Happy New Year! Calendars, a Japanese Tradition!

Friends, I hope that 2021 is a much better year for all of us than 2020, both collectively and individually.

So at the moment I am working on something on my car, but not quite ready to post yet. But soon!

Meanwhile, I want to share a Japanese tradition... at the end of the year, companies send important customers and clients their next year corporate calendar.  These calendars are usually made to be as non-offensive as possible, with landscape sceneries and oil paintings as a common motif.  Hence, usually the ones I get from my insurance companies and banks are opened and then quietly put in a corner/trash... useful, but boring, I guess.

Some companies, however, choose to be a bit more interesting. It used to be Japan Airlines, for example, would pick 12 gorgeous flight attendants from among the ranks of their global staff, and have one (always female) pose in front of some nice scenery. Miss January, Miss June, etc.  It has likely been toned down a bit but I see that JAL still maintains some of that tradition. Although yes the ones with their different airplanes are cool too. I guess.

Anyway, as you can tell I have never been one for calendars, especially the ones from banks and insurance companies.  Until now, when I got a follow up package from Hannah at Trust Kikaku (on behalf of the mysterious M) which included TWO CAR-THEMED 2021 Calendars! 

Here is the first one - from Fujitsubo, the famed exhaust manufacturer. Blake Jones from Speedhunters did a nice write up a couple years ago of what these guys are all about.  Indeed, the first exhaust I had my car (before it served as the R33 jig for the Tomei Expreme Ti titanium exhaust) was a Fujitsubo Super Legalis R, upon recommendations from the guys at Nissan Prince Tokyo Motorsports when they were still located in Shinagawa.  It was steel and heavy, but it sure sounded mature compared to the race car loud Tomei!

The second calendar came in this cardboard tube.  This being Japan of course:

Yep, it has perforations in two places so you don't have to use a knife or scissors to open the tube. No accidents!

WOW, simply WOW! I heard that these are really hard to get, so I am super happy with this. Beats nature scenes and fine art, anytime! (Let's not talk about the flight attendants...:). Everyone knows HKS, but just in case, here is Dino's latest post on what HKS is up to.

The Fujitsubo calendar also came with a plastic clip on mount, so I immediately put that on the wall above the wall in my office:

Uh yeah, all Nissan Skyline stuff... on the other hand when taking Zoom/Teams calls for work, always good to have a Nissan background!

As for the HKS calendar, looking for a good home now. Maybe the garage, or maybe a bedroom. 

Again, thanks to M and Hannah for these very nice gifts! I feel very lucky and hope you both have a great 2021!!

First Post for 2015: Sound Clip of the Blitz E-ESC

First, Happy New Year Everyone! 2015 will be a good year for mods, I have lots planned so whether I have the time to do stuff will be the main problem! 

Second, I had gotten some requests for a video/sound clip of the Blitz E-ESC electronic exhaust valve in action.  Unfortunately it may be a bit hard to tell the difference due to the limited sound recording capabilities of my iPhone, but I think you can somewhat tell the difference. Incidentally, it seems MUCH more quiet from INSIDE the car, but that's probably because one gets used to the drone of the Tomei exhaust at engine speeds above 1200 (so basically all the time) and then all of a sudden when the car is at a light and the revs drop to 1000... silence (ok so it's relative but heck the wife was surprised...)

You will see from the video that what Ninomiya-san (who installed the E-ESC) told me is correct - basically there is no difference in sound from about 20% open all the way to 100%. There is a drastic difference however once the valve closes to 15% or less... here in the video you can hear, when the valve is open at only 5%, the engine sounds that remain at idle, and additionally you can also see that the exhaust smoke (it was really cold outside when I shot the video) diminishes as well.

Enjoy!

Wiring up the DIY Rear Diffuser LED

Continuing from my last diffuser post - the final step in the BNR34 rear diffuser project was to wire up the LED. So this is how I did it:

The LED unit itself has 3 leads coming out of it, labeled“+”, “-“ and “brake.”  The unit was described as having a“flashing brake lamp” a la F1 style, and my 12 volt tester confirmed this was the case.

In any case, the first step was to ensure that, should I have to remove the diffuser in the future, I would be able to disconnect the leads without having to cut any wires. So, I found and ordered 3 lead to 3 lead connectors, which I then soldered onto the ends of the wires coming out of the LED, as well as to 3 wires leading into the body of the car.

It ended up looking like this:

See the white connectors

Next, with the wires being exposed to the elements, I wrapped electrical tape around the leads, and also used some protective heat shrink tubing for the LED leads going all the way into the body.  There is a rubber grommet (which has other wires going through it too - most notably the back-up camera leads) covering a hole just above the license plate frame, so I passed the wiring and the heat shrink through this.

I then removed the rear seats, ran the wiring alongside other wiring, zip-tying strategically, and then routed the wire to underneath the center console.  I soldered on some connectors (one side the wires from the trunk, the other on the wire leads going to the switch), to allow for complete removal of the center console when necessary, and then ran the connecting wiring through the pre-existing hole that I had drilled for the ATTESA controller that never worked right for me. I made sure I used connectors, so if I ever need to remove the console, I don't have to cut any of these wires.

On the trunk side, because the wiring into the car ran on the left side, I opened up the rear left side light cover to access the wiring there.  I then cut two short pieces of wire, and soldered the ends of both to a two lead connector.  On the other end, I soldered one wire onto the lead for the running lamps (there was already two wires soldered together on the factory harness for the two left rear lights, so I simply soldered on top of that, rewrapping in electrical tape), and then used a tap for the other wire, which I connected to the brake light wire.  This two lead connector was then attached to the two lead connector for the two wires coming BACK from the main cabin. So now I had one long connection going from the bulbs to the center console. I used clips throughout, in case in the future I want to remove part of the circuit but keep other parts, with no cutting required.

For the lead coming from the LED unit, I soldered a connector to the ground wire and bolted it to the body. The remaining two wires - one being the positive lead for the running lamps and the other for the brakes - I ended up also soldering leads for connectors, to be mated to the appropriate connector for the wires leading to the main cabin area. So this was the other long connection, going from the LED to the center console.

So, I now had a complete (fairly long) circuit, broken only by a lack of a switch connecting the two leads coming INTO the cabin from the LED unit itself, and the two lead going OUT into the cabin to be wired into the brake light circuit.   Initially I had envisioned have one switch handling the ground wire only and serving as a master on/off switch, but then realized that I wanted independent control of the braking and the running lamp circuits, as the flashing red lamp clearly violates Japan’s shaken (road-worthiness) laws.Thus I ended up sending 4 wires into the cabin (2 in, 2 out).

Here is the harness I made, open leads (4) to connect to the switch, the clip inserts into its mate underneath the center console

Given the need to be able to quickly toggle the LED on/off from within the cabin itself (i.e. remember this mod likely is illegal on public roads), I spent some time looking for various switches which would work. Initially, I was set to use these tiny switches, with one switch being for LED to come on with the running lights, the other switch being for the LED to be wired into the brake circuit.  

The problem, however, was that I now had the problem of how to affix these switches to the center console.  Do I carve out two holes directly? Or do I have some kind of bracket? Where would I locate them? Should they be visible? Or do I install in a hidden spot?

In the end, I finally decided that something that looked or was, OEM would be my best bet.

I found this on Yahoo Auctions - it is the switch for the OEM Nissan optional foglights,
as our red R33 friend Miyuki-san demonstrated. 

But rather than placing this switch next to the GT-R logo where it is normally placed:

I decided to continue with the stealthy scheme and install inside the console.  So this required some cutting of the center console for the switch to fit.

The center console, as seen from below - I had to use a drill and drill several holes
as the angle was wrong for the Dremel!
And then use a very sharp razor knife to make nice and clean

Then, I discovered that while the switch fit perfectly, the switch itself was too tall, meaning I had to cut off some of the bottom of the switch, and also bend the leads on the wires so they could connect to the switch with minimal amount of wiring sticking out of the bottom vertically, where it was bumping into the G-sensor.

Used the Dremel here!

Note how the leads are bent 90 degrees

The end result, however, looks fantastic, is solidly mounted and is hidden.

Actually it looks here like it's lifting up a bit, but in reality the switch is flush
with the floor of the console box

Anyway, it all works perfectly in the end - here is a video showing the LED lamp in action: First, just the running lamps, then turning the switch on to get the running lamps plus the LED, then the brakes with the LED (see how it flashes), then release the brakes, then turn off the LED.

So now all that's left to do is see how the diffuser performs at speed...

A Professional Film of the Dyno Run!

Everyone check this out! You may have already seen this on my Facebook page but...

When I had my car dyno'd at Uchida Car Works... Dino Dalle Carbonare decided to try his hand at taking video with his Canon DSLR...his first time ever? Luckily Luke Huxham of Maiham Media agreed to do the post processing and editing, resulting in this beautiful short film:


Tomei Expreme Ti from Luke Huxham on Vimeo.


Posted here with the explicit permission of Luke Huxham and Maiham Media.

Those of you who know Luke and/or have seen his work know that he is a world famous young up-and-coming professional videographer/cinematographer, and with this kind of quality, I am sure you would agree that, it's only a matter of time before he's widely acknowledged as one of the top in the industry.

Thanks again Luke!

Private Tour of Tomei Powered!

So how do I get so lucky? Clean living I guess...

Anyway, a good friend who works at Tomei invited me for a tour - yep these guys are working hard even on Saturday! Not being one to turn down such an offer, I made haste and drove to the Tomei Powered headquarters building, and parked my car outside... and had to of course take the obligatory photograph to share!


Walking inside the lobby, my friend Allen greeted me, and immediately gave me a history lesson of the company. And then showed me some of the products they make - this was somewhat of a review for me, because any one into cars in Japan knows about Tomei.


Here is a cutaway of their new design turbo for the Evo. Apparently they no longer use ball bearings, for increased reliability. The ones for the GT-R are being developed as we speak!


Speaking of development work - here is a Subaru engine in the dyno room - the blue covers give it away as a custom built Tomei Genesis engine...

According to Allen - "this is the actual race engine for the Tomei Cusco Time Attack Impreza that will be shipped to the World Time Attack event in Sydney Australia.

Expect it see it in action with the worlds best on May 21st and 22nd!"


When the Tomei engineers assemble the engines, they ensure first that all the parts to be put together are at the exact same temperature, in order to avoid expansion/contraction problems. Here, Allen demonstrates by showing me with the infra-red thermometer pointing at some cylinder heads - all 21 degrees Celsius!

Or, as Allen better put it - "here you can see how the parts are left to sit in the room to all become the same temperature before final measurements and assembly. Here you can see these pistons are at 21 degrees celsius. When all the pistons, rods, bearings, crank etc. are all the same temperature then the magic begins."


Outside, we found a Nismo Z33 with a Tomei engine. Apparently a demo car, but beautifully put together - it had a roll cage, but the seams were seamless, and the cage itself was so carefully worked into the interior, you could barely tell it was there!


Here is an old lathing machine - apparently older than me, on which one of the founding brothers still custom makes camshafts.


Here is an old Nissan 6 cylinder engine head, showing rust(!) as well as 4 valves per cylinder. Originally built in 1968, it was delivered to Tomei to get some refreshing work!


Here is an example of what happens with too much boost! Not even a forged Tomei piston head can withstand excessive abuse!
Additional info from Allen - "that was an SR20 with the exhaust valve sticking out of the top of the piston!"


Did you know that Tomei makes some of the best exhausts? Their chief exhaust engineer (ex-Yoshimura) handcrafts prototypes (some of the most beautiful welding I've ever seen), then constructs his own jigs to ensure perfection. To the uneducated, a Titanium exhaust is a Titanium exhaust, but Tomei ones have NO seam... which means that all of their tubes are punched out, rather than welded. Take a good look at one if you get a chance!


Finally, downstairs, lo and behold, we found the car Tarzan Yamada will be driving soon to attempt another speed record. Amazing the lightening techniques being used.