So every year, 86 day is celebrated around the time of August 6th.  This year, 8/6 landed on a Monday, which makes it difficult for many people to attend an event on the actual day — bc of work, school, etc.  So all of us local Texas 86 guys always celebrate 86 weekend, usually the weekend before 86 day.  This year, we decided to celebrate August 3-5.

This year, we decided to all meet in Austin and enjoy 86 festivities in this beautiful city.

Day 1 — 8/3:

Mark & Jonas were the only out of towners that made it this year.  Mark drove all the way down from Dallas.  Jonas trailered his hatch all the way from Houston.  They got in Friday afternoon and came down to the pho shop to meet up with Joseph and I.  P.S. most of the pictures in this blog post are shot with a Minolta MAXXUM 7000 35mm camera.  Circa 1985.  What better way than to celebrate an 80’s car with a period correct camera!  All images unedited.

After grabbing some food and grub at the shop, Jonas informed me that the diff in his 86 has been leaking out fluid…  So we made our way back to my house to do some quick tinkering to fill up his differential.  While Jonas was working on his car, I decided it would be a good time to check out all of Mark’s super rare JDM black limited tid bits since it was dark, I could see all the glowing Orange.  (In case you didn’t know, Black Limited is a special edition of the ae86 that was released in 1987 in Japan — it was the limited edition before the ae86 would be replaced by the ae92 FWD corollas.  They came with gold emblems, amber gauges, amber clock, gold logos, different seats, etc).

(note the shift knob, climate control, gauage cluster, and lettering on the steering wheel)

Super gangster.

After that, we decided to head out to a bar to grab some drinks and chit chat.  We drove to a bar just a few blocks from my house and when all the cars entered the lot, there were definitely stares.  Jonas with his buddy club spec 2, Joseph with his megan, and Mark with his Reinhard underdiff exhaust.  More or less, everyone had an underdiff straight pipe exhaust except for me and branden…  But all the 86’s have ITB’s, so needless to say…our cars are pretty loud.  Mark’s was the loudest out of all of us with that Takumi Project Reinhard exhaust.  This video doesn’t do the exhaust justice, but youl’ll get the idea, cruising behind Mark is deafeningly amazing.  Especially since he didn’t have his baffles/silencers in:

We parked at the Taco Bueno in the same parking lot as Backspin, the sports bar we grabbed a beer at.  Branden got exiled because he was in his Si, so he parked on the other side of the lot, hahah.

1am came around the corner and we decided to call it a night and head home/to our hotels so we could prepare for the second day’s activities I had planned.

Day 2 — 8/4:

9am I was up and lied in bed thinking about how hot it was supposed to get.  Texas summer heat in a bunch 86’s without ac was gonna be rough, but well worth it!  Joseph came over early in the morning and I woke up my little cousin to come celebrate with us. Dat, who’s 7, was visiting from Dallas and had planned to hang out with me all day.  So, i dragged him along to the 86 festivities with us!

We made our way North to meet up with Mark & Jonas at the hotel.  Upon our arrival, I realized that one of the Texas 86 guys, Yaqub, actually lived on the other side of the highway from the hotel!  So I texted him to see if he would stop by (he previously told me he had family in town and prolly wouldn’t make it).  But he came right over!  I put some film in my camera and shot the cars as they were parked in the hotel lot.

We were soon heading off to our first spot — BREAKFAST!  I had planned for us to get to Round Rock donuts to get some of their world famous donuts!  None of us were man enough to tackle the Texas Sized Donut, so we each got little things instead.

As we were half way through eating, Branden showed up bearing gifts!

After nomming on donuts, we decided it was time to head out and hit up some roads!  We decided to meet at Branden’s so he could grab his Si and would then lead us to all the local hillcountry twisties.

After we hit up lime creek, we pulled over to give our cars a once over before we continued on.  With this old cars, you know know what will happen when you push them to their limits.  But everything was A-OK so we continued on!

We made our way to a gas station to fill up.  I had about 98 miles on my tank, so I knew it was about time to fill up.  Ding ding ding!  8.7 gallons.  😦  My car was getting ~11mpg’s.

After we filled up, we were on the road again headed towards city park road!

Unfortunately, Branded herd something bang around in his engine bay and then his A/C went out.  After popping the hood, he realized that the A/C pulley bolt had sheared off!

So Branded decided to head out to Honda, where Natsukashi Cody works to see if they could fix it/change out the part.  Later, I got a call from him telling us that the bolt had sheared off in the bracket and not the block!  Good news!

We decided to cut the cruise short because we were starting to get hungry.  But before we did, Dat got his very first ride along in a drift car!  So since we went to Mexico real quick and Jonas took Dat for a quick ride:

Jonas had to cut it short when Dat turned to him and said “Can you stop?”  Hahaha.  Not bad for a first ride along.  When he got back into the car with me, I asked him how it was and if he was scared.  He said he saw Jonas “turning the wheel a lot” and asked him to stop.  After all the fun, we felt like it was some time for food

Then we headed not too far away, to The Oasis for an early dinner.  The Oasis is a Tex-Mex restaurant that’s three stories tall, on a cliff overseeing Lake Travis.  We all ordered our food and drinks and enjoyed a much needed meal.

Taking advantage of the scenery around us, I thought it’d be a good idea to get a photoshoot in with all of our 86’s.  So we mobbed around the Oasis parking structures/lots to set up a few different shots.

Stuffed to the brim with tacos, enchiladas, nachos, chips, queso, Shiner, and margaritas, we decided to head back to Branden’s to chill and relax before heading to the Saturday night meet.  On the drive home, as soon as we left the Oasis, my car started to have some problems…  It was misfiring so badly, I could barely accelerate to get my car up to any decent speed.  We figured it was probably my spark plugs fouling out from running so rich the last few weeks.  Swapped Mark’s NGK’s from his BT 20v into mine and bam!  Ran great!  We couldn’t get any NGK’s so I settled with AC Delco Platinum plugs.  They worked great for the first 15 miles, but my motor then began misfiring once again.  My swap is running quite poorly as of right now… So I decided to park it after 86 Day so I could really go through everything.

This picture sums up how we felt after a long and eventful 86 celebration: