had not been painted yet. I put the front and rear bumper covers on it to make it driveable and take up less storage space. Obviously, the rear quarter glass is still out, and less obviously, there is a good amount of weatherstripping that still needs to be put back on.

As a nice Christmas surprise, Greg painted my wheels white as I had been wanting to do them. This was the first time with them on the car after getting the tires mounted. Yes, he used the most absolutely cocaine white he could find. It is white white and bright bright.

The final product! Ignoring the ride height and the missing front lip, the exterior is complete…for now…well, we’ll just say it matches how it sits now. I foresee some color changes coming in the future but more on that when it happens.

Now to address the color, I knew I wanted green – not forest green, blue green, neon green – just green green. I think I succeeded. Its pretty dark but its not foresty or blue-ish. It is a pretty true green. I am happy with it as it really comes alive in the sun. There is a lot of gold pearl in it so it has kind of a gold tinge to it when it catches the light. In all honesty, I haven’t spent enough time with it clean and in the sunlight to be able to fully appreciate it. For a cold 100% garage paintjob, it turned out great! I couldn’t be happier.

The color choice also helped give it its name – Hulk Smash. Obviously, it is green but The Hulk was also insanely muscle bound. I am not saying I have the most crazy KA ever, but it is no slouch and a far cry from the cheapo t25 setups. Look for updates on the car’s “muscle” in the near future. Also, hands down, The Hulk was and has always been my favorite super hero (if you can call him that).