Life and Times of Garagelu: S15 Build in the Dirty South

[Nicelyphe]

Suscribed, that thing looks amazing, keep up the good work.

[tricky_ab]

I knew I had seen your car over on the chronicles blog...It's looking great!

[garagelu]

So now I finally have time after Import Alliance to post some content up. You can plan things all you want but it always seems like we are wrapping things up at the last minute before the big day. So I found out the hard way that fitting a FMIC on an S15 is far harder than S13 and S14. I have installed several intercoolers on S13 and S14 and never had to trim the bumper.

I have about 8 hrs of labor in this bumper. The last thing I would have wanted was a huge gap between the bumper and the intercooler so I basically trimmed, install bumper, trim some more, install bumper, oh it still doesn't fit, trim some more, install bumper until it fit perfect. Here is the end result.



This isn't even close to what I trimmed off. By the end, I was covered in plastic dust. I even broke my dremel...from overuse I guess.


When I was fitting the front bumper for the intercooler core, I didn't have the piping installed so I after the fact, I found out I needed to trim some more. FML.



As you can see from this picture, there is a fog light bracket you have to cut away.


Here is the finished product.


There is a huge hole that the owner in Japan cut for a FMIC and its hideous so I cut out a piece of aluminum to cover the battery try. Eventrually I'll powdercoat it black.


Mounted my Tial BOV in the bumper. This is where I mounted my BOV on my S14 so decided to do it the same way on this car. Main reason is to get it out of the engine bay. I think the bay looks cleaner without a BOV sticking out of the piping.


Here is my modified Greddy intake pipe mounted. Can't wait to go MAP so I can get rid of that MAF.


Engine bay shot. Still have lots of work to do.

[garagelu]

The weather was amazing in Atlanta this weekend so took the S15 out for a spin since it's been about 3 months since I drove it last.





My daily beater in the background.

[2stepGoesPowPow]

gorgeous.... i never seen someone mount a bov outside the bay before, its probably a lot louder for people outside.

[Om1kron]

Originally Posted by 2stepGoesPowPow

gorgeous.... i never seen someone mount a bov outside the bay before, its probably a lot louder for people outside.

A lot of drag honda builds I've seen put it down there, since I daily my car I don't want anything that could introduce outside elements into my intercooler piping to get sucked into the engine. So it's safer in the bay, I think I may weld a bung on my mid mount cooler for the bov so it kind of sits in limbo out of the way but also out of the bay.

I hear you on trimming the oem bumper though to fit over the intercooler. I have a jdm kouki bumper as a spare in case something happens to the aero and it needs a good 2-3 inches chopped off of it.

Are you ever going to go aftermarket on the body of the car or just keep it oem spec?

[garagelu]

Originally Posted by Om1kron

A lot of drag honda builds I've seen put it down there, since I daily my car I don't want anything that could introduce outside elements into my intercooler piping to get sucked into the engine. So it's safer in the bay, I think I may weld a bung on my mid mount cooler for the bov so it kind of sits in limbo out of the way but also out of the bay.

I hear you on trimming the oem bumper though to fit over the intercooler. I have a jdm kouki bumper as a spare in case something happens to the aero and it needs a good 2-3 inches chopped off of it.

Are you ever going to go aftermarket on the body of the car or just keep it oem spec?

Yea but anytime the bov is open it "should" be blowing out. I know there is probably that split second when you open the throttle that it could suck something in but I'm not too worried about it. I definitely agree that it is safer in the bay. There were times when I drove my s14 in the rain and I was pretty scared about water entering the bov.

Why did they design jdm aero differently? I was so frustrated that day. I didn't want to take too much off so I just trimmed little by little till it fit. The last thing I would have wanted was a 2 inch gap. I had a usdm bumper with lip on my s14 with no trimming and still had at least an inch between the bumper and the intercooler. Same on usdm s13 iirc.

It is something I have considered but I am such a purist when it comes to my cars. I like oem aero with aggressive wheels. If I even did aero, it would be either vertex lang, ridge, or c-west. Lang being my first choice. I'd love to do something like rocket bunny or tra kyoto but those kits are so far from my style.

Right now my main focus is power and the engine bay. This car is so slow it's not even funny.

[garagelu]

I have been wondering what this sticker reads ever since I bought my car. Can someone translate?

[Om1kron]

looks like the yearly inspection sticker due to it being stacked. and yeah normally jdm cars have different crash standards than their us counterparts so their bumpers are normally shorter and don't have huge foam padding under them, etc, etc.

[angel mkiv]

beautiful s15!love it!clean and simple with baller parts!

[CamryOnBronze]

Awesome job on the bumper, Kev. My Dremel took a dump too- my Harbor Freight angle grinder has actually held up better to all of the hours of use, lol.

[97nismo]

looks very nice....i saw your car at ia.......but didnt see you

[garagelu]

Originally Posted by 97nismo

looks very nice....i saw your car at ia.......but didnt see you

You have my number...no excuses, lol.

[garagelu]

I finally got my brand new nismo floor mats and brand new S15 floor mats in from Japan today. These are almost impossible to find!







Also I got some more goodies in this week. I can't wait to start my engine build. I just bought a HKS exhaust manifold that I hope works out. I'm going to start buying parts and then start the engine build after summer Import Alliance meet.

1) Flex-a-lite fan with HKS fan controller-Took me a while to find the HKS fan controller. I bought it used for 50 bucks so hopefully nothing is wrong with it.

2) Works bell hub and quick release-I really want the Nardi deep 350 but it has red stitching and will not match my blue interior.

3) HKS boost gauge-This will go in the place of my stock boost gauge on the a pillar. OEM boost gauge only goes up to 1 bar and I plan on boosting more than that on my setup.



OMG, you guys have no idea how happy I am to have this part. The FMIC kit I have on my car is a Greddy R-spec S13 kit that I kept after parting out a car. I cut and modified majority of the piping and the only pipe that didn't turn out the way I wanted was the upper cold pipe. If you look at the picture of my engine bay that I posted earlier, you can see how the pipe goes into the throttle body at an awkward angle.

Last week I found this Greddy S14 pipe on zilvia and snatched it up immediately. All I need to do is some sanding and filling where the BOV pipe was, just like I did on my Greddy intake.



Got my Mezerna finishing polish today from autogeek. Every 50 dollars you spend, you get a choice of some free samples. I need to do a finishing polish on my mom's CRV that she recently bought so I bought this after hearing good things about it. I'll be using it out on my S15 because I have some very light swirls I want to get rid of.



And then finally, my nismo bushings that I bought. I know I don't really need these considering my car only has 22,000 Km but I figured these are hard to find so went ahead and picked them up. I love seeing old school nismo logos! So nostalgic!

[tricky_ab]

Finding those new floor mats is straight dedication... I love it!

[97nismo]

what are the holes on the nismo mats??

[leung]

Originally Posted by 97nismo

what are the holes on the nismo mats??

Clips to keep them from moving around

[CamryOnBronze]

Dang, so much cool in one post...

[LeythDC5]

Beautiful car man, I just moved to Atlanta about a year ago. I hope I'm lucky enough to see the car on the road one day.

[EDacIouSX]

Hey man, nice car. good to see people still give a damn about what they own on zilvia! Keep up the great work/progress and maybe one day I'll join the us s15 club too!

[garagelu]

Wow, Formula D Atlanta weekend was so tiring but so amazing at the same time.

Obviously my favorite car there...



Gotta eat good!!!



It was mind-blowing hearing Daigo's drift monster.



So sad it's over



Amazing find during formula D weekend. I was originally planning on buying the garage defend carbon fiber knockoff but considering this arc piece was more than half the price, titanium, and super hard to find, I went ahead and picked this up.

[bc.]

If you would have started this build two years ago, HKS USA wouldn't have needed to leave.

[Om1kron]

Originally Posted by garagelu

I feel so bad how that thing looks in my car right now, definitely needs a polish and some cooler mounting hardware.

[CamryOnBronze]

So cool man! Nice score.

[turbo2nr]

awesome build man keep it up!

[xoxide]

Saw your car in the parking lot at FD last weekend.... It is one of the nicest cars ive even seen. Perfectly executed! Im jealous!

[Pinggg]

Wow man! The car is beautiful!

[Okinawandrifter87]

Originally Posted by xoxide

Saw your car in the parking lot at FD last weekend.... It is one of the nicest cars ive even seen. Perfectly executed! Im jealous!

I def agree.. walked by it and I looked at my wife and said the guy that owns this car is the one that sold me all my really cool shirts including that last Nissan shirt we got in the mail. She loved your car as well. Keep up the great work, looks even better in person than it already does on here!

[garagelu]

I got my new project in today. Many of you may have seen these calipers on the for sale forums recently. The seller wouldn't ship but luckily I had a friend that lives 15 minutes away from him. I was going back and forth debating on whether to buy these or not because the rotors were not included. I called a few project mu distributors and all of them quoted me over 2000 dollars just for two rotors. I was pretty discouraged at that point but after doing some research I found out that evo X rotors are almost identical in size. Considering you can get one piece evo X rotors for around 300-400 dollars and two piece rotors for around 700-800 dollars, I decided to pull the trigger.

I immediately called up my buddy that has a evo X and asked him if I could borrow his stock rotors since I know he upgraded to Girodisc two piece at one time. So here I am today, with project mu rotors, brackets that apparently were modified to fit Ken Gushi's RSR TC, and evo X rotors. Im pretty confident I can make this all work. I still remember grinding away at a block of aluminum to make brackets for my sti brembo back in the day when evo and sti brake swaps were uncommon.

This weekend I will see if I can make the bracket work. If not, I'll have my local machine shop make one for me.



When I received the calipers there were a lot of scratches in the clear. I took my buffer with some Menzerna polish and now they look super wet. I've always dreamed of owning a project mu or endless BBK so this is one project I am extremely excited about!!!

[VAs13]

fuck, why did i sell my s15. car is gorgeous man