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Hilarious: American muscle is stronger than Japanese tin

February 5, 2010 / banpei / 0 Comments

Yesterday I already posted a car chase by the Abunai Deka and today I have another one! This time they swapped their regular Nissan Leopard Y31 for a second generation Pontiac Firebird Trans Am!

Now this is a perfectly good example why American cars are superior to the Japanese: you can empty your gun on a Trans Am and it will still be going as strong as when it left the Pontiac factory in the mid 70s! Now compare that to their regular Leopard: would they have survived at such an attack at all?

After four and a half minute of wrecking 20 to 30 perfectly good late 70s and early 80s Salary Men type saloons it comes to an end when the Trans Am finally escapes the junkyard. It must have been a wise choice of the director to pick the junkyard as the background of this scene: after wrecking 30 cars you can just leave them there! Saves a lot of trouble in logistics! Brilliant!

In memoriam: Atsushi Kuroi

February 4, 2010 / banpei / 0 Comments

Most people already read or heard the news today: the D1GP drifter Atsushi Kuroi died three days ago in a motorcycle accident.

He was one of the early drifting pioneers and his professional drifting career began in the first season of D1GP (2001) when he entered it with his well known OneVia S13. He was well known for throwing up big clouds of smoke when going sideways and that is most probably what most people will remember of him.

I’d like to remember him like this:

As the man who could grip an amazing 77kg during the D1GP arm wrestling event!

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! :)

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