Keeve's Lowstyle S13

Was up for a wedding at the weekend and did what I think is a pretty polarising move.



Plan was to replace it with a really light blue so it gave it an OEM look but the 70% VLT that came from China was grey/smoked not blue and I fucks with the car so much more with no tint so it’s gone. Surprised I left it on for so long (3 years) when I look at photos of it now I think it looked SO pish haha.







Also started fitting the Brix using an old seat rail. All bolted up in the rear but I need to weld in an extra piece on the front section of rail since it dips down.



Finally here’s a couple more photos that have arrived from STL4 from a comfortable photographer.










Proper excited now to get it all sorted with more power for a couple events this year. Hoping to get to three events this year now my work is a bit more flexible I shouldn’t have to burn holidays to do events even when they’re at the weekend.

 

Haha thanks mate, it's changed a lot since then.

 

Managed to get up the road to do some schassis matsuri preparation. Unfortunately after stockpiling everything I needed to get up the road and fit my TD05 we ran into a problem with modifying the manifold so I had to switch gears and just do all round maintenance.

So first off was the intercooler swap. I’ve been running solid up headlights since the car was MOT’d because I hated pig nose bumpers with headlights down. Obviously I now have a kouki bumper but my bodged mid mount stops me from getting my headlights down. Picked up an intercooler from Dan Joyce that already had two 90* bends already welded into it (I also had bought two 90* bends to weld in but never had the time to pull the IC and get someone to do it).



Got it fitted and had to trim my headlight brackets a bit more but was able to get them down fully in the end.



Obviously since I had a new intercooler with different entry/exit points I’ve had to re-do the boost pipes. I decided instead of doing my hack flare with mole grips I should make a diy boost pipe beader. I welded an old alternator bracket and exhaust clamp into to a pair of mole grips. Tested on some offcuts and worked well.



Then I started trying to bead a slightly thicker bit of boost pipe so stuck it in a vice to help with the clamping power....



turns out that half of the boost pipes were stainless and I killed the beader before I got started with it haha. Went back to flaring with mole grips and got it all bolted up. Boost leak tested to 2 bar so at least it works.



I also bought an adjustable actuator as I was suspicious that my t25g isn’t boosting properly. It was bullshit and pish and I didn’t even fit it. Put on the actuator that came with my t25g (I had on a t28r actuator) and it seems to take a fair bit more pressure before opening so hopefully the turbo will hold boost a bit longer before tailing off.

My bay is a total state from driftland pits. I need to give it a clean but don’t have the time, and it will just get clarted again the next time it’s driven.

Talking of the pits being a state I cleaned out my Apexi filter which was fucked. Had compressed air on it and wasn’t really feeling it from the inside out in my hand. Gave it a good going over and finally my hand was able to feel the air rushing through. Poor wee bugger must have been horrifically choked up.



Also realised that since I did the tubs there’s no fresh air actually getting to the filter and it’s just getting hot bay air. Bought a 3” piece of silicone ducting and drilled out a 3”(ish) hole to feed it to. - I fucking hated this job and have no idea how I didn’t find it so bad doing my loom relocation. Next time I’m paying for a metal hole cutter even if it’s for one job.



Jammed the duct into the hole then ran the other end to my bumper and trimmed to fit.



So for the first time in years I was able to get my lights down.



Annoyingly the OS headlight cover was too low.



I’ve never wanted to adjust them because I snapped two heads previously and naturally expected the other two to snap but went for it.



Yeah you guessed it. Snapped. Drilled and trapped, raised the headlight cover but it was still too low. Bent the bonnet. Sorted.

I also got a GKTech cooling panel to try and help the car run a bit cooler. I’ve added a universal overflow tank with a hole drilled in it to vent. I used to just let it pish water out and then when the windscreen got misted I knew it was time to stop (instead of ignoring the beeping defi) Going to do a coolant flush as well because the coolant will be pretty diluted by now and overdue a change.



Another thing I’ve been wanting to do for some time was sort out my interior. I’ve seen a few nice 180’s and 240’s pop up with nice interiors so the motivation was finally there to do something about it. I had been trying to figure out what pattern I’d go for but since deciding I was returning door cards I knew I was doing Harris tweed with the Harris tweed labels. Annoyingly when my fabric arrived I ended up with the massive labels so I need to get some more.





Started by lifting the original fabric and got some black vinyl underneath.

I was thinking about retrimming this but thought it’d be best to get rid and stick directly to the doorcard, so cut the vinyl off and was left with this.



At this point I’d cut fabric to roughly the right shape and just stuck it down with some pretty aggressive spray glue.



Finally went round the extra fabric with a Stanley in the fabric well and looks pretty good!





Chucked it back on to admire my work.

Got my old dear to whip out the sewing machine to do the gearstick gaitor and I followed the same process as the doorcards for the glovebox.





Next up was dealing with my doorbars since one is black and the other is just raw and has been making a mess of my new brix and doorcard.



No point taking photos as I’m sure everyone knows how to paint something from bare metal.




Finished article of the interior. I’ve got some rear 1/4 panels and a bench to add in also but the car leaks water so going to wait til that’s sorted.

So as part of “make my car not slow as shit” I was going to re-do my rear alignment after having some dodgy drift days with fucked alignment.

Started by pulling my traction arms off to free them up and set them.



Looks like someone has used them to change toe. No wonder the car had fuck all rear grip.

At this point though I was running out of time for everything I had to do in two days so instead of doing the full setting I just chucked them to +22mm as I heard the figure someone with a low car said at some point. Them being even will be a good start anyway.

Removed all arms and freed them all off ready to do an alignment. One of the camber arms was fully fucked though so I had to revert to a spare I had.

Run a plumb line (golf tee taped to some other golf marker my old boy gave me) and got a centre line before setting toe on one wheel with it, then I got the toe plates out and evened up the other side before adding toe in.



I picked up an HKS Hi-silent exhaust for quietening down my exhaust for when I go to the Greddy Wastegate.



Only problem was it was for an s15 so some modification was needed. I cut up an old japspeed backbox I used for MOT’s and welded the backbox onto it.



Managed to impress myself by nailing the location of it with the first tacks off the car after figuring out the rough location for it. I also ran round the other sections of exhaust patching holes that have come up since the last time I had the welder and stainless out.

 

Hit the limit for photos in the last post so here is a dump from when I was finished. Headlights aren't fixed in place yet, I had plans to make a motor relocation but ran out of time and it wasn't as simple as I had initially thought. Got all materials ready though so next time. I also destickered my rear 1/4 windows and like it so much more. I need to remove all of the tint gunk and I might even put on my road legal light blue tint to see how it looks.

Also all these photos are the bumper just resting in place, I don't bother cable tying it on because it has to come off to get on the trailer anyway.


I need to bend this bit of the bonnet too it seems.

 

Cheers Cal, just a shame it wasn't fitting a Greddy turbo.

Thanks mate. For the headlights I'm in the same boat as removing the tint, wish I did it ages ago...
To be honest the state of the roads don't matter as long as you've taken measures to trust the cars not going to die when you hit a pothole/bump in the road. I've followed some people weaving about all over the roads avoiding potholes, going super slow over the tiniest bumps and shit and I've just stuck course and trusted the car would take it. My Chassis rails and tension arm brackets are absolutely hammered but its been fine. Although the exhaust used to fall off regularly but that's because I hadn't perfected how to get it tucked properly

Proof of daily duties.

 

So I've started to make a blog with all my lessons learned from building this car. I've wanted to re-visit my build thread for a while since its at 16 pages over 5 years and I thought it's worth re-scoping it in such a way that when I tried to fix my exhaust in 2016, I'm also giving the definitive "This is what I did over 4 years of trial and error to get it reliable".

https://highlandsports.wixsite.com/highlandsports

Current topics posted that will be useful for others: Driveshafts, Exhaust, Front Wiring looms.

Happy to have a discussion about anything posted. This is by no means definitive and if you have a differing opinion you're not wrong, everything I've posted is my first hand experience. I'm trying to steer clear of any second hand info and if I do provide any, I'm going to be clear that its not something I have experience with (I see far too much 2nd hand info on Facebook)