Month: September 2009 (Page 3 of 6)

Japanese rustoseums (part two)

September 21, 2009 / banpei / 6 Comments

Time for some more Japanese rustoseums:

Rusty Toyota Carina TA63 GT-TR

This rusty beaten up Carina GT-TR was found here.

Rusty Toyota Corolla Levin AE85
I posted this rusty Corolla Levin AE85 before on hachiroku.com.au. It is painted in the infamous colorcode 879 and it has got a nice pair of fender mirrors! ;)

Rusty Toyota Starlet KP61
This KP61 Starlet interested me: it is sitting in a junkyard and yet it has a set of Watanabe rims! Who would throw out a pair of wats?
Also funny to see the foliage coming out of the grille! First thought is always that the foliage must have been picked up during a ride, but in reality it is just growing from under the car!

It wasn’t planned to make this a Toyota only rustoseum posting, but next time I’ll make it up by posting only non-Toyota rustoseums!

DOTS: 1989 Mitsubishi Colt GTi 16V

September 20, 2009 / banpei / 9 Comments

I always had a soft spot for the third generation Mitsubishi Colt: it was my first car and it still brings back many memories… So whenever I see a third generation Mitsubishi Colt I always look for two things:
1. Is it my old Mitsu?
2. Is it a GTi?
I was in luck three times: just once I spotted my very own Colt driving in the other direction of where I was going to and twice I spotted this Colt GTi 16V:

Mitsubishi Colt GTi 16V

The GTi exists in two versions a 1.6 and a 1.8 liter version. However the early type Colt only featured the 1.6 liter GTi driven by the 124 hp 1.6 4G61 engine.

This GTi still has its original GTi rims, however in the picture below you can see that it is missing one:

Mitsubishi Colt GTi 16V
It does have an hubcap, so it can’t be the spare wheel of the car…

Also a fun fact: the Colt and Lancer both have 4×114.3 pcd rims, so the rims of older Toyota, Datsuns and Nissans fit on these cars (wide!). It works the other way around as well, however the offset of the FWD cars is highly positive so you will need spacers to make them fit on RWD cars!

Funny to see the double exhaust tip implying the car needs to breathe well. If you look carefully you will see the second silencer going transverse under the car which feeds the double exhaust tip with a single pipe. Apart from the 2-1 flexible header at the engine the entire exhaust is exactly the same for the whole line. Imagine what improvement an aftermarket exhaust would give this GTi. ;)

The first and last pictures are from a set I took with the shitty-cam I always bring along (weights less than the EOS) and all other photos failed miserably. I did not spot the Colt again till last Tuesday when I was in a big hurry, so I stopped and snapped another four pictures with the shitty-cam from which two failed again and only one (the picture above) was worth keeping.

Mitsubishi Colt GTi 16V

As you can see, the second time I spotted the car was, yet again, around the corner of the office where I also spotted the Toyota Celica Supra MA61. Hopefully I will spot it again and this time have time to have a few pics of the interior as well. ;)

Scans of the Dutch Nissan 2400 GT catalogue

September 19, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I’ve finally finished scanning the Nissan 2400 GT brochure I bought earlier! It took me a while because I also wanted to translate its contents first and then publish it here. ;)

The cover:

Dutch Nissan 2400 GT catalogue cover

The first page:

Dutch Nissan 2400 GT catalogue page 1

The second page:

Dutch Nissan 2400 GT catalogue page 2
Basically the text says the interior is a very roomy interior (five persons) and a very good readable dash.
Full translation can be found here:
http://www.banpei.net/image/nissan-2400gt-catalogue-page-2

The third page:

Dutch Nissan 2400 GT catalogue page 3
This page gives an overview of all safety features (cage-constructed and two waist seat belts) and shows all important specs. I hope I translated all specs correctly, so don’t pin me down on that! If you have a correction for that: please let me know! ;)
Full translation can be found here:
http://www.banpei.net/image/nissan-2400gt-catalogue-page-3

The fourth page:

Dutch Nissan 2400 GT catalogue page 4
Text is not that important: it sums up all key characteristics a bit. What is a bit weird is that they call the car durable. Keep in mind that, as far as I know, there are no Nissan 2400 GT’s left in the Netherlands! There are some 2400 GTs left in Portugal, Finland and Switzerland though… Also durable means something else nowadays: would they have planted 1200 trees to compensate its CO2? Or did they construct it out of only re-usable materials?
Full translation can be found here:
http://www.banpei.net/image/nissan-2400gt-catalogue-page-4

And the last page:

Dutch Nissan 2400 GT catalogue rear
Not very interesting. It says the catalogue is from 1970-1972, which are the years the Nissan 2400 GT was sold in the Netherlands.

Hope you appreciated me sharing this with the rest of the world! :P
I only placed smaller versions of the scans online with watermarking (to prevent hotlinking/stealing). If you need the originals for some reason or you want to buy that brochure for some rediculous price, don’t hesitate to contact me! ;)

Hilarious: Japanese custom cars

September 18, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

A popular Japanese TV show called Sokon Tokoro featured a couple of fantastic wacky custom cars last week:

The first car is the George Tokoro’s (the TV show host) Subaru R1 badged as a Ferrari. Not very hot. :(
But then a large line of wacky customs arrive around the corner of the stadium:
– A 1994 Cadillac limo lowrider limo with plush pink interior. The paint joib contains 11 colors!
– A dragster disguised as a tank! It is powered by jet engine capable of pushing more than 25000 hp! Even the fireproof camera can’t stand its blast! It can reach a speed of 400 km/h!
– A factory stock Campagna T-REX, but for people who do not know this bike it is certainly wacky! ;)

The second video:

More bizarre cars:
– A BMW E66 which at first sight looks quite normal. Then the Buddhist priest gets out and shows the trunk is decorated with sutras written in Swarovski crystals!
– The priest also owns this Toyota Celsior with gullwings, scissor doors and a split hood and way too many displays! Even the headrests have display panels (to watch with the eyes in the back of your head!)
– A Dekotora van with a Batman theme.
– A 1981 Daihatsu Hijet with a Rocket launcher on its back. The rocket does work and is propelled as an ordinary water-rocket!
– A replica of the Earth Defence Force’s Pointer from the Ultra Seven TV series showed in the late 1960s. The car itself is based upon the original car it was made of: the 1967 Chrysler Imperial.
– A Hitachi ASTACO of the Tokyo Fire Department immitating a giant crablike monster!

IMO they missed one car/owner in this video:
Daisuke Shouten’s Bosozoku styled Toyota Celsior UCF11 vip car!

Through:
PinkTentacle

Video: 1960s Nissan Bluebird crashtests

September 17, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I found these two vintage 1960s crash test videos of the Nissan Bluebird on Youtube. The first video shows the crash tests of a dummy sitting on the rear seat of a Nissan Bluebird 410 crashing at 50 km/h and 100 km/h:

Most probably these tests were done to see the impact of wearing seat belts at the rear seat at 50 and 100 km/h. As you can see the 410 two point seatbelt is pretty useless at 100 km/h: the seat belt fails due to the force of the impact and the dummy is launched and beheaded by the dashboard. Lovely slow-motion replays at the end of the video!

But believe me: even though the carnage looks bad, for that time these tiny 410s were quite safe! Compare that with these GM crash tests! But I still wouldn’t want to be beheaded by my own dashboard…

The second video shows the Nissan Bluebird 510 crash test at 40 km/h, creating a chain crash a few other 410s and a (new?) 510:

This test is actually very ingeniously done: no remote operated brakes, just a plain and simple wirecutter activating the brake system! It is like watching the Mythbusters from 1968! ;)

This test shows the advantages of using both a headrest and a seat belt. In the slow-motion footage at the end you can see that the dummy in the front car stays in place even after this car gets hit three times! The headrest saves the dummy from breaking its neck, while clearly the dummy of the second car wasn’t that fortunate: it hits both the windscreen and breaks its neck due to the front seat lacking a headrest.

Another thing becomes clear with this test: the 510 is a lot safer than the 410! Even though 410s receives a lot of damage on both front and rear ends while the 510 (third in row) crumples a lot more than the 410 to reduce the force of the impact.

I’m glad I’m driving a bit more modern car than these two! However, I seriously doubt a 27 year old car is considered safe according to nowadays standards…

Carina sightings: Carina TA63 with 3RZ-FE swap

September 16, 2009 / banpei / 2 Comments

Good news! The infamous Carina with 1UZ swap is now getting a 3RZ-FE swap:

Infamous Carina 1UZ is getting a 3RZ-FE swap

Toyotaloyal transplanted a 1UZ-FE in his Carina TA63 (3T-GTE was already gone when he bought it) and ran it for over a year. After, as he calls it, bragging about the reliability of the engine the engine decided to destroy its big end bearing. The 1UZ-FE either had to be repaired or… swapped for another engine:

3RZ-FE shoehorned in the enginebay

The 3RZ-FE engine can be found in the Toyota Tacoma, 4Runner and T100. The reason for choosing the 3RZ-FE was because of its reputation with the US dragracers: the engine is very reliable, got an incredibly big displacement for an inline four and is easy to unleash a lot of power from this engine. As you can see the engine is a bit tall for the Carina, so I expect him to run the car with either a big bulge in its hood or even without the hood at all.

Big gearbox crossmember

You can see his expectations of the power output echoing in this enormous gearbox crossmember!

Custom oil pan to have better oil flow

The oil pan will be a custom job to have a better oil flow than stock. This to prevent the engine from doing the same as the 1UZ-FE. ?´???

Carina TA63 with 3RZ-FE

His plans for the engine is as following:
improvements to the 150hp commercial engine planned include a decently sized turbo- head work- custom inlet with 4age quad throttle bodies- remove the balance shafts- aftermarket pistons and connecting rods- MS3 engine management, just to name a few.

Carina TA63 with 3RZ-FE

I like the look of this lip: it looks better than my FOHA lip. Toyotaloyal says he is going to source an AE92 front bumper instead. I do agree with him: the AE92 front bumper looks much better than this.

I’m curious what the 3RZ-FE will bring in the future, so keep you updated on new developments on this car! ( ? ??)