Keeve's Lowstyle S13

So I Got home Friday night and unpacked the Advan RGII's. They're in cracking condition. Two have relatively chunky kerb marks on them but not that fussed as I'll probably do damage to em myself.





Since I picked up a new camera I had to grab a couple shots of the car on the VSXX before they’re gone forever.






As the VSXX are sold I had to whip them off before going to the tyre guys and got the lovely shot of my car sitting on the spare S14a wheels I have.



Got the towing yeti loaded up with 6 vsxx, two tyres and 4 Advans with a shit load of room left over… Towing to track days is going to be ace. Gone are the days of loading up my car to roof haha. My old boy got a detachable tow bar fitted to it and looks a good job.



Had fun with the tyre guys getting some 215/40.R17’s onto the 9.5 Advans. Ended up getting one on with the fire method but the second just wasn’t taking it so I ended up finding a tyre place in Inverness with a Bead blaster which was ideal to get it on.

Then the first test fit happened.







Could do with a couple 5 mm spacers on front and a bit less camber on rear but realistically i’ll just put 5mm spacers on the rear too.

Now with the Advans on I jumped onto the next issue thats been on the list for ages. My AFR has been reading a bit lean on idle and I knew I had a blow at the turbo gasket so bought a new nissan one. Pulled the old one.



Fucked. Put the new one on.



Pulled the car back with the intention of washing it but started chucking it down with hail/snow.





Ended up stopping for 15 minutes which was long enough to get a quick wash done on the car. The wheels have a bit of baked on brake dust I tried to pull off but was a bit stubborn and dragons breath didn't make a dent in it so I’ve ordered some Bilt Hamber to see if that helps.












I’m so happy with how these wheels look on the car. At first I was a bit unsure about running the Advan Gold on a red car and was worried I was going to have to fork out on a refurb to make them silver, but I’m actually so stoked on how this has turned out.


So with all that out the way the only thing I had on my list to do was set up the EBC now that the car is boosting properly… Took the car out the road and first thing I noticed is with the extra 0.5” stretch on the front I was bouncing the subframe down my road. (Honestly you should see the state of my driveway and the single track road to get into the city.)
Set up the EBC for a really conservative 0.9bar setup. Foot down and as soon as it hit boost the exhaust makes a fuck off fart and I get boost cut. Great. Drop the EBC to 0.8. Again. Down to 0.6. Same. Turn the EBC off completely and it sort of boosted.

Got a standard Asda celebratory beer collection picture as usual though.



So with the farty boost shit I got back after a drive and my AFR was still reading lean. Confused I speak to Freddie who says "Unplug AFM and check reading". Unplug the AFM and the AFR sorts itself right out. Great, so how long have I been driving with a fucked AFM for. Norfy had an idea last time we were talking AFM's that a 3 pin CA one has the same ranges as SR straightcam. I chopped it up for science. It worked and revved past 2.5k but just didn't idle right.
So I need to order up an AFM from Japan unless theres anyone in the UK that is holding one that doesn't want daft money for it.

And thats it. Car is SORN'ed. I expected a bit more driving etc of it but with the AFR playing up it wasn't to be. but I am fucking stoked on the wheels. The TD05H setup is still sitting in my shed for sale but no real interest in it yet so theres a strong likelihood of it ending up on the car...

 

Cheers all! Still pretty happy with the decision but having seen my VSXX in 100% clean condition I'm regretting not just sitting on them like I did last time.

I've also managed to source an AFM so the threat of fitting the TD05h has gone away again.

 

Cheers lad. Unfortunately with the midmount intercooler the lights don't go down. I have dual 3" aluminium bends to weld into the IC then re-fit the motors in a new location but its a lot of work/effort for something I will never really use.

 

Cheers dude, STL4 is booked but that's it so far. I might try and make it to a teesside/3s day before. Currently I can't get time off work for Next Level but if anything changes there I'll hopefully be headed over.

Yeah, tbh with the Kouki front I probably wouldn't mind it with the lights down but the effort is just too much and knowing me I would put in all the effort then hate it haha.

 

Was home for a stag weekend so ended up with a couple days to do stuff on the motor.
First thing was doing a compression test. I had managed to give myself the shits thinking I had killed my motor with running lean for a few events not realising. Still up there at 150psi across all 4, Ideal.


Fitted a replacement AFM as this was making my car run a bit fucky and a lean reading at idle. Fired it up and now the car was struggling to idle. Tried resetting IACV but wasn't making any difference to the way the car was running. Don't know how it even got into my head to try but removed my silicone 45* bend to get my Air filter in behind the tub and magically sorted the idling issue. So I'm now running a super short intake pipe, no idea why this has affected it but as long as its fixed!



Also whilst I was doing all this I hit two of the Advans with Bilt hamber as they had some a build up of brake dust on them.



Looks like this stuff actually does what its meant to and lifts the brake dust rather than just make your wheels go red like the other pish I've tried.



Went to drive the car up onto my jacking point to be able to get the front wheel off to do the inner barrel. When I was driving up there was a bit of a crunch and I was greeted to this.



...and the front.



Combination of not checking my front bumper still cleared getting onto the jacking point and a flat tyre resulted in smashing this splitter to fuck. Since wing is metal and bumper is OEM there were no issues with those.



Out with the fibreglass on my professional table.



Glassed from the rear and a bit of filler to smooth over the cracks.



Sanded back. I know this is a pretty bullshit repair but from all the abuse this splitters taken I'm not fussed if theres a couple small cracks. This also gave me the motivation to fix where it hit some motorway debris on the way to STL3.

So if you've ever spoken to me since the crash at crail you'll know I've always fucking hated the NSR arch, to the point I've had a couple photos ruined by it. Decided since I had the filler out I was just gonna whack it in and see if I can get it a bit less flared.



Looked much better already just from a few cracks with the hammer and panel beating weights. Hit it with some filler.



Since I had the filler out I decided to fix the taped up part of the OSR also since its been neglected for quite some time.



Went off to our local paint shop to get a pot of paint mixed up but they couldn't match it to the paint I had previously. Since there was no point splashing out on paint thats not going to match I went for some more of Halfords finest and tested the colour match on the splitter which wasn't too bad.



So hit the arches with it.




As soon as I had finished laying the first bit I defaulted from "Doesn't look too bad" to "Fuck it its red"





NSR looks a lot better than it did before. Just annoyed I couldn't get a colour match for it without having to do the whole car again. Need to hit it with some polish as its a bit crap where it's not been painted.





I bet this is makin folk who have a clue about bodywork cringe like fuck but I'm not fussed, never been taught bodywork/metalwork so I'm just chuffed I'm happy with it. Big improvement from how it was.





Not horrific from afar. Also thats not how the rear sits, the spring hasn't settled since it was jacked up to get the NSR wheel off.



And finally the bumpers not being refitted til events now I've learned my lesson and its not street legal anymore...

Back up north in a few weeks but tbh theres not much that needs done. Will probably now just sit and wait for STL4.

 

Gotta be in the loop....

Nah I joke. Ali normally posts on the STL Facebook page on the run up to the event with the info for spectators etc iirc.

 

Got a brief weekend up the road as my girlfriend is up here for a hen party. Ideal excuse to get a couple things done ready for STL4.
First thing was to check how the paint I bodged last time was. Pretty shocking tbh.


Did a quick oil change. Went to take a photo for Axel to use on social media for Driven and actually ended up laughing at the nick of my engine instead. Cracking stuff by the way. Temps are great with it and oil breakdown is much slower than it has been with everything else I’ve used. Absolutely worth the extra coin.



Pulled the car out and gave the OSR arch a quick polish to see how the Halfords paint against the 2k would come out. Better, but still not great. The car was left under a tree and it was so rough when I pulled it out. Rookie mistake.



Also this was my first time seeing the rear arches with the springs sat properly... Which I fucking shat myself when the rear spring re-sat as it sounds and feels like someone smashing the underneath with a mallet and I forgot it was going to happen.

Much happier with how the rim to arch sits now. Although as I'm wiring this I've realised I did this without aligning the car first... fuck. Will need to re-do it again anyway when it comes to repainting so not too fussed.




Picked up some 6” hook and loop polishing pads so I can actually polish the car. Not the greatest bit of kit but for £5 and it goes onto my air sander I'm fuckin stoked. Wish I bought this 3 years ago when I first had the car painted. Could have flattened and polished myself.



Gave the car a quick wash so I could get polishing it. I'd suggest any detailers stop reading now...



Did a once over with Poor Boys black hole. Car looked better overall but arches are still shit.



Finished off after polishing with a once over with some poorboys wax. Which after laying down the halfords paint was an even bigger eyesore but seemed to chill the fuck out.



The spats not fitting right has pissed off people for too long so I ended up hitting it with tigerseal to keep it in place. Had a minor breakdown trying to get this sitting well enough to hold but managed in the end.



As the tigerseal was drying I looked to sorting out my front windows again. I removed the tint for my last MOT and never got round to re-fitting the tint thats been floating about the car for a year. Finally did it and after doing the drivers side first forgot how much I fucking hated this fucking tint. I don't understand how the chrome stuff is so bad but then the non-chrome stuff was worse from ripping and marking.



Its really shite on the drivers side and theres a small section missing that just decided to randomly rip when i was flattening it out. Its hard to photo but in person it looks shite. I'm not bothered as overall its fine.

I had planned to nail the front windscreen with the same blue tint as well so its a 50/50 of chrome/dark blue but ran out of tint. I might order some more but not sure. I have a couple other things to do that are time consuming so they’ll take priority.

So thats pretty much it for STL4 prep. Cars ready to be loaded onto the trailer even if my other couple ideas fall through. Heres hoping the polishing and waxing means i can just nail it with the pressure washer and avoid all those minging black marks I came back to.