MiraiZ

Its time for my weekly stroll to the garage to check on the status of my car. Those of you who have been following my story know that I am in a middle of a rebuild of my turbo ITR.

Recap:

1. Replacing pistons with 9:1cr Wiseco (Endyns) and Eagle rods.
2. Replacing stock clutch with ACT street disc and extreme pressure plate
3. Replacing RIdeal headgasket and going back to stock.

Parts:





So, I decided to walk to the garage today, which is a 15-20 minute walk from my house. I usually take the bus, but I needed the walk. First thing that I noticed was that my neighbor had bought a car. A black Honda Integra Si-R...it was beautiful!!:




As I walked up to the garage, I noticed Mr. Koyama scrambling around the unpaved lot next to hi garage. The lot was full of cars (including my ITR). Some were covered: most weren't. I noticed that most of them had something missing (engine, transmission, or both) no doubt that they were in the garage being rebuilt.



Mr. Koyama (in the black jacket) was talking with a customer about his vintage Chevy pickup. The truck looked immaculate, and caught Mr. Koyama's attention. Apparently, the tranny was giving and needed a rebuild.



As he was talking with the customer with the Chevy, I circled around the front and was immediately greated by Mr. Koyama's other customer's cars. It was a red Ferarri Testarossa. It was partially covered in plastic for some reason.




I was called into the garage by Mr. Koyama and handed off to his son.

"the engine is almost done", he said.
"really?", I said very excitedly.
"Yup, unfortunately Iran into to a minor snag that slowed be down a bit" he said, as if it we no big deal.
"what's that"
"well your piston rings were damaged and left some scratches on the cylender walls in #3 and #4. We bored and honed it so its okay...but by the description of the problem you gave us, we did expect some damage, so its no biggie"

I breathed a sigh of relieved. Fore several days, I had dreams that the cylinders were going to be so badly damaged or even cracked that I would have to get a new block.

I followed him to the second floor of the garage. I searched around for my engine which had been there the last time I visted.

"Oh, its not there anymore...its in our rebuild room on the 3rd floor." he said

What? howmany floors does this place have? I thought to myslef. From the outside, it doesn't look that big. I again walked up an even more steeper flight up steps. It was so steep, I was tempted to use my hands like a ladder .

At the top of the steps, there was a room full of engines, some covered, some exposed. My engine was on a stand next to the door. Most of it had been assembled and the head was back on. Any the valve train was been adjusted. The cams were in place.

"the internals are in. I will be putting in your clutch and closing her up. She should be done in a week or so, but I would like to hook her up to our engine dyno just to make sure she runs ok. Then, well drop her in the car, and we're done."

"sweetness", I said.
"By the way, we had one of the head design engineers from Honda here a few days ago. He took a gander at your engine."

"oh yeah...what did he say?" I asked.
"Well we had the head off and had the head gasket in place at the time. He looked att he head gasket and said that we wasn't every pleased what its design"

"But its completely stock" I said "I bought it from them."
"yup, he daid that when he and his team were designing the HG, he immediatly noticed a design flaw. The way the HG is design, the circulation of coolant around #4 is poor. He has raised this issue with Honda several times but nothing was done. So this, with a turbo setup, may be asking a bit much from this HG. He advised me to used a special ahesive to make sure that a leak doesn't manifest."

He mentioned the name of the ahesive, but I didn't really catch it...I am assuming its the same stuff thats in copper headgasket spray.

"So, make sure you get this tuned as soon as you're broken in...one back knock can end it all"

I looked around the room and saw a bunch of covered stands. He pointed out a few engines being rebuilt. One was an Altezza engine being prepped to be put into an MR-2. Another was a V-6 block from a Alfa-Romeo.

"You should have been here earlier this week. We had to hide an engine for this customer. It was a top secret race engine, but I was showing it off anyways.." He laughed as if he cared "You saw the black car downstairs right?...that's an old school Maseratti. We yank the engine for the costumer and we are current building a special engine based on a Nissan V-6 Turbo for it. He had to mate the old Maseratti tranny to the Nissan V-6"

"Can you do that" I asked

"Takes a lot of welding and cutting, but anything is possible. Luckily the Nissan is a more compact 60 degree V-6 comapared to the 90 V of the Masaratti...but the Nissan engine is a bit taller....we might have to fabricate the front end and hood to get the monster in."

I spent about an hour there, and it was an intersting afternoon. He also mention that his garage has contributed in building race engines for JGTC and can probably get pit passes for the NS-X team as well as pit passes for the all DC-5 race team in another league. I nearly creamed right there...




[Modified by MiraiZ, 4:58 PM 2/22/2003]

Daniel

good luck on the build-up! but that red car looks more like a Ferrari 348 Spider than a Testarossa.

MiraiZ

Your right...but there was Testarossa in the garage itself....

CzanSOHC

Very nice...hopefully everything works good...from what you have to say...this place does some really nice work

Sleepin'

A little OT, but what are these seals for on the license plate? I just noticed them and wondered.

MiraiZ

Those are screws for the license plate

Speed PHreak

Japan ownz, I wanna visit there for awhile.......to bad I don't speak the laguage.

JustChou

JDM yO! You can buy them off ebay for 450$ apeice.

Lol.

silverEH2

me too

Diego Boost

Cool pics

es four

Damn.... nice pics.

Sleepin'

For only the left hand screw on only the rear plate of each car???? That doesnt make any sense.

MiraiZ

confirmed that it was a bolt...don't know why its only on one side though

Sleepin'

Huh, I thought it might be some anti theft or anti fraud seal of sorts being that it is on all of the cars rear plate.

VWkila

It's put on by the government officials for an anti-temper measure.

GZERO

Is that a toyota Yaris? the one in red and white

EDIT: sorry to bring this back from the dead


[Modified by GZERO, 7:12 PM 3/10/2003]

2000Accord5sp

It's just like the tab stickers we get where once it's on, the only way to get it off is to tear the sticker apart in pieces. It's just another measure to make sure no one is trying to stick on fake plates on their car.