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aaronlosey · 02-10-2013, 04:59 PM

Ok, from here it is copy paste!

---

Earlier this year a friend of mine, Tyler Cox, passed away. Drifting brought us together nearly 7 years ago, and we had a great time running around the country and drifting all over the place. When I was asked to speak at his funeral, I retraced our steps and discovered I had covered 27 US states with Tyler. Some of those states like Louisiana, California, Nevada, Georgia, and Florida we frequented quite a lot. We spent so much time together people thought he was my little brother multiple times, and he used to pick up my mannerisms constantly. Those were great times.

Everyone that came into contact no doubt has stories about him, as he was quite the character. Now that might sound like a generic thing to say, but if you knew him, it was an understatement. Everything that happened around him got out of hand in some way, and for better or worse everything turned into an adventure. To say his life was all about cars would also be an understatement. His loving family indulged his love of cars in a way that makes all of us in the drift scene jealous. We all wish we had parents that would support our love of such foolish things as drifting with enthusiasm and excitement instead of confusion and questions. Of course cars are silly, and traveling the country playing with them is a waste. But when life is over and there is no time left, I would rather I didn't spend it in front of a desk shuffling paper and instead embarked on ridiculous adventures that left me cold, hungry, and lost. These silly car adventures have given me so many beautiful sunrises in distant lands, so many interesting moments, and so many emotions. And above all, so many friends all over the globe.

But this is going to be a fairly long story, and it is going to be about Tyler's last car his was lusting over, a replica and better version of his first and awesome S14. This story is about me trying to finish his last car up since he isn't able to do it himself. This photo was taken at D1GP Anaheim in California, circa 2009. This was probably considered the glory days for the Texas boys, and truly the glory days for his S14. Amazing times!

Tyler's run of the D1GP USA series was cut a little shorter than the rest of us, when he totaled out his car in Florida that same year. The car was working amazing and he was having a fantastic time, but the track was wet and the that was that. He still continued driving that weekend, but after the event decided the chassis was done even though it still functioned, and tore it down. He had been driving full steam for about 4 years at this point, but he slowed down a lot after this. He picked up a few lesser cars to have fun with, but after having an SR20 with nearly 500whp, it is hard going back to 200whp cars and not get caught up in the modification game again. He dreamed of rebuilding his car bigger and better.

Around late 2009 to 2010 Tyler sent off a new chassis to be "caged" by Forrest Wang in Las Vegas. I thought Tyler was silly for sending a car all the way across the country for a cage, but Tyler loved Forrest's style and obviously wanted it incorporated into his new car. Most years I go to SEMA ( a trade show ) in Vegas, so each year for the last 3 years I would see the car very slowly coming along while I was out there. The first year the car was just a simple cage with lots of dimple dies. The next year the car was cut off front and rear and getting really serious, and way past what I thought the project was going to be. This quickly was becoming an insane full chassis build, nothing held back. I have pictures of lots of Tyler's friends, myself included, standing inside his new bare chassis in Vegas while he wasn't there. I can't find them at the moment though. But we were teasing him sending him progress pics years before the thing was finished. Well, actually, it still isn't finished. The pics are really cute, use your imagination.

Then, before the car could be completed, Tyler passed away this summer, leaving the car unfinished and a world away. During long conversations with his father, I wasn't sure if it was worth finishing because it would be expensive and somewhat without purpose when it was done. However, his father decided to finish the car, which I am very happy with, and wheels were set in motion. I gathered up a posse to go retrieve it with me in Vegas. Josh Buckley and Fielding Shredder jumped in the truck with me and off we went. We scheduled it so we could attend the Vegas round of Formula Drift which worked out really well.

We stayed in the Stratosphere hotel, and this was the view out the window.

We ate at our favorite foodie spot out there, Hash House a go go.

And we picked up a sad looking neglected S14. It had a mountain of tube work done to the chassis, but it had taken a glacial 3 years or so to get to this stage. The motor was now a SR23 of some sort, we still aren't sure. And basically every nut, bolt, seat, fitting, mount, glass, fiberglass, and anything else not seen in the picture was missing. We would later find much of it hiding in Kilgore, but that would come along months later. It sat much like this from August until around the end of November. I and everyone else who volunteered to work on the car in their free time were simply too busy. I also around this time came to the conclusion that no one would ever really have time to devote hundreds of hours to finishing the car besides myself, and if the car was ever going to be finished, it would fall on me for the work and his dad for the finances. This poses a few problems as you can imagine. First if you know me, while I am always around cars, deal with them constantly, and know a lot about them, I am not a mechanic. I don't browse forums looking at builds. I don't dream about engine parts, suspension parts, or any of that stuff. My car has basically been the same for almost 5 years now without any real changes except fixing problems, and when any of that happens, my good friends Derrick or James see to it. I wouldn't really call myself your typical car guy.

So far in the picture below I had a week into fetching the car, and a few days loading, unloading, budgeting, and tinkering with the car. Not a huge investment in time yet, but I also hadn't accomplished much more than transporting the car around. This is the part of the story where I actually start pouring time into the car. It is hard getting motivated to work on a 240 with stock SE wheels on it, so I tossed on some of my fancy white wheels to add some contrast and spice things up visually. I spent a few days cataloging things, zipping across the state to pick up about 5K pounds of stuff including another car from Tyler's storage area. The process of putting the car together is daunting for me, so I chose to methodically pic apart one system at a time. I started with the steering system since it should be pretty straight forward.

So steering system, lets see how bad you look. No steering column in the car, completely trashed steering rack, trashed tie rods. Catch can, pump, and cooler are accounted for though, that is a big plus. Steering knuckles don't get within 2 inches of hitting anything to stop them, and only have about 40 degrees of angle even though they appear cut. Hmmmm…. At this point I should also mention pictures of this car are an illusion. It looks like an almost complete car. But I assure you, behind those wheels there is basically nothing. The car didn't even have lug nuts on all the wheels when I took possession of it. There were about 4-5 total lug nuts on the car. Stock worn out subframe in the rear with no brakes, no lines, rusty lugs. The interior is 100% empty. No fuel lines, just a fuel cell sitting in the trunk. The car is missing over 50% of the bolts on it. When I try and mount things the new tabs and holes don't really line up, and everything has to be coaxed together with some removal of material. But on the flip side there is already a mountain of work that has been done to the car. There are hundreds of hours of fab work, dozens of hours of prep and paint, and hopefully a functioning and built SR23 sitting in the engine bay. Not the we will able to tell for awhile though, as there is no tune, no wiring, nothing hooked up to the motor. The driveshaft is missing. Little details of the car give me a smile though. This is definitely at least Tyler's valve cover, I recognize the Porsche Turbo emblem residue.

After lots of cleaning I got his old baller hand made catch tank looking pretty good. Tyler didn't keep things clean LOL.

And I have piles and piles of his old stuff laid out for cleaning and cataloging so I can figure out what I need to order and what I already have. There is a mountain of missing stuff, and I have already at this point spent more than 20 hours just buying parts online, locally, and sending friends off to get them for me.

And so I purchased a cute little journal so that all my progress was recorded on paper, and so I can figure out what I need to order when I get home from working on the car at night.

So you can see I sketch out what I need, start labeling every piece of it, and anything I am missing spec wise I ask one of 3 people. Derrick, Marty, or Stew. I try to alternate through them so I don't bug each of them too badly, but each of them gets many texts a day from me. For example, this is what the page looks like at the shop, then I get home and figure out I need -6 to 14mm x 1.5 and -6 to 16mm x 1.5 for those two circle fittings in the middle of the page. Then two 45 degree AN fittings that are -6 over to a push lock, and the other to another -6. And on and on. I update my little drawing with all that info as I figure it out so I know what is what, even if I am not standing next to the car.

As I have been collecting items like the steering column, I test fit, find all the correct hardware, then lay them aside for fancy cleanup and paint. You can see in this picture the holes don't line up perfectly, so I carefully take everything apart and massage them in the direction they need to go a little.

Not difficult, just lots of time finding all the little things that are off. It also means you assemble, disassemble, and reassemble things over and over. Test fitting the steering rack required several hours locating some key missing pieces, clocking the waste gate dump tube, opening some holes, a trip to the junkyard, getting Anthony to find me a few parts, and the time to clean everything up. If this was my race car we would have spent 30 minutes bolting everything together and been done with it, but I am moving very slowly and methodically with this car.

As I work on the car I find things that I get stuck on for the simple reason I am worried what Tyler would do in the situation. For example, the brakes and wheels. Tyler always had this crazy set of $3500 Project Mu brakes, they embodied his style and persona. However, I am not going to subject his father to buying another set of $3500 brakes for the car, so what do I choose? Simple 300ZX brake setup? Tyler would go for that probably. 350Z Brembos? For some reason I can't see Tyler wanting those. I don't know why, but I get hung up on little details like this. I tossed my wheels on the car since it came with the worst wheels I have ever seen on a 240, and these help motivate me to work on the car since it looks better with them on it.

I purchased an assortment of nice zinc plated hardware to replace all the missing bolts on the car. The majority of the hardware on the car is going to be nice and new, or cleaned up and shiny. So all in all I am working hard on this project, methodically and carefully making through one part of the car at a time. I have in total maybe 100 hours into the project so far, and I am not very far into it. Most of those hours aren't really working on much mechanical, but I am about to get into that pretty heavily now that parts are starting to arrive. Just today I have had about 7 boxes arrive at the door, and it should keep up that pace for a week or so.

I will be continuing posting about this ongoing story as I make my way through it. I am glad to get the chance to work on the car, and happy that his father is interested in finishing the car. It has been good therapy for me as well as well since I feel guilt and other emotions now that Tyler is gone. I hadn't seen him much in the last year or two, our lives had drifted apart. This car is, in a way, an opportunity for me to put more positive effort into our friendship even after he is gone.

02-10-2013, 04:59 PM	#3
aaronlosey Zilvia Junkie Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: texas Posts: 321 Trader Rating: (2)	Ok, from here it is copy paste! --- Earlier this year a friend of mine, Tyler Cox, passed away. Drifting brought us together nearly 7 years ago, and we had a great time running around the country and drifting all over the place. When I was asked to speak at his funeral, I retraced our steps and discovered I had covered 27 US states with Tyler. Some of those states like Louisiana, California, Nevada, Georgia, and Florida we frequented quite a lot. We spent so much time together people thought he was my little brother multiple times, and he used to pick up my mannerisms constantly. Those were great times. Everyone that came into contact no doubt has stories about him, as he was quite the character. Now that might sound like a generic thing to say, but if you knew him, it was an understatement. Everything that happened around him got out of hand in some way, and for better or worse everything turned into an adventure. To say his life was all about cars would also be an understatement. His loving family indulged his love of cars in a way that makes all of us in the drift scene jealous. We all wish we had parents that would support our love of such foolish things as drifting with enthusiasm and excitement instead of confusion and questions. Of course cars are silly, and traveling the country playing with them is a waste. But when life is over and there is no time left, I would rather I didn't spend it in front of a desk shuffling paper and instead embarked on ridiculous adventures that left me cold, hungry, and lost. These silly car adventures have given me so many beautiful sunrises in distant lands, so many interesting moments, and so many emotions. And above all, so many friends all over the globe. But this is going to be a fairly long story, and it is going to be about Tyler's last car his was lusting over, a replica and better version of his first and awesome S14. This story is about me trying to finish his last car up since he isn't able to do it himself. This photo was taken at D1GP Anaheim in California, circa 2009. This was probably considered the glory days for the Texas boys, and truly the glory days for his S14. Amazing times! Tyler's run of the D1GP USA series was cut a little shorter than the rest of us, when he totaled out his car in Florida that same year. The car was working amazing and he was having a fantastic time, but the track was wet and the that was that. He still continued driving that weekend, but after the event decided the chassis was done even though it still functioned, and tore it down. He had been driving full steam for about 4 years at this point, but he slowed down a lot after this. He picked up a few lesser cars to have fun with, but after having an SR20 with nearly 500whp, it is hard going back to 200whp cars and not get caught up in the modification game again. He dreamed of rebuilding his car bigger and better. Around late 2009 to 2010 Tyler sent off a new chassis to be "caged" by Forrest Wang in Las Vegas. I thought Tyler was silly for sending a car all the way across the country for a cage, but Tyler loved Forrest's style and obviously wanted it incorporated into his new car. Most years I go to SEMA ( a trade show ) in Vegas, so each year for the last 3 years I would see the car very slowly coming along while I was out there. The first year the car was just a simple cage with lots of dimple dies. The next year the car was cut off front and rear and getting really serious, and way past what I thought the project was going to be. This quickly was becoming an insane full chassis build, nothing held back. I have pictures of lots of Tyler's friends, myself included, standing inside his new bare chassis in Vegas while he wasn't there. I can't find them at the moment though. But we were teasing him sending him progress pics years before the thing was finished. Well, actually, it still isn't finished. The pics are really cute, use your imagination. Then, before the car could be completed, Tyler passed away this summer, leaving the car unfinished and a world away. During long conversations with his father, I wasn't sure if it was worth finishing because it would be expensive and somewhat without purpose when it was done. However, his father decided to finish the car, which I am very happy with, and wheels were set in motion. I gathered up a posse to go retrieve it with me in Vegas. Josh Buckley and Fielding Shredder jumped in the truck with me and off we went. We scheduled it so we could attend the Vegas round of Formula Drift which worked out really well. We stayed in the Stratosphere hotel, and this was the view out the window. We ate at our favorite foodie spot out there, Hash House a go go. And we picked up a sad looking neglected S14. It had a mountain of tube work done to the chassis, but it had taken a glacial 3 years or so to get to this stage. The motor was now a SR23 of some sort, we still aren't sure. And basically every nut, bolt, seat, fitting, mount, glass, fiberglass, and anything else not seen in the picture was missing. We would later find much of it hiding in Kilgore, but that would come along months later. It sat much like this from August until around the end of November. I and everyone else who volunteered to work on the car in their free time were simply too busy. I also around this time came to the conclusion that no one would ever really have time to devote hundreds of hours to finishing the car besides myself, and if the car was ever going to be finished, it would fall on me for the work and his dad for the finances. This poses a few problems as you can imagine. First if you know me, while I am always around cars, deal with them constantly, and know a lot about them, I am not a mechanic. I don't browse forums looking at builds. I don't dream about engine parts, suspension parts, or any of that stuff. My car has basically been the same for almost 5 years now without any real changes except fixing problems, and when any of that happens, my good friends Derrick or James see to it. I wouldn't really call myself your typical car guy. So far in the picture below I had a week into fetching the car, and a few days loading, unloading, budgeting, and tinkering with the car. Not a huge investment in time yet, but I also hadn't accomplished much more than transporting the car around. This is the part of the story where I actually start pouring time into the car. It is hard getting motivated to work on a 240 with stock SE wheels on it, so I tossed on some of my fancy white wheels to add some contrast and spice things up visually. I spent a few days cataloging things, zipping across the state to pick up about 5K pounds of stuff including another car from Tyler's storage area. The process of putting the car together is daunting for me, so I chose to methodically pic apart one system at a time. I started with the steering system since it should be pretty straight forward. So steering system, lets see how bad you look. No steering column in the car, completely trashed steering rack, trashed tie rods. Catch can, pump, and cooler are accounted for though, that is a big plus. Steering knuckles don't get within 2 inches of hitting anything to stop them, and only have about 40 degrees of angle even though they appear cut. Hmmmm…. At this point I should also mention pictures of this car are an illusion. It looks like an almost complete car. But I assure you, behind those wheels there is basically nothing. The car didn't even have lug nuts on all the wheels when I took possession of it. There were about 4-5 total lug nuts on the car. Stock worn out subframe in the rear with no brakes, no lines, rusty lugs. The interior is 100% empty. No fuel lines, just a fuel cell sitting in the trunk. The car is missing over 50% of the bolts on it. When I try and mount things the new tabs and holes don't really line up, and everything has to be coaxed together with some removal of material. But on the flip side there is already a mountain of work that has been done to the car. There are hundreds of hours of fab work, dozens of hours of prep and paint, and hopefully a functioning and built SR23 sitting in the engine bay. Not the we will able to tell for awhile though, as there is no tune, no wiring, nothing hooked up to the motor. The driveshaft is missing. Little details of the car give me a smile though. This is definitely at least Tyler's valve cover, I recognize the Porsche Turbo emblem residue. After lots of cleaning I got his old baller hand made catch tank looking pretty good. Tyler didn't keep things clean LOL. And I have piles and piles of his old stuff laid out for cleaning and cataloging so I can figure out what I need to order and what I already have. There is a mountain of missing stuff, and I have already at this point spent more than 20 hours just buying parts online, locally, and sending friends off to get them for me. And so I purchased a cute little journal so that all my progress was recorded on paper, and so I can figure out what I need to order when I get home from working on the car at night. So you can see I sketch out what I need, start labeling every piece of it, and anything I am missing spec wise I ask one of 3 people. Derrick, Marty, or Stew. I try to alternate through them so I don't bug each of them too badly, but each of them gets many texts a day from me. For example, this is what the page looks like at the shop, then I get home and figure out I need -6 to 14mm x 1.5 and -6 to 16mm x 1.5 for those two circle fittings in the middle of the page. Then two 45 degree AN fittings that are -6 over to a push lock, and the other to another -6. And on and on. I update my little drawing with all that info as I figure it out so I know what is what, even if I am not standing next to the car. As I have been collecting items like the steering column, I test fit, find all the correct hardware, then lay them aside for fancy cleanup and paint. You can see in this picture the holes don't line up perfectly, so I carefully take everything apart and massage them in the direction they need to go a little. Not difficult, just lots of time finding all the little things that are off. It also means you assemble, disassemble, and reassemble things over and over. Test fitting the steering rack required several hours locating some key missing pieces, clocking the waste gate dump tube, opening some holes, a trip to the junkyard, getting Anthony to find me a few parts, and the time to clean everything up. If this was my race car we would have spent 30 minutes bolting everything together and been done with it, but I am moving very slowly and methodically with this car. As I work on the car I find things that I get stuck on for the simple reason I am worried what Tyler would do in the situation. For example, the brakes and wheels. Tyler always had this crazy set of $3500 Project Mu brakes, they embodied his style and persona. However, I am not going to subject his father to buying another set of $3500 brakes for the car, so what do I choose? Simple 300ZX brake setup? Tyler would go for that probably. 350Z Brembos? For some reason I can't see Tyler wanting those. I don't know why, but I get hung up on little details like this. I tossed my wheels on the car since it came with the worst wheels I have ever seen on a 240, and these help motivate me to work on the car since it looks better with them on it. I purchased an assortment of nice zinc plated hardware to replace all the missing bolts on the car. The majority of the hardware on the car is going to be nice and new, or cleaned up and shiny. So all in all I am working hard on this project, methodically and carefully making through one part of the car at a time. I have in total maybe 100 hours into the project so far, and I am not very far into it. Most of those hours aren't really working on much mechanical, but I am about to get into that pretty heavily now that parts are starting to arrive. Just today I have had about 7 boxes arrive at the door, and it should keep up that pace for a week or so. I will be continuing posting about this ongoing story as I make my way through it. I am glad to get the chance to work on the car, and happy that his father is interested in finishing the car. It has been good therapy for me as well as well since I feel guilt and other emotions now that Tyler is gone. I hadn't seen him much in the last year or two, our lives had drifted apart. This car is, in a way, an opportunity for me to put more positive effort into our friendship even after he is gone.