Tyler Cox Memorial Build thread

[aaronlosey]

Late in 2012 a friend of mine passed away. In an effort to keep his memory alive I wanted to share his new car build he was working on with people from around our drift and 240sx community. Many of you probably had a chance to meet him in person, most of you didn't. I am writing this little intro post them I am going to straight copy paste out of the original thread I am posting in to make this easier on myself.

Tyler never had a build thread for himself anywhere that I can think of, even though his car was FAR beyond the average builds of the time period. When we were going built LS1 in my drift car back in 2006 or 2007, he was making more TQ and HP than my built V8 out of a 2 liter, and managing to drift it! When Falken Drift Showoff came to town, he made more smoke than any of their cars! When normal kids were posting about getting their first set of xxrs and going to their first local event, this lucky kid was getting to tandem with his JDM heros like Daigo Saito and Ken Nomura in the D1GP USA series. He was ricing the streets of Atlanta in his drift car and then going to Nopi Nationals Drift comp and doing their whole series. I got the opportunity to travel most of the nation with the kid.

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Mind you those pics were taken back in 2009 or so, that car was mind blowing back then! It is mind blowing now! And so I give you Tyler Cox. The man the myth the legend. The drifter that everyone classified as the Texas oil kid, and the legend of the boy who burned off more tires than anyone else his age.

[Sileighty_85]

I knew Tyler, really cool guy. Watched him drift and hung out with him a little bit at some of the local events in Louisiana and tried to tandem with him 6 cars deep once lol

He will be missed.

[aaronlosey]

Ok, from here it is copy paste!

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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!

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/PIC-0154%20(1).jpg

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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

[aaronlosey]

2nd Entry, Dec 13 to Dec 20th.

This seven day or so stretch on the car has gone really well. My wife has been working nights at the hospital, and I find my schedule slipping farther and farther into the late hours of the night over at Autocomp. I am most productive with no one around, and any distractions and my productive level goes to about zero. So all in all I have been having really relaxing afternoons working on the car until around 2 am, then I stop by and see my wife for a short time, then order/research parts for an hour or so, then hit the sack. So lets get started here.

I might have mentioned earlier that I have been agonizing over parts selection with the car. I want the car to be a reflection of Tyler, and what he would want, but also a reflection of what I am willing to put in the car. For example I am not willing to purchase $4,000 brakes ( which is what Tyler would want ), but I am willing to do something crazy with them. This leads to tons of research, an obsession with wanting to do something unique and interesting but also awesome. That, weighted with the concern that when I turn the car over to his father that I am not leaving him with some odd ball car with super difficult to service obscure racing parts. And then there is the point of not spending a ton of money, although the budget is substantial, and keeping things within reason. I poured over off the shelf brake setups from tons of retailers, piecing together a completely new Z32 setup, 350Z Brembos, and even trying to track down some Project Mu setups. They don't seem to sell the brakes where in the states anymore, and are an example of how difficult it can be to try and maintain and use awesome niche JDM parts. There are tons of problems associated with each setup, and nothing I really wanted to settle on. Then Stew turned me onto something really neat. The newer 370 and Infiniti cars come with a setup from a manufacturer named Akebono, and they are a great mixture of OEM clean styler and function, GIANT 14 inch front rotors and 13.8 inch rear rotors for bling, and fairly simple and straightforward to get onto the car. I think they would make Tyler both happy for the ridiculous bling factor, as well as keep the car functional and useful so that his father can enjoy and maintain it. That is a huge load off my mind, and I am excited to get them in the mail in a few days.

Moving on to the physically laborious side of the project. As I browse through the pictures I am about to include in this I realize how productive the week has been! This is going to be good! As I am waiting for fittings and other parts to complete the steering system I moved onto other portions of the car. Tyler's dad is going to come take a look at it this weekend, so I really wanted to let him see the car start taking shape. Having a functioning steering system in a car that doesn't look anything like a car isn't very exciting, but having unfinished steering in something that is taking physical shape is something more visually appealing and I want him to feel the project is advancing. The car has been 3 years in the build at this point. So I grabbed the dash and starting soaping it up, scrubbing it as clean as I could. I then started to use tar and bug remover on the difficult parts, and spent a few hours bringing it up to the level of cleanliness that I am trying to keep the car at.

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After getting it clean, I then needed to start chopping it up so it would fit in the car with the elaborate cage.

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I very carefully fitted it to the car. Over and over I very carefully fitted it to the car! I kept having to make decisions which I didn't really want to make, such as how much material do I remove. Do I make it possible for someone to remove the dash once the car has the windshield in, or do I leave it stuck there forever? Do I potentially crack the dash getting it in because I cut the dash perfectly to fit the cage, and by doing so have to bend it terribly to install it? I ended up doing what I always do, which is use reason and logic to arrive at a fairly neutral middle ground to everything. I cut the dash enough to make it fairly easy to get in and out, but with close enough tolerances that you have to bend it substantially to get it in, but not TOO much. Of course I arrive at this AFTER trying to make it fit perfectly and being unable to install the darn thing. I was FORCED into the neutral decision : (

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I have been going kind of crazy on the details in the project, and if you see the yellowish seam in the dash, which will be hidden by the windshield in most places anyways, I have been taking a magic marker to it. A huge magic marker. I looks really good from a reasonable distance of a couple feet. I have a lot more of it to do, but I was getting kind of high from the fumes so I procrastinated finishing the rest of it.

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I cleaned up the steering column, getting rid of the rust and repainting it so it will be pretty…. even though you won't be able to see it when finished. I am using this logic for as many things as I can, just because you can't see it doesn't mean I am not spending a huge amount of time on it.

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Pretty!

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During one of my super late night shopping sessions I made a poor choice. Someone who shall be nameless told me that knockoff 30 dollar steering wheel quick release hubs are actually really well made nowadays. I did something that ended up costing more money in the end because I had to do it twice. I ordered the crappy knockoff ebay part and then was so disappointed in it after installation that I had to order a higher quality part to replace it. When assembled in the car it give the feeling of too much slop in the steering, way too much. It is one of the few things in the car you have a tactile relationship with, and needs to feel high quality and trust worthy. The last thing I want is people thinking the car is terribly built because they simply feel the steering wheel and experience way to much slop in it, and write off everything else as poorly constructed. Plus this crappy part required hours of putting together. I had to chase out all the threads, assemble it multiple times to play with it and disassemble it, and figure out if I was doing something wrong or if it really was that sloppy. It was.

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It looks cool assembled though.

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Then as I was starting to mount the body panels I found a little present Tyler left me. He has been leaving me a lot in this car! I am sure he meant to fix it…. but then he painted over it…. Very Tyler. It is a broken bolt in one of the most important fender mounting holes.

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This one little broken bolt took me about an hour of fussing with until it was completely drilled out and re-tapped carefully. Good as new now. That stitch weld next to the drill bit is mocking me. I know Tyler would have just not used the bolt hole and mounted the fender with just 2 bolts.

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Tyler was rough on everything. Even the key to the car was mangled. Luckily a locksmith made a new one! Took a couple tries though. This is the key after it had already been mostly "unbent".

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Everyday has been Christmas lately for this car. About 3-7 packages a day show up for this thing. They range from a simple can of spray paint all the way up to the seats. I am patiently awaiting that box with the brakes though!

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ASD sent out a sweet handbrake for the car!!!!

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And finally, we are getting to the fun ricey stuff. Mounting the fiberglass on a car is always fun. It changes the car so quickly into a finished looking car, and gives it volume and style it didn't have without the few pounds of FG hanging off of it.

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Plus, you get to drill into a perfectly good car! That is always fun.

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Don't mind the rear wheel fitment here!!! I tried to use the dog to cover it up, but you can still see it. : ( The front isn't too bad though, although I still have the width of a very large brake rotor this is about to be added. I even took the time to fit the gas tank cover, even though it has a fuel cell. Those cool little hell raiser things sticking out of the back fenders are called Clecos. They are like temporary rivets and are really neat, look them up.

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And finally, today's work. I spent an entire day fitting the head lights. Considering the car doesn't really have a core support, this went pretty well. The mounts off the tube frame structure are pretty good, and only need about 1/2 an inch of adjustment at the middle part of the car, and maybe a bit more than that towards the corner lights. The intercooler had to be relocated about another half an inch, and the headlights had to be cut about another half an inch. Then the fenders needed to be cut in various places to fit around the tubes, and I think the hood is going to need to be clearanced a bit more. All this meant I had to assemble and disassemble, modify things, then repeat dozens of times. Each time I had to lift the hood off and set it aside, take the fenders off, remove the head lights, corner lights, and make my adjustments. But it is definitely coming together. I love the style of the car, and I love working on it. I can't wait to fabricated a bunch of little items for the car such as a catch tank, brackets, mount the seats, etc. I am going to go spend some time practicing my TIG skills, and get to it. I hadn't really paid attention to the welding on the car much, but everything so far was done with a MIG at the previous shop, so it will be fun to add some delicate TIG work.

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If you made it this far thanks for reading! I hope you didn't mind the fact that I have been documenting a lot of the build with my iPhone shooting with Instagram. I have a fancy DSLR camera but it is so much faster and more fun to shoot with my phone. I can just pull it out of my pocket and fire away and keep working without fiddling with my settings and changing lenses. Also, I get some fun dramatic shots with drills and stuff, shooting with one hand and drilling with the other! I would like to throw some quick shout outs to Autocomp Racecars for letting me take up space and use their tools to work on this sweet chariot. I would like to thank Amazon and Ebay for insanely easy shopping LOL, I buy most parts and consumables while I am working. I have only made ONE parts run during this entire build, and that was only to see what kind of bolts Autozone carries out of curiosity. Everything is ordered online from zip ties to spray paint. I simply move on to something else and budget my time accordingly. I have more than enough work to do this, and it hasn't been a problem yet. Just like cell phones, email, computers, and everything else have changed how we do everything, this is really the first time I have really taken advantage of ordering everything from my phone as I work and not stopping. It has saved me probably 20+ hours of parts runs, not kidding.

[aaronlosey]

So here we are again! It has been a few weeks since I have posted the last batch of pictures, and I have been all over the place. I went on a snowboard trip with my wife, I ran all over Texas multiple times, and finally got a chance to get back to work on the car.

After installing some of the body work and lights, I moved back onto less glamorous parts of the car, namely the rear subframe. I needed to install some control arms and solid subframe bushings, so I figured it would be a good time to pull the entire subframe out and clean it up. Shaun and Fielding swung by and we started by dragging it outside and setting the rubber portions of the subframe bushings on fire to get rid of them. It was about 25 degrees out and windy, and the burning rubber was absolutely terrible smelling.

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That was the only big part of the assembly of the car I let anyone help with so far, as I needed extra muscle to move the thing around. I really am enjoying working on this car mostly by myself, everything is done by one person and hopefully less is overlooked that way. During daylight I started the process of cutting and forcing the subframe collars to let go of their contents.

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They went back together without too much fuss, but the whole process from start to finish was probably 10 hrs of physical and noxious labor.

To spoil the car, and since it had no hardware when I got it, I purchased assortments of fancy zinc plated metric hardware, as well as a cleko set since I was monopolizing the ones at Autocomp. Thanks Marty!

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Here you can see how rusty and beat up everything in the subframe is. It took massive force to break the rusty parts free, and when I did rust simply poured out of the stuck joints. I mushroomed the end of an axle shaft nut thread forcing one, but luckily I have race spares so it isn't a big deal.

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Here I am prepping for some sand blasting, which I have been doing a ton of! Marty showed me this sweet technique for getting edges really nice with tape. I didn't want sand to get into the bearings at all, so I had to be careful with prep.

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That sequence is pretty self explanatory. : ) Next we needed to move and shuffle cars around in the shop, so I reassembled the subframe and got things moving again. This is the first outside time the car has seen in quite some time. You can see we have quite a few drift cars up here now.

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Moving back to work again, I just put a new steering rack in the car since the old one was junk, and I got to install some fancy new AN fittings that I ordered early in this post. About this time I found out that more things didn't really function in the engine bay, as the turbo oil return line was hopelessly in the way of the steering coupler and shaft, so I need to order a 45 degree angle AN to clear that and shorten the line. Some other little items need attention too. I forgot to take pictures of me installing all the AN pushlock fittings and plumbing the power steering rack, cooler and reservoir. I learned that AN pushlock hose and fittings are proprietary sizes by just a TINY amount, which makes it freaking impossible to put them together properly and completely if they don't all match in brand. That was a big pain.

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I got to make some cool brackets to mount some stuff too. Not done yet with this one yet, but it is pretty fun. I need to do a little brace on it, but it came out really nice for a piece of scrap aluminum in the junk bin. I was planning to remake it, but I think I will keep it.

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-------

On a side note, I swung by Tyler's garage space for his toys and picked up a chassis. Of course it would end up being a snow day in Texas, and take 20 hours to complete the journey. You can see a pic of Tyler's original chassis just hanging out. And also a pic of my old chassis being moved over to a spare chassis Tyler had lying around. That counts as three of my cars now in one building getting worked on! And over at Autocomp, I have 4 that I am storing or working on. I think I have a problem!

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And we attended a wedding where Tyler was mentioned in both the service and the program. This isn't all I have accomplished on the car lately, but all the stuff I remembered to take pictures of!

[aaronlosey]

Little update....

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So I tried to get the second Tyler S14 running so I could take it out to play with it soon, his old missile car. Of course it wouldn't start, and after tracking down electrical problems, charging the battery, checking the oil, and figuring out the car has no ignition key we finally got it started. But then it would never restart again, except for that one time. So I figured it was the starter. So I pulled it off and went to go toss the racecar starter on it to see if it would fire up again, and low and behold after something like 30 minutes of attempting to bolt it up to no avail, I realize the threads had been drilled out of the starter mounts so it could be reverse mounted!!! LOL. Oh well, with the electrical system working a bit better and a battery in the car, I attempted to finally get the windows up, but it has a bad window motor. Getting a bit frustrated and wanting to accomplish something I took it upon myself to clean up the headlights. They looked like this.

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Now they look like this. Basically I bought one of those little head light cleaning kits and followed the directions carefully. They came out pretty darn well in person, I was really pretty happy with them. Takes about 30 minutes of sanding per headlight, and some other steps. Not difficult at all. Everyone with crappy headlights should do it. I then did a bunch of little stuff like gather up some Zenki body panels for it, and tried to make a list of things it needs. It is in pretty terrible shape, blown turbo, tons of broken parts, more broken parts, but I want to go drive it for some reason. I started ordering parts for it in the hopes of making it running again.

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Back to the main car, the blue one. I used my contacts with our BC Racing Racer Program to get a set of custom setup coilovers for the car. I had Chelsea Denofa take my list of wishes for how I want the car to behave, along with the power and tires I plan to put on the car, and he put something special together. The box was custom modded too. Big thanks to the guys over at BC Racing for hooking up so many of our drivers with discounts this year.

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I started mounting the coilovers and lots of other cool parts on the car, such as Derrick Rogers Knuckles ( Tyler got to the modded knuckle scene a bit late, swearing them off as a crutch and making other drivers boring, but when he came around, he fell in love with the idea of knuckles and silly angle ), custom extended tie rods, new bearings and hubs, and lots of other cool little stuff. I had been holding back on some of those things until the coilovers got here, but now I figured I would put them on. That goes for the brakes too. I am still really proud of the brake choice, I really think Tyler would like these things. He probably would have painted them a crazy sparkle color or something, and they aren't quite the full Project Mu effect, but they are matched front to rear and hopefully much more functional, maintainable, and enjoyable.

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Here is one of the front brackets being lined up for the Akebono big brake kit. With no instructions, and tons of parts, I just sat on the ground for about an hour making piles of where I thought everything went, fitting things and testing them over and over, then beginning the assembly. The kit is really nice, with giant aluminum brackets that mount the calipers that normally wouldn't even come close to fitting on the car. A few things to note:

The calipers are giant and won't fit 17 inch wheels up front.

There is some trimming involved even if you use the crazy extra spacer pieces the provide which I didn't really use. You will need to trim the caliper in addition to where they already trimmed it. In addition I had to trim one of my rear spindles due to what I imagine is a casting tolerance issue or something, but I had to take a few MM off of it with a flapper wheel.

The calipers are very light and aluminum. I really like them. The rotors though, dear lord are they heavy. If they slid off during the fitting they probably would have broken my leg. The fronts are 14.8 inches, and extremely heavy. If this car was going to ever really get raced, I would switch them over to aluminum hat multipiece thingies.

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My mess of parts figuring out where things go.

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Making some clearance for opposing bolt heads that mount the bracket to the spindle. They did provide a half moon 1 + inch aluminum spacer for the feint of heart that don't want to make room for like this, but I decided this was a much cleaner look than a giant extra washer in an odd shape.

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And here is a corner of the car all buttoned up! I think only one corner actually got the brake line attached at the moment, all the other sides had missing or broken bake lines! I have fancy stainless ones but there isn't anything to attach them to, just like everything else on the car! Everything has to be made from scratch, or found at a junk yard, or ordered online.

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Here you can see the clearance created in the caliper for a bolt head. This was provided by the kit company, and had to be slightly modified as they didn't fully fit over my rear spindles. All in all a very nice kit that had to only be lightly massaged onto the car with slight cutting of a couple mm at most.

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I had to modify some spacer pieces a bit, so I tossed them on the lathe. Thank goodness Autocomp has so many tools and lets me use them!!!

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[aaronlosey]

So I need to weld aluminum for some upcoming parts of the project. I made a bunch of little tiny pieces of aluminum by cutting apart formula car body panels, sanding off all the paint, cutting them into tiny pieces, and then welding them back together. I won't show you tons of this stuff like the shark box catch box I made, but this piece looks decent lol. The more complex stuff doesn't look as nice. I feel like I can finish up some bracket stuff I was working on, and continue on with some of the front end stuff I want to make.

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A HUGE amount of my time is cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. The car literally came with no bolts, and I keep scrounging what I can or buying them. The scrounging requires so much cleaning!

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I have been meaning to fix some small mistakes I made with the power steering system. I put together some AN Pushlock hoses with non-matching brands which caused some problems with proprietary non-interchangeable hoses, even though everything was the same size. So I purchased the corresponding same brand fittings, and rebuilt the lines. Here I am laying them out. This is low pressure power steering stuff, ignore the hose clamp in the bottom of the picture, that hose was temporary and a used piece of hose for fitting and routing.

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I wanted to fit a 90 degree curve problem with the factory style hose setup since things have been rerouted quite a bit. This involved cutting up the stock low pressure feed into the power steering pump, I got rid of some length and the barb...

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Putting an AN fitting into a lathe. A dash 8 male Earl fitting if you are curious.

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Then opening the backside of it up so the powersteering feed slides directly into it so it will be a better welded joint.

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Then WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

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And here we go, final routing correcting some problems in the engine bay.

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For your information it is a dash 6 coming out of the high pressure side, feeding into the rack, coming out the low pressure side over to the cooler, coming out of the cooler in another dash 6 line into the reservoir, and out in a dash 8 and over to the return low pressure inlet which is a dash 8. All the low pressure hose is Earls Super Stock push lock hose, in both dash 6 and 8. The high pressure side is a premade piece, since I can keep a hose from exploding at 1000 psi.


-----

Some fun facts.

1. I have now pulled a trailer in the quest to finish this car over 3500 miles. That includes going to Vegas, going to Kilgore, going to College Station, etc. All with a trailer and a diesel truck. Tyler traveled out to Vegas quite a few times and probably drove a combined 10,000 miles to work on the car and transport it around. Each trip to and from Vegas is over 2400 miles.

2. The front suspension has been pulled apart more than 10 times. Tyler probably did that as well.

3. The new brakes have been on and off the car probably 5 times so far. Tyler never got to see the brakes, and took the stock ones off and threw them in the trash, he didn't have to fuss with those.

4. The head lights have come on and off more than 20 times for fitment, and I am only about halfway there on that. It takes me 20 minutes to assemble and disassemble those little guys. Tyler loved HID's and probably fussed with them on every car he ever owned.

5. I have received more than 50 packages from online retailers. I am a LONG way from done. Tyler probably received that many a month!

[aaronlosey]

So here comes another big update! I keep meaning to do these more often, but I just get so caught up in working on stuff 12 hours a day that I am exhausted when I get home. A couple months ago I understood that Tyler's car wouldn't be done anytime soon since I am doing everything myself and I am incredibly slow at mechanical stuff, and since my S13 has been dismantled, I figured it was a great time to bring Tyler's missile car back to life. I need a vehicle of his to spread his ashes in out at Mineral Wells, as well as to entertain his friends and family at the memorial event coming up in April. More info on that will be posted soon.

So knowing that I needed some serious help with Tyler's car I first made a list of what really needed to be fixed.

Blown turbo.
Condition of motor was unknown and after spending a day getting it running it puked all its oil out.
The car only had a side mount intercooler from the factory.
Starter wasn't working for some reason.
Window regulator was messed up.
Hood wouldn't release and the hood cable was messed up.
Door wouldn't close.
Trunk wouldn't latch and close.
Power steering system needed attention.
Car was hot-wired to run with broken ignition setup.
Plugs were fouled.
Car wasn't charging and alternator wasn't working, battery was dead and wasn't tied down or captured.
Motor mount is broken.
Leaks everywhere and motor soaked and caked in oil.
Car has Derrick knuckles on it but steering isn't setup correctly and the wheels rub everywhere, tension rods need to be modified, fenders banged out, alignment done, larger wheel spacers added.
Ebrake isn't working well enough.
Wiring is SCARY SCARY SCARY. The wiring is really really really bad.
Radiator isn't actually mounted to the car with anything but 1 zip tie.
Fan shroud is broken.
And on and on.

So I asked Derrick if he would come down for a weekend and tackle this with me, and thank god he said yes. I am really excited to get the car going immediately and to pilot a simple SR20 car again for the foreseeable future while my new chassis is being built. Marty at Autocomp was super inviting and let us do everything at his shop, which is an amazing place to get to work on my projects at! So Derrick came over to give me a hand and that is where we begin the pictures.

So I started by pressing out a bearing on the old Autocomp press and getting ready to swap in a new bearing.

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That left me with a race I had to cut off and a bearing to throw away.

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I super carefully cut away the race and then put a crack in it, being super careful not to contact the material of the hub itself and the surface I was going to put a bearing back onto, although it probably wouldn't have been too terrible had I nicked it.

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Now a peak at the car in question. You can see it had no bumpers, a trunk I have to hold down with a tire, and a permanently downed window. It has lots of dents I am temporarily going to ignore, but I have a plan for those. Many of you guys will remember this car as the one Tyler brought out to GGP and a few other venues a few times to play with. It was T25 at the time and probably 14 psi through a side mount! Too much for the little turbo to take! He drove amazing well in the car though, and we tossed him into single qualifying runs with everyone at GGP and he qualified 1st or 2nd and then bowed out since there was no cage. That was without driving with us for a year in a really ragged out car with maybe 200 whp.

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I go through all the effort of pulling the starter and ordering a new one from Courtesy Nissan and carefully explain what I needed, telling them over and over again I needed a RWD SR20DET starter, blah blah blah and they send me a FWD one : ( That took a week to sort out, and was a time suck!

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Tyler's catch can setup! Mine is a Starbucks tea cup!

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We compression checked the motor to see if we should even bother putting all this work into such a ragged out salvage title car that has so much damage to it. And it checks out 170 across the board! Or at least that is what Derrick told me, as I was sitting inside the car working the key after we found a solution to our starter problem!

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Poor little spark plugs. At least they weren't melted and destroyed from detonation!

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We started breaking everything down on the car getting ready to put another turbo on it, and fix all the broken or neglected stuff.

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Working on a table inside finally, since the car is in the backyard of Autocomp.

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And now the fun of choosing a turbo out of my collection! This little turbo is too big. This little turbo is too small. This little turbo is JUST RIGHT. That would be the 2860RS or Disco Potato, otherwise known as a T28RS or something. Basically it is a T28 visually, but makes a bit more power. Sitting them side by side you really can't even tell a difference in size or anything. I chose the turbo because I wanted an enjoyable playful car that didn't make a ton of HP, had really quick response, and would let me show people they don't need to go V8 to tandem well and have an awesome time. The SR20 S14 is an amazing platform that can compete with the best of the cars in our series with just 250 whp, and can keep the build budget in check. A fantastic S14 can be had for 4-10K $, while building yourself a V8 car will cost something approaching 20k $ at the minimum. The turbo on the left is a GT3076R, next is the 2860RS, then the S15 T28, then the T25. The party starts from left to right at 4500 rpm, then 3500, 3000, and probably 3000.

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I sand blasted the exhaust manifold to clean it up, found a Tomei turbo elbow to spice up the parts list and cancel out the Meagan manifold, and Derrick kept working on getting everything lined up and tacked together so it wouldn't fall apart.

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I went to go inspect the fuel pump and see if it was up to par, and try and figure out why the fuel level wasn't working on the dash. Also, nothing else works on the dash, so there are probably enough reasons you can just take your pic. The car had a walbro and no fuel level setup, so I just put it back together and let it be.

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We then tackled the fun part of all this, and the most time consuming. We took a knockoff front mount Greddy intercooler and turned it into a sweet mid mount intercooler.

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This contraption was required at one point.... That battery mount is really neat! I stole it out of my E46 drift car I got off of Chelsea.

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And then the cutting begins back at the front of the car! Have to make room for those intercooler end tanks... which we also had to cut off and remake.... I don't think I got a single picture of myself, it is always Derrick in the pics! Unless you see a POV shot, then that is me.

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Then there was tons of measuring, cutting, stealing intercooler pipes for end tanks, etc to get to this pic.

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And of course Sam the Autocomp dog is constantly looking for love, trying to show you things and get attention and scratching.

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I hope he doesn't stare at this too much!!!

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And finally after two days of building the setup and piping, it gets put in the car for ALMOST the last time! Notice how little intercooler piping there is, and how hidden away the setup is. I should be able to run into quite a few people without killing my piping hopefully, and sidelining me for a day.

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TO BE CONTINUED....

[aaronlosey]

So while this car isn't crazy baller like Tyler's new blue chassis, I think it is going to be a much more fun car to drive. The white car was giving Tyler the chance to be really aggressive with his driving, where I feel like the blue car was becoming too nice and far too prepared to really wreck once he finished it. And the fear of wrecking your car makes you a terrible driver. The mid mount setup is really similar to how the blue car has it's intercooler setup, and we are simply continuing to build the white car in a super budget conscious fashion that can be driven aggressively and often. Almost every part of what we are adding to the car is either from my junk pile, or just created with the skill Derrick has in his hands. Of course I still spent a couple thousand dollars in an argon bottle, lots of welding rod, food, fuel, spark plugs, hose, bolts, cooler, blah blah blah, but it is pennies on the dollar compared to the blue car. I am really lucky I have the resources of Derrick and Autocomp to pour into this project, otherwise the car wouldn't have turned out so well.

Before we get started with pictures and more story, here is a little teaser of what is currently sitting in front of Tyler's blue car. Will's 2013 FD build that Will and Marty are working on.

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Also, I spent like 6 hours sand blasting my V8 headers with the wrong blasting medium.

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And here you can see Derrick making the complex intake pipe for the MAF to turbo. We couldn't come up with the correct bends out of my intercooler parts pile, so he started pie cutting his way to victory. If you know Derrick, he does this a lot.

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And at Autocomp we work almost exclusively with Snap-On tools! Baller, except for the constant fear of loosing a set of 200 dollar sockets LOL. I clean each tool every night as I tuck it back into the most ridiculous tool box I have ever seen. It is the same one team Falken pulls behind a truck onto grid at events.

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Most of the power tools are Dewalt, as the Snap-On ones don't seem to fare as well for some reason.

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Here I lay out the Tyler/Aaron exhaust pile and start picking parts. I ended up with basically a straight pipe on the car and need to revisit that soon, as I am going to try and drive this on the street some for fun.

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Power steering cooler is getting sandwiched between the intercooler and radiator, and will hopefully get some airflow from the fan.

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The steering rack had no boots on it, so I bought some replacement boots and slid them on.

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Here is another more finished pic of the engine bay.

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I stole an oil cooler off of my E46 as well and attached it to the firewall. I capped off the front t fitting on the valve cover and ran the hose around the rear of the engine, and capped the breather that comes out of the block down by the exhaust manifold.

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We decided to run no blowoff valve after already putting one on the piping, so we deleted it. No BOV on this car of any kind! Sorry turbo, but you are going to sound RAD!

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Oh Tyler! Leaving us surprises!

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Game of latches. Not as interesting as Game of thrones, but it got sorted out with bending things. And now it closes! Still haven't really finished the door latch setup though. Not sure what is going on with that.

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Had to resort to these a lot lately. Rethreading tools for those that don't know. it is for when you or someone you know royally screws up something that screws into something else.

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And the Autocomp stomp shear! I call him stompy and I love him! Combined with the bending break ( or brake? ) I can make little bracket for fun to amuse myself. Fun times.

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Here we are trying to figure out what in the world Tyler did to this poor window regulator. It took us about an hour of jigsaw puzzling, but it finally came back together. It was really bizarre, but something like this would not have kept his attention for more than the unbolting process. Hence why it didn't work. He did some really weird things with screws though that we couldn't figure out.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%205/IMG_0657.jpg

I was so proud of myself to procure a 1 piece driveshaft for the car.... and when going to install it I found it ALREADY HAD ONE. TYLER'S MISSILE CAR THAT IS A SALVAGED TITLE BLOWN T25 CAR WITH A STOCK SIDE MOUNT HAD A 1 PIECE DRIVE SHAFT ALREADY!?!?! Only in the world of Tyler Cox would a 2500 dollar car have a 500 dollar driveshaft installed, and baller coilovers. The coilovers and drive shaft alone were worth more than the car could be sold for when I started working on it.

And finally, the street shot. Luckily this gas station is literally in the parking lot of Autocomp, and the street Autocomp lays on is pretty quiet other than security cameras. So we did a little night testing of the car and a lot of waste gate/boost controller stepup. The wastegate on my turbo was set at 18 psi, so we had to go and swap it after a couple pulls for another one, then add a boost controller. The motor is 100% stock inside with a stock ecu, stock injectors, 10 psi off the turbo, and a stock maf. I have Nismo 550s and a z32 maf that will get tossed on the car as soon as I get a mail in tune for it hopefully, then I will probably run around 12-18 psi when I go play with the car. I also picked up wide body for it, but will be running stock bumpers and skirts. The fenders are only to fit the larger wheels I run so I don't need yet ANOTHER clutch of wheels for yet another car. I probably have well over 20 wheels at this point, fitting a mixture of 4 cars.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%205/IMG_0652.jpg

I need to get some Tyler Cox Memorial Missile Car vinyl made up, if someone want to cut it for me I would appreciate it. I will design it!

Things to get done when I get back from Utah, paint some stock bumpers, get some side skirts, put on all the sweet fancy marker lights and stuff I scored, enjoy the freshly redone head lights, maybe find a new stock hood and a front bumper lip, install the fenders, do an alignment, get the ecu and install some go fast parts, CLEAN IT, AND GO DRIFT IT!!! It will be at the FEB 17 event.

[towlie]

And I thought I was busy with car projects lol. Good read tho. The missle is almost more interesting then the blue car.

Keep it updated :)

[conrad_s13.5]

ill cut that vinyl in a second for you.

You're an awesome person for doing this!

[aaronlosey]

I will take you up on that! What are the limitations of the vinyl so I know what to design?

[Hoffman5982]

Very nice build. I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Where did you find the zinc coated bolt kit?

[lm7240]

sorry for your lose bro but your doing it right by building this car and its coming out so sick. i will deff watch this thread. good job so far and good luck!

[aaronlosey]

Very nice build. I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Where did you find the zinc coated bolt kit?

229 PC 10 9 Zinc Metric Flange Bolt Assortment | eBay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/400306959976?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649)

hopefully that link works!

[aaronlosey]

So another day, another day of working on one of Tyler's cars.... or finally, ACTUALLY DRIVING ONE!!!!!!! I actually felt bad about not working on the blue one lately, as I have put a ton of time into the white one. But, the white one is now drivable and awesome, and I had a blast in it this weekend, and that distracts me from the guilt of not working on the blue one too much in the past few weeks.

First of all, I have been wanting to build a drift car that has very little fiberglass on it so it is far more resilient to smashing into things. The E46 BMW that I picked up fits that bill well, but now that I am working on 240s at the moment instead, Tyler's Missile car gave me the chance to try it out. You will notice in the above pictures in one of the older posts that the white car had a crappy ebay URAS kit on it. This thing was ragged out and falling apart, and without cool wheels to back it up and a lot of work put into it, it just looks tacked on and bleh. I want to go in the opposite direction with this car, cool wheels to make the car with big tires, and stock looking body work that fits well and only rely on fiber glass for the fenders to fit the tires.

So now you know my plan... I ordered up some Origin type 2 rear fenders and some origin front fenders. I am trying not to use ebay chinese stuff anywhere at all on the car. I got them in the mail and started really doubting myself. I didn't like the look of the type 2 rear fenders at all, and after mounting them, I was doubting myself even more.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0675.jpg

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0676.jpg

I was pretty much like bleh, I don't think I want this at all. It was getting dark though because I got a late start that day, and it was the Thursday night before the event at Mineral Wells this weekend. Saturday I was teaching a class on drifting fundamentals, and Friday I reserved for finishing up the car and making sure everything was ready, as well as mounting tires and stuff. Oh, and Thursday earlier in the day I installed an Enthalpy tuned ECU, Nismo 550cc injectors, and a Z32 Maf. It all worked like a charm and is awesome.

Back to the fenders. It was getting late in the game at this point if I wanted to drive Sunday, and I only had 1 pair of rear wheels which would fit the car with the stock body, some Battles in 17x9.5 +20ish or so. They would fit the rear fenders and barely run with 245s on them. Problem is I want to run 265 Kendas, the same as my V8 car. So with the pressure of meeting those guidelines I decided to cut the stock fenders up and mount the rear fiber glass fenders.

Some super quick guidelines, no really plan except I have done this several times before and feel comfortable just going for it.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0677.jpg

BZZZZZZZZZ plus sparks. Use your imagination.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0678.jpg

Commitment.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0679.jpg

And then it got too dark to really take pics with a cell phone. I was using the headlights of my truck to do all this! In the dark outside Autocomp because the interior is all full right now. SUPER FULL. I finished up the back fenders, although I didn't have time to actually seal them up completely, and drilled everything up and aligned/mounted the fronts. It all went pretty well except the corner lights and headlights which fought me a lot. The core support of this car is pretty bashed up and really needs some love of some kind. So does the wiring :sigh:

Finally I couldn't take working in the dark anymore, after finishing mostly everything body related, and started the process of moving stuff around to get this car into at least the very edge of the shop. The car was starting to really come together.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0690.jpg

A blurry pic of me mounting up some 265/35/18 Kenda tires for a T28RS car. Ballsy!!!

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0691.jpg

Tyler left behind a baller Longacre digital airpressure gauge for me! I was trying to decide what kind of air pressures to run at the track with this tire size. I started at 50 PSI actually, and immediately dropped them down to 30 hot after the first 2 runs. I will probably lower it a tiny bit more next time I go out, maybe 25 PSI or so. The car has amazing grip so far!

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0692.jpg

Loading the car up in the trailer I was still a little curious about how I liked the look of it, I wasn't sure. I hadn't seen the car in the light of day yet, and I couldn't see it from the side with anylight whatsoever on it. I was exhausted and tired and went home at around 5 am. Lots of stuff happened, I taught a class, still didn't a chance to see the car in daylight, worked on more stuff to get it to the event. Shaun and his friend replaced both motor mounts Saturday night for me, Derrick bounced into town and fixed some more stuff. I made little temp brackets to mount the front bumper and we used stock brackets to mount the rear one. We had some stud spacer problems in the rear we addressed, mounted tons of tires for everyone with the Autocomp tire machine ( thanks Marty!!!! ), bled the brakes, checked the cooling system, messed with the throttle body and cable setup, messed with a bit of wiring, and on and on. Oh, we loaded cones and loaded and unloaded trailers over and over too. Went to bed around 2 am or so. Then got up around 6 am to head to Mineral Wells. This is basically par for the course by the way.

Still never really seeing the car and having no idea if I would like the way it looked or drove, we got to Mineral Wells and unloaded it from my enclosed trailer. I setup course and started getting people checked in, and then finally took the car for a few laps.

This picture says it well I think. I love the way the car looks and drives. The wheels and tire fitment really pull the car together. It has extremely little actual setup time since I hadn't ever really driven the car before. But going off the principal that wheels make a car, it worked out. I love the stance, don't hate the ride height, I love monster trucking over cones if they are in my way and not worrying about body kits or fragile things. The motor is a little BEAST. It makes around 310 whp, but does an amazing job. You definitely don't need a V8 or big turbo to have fun still. And remember, this thing makes as much power as a stock LS1, with a cool little T28 turbo! Tyler would have been in LOVE with the way this thing drives!

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/843927_10151243026310957_769843998_o.jpg

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/857325_10151243026350957_522567192_o.jpg

It drove at huge angle all day. Like HUGE angle. The pics don't do it justice, but we were at lock with knuckles that have 60 degrees of angle basically every turn. It is a beast with grip, and I only spun it once all day, and that was on purpose just TRYING to.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/860636_10151243037665957_873282520_o.jpg

I was being super careful in tandem since I didn't want to wreck into Anthony's Chaser while Josh Buckley was driving, but this thing can tandem like crazy. I was getting pelted by rocks in the face since my helmet wouldn't fit with me in the car, and I had to use a borrowed helmet while tandeming that was open face. Even keeping 20 feet behind the Chaser was pebble city lol.

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/857771_10151243027290957_927823426_o.jpg

Here is a little shot of the Chaser. Man is that thing beautiful!!!!

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0687.jpg

The next day I was working at the shop on the car again, fixing the alignment and Jake started sending me these pics he made in Forza!!! They were cracking me up!!!! We are going to have a Forza comp at Round 2 of our series with some cool prizes, and the drivers will be drifting in Tyler's cars replicated in the game!

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/IMG_0708.jpg


So, the car was a raging success. It drifts AWESOME! The things I need to fix are:

It overheats after 2 laps. I need to figure this out. I was running it around getting airflow on it after each lap and the temp would come right back down after about 30 seconds. Not a huge deal, but a drift car definitely shouldn't overheat.

I don't fit in the car with my helmet, and I like my helmet. I need a racing seat in it. Not a big deal.

With the rear fenders not sealed back up at the moment, the cabin fills with smoke, and this drives me nuts! I need to seal those up.

The alignment is way off, and it chews through the inside of the tire waaaaay faster than the rear. We still got about 30 laps out of a set of new Kendas without a problem, but hopefully it will go up measurably when we start using the whole tire. Hopefully grip goes way up too, even though it already has amazing grip! We measured it Monday night and it had 1/2 inch of rear toe in and -2 degrees of rear camber. It needs to be about zero to or a tad in, and -.5 rear camber. Also, the rear upper control arms are installed upside down and hitting the frame rails! We figured that out working on the toe! Scary!


http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/tylerscar/tylers%20blog%20post%206/861089_10151243026525957_1313580039_o.jpg

[aaronlosey]

And now for some video from the event!!!! In the video you can hear me just running the rev limiter for long periods of time. This amused me so much for some reason I just kept doing it! I got some tandem in with the Chaser, but was super careful to keep my distance in a new unproven car. If it wasn't the Chaser I would have been driving into people's doors with this thing! The car is SOOOOOO much fun to drive, and is such a simple build for the most part. When you see Josh driving the car, watch for his hilarious smile towards the end of his run : )

I am excited that this car is going to be ready for April 20th when we spread his ashes while doing a giant burnout in it, T Cox style.


Tyler Cox Missile car project test day on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/60033940)

[Idahos13]

Great build so far! I'm sorry about your friend, Im sure he would love what you are doing.

[bc.]

now this is a 'missile' car i can approve of. everything looks good on the build and the only reason to classify it as a missile would be lack of paint, which is the way it should be imo.

such a rad stance too, +1

[aaronlosey]

: ) Finally figured out how to embed on here. Turn on HD!

60033940

[blockedwizard]

Awesome build thread and love what your doing in your friends memory, shows how amazin of a friend you are for doing this!!!! :bigok:

Love the video by the way!!!!

[frizzle]

Great build!!! Is that real BN on Tyler's car?

[aaronlosey]

Yes real Bn fenders. Still trying to get a kit. I want dmax 3 again for it, or real Bn . Can't find it easily though

[RurouniMidnight]

Ohhhh YEAH! Love me some T-cox was such a awesome guy, keep up the fantastic work Aaron.

[aaronlosey]

I took the missile car out for some fun at Round 1, it is quickly becoming the UN missile car. It had no problem at all keeping up with even the fastest of our local cars. Enthalpy sent me a tune to pop the rev limiter up to 8000 rpm. Still on 100% stock block, stock head, never popped the valve cover off. Turbo is set at 18 psi on a Garrett 2860RS, and unfortunately a .86 hot side. I completely spaced when I got the turbo from a friend and didn't realize what the hot side was when I put the turbo on the car. I ordered one of the new fancy GTX 2863 .6x turbos for the car, so that should be interesting!

Tire wear has been amazing, and the car is working great. I blew up the ring gear as I forgot to check if it had fluid, and of course, it didn't so it blew up the teeth on the ring gear. Live and learn and check your fluids before you take the cars out kids!

The car has now been to 3 events and done great at pretty much all of them. Oh, and I fixed some more wiring, I will have to post that up. Turned out pretty well. Most of the car's wiring that is modified is not connected in any other way than twisting the two wires together, and possibly adding electrical tape! I don't think Tyler made those modifications though, I think the car came that way!

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/540110_10151562219411944_1091856421_n.jpg
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/486349_541651042546910_1887219115_n.jpg
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/580264_541650989213582_1183673359_n.jpg


And here comes the memorial event! Click below for more info!

Tyler Cox's Lone Star Drift Formula D Proam Event | Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/events/504814392893880/)

http://fabricatedmotorsports.com/images/TMS-4-28-2013.jpg

[Big Zee]

My best friend said he would do this for me also if I ever died and still had my car.
You are a true friend and I express my condolences for your terrible loss.

Keep up the good work, I've never met Tyler, but if he were here today I'm positive he would be proud of your work and dedication.

[ferrariowner123]

WOW, all i can say!!

I have never met Tyler, but he must be an amazing individual for you to want to do this car for a memorial of him

sub'd

-Kyle

[jmac636]

Aaron, I'm sure Tyler is proud of what your doing for him. See you at the next round of the Lonestar series!

-James Mckiddie

[Mannykiller]

dude.....maddddd props for picking up the pieces and finishing the project. Your a hell of a friend, mad props...madddd props.

[rawgarage]

reppin for TX...keep it 100...

[aaronlosey]

A little video : )

Tyler Cox Not So Missile Car playing around at Round 1 2013 on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/63370433)

[xoxide]

That track looks really fun.

[OutlawLui]

How did he die?

[aaronlosey]

The missile car was getting some action this weekend! I made contact no less than 5 or more times with other cars! It was a TROOPER! At the very end of the day after 105 + laps I thought it ran out of gas. After taking it home and filling it up, it still didn't run, and took me about 2 hours and a couple friendly phone calls to work through that it was a fuel pump line in the tank that fell off, and how to detach the stock fuel pump bracket from the tank. Unfortunately I had already filled the tank with gas!!!!!!! BLEH! Everything worked out great though, and the car is doing fantastic! It was a grip monster, and during one part of the day when I put on some new 265/35/18 Kendas with 20 PSI of pressure in them, I couldn't even tandem with people because Tyler's car was SOOOO much faster than all the other ones. By the end of the first corner I was passing people no matter how much I was holding back in tandem, and was having to bail from the runs. After I wore them down some I had way better luck and had the most AMAZING tandem action. Thanks to drivers such as Matt Bengston for so many amazing tandem runs! We had literally 40 tandem runs together!

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/533586_1715959831876336_1022588718_n.jpg

Thanks to all the photographers that got sweet shots of the cars going around the track.
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/537822_10151318565290957_565034453_n.jpg

Thanks to all the awesome fans that made me feel special letting me take them for ride alongs, then posing for pics with the car and helping me mount tires, and friending me on facebook : )
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/58813_490377147694536_772568355_n.jpg

Every event I take this car too I still have friends of Tyler's that tell me stories of when they got to take a ride along in this white car, and how it was special to them!

[Extreme Dimensions]

How did he die?

+1 please shine some light on this please.

[mantas]

+1 please shine some light on this please.

Yeah i was wondering the same.

[pigeon]

I forget what year it was, but I saw the red s14 at Gateway in ST. Louis, it rained up there both days I think, it was either nopi or xdc I really can't remember who held the event.
Anyways I think he broke a trans or something because He had the car up in the air sitting on his spare wheels, using them as jack stands, I had never seen anyone do this before and thought it was the coolest idea ever. The aero, wing, wheels, and the sound of that thing was awesome. Deff one of my favorite cars up there that weekend.
Its really cool what your doing with this.

[OutlawLui]

Rip though... Always sucks to lose someone

[aaronlosey]

I forget what year it was, but I saw the red s14 at Gateway in ST. Louis, it rained up there both days I think, it was either nopi or xdc I really can't remember who held the event.
Anyways I think he broke a trans or something because He had the car up in the air sitting on his spare wheels, using them as jack stands, I had never seen anyone do this before and thought it was the coolest idea ever. The aero, wing, wheels, and the sound of that thing was awesome. Deff one of my favorite cars up there that weekend.
Its really cool what your doing with this.

Tyler and I were both there for that on my 3 car trailer, it was a hell of a weekend! It rained for the qualifier day where the guys without licenses had to try out. We both didn't have to do that so we luckily drove on the dry days. Tyler blew a tranny and a friend of our from Traction Optional, Jerry, replaced it for him. Or maybe it was a clutch. Either way the tranny came out. That was Nopi 2008 I believe, an amazing event for us. I got to go on to drive against Kenji Yamanaka and Forrest Wang, and beat them all out to take the win that day and a giant check. Tyler got knocked out a bit earlier in the day, and to cheer him up I bought some hilarious 18x12 +0 wheels for him off Forrest the same day at the track with some of my winnings. Tyler tried for years to fit those on the car and never succeeded. I still have them. We went on to drive a whole season of Nopi together, which was a blast. When Nopi died, we moved onto the D1GP USA series, which was AMAZING!

As to the question of how he passed away, he was at a party and drank too much and passed out. No one noticed he vomited laying on his back, and he stopped breathing from a clogged airway. Let this be a lesson to everyone! I know a couple people this happened to, be careful people!

[mantas]

Tyler and I were both there for that on my 3 car trailer, it was a hell of a weekend! It rained for the qualifier day where the guys without licenses had to try out. We both didn't have to do that so we luckily drove on the dry days. Tyler blew a tranny and a friend of our from Traction Optional, Jerry, replaced it for him. Or maybe it was a clutch. Either way the tranny came out. That was Nopi 2008 I believe, an amazing event for us. I got to go on to drive against Kenji Yamanaka and Forrest Wang, and beat them all out to take the win that day and a giant check. Tyler got knocked out a bit earlier in the day, and to cheer him up I bought some hilarious 18x12 +0 wheels for him off Forrest the same day at the track with some of my winnings. Tyler tried for years to fit those on the car and never succeeded. I still have them. We went on to drive a whole season of Nopi together, which was a blast. When Nopi died, we moved onto the D1GP USA series, which was AMAZING!

As to the question of how he passed away, he was at a party and drank too much and passed out. No one noticed he vomited laying on his back, and he stopped breathing from a clogged airway. Let this be a lesson to everyone! I know a couple people this happened to, be careful people!

That is a terrible way to go out. Seemed like a cool dude, and you seem like a good friend for keeping this build going. Keep up the good work.

[hypercrush]

its really cool what youre doing Aaron, enjoying following along.

much <3 from us in AZ, come back and see us again soon

(this is Dylan btw, Stew's painter friend)

[aaronlosey]

Howdy Dylan! Maybe I will get a chance to come out there and drive soon! Or at least at see you dudes at Allstarbash later in the year!

[aaronlosey]

So on April 20th, 2013 we finally spread Tyler's ashes. I set up a memorial day with the help of his family at the Mineral Wells Airport. The purpose of the afternoon was to remember Tyler and spread his ashes, as well as bring his friends and family together for a small memorial service. Drifting seemed the most appropriate way to do these things, and with the blessing of his family I started the ball rolling. I felt a lot of pressure putting together this event, more than I typically do because I wanted to make it a special day for his family, and I had no idea how to properly make sure his family would be pleased with the results. After all, the Mineral Wells Airport isn't exactly the most prestigious looking environment for a ceremony. It is neither beautiful nor fancy. However it was a place that Tyler decided to come back to over and over again over the months and years. I would guess to say it was the one of his favorite places on earth, even though it isn't particularly special for any great reason. His early days there he was so excited to be there he had trouble sleeping the nights before in our hotel room. The parking lot represented complete freedom to do what we wanted in our cars. No track officials, no police, not much of anything most of the time. I venture to say for most people, there really aren't many places like this anywhere.

Tyler met so many friends out there. Stewart, Russell, myself, and many others. Friends that shared his odd passion for drifting, and let their lives revolve around their passion. Adventure friends, people that share in crazy trips across the country or even the world. People you love and hate by the minute as you blur the lines of what is acceptable at hour 40 of being awake on a road trip.

So the day finally arrived, and the weather was beautiful. I set the event up, fiddled with the course layout so it was fun, gentle on tires, even from left to right on wear. I carefully placed Tyler's 2 remaining drift cars in a small booth, complete with memorabilia from his life such as his helmet and race suit. A fully catered lunch for 200 arrived around noon and was fantastic. Then, at about 1 pm we held the ceremony. A few people talked about his life, a bunch of us cried, me included. I spoke at his funeral at length, and held my composure with a sober smile, but at his function I wasn't able to. I missed him. The memories of good times and bad times, guilt of when we were mad at each other, it was all too much. After a minute I was able to speak for a minute and explain what we were about to do, then I jumped in Tyler's old white S14 and Josh Buckley and Stewart Leask and I did some T Cox smokey burnouts and spread his ashes into the smoke. It was a bit awkward since I have never done anything quite like this, but I am pretty sure it is exactly what Tyler would have wanted. Will Parsons and I are actually planning on spreading a vial of Tyler into Saitos car as well, and I am pretty sure Tyler would have wanted that too.

I should also add that after all my preparations for the event, after just a few laps of playing around the fuel pump in Tyler's white car gave out while at full boost. It took out about 30% compression on cylinder 2 when it happened, and melted the plug. Not wanting to give up on the car for the day though, we stole Josh's fuel pump and with the help of Shaun got everything back together. The car was fantastic for the rest of the day, doing probably 50+ laps with his family and friends riding shot gun. Tyler's dad even took some laps on the skid pad learning to counter steer and clutch kick. I am very sure Tyler would have got a kick out of watching that. I am hoping his dad lets me teach him how to drift! I dropped off the car Monday night to Derrick to pull apart and I am about to order parts to put it back together. It is getting some really awesome parts, including higher comp pistons, an E85 tune, bigger injectors, and a GTX turbo. I REALLY REALLY REALLY like driving the white car, it is a blast.


Here is some video of the spreading of Tyler's ashes. Also, there will be vials of ashes to spread all over the world. Locations are:

Saitos SC300
Ebisu
Road Atlanta
Shreeveport drift event
All Star Bash
Lone Star Bash
Gateway International
Englishtown Raceway
A vial will be put into his cars, 1 each.
And his friends will be given a vial each and allowed to spread them wherever they think is fit.

Spreading ashes tcox style | Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151467642098305&set=vb.505288304&type=2&theater)


I am giving rides to Tyler's family in the pic. I am tandeming with Fielding in a borrowed R32 Skyline, with only 3.5 cylinders. I was still much faster : )

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/921602_10151335187340957_2036746854_o.jpg

[fast250sx]

I think it's amazing what you are doing for him his family and his friends. Every aspect. To a great guy! Cheers!

[conrad_s13.5]

:')

Texas IS the reason

Id like to be a part of what youre doing at Road Atlanta and Gateway!

[blockedwizard]

Sounds like a great way to memorialize him by doing what he loved where'd he loved to do it!

[rawgarage]

this weekend will be EPIC...

[aaronlosey]

Small update on the white car.

The motor lost 40% compression on one cylinder at the Tyler Cox memorial event after the fuel pump seized up on a run. It was still running great and I finished the event driving it a TON after I hurt it. Since I needed one single stock piston to put everything back together, in Tyler/Aaron fashion I decided to have Derrick build me a motor.

Now, I didn't want to go crazy, since I still want to keep this motor a tiny T2 flanged T28RS turbo. BUT, I have had tons of SR20s and wanted something a bit different. Derrick and I chat a lot, and are always dreaming up stupid stuff to do. Since we needed a piston, we figured why not just do all the pistons at once, and why not do fancy ones. And if we are doing fancy ones, lets do something silly. So I attempted to order 12 to 1 Wiseco pistons for the SR20, then to my dismay, found out although they have part numbers and are all over the internet, they don't actually really make them. In doubt of what the reseller told me, I called up Wiseco and found out they really don't make them, and then a day later found that the part number was pulled off their sales sheets online lol. DOH! So we settled on 11 to 1 pistons and are going to mill the head to get another .5 compression.

I have been running a T28RS with a .86 exhaust housing, which means I effectively have a T28 that makes full boost at 4k rpm. In the quest of changing things, I ordered a .64 housing while I wait for my GTX turbo to get here some time in the distant future. When I chat with different people they all tell me to use the different housings for one reason or another, and I haven't 100% made up my mind what I am doing yet on this, but I expect to put the .64 housing in there and drop spool by a good bit, especially with the other things that are going on with the build!

Since we are running higher compression, the motor is going to immediately blow up with a turbo on it. To stop that, we are going to run E85. To run the stuff, we are changing over some fuel lines, putting a new pump in the car, and adding 850cc injectors. The tune will be courtesy of Enthalpy : ) Yes, a mail in tune for a high compression E85 SR20DET drift car that gets beat like an unwanted step child constantly. The last tune worked so well I am excited to try this one! Redline will once again be stuck at 8k rpm with 100% stock head ( rebuilt only for the hell of it, it was perfect when we took it apart. Not changing springs or anything )

There is a bunch of little stuff going on to, like new ACL bearings and a head gasket, but nothing overly fancy. Stock rods still, stock cams, stock head but rebuilt.

So the parts list is pretty simple. New stuff is:

ACL bearings
.64 hotside for the turbo
11.5 to 1 total compression
E85 enthalpy tune
fuel pump
850cc injectors
some little parts

So hopefully the car goes from a 4-8k rpm powerband to a 3.5-8k rpm powerband. Hopefully I don't have to worry about anything happening with the AFR or anything since E85 shouldn't let the motor detonate. Power should be limited to around 330-360whp by boost. The car will probably want to make more than that so I will limit the boost to whatever is needed to hopefully keep the transmission alive. Figuring the bump in compression might make from 0-4% more power per point, I am guessing the motor might make 0-12% more power from the compression alone. The car might make as much as 35 hp more than a stock compression motor at the boost I was running before, 18 psi. Couple that with the fact we are adding E85 and people claim a 20-40 hp jump with E85 instead of pump fuel at the same boost level, and I would figure the motor should make more power at the same boost level as before. How much, who knows. I don't understand ricer math and adding up guesses. I would figure 18 psi would make 350 whp at the minimum now with the disco potato, and 20 or more psi should be close to 400 whp. Maybe that is on the low side, who knows. Anyways I figure 400 whp and a stock tranny will spell trouble, so I am going to probably not run that much. Also, I have been lowering my boost at events, sometimes as low as 7 psi so I get retardedly good tire wear. 300 whp is more than enough to drift with on 265s, I just wanted to try E85. Hopefully it goes well!

------------

Blue car progress.

I got a Dmax type 3 kit for the car.

I got a stock fuel tank for the car.

I got most of the glass put in the car, doors on, hood on, and some other stuff.

I got a new front subframe.

Now I have to get time to work on it!

[rawgarage]

aaron post an update please

[Shanevasquez]

I did not realize your build is close to the one I am doing on my KA. I am doing 11:1 on a GT25 with meth. :) But going to end up upgrading the turbo too after I get used to that setup. :)

[rawgarage]

Aaron has been very Busy... So take a look at the pics I snagged today...


http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e105/bwoodballa/null-6.jpg


http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e105/bwoodballa/null-7.jpg

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e105/bwoodballa/null-8.jpg


T Cox car was killin today

[boostdd]

This thread kinda hits close to home with me , I read somewhere else on Tyler's passing and how he was without breathing and his brain deteriorated and left his car unfinished

My lil bro had a similar fate 3 yrs ago and was an avid track visitor for time attack racing and left his car unfinished , not to this extent but me and his friends finished it and I continue to track it , lil bros screen name was smirfs2k05 on the s2ki boards

Keep doing what your doing !!!!

[aaronlosey]

This thread kinda hits close to home with me , I read somewhere else on Tyler's passing and how he was without breathing and his brain deteriorated and left his car unfinished

My lil bro had a similar fate 3 yrs ago and was an avid track visitor for time attack racing and left his car unfinished , not to this extent but me and his friends finished it and I continue to track it , lil bros screen name was smirfs2k05 on the s2ki boards

Keep doing what your doing !!!!

Sorry for your loss! Having a car around to work on and take care of really helps keep them remembered!

[aaronlosey]

So time for an update!!! Since the last update the white car has gone through a huge makeover, courtesy of Derrick Rogers. I had been doing most of the work on the white car myself, and I am just slow and not nearly as competent at working on cars as Derrick, so the car went into hyperdrive when I handed it off!

Why did I hand it off? Well, the motor was very slightly hurt at the memorial event weekend where we spread Tyler's ashes, and the motor lost a bit of compression on one cylinder. We decided to pull everything apart and put new pistons and bearings in the motor and clean it up. The motor was still running great, but I didn't want to trash it on accident so I ran it down to Derrick.

To revisit the highlights of this portion of the buildup of the white car....

11 to 1 Wiseco pistons
E85 fuel
ACL bearings
Cometic head gasket
Rebuilt but stock head
8000 RPM
Enthalpy tune
put a smaller hotside on the 2860RS discopotato turbo, T28RS
Painted the car as an impulse
Cage
Larger Walbro pump

Now for some pictures for fun!

I got to buy E85 finally! I picked up a bunch driving through Waco on my way to Derrick's place. It smells sweet and sugary.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/481527_597541943603422_2070099371_n.jpg

I put it in my normal race jugs, but I have been meaning to put a barrel of it in my trailer. Now that I am thinking about it though, I might just do a bunch of race jugs as they are easier to move around.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/423908_597541740270109_429300756_n.jpg

Slightly milled head, and rebuilt stock stuff. We meant to have the head milled a bunch for even more compression, but I guess the machine shop forgot, so we didn't end up with our goal of 11.5 to 1, but a bit lower. Maybe around 11.1 or something. Not sure. Purple makes the stock head look racecar though. I always turn my redline up to 8000 on all my SR20s, even the completely stock ones. I have never thrown a rocker arm, not sure why that happens to some people, but I have thousands of laps in SR20 cars and have never done it.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/248070_597596750264608_473696236_n.jpg

Here the car is looking extra high in the front with no engine in it. Looks kind of silly. Really not that far off the ride height though!
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/294107_597595153598101_441039259_n.jpg

These fancy little pistons! They bring a lot of life to the party though! Between the E85 and the pistons this little SR20 is rowdy. I need to go dyno it for fun, but I actually turned the boost down at the event to conserve tires a bit. I started at 18 psi which was probably 360-380 whp it felt like and dropped it down to 15 psi to keep the tires alive.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/969777_597594993598117_1161264944_n.jpg

Sweet hone machine that Derrick used on the block. Derrick is the man with engines. All the drift engines he has built are indestructible monsters. I can't believe everyone doesn't break his door down trying to get him to build their motors. He is way too cheap and way too awesome. However, I think he tells most people no lol.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/941114_597577193599897_87480392_n.jpg

My other Derrick motor, (I had another couple SR20 by him too), my LS1. The SR is in the background. I have never blown up a Derrick motor, although the first time he built my LS it was a bit of a learning experience lol. Derrick built a motor for Tyler Cox once, and it was in his car for a couple seasons at 9000 rpm being thrashed on by the worlds most abusive driver, who did the least amount of maintenance you have ever seen. People would change Tyler's oil for him out of pity for the car when he wasn't looking! That motor Derrick built in Tyler's red car made somewhere around 480 whp and lived longer than any of Tyler's other motors. Eventually I think Tyler killed it from running it without oil.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/264579_597597123597904_99396072_n.jpg

Here is the super sweet cage in the car now. Super simple cage, nothing overkill. Super easy to get into, passes whatever rule books, sweet stuff.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/485442_597846840239599_1367786163_n.jpg

Fancy timing wheel. Derrick takes great care and has lots of fancy tools for putting together motors. This isn't backyard bubba swapping bearings into the motor by pulling the subframe! Those are adjustable cam gears getting timed in. I'm not sure exactly what he changed on them but everything is working awesome.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/935250_598740990150184_104832358_n.jpg

And like magic the motor is back in the car! The 850 cc injectors are plugged into the rail, a new catch can is settled into the engine bay, the rad mid mount intercooler setup is in place, and everything is working!
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/600725_600995059924777_1534509961_n.jpg

I randomly got an impulse to paint the car for some reason. I probably shouldn't have, but for some reason I was compelled too. I tossed on a new front bumper, a hood, and a door and took it down to a paint place right down the street from Autocomp. The did a pretty good job but oversprayed the crap out of everything, and fixing the overspray took a day.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/603076_603026743054942_163992251_n.jpg

Valve cover looks rad! I really wanted to paint the whole car this color, but I don't think the body could pull it off, so I just painted the valve cover. I love the color.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/580139_603918319632451_1712107763_n.jpg

I tossed on some sweet tail lights, remounted stuff, and got help from Chris and Luis removing overspray and changing out some parts.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/969501_604046232952993_1291507039_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/602328_604072026283747_955999941_n.jpg

The night before the event I found an oil leak. Sigh. It was the turbo oil feed line. Double Sigh. I fiddled with it for an hour, and True and Kevin came over to help and spent another hour on it. We failed to make it stop leaking. Just put it back together and said screw it. On the bright side lots of other things on the car stopped leaking.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/970301_604072286283721_1225525159_n.jpg

So we thought we could get away with a Walbro 255 hp, and I suppose we did. I was rice-ing the car up and down the street in front of Autocomp like a boss, but I started to get a bit uncomfortable with the situation since we raised the fuel pressure to fine tune the Enthalpy tune a bit. Turns out fuel pumps suck when you raise the pressure on a turbo car, and after some time with tech support, even though the car was running great, I decided to get a Walbro 485. I was really worried it wouldn't swap right in, but it did. Swapped right in : ) Oh, except we then wired the thing straight to the battery with a fuse and relay. That part took the longest. We used the original fuel pump wire coming from the front as the new signal wire for the relay, and just went straight to the battery. Why? Because we were only seeing 11 volts at the pump and wanted to see a bit more.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/6317_604079142949702_775468324_n.jpg

Just in case anyone wanted to see how the Walbro 485 fit.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/971981_604783946212555_1168629028_n.jpg

Car looking all pretty. Tyler wouldn't even recognize it. At this point I realized the car isn't really a missile anymore, except it is still driven like one.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/934974_604397412917875_635941529_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/946731_604396289584654_1336162323_n.jpg

Drift cars are the cheap part, the tires are the expensive part! Tyler always ran DZ101, and destroyed them so fast it wasn't even funny. These are Kendas and they last about 4 times as long as a DZ101, plus this car doesn't make almost 500 whp like his other car. The car only killed 2 tires at the Game of Cones event! Also, it rained halfway through the day lol.
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/946847_604379529586330_629234348_n.jpg

I decided to leverage some parts Kevin and True wanted into a wet sand and polish for the car. Thanks guys!
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/972145_604444029579880_1934390771_n.jpg

The game of cones trophy, and stabbing device!
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/972185_604681479556135_1802760780_n.jpg

A final picture of what the car looked like, with the wheel fitment dialed in, ride height, etc. I still have some head light covers to add, and the grill, and some details, but the car looks rad in my opinion. So different than typical 240s. No bell bottom kit, just durable battle ready body parts. The car hit around 4 people this weekend, and is no worse for the wear. The other cars are, but the Tyler Missile car came out pretty much unscathed!
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/1002716_604789756211974_1194159696_n.jpg

And a fun little picture from the event. : )
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/6507_527363477299417_1330386914_n.jpg



AND FINALLY, SOME RAD HELMET CAM FOOTAGE! Tyler would have wanted me to hit more people in the car, but I was trying to be nice to everyone and not hit them unnecessarily. That meant keeping a bit of distance. The only person I really stuck it to was Matt Bengston, because he loves it. I put a dent in the side of his car by pushing my front tire into his car a tiny bit too hard, but it didn't mess up our runs and he loved it so oh well! Hopefully someone got video or pictures of it because my go pro missed it!!!!

2013 Round 3 Game of Cones in car video with Aaron Losey in the Tyler Cox Memorial Missile on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/68113711)

[aaronlosey]

So to catch everyone up, the white Tyler Cox Memorial Missile car has been seeing a ton of action lately. *It got the new high comp motor setup, which was basically a stock motor with high comp pistons and a disco potato and after a couple events the oil filter backed off on a road course and I failed to notice fast enough, ANNNNDDDDD rod knocked the motor. *The high comp E85 setup was pretty darn sweet, and even with the tiny disco potato was awesome for parking lot stuff on 265s. *On the road course the faster stuff left it a bit underpowered for the tire size, but I really could have just stepped down to a 245 and probably been golden.

Anyways, two weeks before the big YOKOI event I am stuck with a dead motor, so the day after everything went south I rushed Derricks place ( several hours away from the track ) and we tore the motor out of the car. *Within hours it was totally torn apart, and we found the rods, cams, crank, etc were trashed. *SIGH. *All over a stupid oil filter backing off which had been on for hours of driving already. *So anyways, I got on the email with Ken from Enjuku and got everything overnighted to Derrick so he could do a speed build, and get the car back together within 7 days. *That included all machine work and stuff as well. *Thank god Derrick keeps bailing me out of my problems, I really should just be driving a stripped out 350Z with a stock motor, but thanks to him I can live out my dreams of ricing the crap out of an SR20.

So, thanks to hook ups from Ken, and working with whatever they had in stock the motor is now...

11 to 1 compression
E85
1200 cc side feed injectors
enthalpy tuned ECU ( he flew in and tuned it in person this time, I set up a tuning day )
350Z coil packs and no igniter
eagle rods
264 bc cams
springs
GTX 2863 THANKS GARRETT!!!
Lots of little things

First off, beware if you do a new GTX turbo that is internally gated, the actuators are different from the GT series....

https://sphotos-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/21372_625978030759813_223207994_n.jpg

As you look at the dyno sheet above, that is with the tiny little t2 GTX 2863, .64 housing. *@ like 29 psi. *We just went for it with the boost to make sure it would take anything we threw at the thing boost wise later on. *It was blowing out spark up top so Martin from Enthalpy told me about 350Z coil packs, and then popped them on my car in like 20 minutes after I snagged some. *He is rad.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/q71/1044342_623443557679927_1140058059_n.jpg

Bling Bling.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/q71/s720x720/1004757_623263497697933_1597873197_n.jpg

Didn't intend to put aftermarket rods in this thing, but we killed the stock ones from heat.

https://sphotos-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/q77/s720x720/1001010_622732987750984_1910674357_n.jpg

There is an interesting story to the NEO VVL motor. *I picked this for Derrick to play with and put the head on an SR20 for fun for his car. *I am sure he is going to build something crazy out of it, and I was stealing a crank from him and needed to bribe him to work on my car. *I try to only pay him in neat car parts now to motivate him to build his own car.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/q71/1005435_620215044669445_1169881601_n.jpg

This turbo may be little, but it is also tiny. *We are going to see how it fairs with way too much boost thrown at it, with no BOV. *The disco potato did very well and didn't seem to mind no BOV, so lets see how this dude fairs.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/q71/s720x720/1014098_619687908055492_551959918_n.jpg

There are a lot of parts that have to go together eventually!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/q71/s720x720/970570_619633324727617_1345838086_n.jpg

What E85 pistons look like on top I guess. *I would have figured they would look cleaner for some reason, but instead they have an oily look.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/q71/s720x720/47979_623508107673472_718521863_n.jpg

And finally!!!! *Back together!!!! *For the LAST TIME EVERRRR!!!!!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/26330_628265890531027_452221052_n.jpg

Yokoi from MCR hooked me up with these, and drove the crap out of the car. *That was cool. *





https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/q71/s720x720/547388_10151488344755957_1504008908_n.jpg

I threw the coolest drift event ever in Texas, I am excited about that. *It was soooo much fun.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/q71/s720x720/581700_10151488346900957_558402685_n.jpg

The drivers didn't embarrass me in front of Yokoi, that was a plus. *I was a little worried about that lol.

https://sphotos-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/q71/s720x720/992857_10151488346935957_814470217_n.jpg

Sy Pham took amazing photos and made everything look epic.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/q71/s720x720/1000899_10151488344705957_334948038_n.jpg

Fielding Shredders car now looks cool. *WUT.

https://sphotos-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/q71/s720x720/1003898_10151488216245957_1728498811_n.jpg


https://sphotos-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/q71/s720x720/600817_10151488215470957_963347328_n.jpg

I dressed up Yokoi in a one of my hats. *I think he got a kick out of cowboys so we made him a cowboy for the event.

https://sphotos-b-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/q73/s720x720/1014001_10151488215515957_2102556930_n.jpg

Cool cars everywhere.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/q73/s720x720/970013_10151488214920957_1795586304_n.jpg

Arizona dudes made the event so much better.


--------



So back on topic with the build. *The car is pretty rad. *It has no problem keeping up with the faster cars in our series, LOOKS like it is a simple car with the tiny bottom mount t2 turbo, HASN'T BROKEN A TRANNY YET, whew, and is super duper fun. *I get to shift a lot, make judgement calls on what gear to be in and need to think a bit, and basically is totally different from my V8 car, which became a point and shoot car for the most part. *I love the SR20 stock transmission, I love banging rev limiter at 8k everywhere, I love the stock bumpers and no kit, I love trading paint with people. *I was super busy at the event and only got about 12 runs, but got some amazingly fun tandem in. *The car was awesome, and really fun. *I hit every single person I drove against except one person as I didn't think they would appreciate it as they have a very nice car. *Everyone else got a mark. *

[aaronlosey]

Here is my little video from the event from my helmet cam. *This is every run from the event I had on my go pro, and only a few seconds are clipped to make it slightly shorter. *Unfortunately the new go pros have shit for battery life and I am super busy running the stupid events and not driving enough!!!! *I am in love with drifting though and having an amazing time!!!! *Thanks to Derrick for keeping my cars running, and all the drivers for keeping me interested in tandeming with them! *: (

I don't know how to embed on here properly : (

2013 Mexican Standoff Drift event by Fabricatedmotorsports.com in the Tyler Cox Memorial Missile on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/71463320)

[Roscoe.]

I adore this car so much, and it was great to meet you Saturday at the Standoff. Thanks for putting on such a rad event! Any progress on the blue car?

[aaronlosey]

The blue car is coming along, I was holding back some pics to do an update on it. It just had the drive shaft made for it, the floor cut out under the seat remade and shaped to lower the set a lot, a mountain of parts gathered for it, and was handed off to Derrick Rogers to finish! It was supposed to be finished for yokoi to drive at the event, but motor damage to the white car screwed up those plans lol.

[Roscoe.]

That sounds like some serious progress. I'm beyond excited to see it. That's a shame the missile's motor issues got in the way of Yokoi driving the blue car. As amazing as it was to watch him drive the not-so-missile and Stew's JZX and George's FC, it would have been an over the top thing to see him drive the blue car.

Not to just be all up on your junk, it's great to see what you're doing with Tyler's cars, and Fabricated. Thanks for sharing it!

[zenkiset]

I wish I had a friend like you around man. my dads work has moved my family around so much that ive never made a true friend like you. hopefully someday though ill find one that shares my passion for the s-chassis cars and drifting just as much as I do bc you never know when your day is going to come. and whenever my day comes you better believe ill be an s-chassis owner still, and id love to be able to hand it off to a friend as you have been able to do with tyler.

keep up the great work man! im loving the "missile" car! its honestly how I want my DD to look lmao. but like you said, its not much of a missile car anymore except for the way it gets driven ha. awesome and inspiring thread!

[7x13]

Mad respect going on in this thread.
:bigok:

[TheRealSy90]

Any more info on doing the 350z coil packs on sr? I have never heard of doing anything besides the Chevy LS truck motor coil packs. And a quick search left me with nothing.

[aaronlosey]

I will try and take some pictures or the coil pack setup. You simply cut the igniter out and connect wires directly together as you chop it out. The pull the coil pack plugs apart on the harness side and move the 3 wires around until they spark again with the 350z plugs connected. There is only a few ways they a go, and the 350z coil pack uses the same plug, so you can simply plug them in, but the 3 wires are wrong, so you undo the plug and change it. I said that tie I think lol. The 350z coil pack drops right in other than that, and even bolts in on the red top, although not 100% perfect. The only problem really other than the not 100% perfect fit is you could get water down into the plug holes. Overall thoug I really like it so far and the 350z coil packs are super cheap and see to beway more powerful.

Sorry about this odd post as it was made from my phone and it was autocorrecting everything all retarded.

[DET240SX]

absolutely love this thread. I'm sorry about your loss

But definitely subscribed to it and keep it going! this is some real stuff

I would love to run in one of your events or something next year. 20 hour drive pff whatever, bring it on!!! Also, where can I contribute/buy the Lone Star sticker??

[aaronlosey]

That is where you can buy stickers from the Texas drift events : )

Fabricated Motorsports &mdash; Home (http://fabricatedmotorsports.bigcartel.com)

[DNAmotoring]

Great post, lots of photos and good info. Sorry for your loss, Keep up the good work!

[aaronlosey]

Here is some video from the last event the car was taken to, where Masashi Yokoi from MCR Factory was given the car to drive for the weekend with all our locals. He was just getting used to LHD but had a blast in the car : )

THe weekend was amazing, and our local drivers really really really enjoyed having Yokoi out there, as he is kind of like our childhood hero thing.

73185370

73440260

Here is Yokoi's D1 car.

http://cdn.mkimg.carview.co.jp/minkara/usercar/000/001/021/292/1021292/p1.jpg?ct=38efdf0ec3a1

Sitting around with some other rad USA drift cars.

https://sphotos-b-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/q71/s720x720/549471_10151599670552426_153289941_n.jpg


WHAM!

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Anyways, this car has been staying crazy busy, drifting at least twice a month in most instances. It has a blown apart transmission at the moment which I am about to swap out for a temp replacement, and then after that my 350Z transmission stuff gets here and one of those little guys will get put in. Then, hopefully no more blown up transmissions and I can turn the boost up and put a bigger turbo on it.

[aaronlosey]

A lot has happened to both of these project cars in the past year. This video sums up a lot of it. This is some helmet cam of me driving the Memorial Missile car around this weekend. : )

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Some changes are happening to both cars. The blue car isn't finished yet and we are already changing things. It is currently a 9 to 1 or so 2.35 SR20, and we are going to bump it up to at least 11 to 1, maybe higher. I also acquired a primera motor or whatever the VE head comes from, and we are going to pop that head on there. So it will be a high comp SR23VET at that point? Not really sure what to call it lol, but that sounds ricer enough, we will go with it. The car is going to get a GTX3576 and I am going to see if it is drift able like that, I hope so. The white missile car is getting the GTX2863 replaced with a GTX3067 I think, but I am not sure. The white car works so well it doesn't really need a bigger turbo, but I want some waste gate noise and more turbo noise, and that should do it. Currently the only turbo noise I get is the compressor surge from not having a BOV, which is cool, but not turbo enough. Oh, and I broke another SR20 tranny this weekend so I got a Maverick-Motorsports.com 350Z adapter kit.

Oh, I didn't document my Japan trip, I will post that in a minute too.

Cool pic of missile car getting worked on. I love this car.

https://scontent-b-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/q71/s720x720/1208913_642037245820558_1071747590_n.jpg

I picked up a set of 4 missile wheels to go with my piles of RPF1.

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Here is that VVL motor chilling in the back of my truck on top of piles of cones. I hope I got the right one lol, I don't know much about these things!
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Car is still going strong!
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This car leaves me mounting tires constantly, and it is about the best tire wear car I have ever had with the Kenda Tires, they last like 30 laps!
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Cool pics from this weekend.
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[aaronlosey]

COPY PASTE FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE TO SAVE ME TIME


I figured I should update this thread a bit.

I am still driving the old Tcox memorial missile, and the car has been a blast. I have been doing tons of events in it, and the thing has been pretty reliable lately. It has been taking some smashes but we just keep on banging it back out and it keeps looking pretty good. I have been running hardly enough boost to even warrant E85 lately, like 1.1 bar, to keep the tires alive as long as possible. I keep forgetting to turn the boost up for fun when I get to the events, all I think about is tandem tandem tandem.

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I went to Japan and spent some time with Travis and Yokoi, and had a blast. It rained the whole time we were at the track, but I got to tandem with everyone with Yokoi's MCR Factory D1 car which was hilarious and sketchy with me behind the wheel, and everyone mistaking me for Yokoi and trying to tandem train with me while I could barely link the track in the rain in a RHD car while my head slammed against the cage from the seat being so damn high. It was still rad and hilarious and I really enjoyed it, I can't wait to go back after some RHD practice and really get to tandem with people.

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I bought an S15 from Yokoi with cool MCR stickers on it, tandemed with Yokoi and Nakamura in it, that was rad. There were tons of other J dudes but I don't know there names, but it was really fun. The car is coming back, and has an HKS turbo and silly cage, knuckles and nardi and seat and defi gauges and tons of rice stuff, basically a finished drift car. So I am excited to have an S15 to drift here in Texas next season. I figured it would be extra hilarious if I Matt Bengston peoples cars in a S15.

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I figured I can't really bring back a stock looking S15 so I loaded it up with a new Dmax kit, grabbed over fenders, a cool stockish spec r or something wing, etc. The car is going to be used as a RHD car for D1 drivers like Yokoi and stuff to come play with as well, so they will be more comfortable when they are here. Stew offered up his JZX as well for Tezuka to drive, so the us nerds can have some fun. Now I am not the biggest Japan is best nerd, I obviously had an LS1 since before nearly anyone in my 240, but I do think that adding the Japanese to our Texas drifting is not only fun, but also fun. So I do it. DON'T ASK ME ABOUT IMPORTING RACE CARS, I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THAT, AND I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT HOW YOU WANT A STREET CAR S15 BLAH BLAH BLAH. THIS CAR WILL NEVER BE A STREET CAR.

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Here is a picture of someone else driving the missile car and bashing it up.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/1272552_178035215716745_1289251579_o.jpg

[GabeS14]

Awesome thread, I was skeptical at first because I didn't know what TC was, but when I saw the car I immediatley subscribed.
That car was an inspiration to many many kids in the scene!

[blockedwizard]

Awesome update!!!!!

[tricky_ab]

Now that's a damn good update!

[mad-ass]

it's awesome that you can beat on a car with out much of it breaking(minus the engine...) and having a blast in the name of your passed friend. keep up the good spirit and update us on the blue car!

[aaronlosey]

Well, I feel infinitely guilty for not finishing the blue Tyler Cox car yet, but the Tyler Cox Memorial Missile has been going strong forever, and I have a bunch of cool updates for this thread, including this year's upcoming Memorial Event where we are celebrating the life of Tyler, and bringing out two awesome D1GP drivers to be a part of the festivities! Yokoi from MCR Factory and Tezuka from Kids Heart are going to come out and play with us over 2 days at Mineral Wells. This next post is going to be an update on the memorial car and an update on the two RHD cars we will be building for them to drive, which will then be added to my personal stable of retarded drift cars : )

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So as a quick recap, the Missile Car is a high compression SR20DET with a GTX2863, running e85 on a ROM tune from RS-Enthalpy. It broke a bunch of trannies over the past year so we tossed a 350z tranny in it with an adapter plate from Maverick Motorsports, and other than that and some fixing some little fender benders ( and ignoring some ) not much has happened to the car. We did have one problem where I miss shifted the car from 3rd to 2nd instead of 4th because I wasn't used to the 350z tranny yet, and that ruined a set of cams and rockers, but other than that the car has been amazing! Derrick put a stock head back on it within a few hours and I had it back at an event the next weekend.

So we are playing musical motors and moving stuff around as we have 3 cars to get ready for the memorial event, https://www.facebook.com/events/491006584343119/ , so the S14 is going to donate it's motor to my old V8 S13, the S14 gets the 13.5 to 1 compression LS1 and dog box, and the S15 gets the 12.5 to 1 compression SR20VET motor. We have 3 weeks to finish all this, so....

So I don't have tons of pictures yet to add to this, but I can start describing everything and update it later with pics.

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Here is a pic of my old S13 and me holding hands with Ueo, the owner of Vertex. I see pics like this, and realize how awesome of a drifting life I have had. How many 240sx dorks get to do the crap I do? So this car has been converted to RHD and will be receiving the 11 to 1 SR20DET with the GTX2863. The car is pretty light weight compared to my other cars, and should be a rocket ship. It has been recently dismantled and had the body and engine bay painted while it was getting turned into a RHD car. It will be sporting W9 front and sides and a stock rear bumper, a 350z tranny, it is obviously caged and had 5+ frame pulls. It has been through more than 120 days of drifting easily, and probably 1000 tires so far.

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I have always liked this picture of it.

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This picture makes me kind of sad : ( This is Stewart Leask ( Johnny5 on here ) taking the car somewhere and cutting it up.

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Here he built some wheel tubs for it because he likes trailer parts on 240s.

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He likes paint on his trailer fenders. Plus, you can see the car is now RHD.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/62360_10202156499851692_1192147695_n.jpg

Those frame rails though!

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Paint booth hard parking.

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It probably won't get this wing.

[aaronlosey]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/v/t1.0-9/q71/s720x720/971572_694625060561776_1455605702_n.jpg?oh=fe61fc9 56fe0700b0f379372a94df183&oe=544A07C1&__gda__=1414347046_29ac25778e25b7533977bb01a5987b3 7

Here is a pic of the motor it is about to get. And that concludes most of what there is to say about this car. Oh, one more pic with some body stuff mocked up, it is getting different bumpers and sides though. I really want the super new origin fenders for it!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t1.0-9/q79/s720x720/1662696_10202091152378046_1086201025_n.jpg

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I like this pic of when I first painted the S13 white. It has been about 6-7 different colors since I got it, each year I typically painted it at the beginning of the season. I would prep it and drop it off at Maaco for the $400 special lol.


Over to the S15 meow. I got the S15 last year when I was in Japan from my friend Yokoi at MCR Factory. He took me out to Mehain and I got to drive his sweet D1 car, and I got to tandem with Nakamura and tons of awesome dudes in it, plus in my S15. This was pretty rad stuff! I brought the car back and it went over to a friend to get prepped and painted. I sold off the S15 drivetrain with the HKS turbo and PFC and stuff to a Mikey from Mayday Garage for his sweet S14, and started getting stuff to finish my wild super high comp SR20VET setup. I have been all about high compression now that e85 is a thing, and this motor is going to be kind of an end all be all SR build for me. I don't care about stroker stuff, and I can drive a car regardless of the power band, so I picked up a GTX3582 for it and tons of parts. After some consideration though, we are putting a GTX3071 on it, and the GTX3582 is going on Tyler's blue S14 again. 12.5 to 1 pistons were chosen, all the hall sensor and vvl stuff is sourced out of Australia and shipped. The bottom half of the long block is finished and the top half has been finished for probably a year. We just need to choose a head gasket and combine them.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t1.0-9/1902892_762177797139835_6217275769165723990_n.jpg

I got these fenders as a gift from Yoshi at MCR Factory, so I had to include them on the car. I wanted fun wheels as not everyone shares my enthusiasm for RPF1, so I got a pile of CR Kai and they are being sent off to the powder coater so they match. A couple are knock offs, but there are at least 5 real ones in there lol!

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S15 wheel and cluster, I thought it was a cute pic of the inside.

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Picture of the pistons for the VVL motor! LOL.

So that concludes most of what I have to show on that car that I have pictures of, I will go take some and post them. The concept of the S15 is a full interior car that is comfy to sit in, with power roll up windows like all my drift cars, and full door panels. With the GTX3071 the motor will hopefully make a bit over 500 whp and spin to 9000, and if I decide at the last second to put the GTX3582 back on, it will make probably 650 whp. I really don't need that much, I am super happy with my S14 at 14 psi making 300 hp and making tires last all day. But what the heck, the car has a boost controller and I can turn it down.




A quick blurp about the S14 setup. My LS1 went into my S13 back in 2007 and was one of the super early LS cars. It sounded rad and spun around 7500 rpm at first, and we turned it down a tad to 7200 and lasted about 6 years like that like a champ. It made about 470 whp, and while the car was sometimes a basket case from lack of maintenance, the motor never blew up. It got refreshened last year, and went from 11 to 1 to 13.5 to 1. It will be e85, it will spin to the same RPM, and the T5 based Gforce dog box with return, which is pretty much the best part of the whole thing. I love the dog box. <3. Other than that, the motor was basically just refreshed and left alone. It will probably make a bit over 500 whp this time, which is more than enough for me. The motor is going into this S14 basically because the hand made headers ( made by Derrick ) fit a LHD car, and we don't have time to redo everything for RHD, and since the SR20 will just pop into the RHD cars, that makes more sense at the moment.

[aaronlosey]

I get too busy to drive at the events sometimes as I host them, but I try to drive as much as I can, since it is the only reason I host them lol. Here is helmet footage from the inside of the Tyler Cox Memorial Missile : ) We have a fantastic group of fun drifters down here in Texas, they are great to tandem with!

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[aaronlosey]

All this is getting built up and will be at Round 6 of the Lone Star Drift Series this year in August, on the 16-17. It is a two day event where we are bringing out Yokoi and Tezuka to drive with our guys for fun : )

Go to the link below to see the event page!

https://www.facebook.com/events/491006584343119/

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t1.0-9/10451179_708586902535834_6410283724022088927_n.jpg

[tricky_ab]

Too many rad things happening at the same time...

[Reece]

This is my favorite thread on here. Easily.

[Slippin'eight-nine]

I was literally just thinking about this thread the other day! Great updates!

[aaronlosey]

So a fun little update. And also a public service announcement lol. I was using 1200cc five o injectors in multiple cars, along with some friend's cars since they fit the stock fuel rail and were supposed to be good for E85. Anyways, out of a total of about 16 injectors, I think we had 5 go bad in less than a year. They were burning out and just going dead on different cars, basically in the same manner. I would highly suggest staying away from these little dudes. So anyways, we are going to try out some Bosch 1200s and see how those do, they will require a new fuel rail and stuff, but hopefully they don't die randomly. The others were so bad we carried spares.

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My S15 came from MCR Factory in Japan, and has a cool sticker to prove it lol. Neat little novelty.

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We put some new BC Racing coil overs on the car. It came with some nice HKS ones I think, but they were a bit older at this point, so I just figured I would replace them and avoid dealing with coil overs of an unknown age. Plus I deal with BC quite often because I am friends with Chelsea Denofa and Cody Slack, so I like to send them business : )

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The car used to be white, but like most stuff in Japan had been exposed to a lot of things that wanted to rust it. So we did some rust repair in the fenders, the rocker panels, and painted everything. It seems a little excessive now to go ahead and paint the inside of a drift cars truck lid, along with all kinds of other stuff, but oh well, the car is getting treated well. It is never going to see any street duty, or anything but track time and the inside of a trailer.

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The valve cover for the S15 is about to go get powder coated a sweet candy grape purple. Hope it turns out cute : )

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The Tyler Cox Memorial Missile Car is about to take a turn. I really always wanted to keep the car SR20, as I love SRs a lot. As someone that went LS1 way back in 2007, and really focused on the headers to make it sound cool, I literally hate most LS1 swaps with a passion. I think they sound awful, make drivers really lazy, and don't really fit the soul of drifting or a lot of the cars they are put into. But saying that, they are incredibly reliable when done right, simple, and for someone like me that is bad at maintaining his drift car, a god send. Plus, they are like cheater mode with a dog box. So yeah, I have a dog box for it too. Anyways, first things first is to play musical motors between 3 cars so we can get all 3 of them running before the big YOKOI TEZUKA event in August!

Out comes my rad little high comp SR with the tiny GTX turbo.

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Then wheel it over to the old S13.

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Pop the turbo off to think about what to do about the turbo setup. Do we go bigger or just keep on keeping on?

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Stab motor in. Local drifters have been showing up in force to help with this event, I am super excited that they are down to help and get this event going!

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Motor is in. All done, lets go drift.

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This is a fresh chassis, why are their tire cords on the axles already lol.

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So that was all last night. We have a lot of days and nights ahead of us! Plus, I still have to market the crap out of the upcoming event where we bring out two rad Japanese D1GP drivers out to a grass roots event to play with us!

Come check out the Facebook event page for more info on that!

https://www.facebook.com/events/491006584343119

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[struka]

I like seeing updates on this.

Tyler's car got totaled at the same D1 event where Tony used my car and spun out hitting the same wall crushing my quarter in. We had to pull it and stick overs on it. That was one rainy event... but fun. I just remember Tyler coming back with more damage and Sammy as well. I am pretty sure Sammy had his gas tank strapped in because there was nothing there.

Anyways, hopefully one day I can come out and play with you guys after hearing all of your stories in Atl.

[aaronlosey]

I like seeing updates on this.

Tyler's car got totaled at the same D1 event where Tony used my car and spun out hitting the same wall crushing my quarter in. We had to pull it and stick overs on it. That was one rainy event... but fun. I just remember Tyler coming back with more damage and Sammy as well. I am pretty sure Sammy had his gas tank strapped in because there was nothing there.

Anyways, hopefully one day I can come out and play with you guys after hearing all of your stories in Atl.

This upcoming event would be the one to come and play at! It is going to be one hell of an event, people coming from coast to coast! I am super excited to see so many drivers from around the country showing up to play with us, and all because I am bribing them with Yokoi and Tezuka : ) !!!!

[aaronlosey]

So as a quick refresher, we have to get 3 cars fully functional from basically shell status in just 3 weeks. We are playing musical motors with a couple, as rebuilding my hand made LS1 headers so the motor will fit into a RHD chassis is a bit more work than we have time to add to the project. So we are pulling the Tyler Cox Memorial Missile SR20 out of the white S14 and sticking it in my old competition S13 that had its LS1 from way back in 2007. And we are putting the LS1 from that car ( which hasn't been in it in a couple years, it has just been chilling on the ground as I didn't want to use it so I could maximize tire wear to drive more at events and have fun instead of burning off tires ) into the white S14. Sounds convoluted but it makes sense in our crazy heads. And the S15 is getting the new SR20VET that we have been slowly building and gathering parts for since 2012 it seems.

I really didn't want to put an LS1 into the missile car ( white S14 ) because it was never Tyler's style. He loved imports imports imports and hated V8 stuff. His SR20 made more HP than my built LS1 all the way back in 2007, it was pretty hilarious. He had the budget to keep a crazy SR20 going before any of us really knew how to, and he loved it. But alas, his real memorial car will still have the SR20, and this S14 will get the V8. I figure he would love to see me tandem like a monster in his old missile car, it would make him laugh, and the V8 in the missile car wouldn't really bother him since it wasn't his fancy car. Plus, he would dig the dog box, so V8 dog box it is. It was updated with basically new bearings and 13.5 to 1 pistons, and will be running E85 this time around. Why? I don't know, I'm retarded, thats why. This stupid car is going to kill tires so fast it is stupid, and hopefully it doesn't encourage our local proam drivers to build faster cars, I don't want that. But whatever, it will be LOL.

The motor was luckily refreshed as well as the dog box and has just been hanging out, so it was simple for Derrick to bolt everything back together and slide it over to the S14. It is going in as I type this.

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Because we are doing 9 things at once, let me jump over to something else we were doing today.

Cutting stuff up. The brake mount was made for LHD, wouldn't really think about that when swapping to RHD, but it has to be done lol. Little stuff just keeps popping up lol.

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RHD dash without cracks cut up and made to fit the cage. Went in and out 20 times while we nibbled to our final cuts. That is Shaun, one of our local drifters and a great friend : )

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Interior cleaned up and painted.

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Never ending spray painting of things.

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While Shaun was working on that stuff, Derrick was in the engine room building the SR20VET. Check out those pistons poking over the block!

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A local gentleman, Bill Hickerson, is powder coating a bunch of stuff to help out. Here is a spare valve cover I have he was running as a test. Looks pretty rad. VVL one is getting done tonight, plus he has piles of wheels to do.

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These wheels looked like garbage they were so gross, but after getting striped they are about to head to the oven.

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Fielding had some gold XXR which are getting turned white, they look really interesting raw as well. I am digging the raw look.

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The S15 received a slight bit of rice as well : ) Thank you DMAX and Yokoi : )

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[Royal_T]

Yes Aaron love it all.. Can't wait to see them at the event..

[aaronlosey]

Is your car going to be running : )?

[Royal_T]

Is your car going to be running : )?


haha talk to Stew about that one.. lol It might be ready (meaning started) the week of the event.

[status_ryan]

Legendary thread. So much motivation has found its way into me. Haha. Keep up the amazing work. And RIP Tyler Cox.

[Bosas]

this is awesome man. so much stuff to take in. subscribed!

[aaronlosey]

The photographer that took this found me the other day and supplied me with some high res versions of it, that is exciting. I plan to make some posters out of them. This is Tyler's car back in 2009, it was a local level car that looked amazing, had almost 500 whp out of a fairly reliable SR20 that he beat the piss out of, and was a inspirational looking. Especially as this was 5 years ago, and still looks better than pretty much every other drift car in the USA.

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I am making stickers for the memorial event coming up, if you want one, come hit me up for one at the event for free : )

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I thought modifying our normal logo into this was super cute.

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All three of the cars are currently being wired. All of them will be running the same ecu, EMU, from ECU Masters. I am excited to see what these little things can do. Hopefully having all the cars on one standard ecu is going to simplify things in the end. They do cool stuff like blue tooth sync to a tablet for gauges and stuff, I am excited to see how that stuff works out.

https://scontent-b-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t1.0-9/10405544_817147871642827_1531642389090758686_n.jpg

The ECU have built in 4 bar map sensors, flex fuel setups, and all kinds of cool stuff since these cars are all going to run E85.

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Rice is very important to me, otherwise I wouldn't be building an S15 to slide into people in parking lots. Here is the VVL valve cover after powder coating, it is crazy looking in the sunlight.

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The V8 is in the Memorial Missile and almost running. Derrick had to modify a few things like the steering shaft to not hit the headers.

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Bzzzzzppp

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Mid mount radiator on the V8 car.

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Mid mount intercooler on the SR car.

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We got poster made for Lone Star Bash the other day.

http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/141380035/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/Home-banner-02.jpg

[aaronlosey]

Lets see if I can get this thing to a new page since I am about to add a ton of pictures lol.

[aaronlosey]

One more try lol.

[aaronlosey]

Ok, anyways, a quick update. We are getting 3 cars ready for this years Tyler Cox Memorial event, we are bringing out 2 D1GP drivers to play with us all the way from Japan. We are finishing 2 RHD cars for them, and the Tyler Cox Memorial Missile all over again. Here is a link to the Facebook page if you would like to come out and experience the drift event, it is going to be rad!

https://www.facebook.com/events/491006584343119/

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Here is a sweet picture of Tyler driving D1GP USA with us!

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Here is me getting into an option video with my old V8 car.

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NOW ON TO UPDATES!

[aaronlosey]

We are going to run identical ECU in all 3 cars. We needed something cost effective, something that could run all 3 cars effectively, could be used with a 4 bar map sensor, could run flex fuel, had knock sensors, was a full stand alone, and on and on. We looked around for awhile and we ended up going with a company called ECU Master. Their USA distributor is located super close, and told us he could help us do any sensor calibration and help us get the cars started up. These ECU are pretty rad, I think only 1200 with the internal 4 bar map sensor and wide band included, plus connectors. This is a pretty rad deal and helped keep the cost of the project down. As I was buying multiple and had a cool cause they cut me a hell of a deal, so that really helped too!

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Here is their Facebook page if you are curious about them.

https://www.facebook.com/ECUMasterUSA

Here is True building the wiring harnesses for all 3 cars. He used the stock harnesses, and cut out everything that wasn't needed, then added in everything extra like flex fuel sensors and stuff. Cool little things happened as well like my stock tach now works perfectly with the V8 swap which it never did with the stock ECU, and stuff like that. We control the accusump directly off the ECU as well, which is sweet. Before I was controlling it off my piece of shit ICQ3 Racepack dash, and that thing sucked.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/10559735_815527288471552_9012676628268319950_n.jpg

The cars all look perpetually half done lol. Thank god they all had cages and stuff already, as just thing amount of work is over whelming!

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The SR20VET is finally together! We ended up getting an SR20DET head gasket to work from Cometic as the other ones were super back ordered for the SR20VET stuff.

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Here is the Taarks actuator relocation kit.

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The Taarks hall sensor put into the front of the motor.

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Oil stuff everywhere. I really like simplicity so all these oil lines everywhere bug me. In retrospect we should have carved out the fire wall lol.

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Ugly water lines, didn't do much with them. Intake manifold will shield our eyes from them.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/t1.0-9/10590529_819070904783857_4936029350563842362_n.jpg

[aaronlosey]

Maverick Motorsports adapter plate being bolted on.

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Here is a crazy little mini twin clutch setup for the SR20VET car from Spec. I called them up and told them how much power we were going to make, and told them to just go ahead and choose whatever for me. They sent this.

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I was going back and forth on turbo choices, and after a bunch of deliberation between GTX3582 and 30R stuff, I chose the GTX3076 from Garrett. I don't care about ultimate power, but these things can probably make 600 hp on this motor, or 600 whp, and both of those numbers seem really high, so there we go. I am pretty sure I could have drifted the 35R just fine, but I didn't even really want over 500 whp so the 30R is going to be great. I just don't want it to choke out toooooo terribly badly before 9000, which I am sure it still will, but whatever.

https://scontent-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t1.0-9/1621836_820934967930784_5686369385872663149_n.jpg

Local Fort Worth powder coater is hooking it up for drifters! I have been powder coating everything!!!! Between 3 of us, we powder coated 26 wheels or so I think with him!

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Fast intake manifold got painted and put on the V8. It is the super duper old 78mm setup, which I have had for a decade now. Never bothered to replace it, motor always made more than enough power lol.

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VVL motor is stabbed into the S15 finally. Looks rad.

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We needed some spare aluminum for the intake manifold to get built, and I have my old Mac Pro case, sooooo....

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Derrick built me the coolest intake manifold ever out of scrap parts!

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And the finished product : )

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/10537817_823819564308991_5045692412348773845_n.jpg

[aaronlosey]

It has been getting to be total crunch time over here, and a mess. We had a ton of volunteers come over and help us try and finish the cars for a tuning session with Martin from RS-Enthalpy.

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Even the 2JZ car got in on the action a bit.

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V8 car was the only one that was able to be tuned yet, all the others are still getting finished. The S13 has started though. The S15 will hopefully be started tonight!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t1.0-9/10565043_822538217770459_1070474513713460171_n.jpg

This is interesting. These are two dyno sheets overlaid from the same dyno, and the same motor, 2 years apart. The red line is the old tired setup after 6 years of drifting. Then the new one is after the addition of 3 points of compression with E85, the blue line. There is a huge temp difference in the room, and other variables, but the lines are identical lol. No real gains on the screen, who cares though, the car always made more than enough power : ) The car SOUNDS UNREAL.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/t1.0-9/p180x540/10460476_822575637766717_2281565385856318822_n.jpg



CLICK HERE TO HERE IT SCREAM AND SHOOT PURPLE FIRE : )

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=823958720961742&l=4856836365536750774

[tricky_ab]

HAHA Was that metal from a desktop G5 DP Mac?! That was my first "Real" Mac many moons ago!

[OBEEWON]

Oh man that S15. So good.

[aaronlosey]

Well the event is over. We successfully got 3 cars running. We brought over Yokoi and Tezuka. They shot machine guns, went to Bass Pro Shop, went fishing, got drunk every single night, drifted with us, and the event was amazing. We sprinkled some more of Tyler's ashes. We hugged, we cried, we had an amazing time. Durdan hit people again. I drove a RHD car and it was really fun.

If anyone remembers this old thing...

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4050/4543231991_a6bfdd5a65.jpg

It is now this thing. 14 psi on a 3071, high comp SR, E85, a simple 350 whp. FUN AS FUCK. Car can't be even 2300 lbs at this point, mostly because it is missing a lot of integral metal that it should have to survive a wreck lol.

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The car is amazing and super fun, it is my new go to car. The new E85 V8 dog box car is put aside and I am driving this. I strapped a vial of Tyler to the cage so I don't feel like I am cheating on the missile car, and I am rocking this thing. It is fun and a bit challenging to shift for me, and to use the e brake since it is RHD, but I am getting used to it fast. The 350Z tranny keeps getting put into 5th after 4th instead of 3rd, but I will get better. It happened countless times lol.

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Car still gets rad tire wear. Smoke fucking fills it up though : / I don't like smoke.

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Here is Yokoi piloting it.

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These cars are so much fucking fun. This was from the memorial. It was very emotional. Stew's hand is dumping ashes.

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Group hug with the family.

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Car is so easy to drive other than RHD at the moment, and FAST. Should have raised it years ago lol.

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Lots of cool cars came : )

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The drivers and spectators that come are what make the event amazing though! Plus, we had D1 dudes to rally everyone to get together on one very special date!

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The S15 ran for part of the day, but had some issues and we put it away because the motor is too expensive for me to fuck with and break at the track, and the S13 was running so well.

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The Japanese dudes loved it and want to come back again, it is like a vacation for them where they are treated awesome and get to drift for fun with people that think they are the bees knees.

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I entered the comp in the newly built RHD S13 because I thought it would be humorous and fun, and it was a blast. The car needs some setup and a bit of attention and fried something in the rear end, but it is going to be awesome. Hell, it already is awesome. We hugged in the winners circle.

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We got the Essence crew all the way out to Mineral Wells to floss lol.

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And because this post wouldn't be complete unless I bought something amusing, I got another M3.

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[tricky_ab]

Awesome update! That event looked like a crazy good time!

[aaronlosey]

Pew pew pew, shots fired.

114456199

[RalliartRsX]

Most of the pictures are not working :(

[drifter92]

fix the pictures!!!!

[jerry_beans]

:(:( aaron none of the pics work in the beginning.