Canadian jzx100 Mark ii. A cliff notes build

Alright so for those that followed my r32 thread, it had a shit ending to a roller coaster of emotions through the last 2 years of the build. That car will be forever missed but is in a better place now (not sure if itsbetter for it or better for me, just better.)




The last place I ever saw this car



Onto my new focus, parted out the wrecked 32 and took a huge loss all around BUT managed to scrounge enough money back out of it to pick up this jzx100 from a good friend of mine.

It’s got high-ish miealage, 3 of my friend’s have all owned it as a daily driver, one of which drove it across the USA and back a couple years back.

Standard engine with a manual boost controller, front mount and currently an auto trans.

Has some kind of cooler than stock lip kit all around and some blown tien Coilovers. Perfect base to build a drift car from IMO because it’s cool, but not nice enough that i’ll feel bad smashing it into things

So onto some photos and the little bit of progress I’ve made thus far. Here’s the night it was dropped off, pitch black, stock borrowed wheels. Nothing spectacular at all


Having had to give the s15 wheels back to my friend, I swapped the wheels from the 32 onto it



Took a chance and mounted my s13 east bear mirrors up onto it, 2 of the 3 bolts lined up and they fit pretty well. Good enough for me!



Swapped the old momo wheel out for my nardi right away as well. This might have actually been the same night it was dropped off if I remember right


Once I finally got rid of the r32 shell I got the car into the garage and started to crack on making new seat rails to fit my bride, turned out 100x better than the ones I made for the r32, very pleased. Threw my checkered floor mats in at the same time too.



Ordered an origin lab roof wing and the ever so necessary e brake button



Track regulations require a fire extinguisher so I made the mount for that and bolted the seat back in for the second last time (still have to paint the rails)



Last night I was bored so I yanked off the Fiberglass fenders and put the OEM ones back on, the glass just wasn’t doing it for me, would need a big kit to suit properly in my opinion and that isn’t happening just yet. (One day, just not YET )



A while ago I picked up a BMW zf5 trans to do the manual conversion, I decided to go this route as they’re much easier to find and much cheaper than an r154 if and when I blow them up, and I’ve heard great things from friends of mine running them behind their JZ’s. Just saving some money to get the conversion kit and then the auto will be coming out and hopefully get this thing on track ASAP



That brings us up to current. Not a lot of progress and there won’t be a whole lot, just small style tweaks to make it my own and getting it manual with some new coils so I can get back on track. It’s been a couple years since I’ve gotten real seat time and this car’s purpose is to heal the wound that the r32 left and bring it back to basics and get back out having fun!

 

I’m not actually sure to be honest, I wasn’t aware there were 2 versions, just impulse bought one on RHD japan.

Clutch master and BN eyelids showed up the other day. Upgraded my daily driver/tow vehicle a few weeks back and I’m going back to finish my trade ticket at the end of the month so progress is on hold for a little bit unfortunately. Hopefully will be back into the manual swap soon.

Shots of the eye lids and where all my money’s gone LOL





That PMC kit has caught my interest, I was going to go for Collins but depending on shipping costs that could be a much more cost effective way to go about the swap

 

Had the eyelids painted and the headlights Re cleared last week. Pretty happy with overall appearance for now. Next update will be the manual swap hopefully

 

Made a bit of progress on the car today. Started to pull the auto shifter and etc apart to prepar to drop the trans out. Received the clutch pedal and brake pedal pad and got on fitting those and the new master cylinder. Love all new oem parts, just fits together so well.



Just cut the auto pedal to the same (roughly) shape as the clutch pedal and slapped a new oem rubber pad on to save a bit of money and effort swapping the entire brake pedal assembly out



All fit up you could almost never tell the difference



Put a deposit on a PMC adapter kit for the BMW box a week ago and should have it at home at the end of the month when the seller comes to Vancouver for vacation. After that it should be pretty rapid to get the rest of the swap finished up.

 

Bit of a real update here, making excellent progress on the jzx finally. My PMC kit came in from my buddy back east, pretty trick piece of kit upon initial inspection

Got it all mounted up, there’s a bit of a lack of install info on the PMC site and it comes with a wide variety of hardware so took a few guesses to figure out what bolt was meant for each hole, ended up emailing the company and they sent over a proper install diagram which helped huge to double check everything. Overall it all fits up great!



Had to test fit the trans immediately as I was nervous about having to bash the tunnel a bunch due to the height of th bmw trans vs a Toyota one



You can see what I mean here by the size and shape difference, to my surprise I actually didn’t have to do any clearancing at all aside from cutting a couple inches off the heat insulation on the firewall around the trans tunnel



My next task I decided to tackle was the shifter. I was going to order a cliq tuning e36 chassis mount set up but decided I could probably rig something up to keep my cost down for now, so started by cutting the stock bmw shifter apart to save just the pivot cup and bushing and cut out an aluminum plate to weld it to and then bolt to the existing auto trans shifter mounting holes



Figured out that with just the plate there may be some clearance issues between the shifter linkage and the driveshaft so I figured i’d Elevate the shifter so the linkage eye was JUST below the floor of the tunnel for maximum driveshaft clearance



Then I cut the stock bmw shift lever up and welded a threaded bit onto it so I could re use my 9K knob and extension from my r32 as a bit of an homage to keeping my entire cockpit feeling “at home”



Ran down to my good friends shop and had him tack weld the ally up for me so I could give it a test fit



With the shifter itself seeming functional the next task was to extend the bmw link to suit the new chassis



Went down and had shifter fully welded so it wouldn’t break apart under testing everything. Installed a brand new bushing too, feels nice and solid just how I hoped



Test fit the linkage and everything seems to work great and have plenty of room for the driveshaft, at this point I’m getting extremely excited and registered for a 2 day drift event a couple hours from home at the end of June. This was my initial goal for getting the swap done so I pulled the trigger on registration to put some fire under my ass



Which brings us up today. Around doing some family birthday activities for my 25th birthday I set the goal that I wanted the trans to be fully self supported in the car, after thinking about modifying the stock Toyota cross member I decided the cleaner route would be to just start from scratch, so into the metal bin I went to find some material to work with. I had a bit of angle iron and some 3/4 inch tubing and my shop mate had some 2 inch square tubing on hand so I set to work fabbing something up. Few hours later with a bit of help figuring out how to bend it with only a 1.5 inch tube die from my shop mate Tyson, I was left with this, something I’m actually fairly proud of as I didn’t think it was going to turn out how I imagined it in my head but I pretty much nailed it



Then of course I threw it in the car to see the transmission completely bolted up and sitting in its new home behind the JZ for the first time. Going to send it off to my buddy’s garage to be powder coated black when I pull the trans out for hopefully the last time once my clutch shows up.



With all that said, I have about 5 weeks to get the car into a driftable state. All I really need is a driveshaft and a clutch to have the car mobile and would like to order a new set of coilovers as the current one and are right blown so the car has a lot of body roll.

If anyone in here reading this drifts a jzx100 I’m a little lost on spring rates. I think I’ve set myself to go with 22/12k spring rates but am always curious to opinions of people out there running these cars first hand. I like a bit of squat for grip and likely won’t run the car slammed on its tits like I used to as it is primarily a track car.

 

Everything I needed to put the car back together showed up, e46 m3 pressure plate, e36 6 puck clutch disc diff bushings. Along with a cheap unbranded arm kit to try and sort the alignment out before the first drift even. Me and my garage mate spend a couple hours last weekend finishing off the conversion and I managed to get the car on the ground again. Very exciting

After the first drive of the car the coilovers were blown beyond a drivable state so I reached out to a local x chassis Facebook group and managed to score this set of Cusco coilovers for free from someone who upgraded their chaser


Went straight back home and swapped the coilovers and installed all the front and rear arms in the car


Pretty clear why I pulled the blown junk out of the car


Took it for a first real drive to go hang out with some friends. It’s almost surreal to have a functioning car again already


I found the stock shifter throw was disgustingly long so I popped the shift lever back out and extended the lower portion below the pivot by 2 inches to shorten the throw. I’d say I probably got around a 50-60% reduction in throw. Feels like a whol new car again


Fairly low quality update as I was too excited working on the car and didn’t take many photos but to summarize, the car drives again in manual form and I have 3 weeks to finish ironing out the details before there’s 3 back to back drift days I’m participating in so fingers crossed the car still looks as it does at the end of the month

 

Finished up the last of the mechanical work on the car over the weekend, the missing rear subframe bushings showed up, they sent the wrong ones, ordered full replacement and they sent the insert type that uses the stock rubber bushing but can’t be bothered to try and rectify it so just fit them anyways. Will do the trick for now. Tossed some new rear sway bar end links in the rear and replaced all the rear knuckle bushings as they were worn and sloppy. Everything’s nice and tight to get an alignment on Tuesday


My favourite bit I did this weekend though was test and prototyping my good friend Neil’s https://scgperformance.ca big brake adapter kit he just developed and will be releasing soon. The kit uses a z33 track pack rotor and Ford Mustang gt500 4 Piston calipers. The kit comes with the adapter brackets, 20mm roll Center adjusters (to clear the bracket) and a hub ring to Center the Nissan rotor on the Toyota hub. The kit fit up perfectly and after putting some miles on the car over the weekend the brakes work awesome. Stock jzx100 brakes are good but these are great!





Neil also lent me his wheels for the time being until my tires show up this week, really feeling the all black look on the car

 

Cost just over $200 CAD with a good discount at a local parts store here! And that’s for both calipers. Rotors were around $180 and pads were relatively cheap for mid range generic stuff too.

 

Just came in to say this thing shreds and is easily the most fun I’ve had in a car

 

Which time? I got out without a single scratch. My team mate in the black s13 got rocked by our other buddy pretty good though

 

Wait you meant me passed out under the truck?! Cause yes, yes it was hahahah