First Ever Visit to Midori Seibi (and dropping into Do-Luck)

So the day after a freak snowstorm hit Tokyo/Yokohama, I found myself using my car as a snowplow...most of the roads were clear, but some side streets (like the street I live on) still had snow in the middle of the road, so I drove slowly, praying that Kabe-san at Rapt did a good job on painting my front lip spoiler...

Anyway, the UK GTROC guys are in town, and since Midori Seibi is only a few kilometers where I live, I drove out there to meet them.  I arrived a few minutes before they did, so took the opportunity to take a few pictures.

When the guys arrived, they checked out the requisite Midori demo cars - both the R35 and R34 were there. But I started to chat with the senior person there (both Uchinaga-san and his wife were not there), who turned out to be their son! AND, it turns out he is a quite a fan of the R33 GT-R... in fact, he owns one and gets asked all the time about why R33 vs the others as he's well known in the industry. He knows more than me, and immediately pointed that the criticism about the longer wheelbase of the R33 was nonsense (the R35 is longer than any of them, and its performance is superlative) and the sad fact that when the R34 was introduced, these new and "better" cars apparently were not successful in the N1 series races and the teams had to revert back to the faster R33s. He was also kind enough to show me a couple of unique one-of-a-kind mods he did to his car:

1) Replacing two of the three gauges in the center 3 gauge (Nismo) cluster with modern (i.e. digital) replacements! Uchinaga-san told me that he did this himself in his spare time.  What do people think? Note he kept the front torque meter but replaced the oil and boost gauge with two temp gauges. His goal was that, if you knew nothing about R33 GT-Rs, you would believe this was stock equipment. I have to agree, it is very slick...

2) He also did the same to the main instrument panel (I apologize for the blurred picture, I was so excited) where he replaced the stock oil pressure gauge with a modern Trust one in white.

He also was kind enough to check out my car, and give me a few pointers, which I will have to work on in my spare time.  Just to save you the suspense, he recommended one way to freshen up the engine bay (such a pretty engine, those faded XXXXX really detract from the clean look), and also taught me a bit about how to properly ground the car.

So two new projects just by visiting Midori Seibi! Awesome!

Also, I am pleased to report that Midori Seibi continues to work on a couple of new parts for our second generation GT-Rs.  Not sure when they will be released, but he said to check GT-R Magazine for details.

As Do-Luck is on the way home, after the GTROC guys and I parted company, I stopped by Do-Luck to just say hello to Ito-san - which of course turned into a couple hours discussion about various car stuff. Turns out he too is working on some new stuff for the second generation GT-Rs, so we will have to wait to see what develops. Ito-san also gave me some suggestions on what I should do next on my car - both in the handling and the engine department.

So stay tuned, this will keep me busy this year...