long awaited update…

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So, if you’ve been following me on Instagram, you might be caught up on my swap.  If you want to — follow me @thaisonnguyen.

I started this about a month ago and REALLY wanted to do a clean swap.  My inspiration?  The Car Peace ae86 from the Hellaflush meet in Japan late last year:

car peace ae86 engine bay

car peace ae86 engine bay

The first thing was to pull the motor — thanks a bunch to Joseph Dann for helping me so much with the swap.

joseph d, mounting the 16v

Soon enough we got it all removed and it was time to start removing everything and prepping the engine bay… Continue reading →

CCM13 Part 2

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To our readers I need to apologize. I know myself have been extremely busy with many things in life. To inform you all I just recently purchased a 2012 Honda CBR250r to commute to school and work. In addition I’ve been spending lots of time at work and school and yes….. playing Diablo 3. For neglecting you all I sincerely apologize and am making  a promise today to create more frequent updates!

But back to the cool stuff. I finally am ready to show you all the second installment to our CCM13 OKC adventure!

Continue reading →

ccm xiii — okc

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So as many of you may know, this past weekend was Cupcake Meet 13: Cupcakin for CF Care.  Alllll the way up in Oklahoma City.  When Branden and I first heard about the new location, we KNEW that there needed to be a natsukashi road trip in store.  New city, new state, new people, new styles, new friends!

My original plan was to drive my peanut up there.  Given the history and turmoil that went hand in hand on my journey to attain the peanut, I thought it was only fitting to take the car back to where it originally came from.  In just the couple of days journey it took for me to drive up to Oklahoma City and drive it back to Austin, a LOT happened.  Both car-wise and non car-wise.  To say the least, a couple chapters were added to “The Life of Thaison.” Continue reading →

blacktop swap progress

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So the blacktop swap into the 86 is about to go full swing.  I’m waiting on a couple parts to come in from the mail!

I found a deal on a harness that I could NOT pass up.  So I ended up buying this harness from a gentleman on club4ag, rather than rewire the aw11 harness that currently is on the engine — I’m just gonna sell that harness instead.

I’m also waiting on some exhaust parts — a jsp header and a buddy club spec ii to be exact.  Meaning, this car is going to make babies cry and your ears bleed from exhaust tones.  So my set up will be 110 mm velocity stacks, jsp headers, straight pipe, buddy club spec ii.

jsp header

My parts should all be here tomorrow!  I’m excited to get started on this swap.  Should make for a completely different car

So it begins

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So it begins…my blacktop 4age swap into the 86.

Just last week I finally got my engine on the stand to really start converting it from fwd to a rwd configuration. This means rerouting the water lines, etc. I decided to go with the sq engineering kit based out of Australia. He makes some really high quality parts for the 20v 4ag swaps.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a 20v 4age is — to put it short, it’s the newer revision of the 86’s original motor. Higher compression, stock individual throttle bodies, 5 valves per cylinder (as opposed to e stock 4 valves per cylinder.

Here’s my workspace:

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Tonight, I decided to start taking apart my harness. The motor and harness I picked up was being run in an aw11 mr2. So I need to rewire the harness to fit the ae86 chassis and also to mate up with the ae86 harness. Spent a couple hours on it and decided it was time to go to sleep. I’ve got a lottttttt of work ahead of me…

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track day — more to come!

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So this past Saturday, Branden and I went down to Harris Hill Road for the “Mazda Raceway Outlaw Autocross.”  Essentially, a higher speed autocross, where we got to run a section of Harris Hill Road with a couple slaloms down the side straight, back straight, and before the dam turn.

Here’s a look at the track:

A really fun, technical course with elevation changes.  There was a slalom between 3 & 4, 5 & 6, and 7 & 8.  Gridding was in the pit and the finish was right before turn 9.  Needless to say, it was a suuuuuper fun day.

More to come on this event soon!

tearing up the slaloms!

tearing up the slaloms!

clutch job

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needless to say, i have an oil leak somewhere...

Took my car over to my buddy David Liu’s place to swap my clutch.  So I wouldn’t have to do it in my gravel driveway in the dark….

Clutch was SHOT to hell.  hahah, no wonder it was slipping so much.

Should be finishing it tonight!

pushing boundaries

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My homeboy Angelo’s been pushing boundaries on almost all of his builds.  At least the builds that I know of.

First build I knew of was his blacktop ae86:

Which then became an sr20det86 and then sold to a kid in kansas:

Second build was an S13 that he built in like 3 months (or was it 3 weeks?):

And thirdly, he just traded that S13 for this teg:

ONI CAMBER.  His builds have always been ridiculous, which is very fitting with his character.  Great guy, great personality.

megasquirt tuning

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So, those of you who’ve seen my car recently, know that I’ve recently switched to an aftermarket ECU.  DIYPNP Megasquirt to be exact.  I was scared as heck putting it together (because it was my first time soldering anything for reals) but it all worked out.  I took my time and double/triple checked everything I was doing.  The DIYAutotune guys have a LOT of written information out there to get me through it.

Anyways, this whole time, I’ve been running off my buddy’s maps — since he’s got a different engine and stuff, I’ve been running PIG rich.  Like AFR of 10-12 rich.  So this is what I’m starting to get into right now:

megalogviewer

I’ve been reading online and watching youtube videos on how to tune and adjust your VE (volumetric efficiency) tables.  It looks like a giant jumble of numbers to me right now… but I’m still learning!

Nice surprise

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So as I’m heading down the route of making my car nice and clean again, I had to source some new parts from club4ag. I thought I was ordering some eyelids and corner lights for the 86 but this is what I got:

Wrapped in Korean newspaper, from Cali.

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I got TWO SETS of untracked eyelids! Ones pair seems to have some overspray, but that shouldn’t be hard to clean up.

From that time I hit a tree, both of my eyelids have been destroyed. Passenger side has a huge crack and the driver side disintegrated. Hahah. Now I have a clean set and a spare set!