Author: banpei (Page 229 of 318)

Car chases: chase the pedestrian

February 4, 2010 / banpei / 0 Comments

This car chase video actually starts with a Nissan Laurel C230 chasing a pedestrian. Apparently this woman is very scared of the Laurel (or its driver) and fakes being hit by the Abunai Deka Nissan Leopard.

After that an exciting chase between the Leopard and the Laurel starts!

A lot of cars can be seen in the background: at 0:28 a brand new Toyota Celica AT160 can be seen (parked next to an A60 Carina sedan!) and a few seconds later an A60 Carina coupe parked in the far background. And let’s not forget the white Honda Today at 0:56! Another white Carina A60 coupe can be seen at 2:03, a KE70 van at 2:06 and as a bonus a 300ZX Z31 at the traffic light!

Now can you name more than these cars?

Carina sightings: Carina GT-TR JZA63 monster

February 3, 2010 / banpei / 1 Comment

My mouth started watering when I spotted this amazing JZA63 Carina GTTR buildup:

Toyota Carina GT-TR JZA63
The Carina was originally a TA63 GTTR model, so attaching the 2JZ engine to the W55 instead of the 3T was easy.

Toyota Carina GT-TR JZA63
The car is AE86 front struts converted to fit the 8 way adjustable AE92 HTS shocks and a R33 4 pot brake conversion has been done as well. Only a few bushings have been replaced by its polyurethane counterparts, but at the front it features 12k Swift springs and 8k TBS springs at the rear. So it should be stiff as a board.

Toyota Carina GT-TR JZA63
All around the car is featuring Work Meisters in 17 inch diameter and 9J wide! To fit those rims the fenders had to be extended at the rear. 205/40 tires are lightly stretched over these Meisters.

Toyota Carina GT-TR JZA63
The interior of the Carina is stripped and replaced with a set of Recaro seats and a roll cage has been fitted.

Toyota Carina GT-TR JZA63
Of course the engine has been modified as well: NA 2JZ was taken from a JZS140 Crown with TRD cams, ITBs, a custom built oilpan and a special purpose muffler. In other words: very powerful! The owner even switched the W55 to a W58 gearbox to handle all that power!

Toyota Carina GT-TR JZA63
In other words: this JZA63 Carina is a beast which I’d certainly would love to tame! ;)

More of the Nissan Skyline VC10 van

February 2, 2010 / banpei / 1 Comment

Another video was posted upon that beautiful Skyline van!

Last time I was wrong: the chassis code is VC10 instead of GC10!
The owner asks in the description of the video if anyone has a VC10 outside Japan. So if you have one, head over here to send him your footage!

Oops I did it again: Mamiya MSX-500 vintage camera

February 1, 2010 / banpei / 0 Comments

Some weeks ago I decided I had enough of digital photography. Well, maybe I should state it differently: yet again I failed to get a good picture out of my EOS. So I decided to get an old fashioned film-roll camera from the 70s to start learning photography once again. ;)

I was seriously tempted when I saw an ad of a complete Minolta X700 with motordrive and about everything you ever wanted back in the 80s! But I stuck to my plan and placed a bid on a few older vintage cameras. One of them reacted on the bid and we agreed upon everything. So, last Friday this arrived:

Mamiya MSX-500 with a lot of lenses and stuff!
A Mamiya MSX-500 from the mid 70s! Most probably just as old as I am. And if that isn’t enough already: it is loaded with lenses and other useful stuff!

Mamiya MSX-500 with a lot of lenses and stuff!
It came along with a nice box and a lot of stuff:
PANAGOR 80 ~ 205mm F4.5
HANIMEX 400mm F6.3
HANIMAR 200mm F4.5
PALLAS 135mm F2.8
PALLAS 35mm F2.8
MAMIYA/SEKOR SX 50mm F2
APS auto plus teleconverter 2x
PALLAS auto teleconverter 2x
Several macro rings and four different purpose flashlights
Several filters (UV, yellow, orange, purple, glare, etc)
And as a bonus: a nice smell of tabacco :(

As you can see it wasn’t the cleanest set I could find, but for that price I was happily cleaning everything. :)

Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up
So this is how it looked after cleanup. You can’t see much difference due to the image sizes, but believe me: there was a lot of crap on it! (including the smell)

Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up
There is still one problem with the camera: under 1/15th of a second the shutter timing gets unreliable. I tried to get the lubrication a bit loose with a hairdryer and it worked perfectly… right until the camera cooled off again. So I guess I need to find a guide how to take it apart and lubricate the shutter.

Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up
I’m very happy with it so far and I can’t wait till I’ve solved that shutter problem and get started with taking cool pictures again! :)

DOTS: Eternal rivals: Nissan GTR and Porsche 911 Turbo

January 31, 2010 / banpei / 0 Comments

Hilversum isn’t particularly the most exciting town to spot Japanese cars in: if you count all the performance/luxury cars in one day you will soon enough find out that most cars are either BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar and Ferrari (big Ferrari dealership here!). So normally when I drive through town it is more or less like this: Porsche, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, Jag, etc.

You can imagine the thrill I got when I spotted some big dark Godzilla like car parked in the center of town: a black GTR! But wait, what’s that car in front of it?

Nissan GTR R35 versus Porsche 911 Turbo
Yes: a red 911 Turbo! The eternal rivals! Even facing each other! Head to head! Mano a mano! Were they here to fight out their rivalry?

My heart immediately raised u to 140 beats per minute and I grabbed my crap-cam I always carry around, shot a few shots and then … it died! :(
I ran into the nearest store (the one right behind the GTR and 911), bought a set of batteries (actually two sets since the second set was free) and ran outside. Just in time to see the GTR leave before I was able to fill the crap-cam with the fresh batteries. ?(?`???)?

Nissan GTR R35 versus Porsche 911 Turbo
So, all I got was two semi okay shots which I had to Photoshop to make them look alright and a big pile of batteries… The one in a lifetime chance: I blew it!

Well at least I will have more than enough batteries for the next occasion then! ;)

Commerical time: Honda Quint

January 30, 2010 / banpei / 0 Comments

I was re-reading some of the old magazines and in a volume of Practical Classics from a few years ago they were featuring the Honda Quintet, aka the Honda Quint in Japan. So of course I started looking for old commercials of the Quint and Quintet:

Wow! What a cheesy 80s synthesizer tune! And look at those special effects!

The Honda Quint was literally filling the gap between the Honda Civic and the Honda Accord: the car is a lengthened Civic with a mix of Civic and Accord bodypanels, and most importantly: the Accord 1.6 cvcc engine!

It is also funny to see where the Honda Integra started from: the 1985 Integra was initally lauched as the Honda Quint Integra in Japan!