AE86 Origins: Part 1
I figured it might be interesting to throw a little light on to my own car, where it came from, the work that I've put into it, where it stands now, and what the future holds for it.
The above pictures are some of the first pictures I got of the car after buying it in July 2015. The car had just arrived in Yokohama from northern Japan so it could begin it's journey to Ireland.
This is a picture of the car outside Koizumi auto, an ae86 specialist shop in Nagano prefecture. If you're familiar with the ae86 N2 race series you may have heard of them before.
It is operated by Koitaro Kuizumi, who is also the driver of the well known pink, Car Factory Ai/Koizumi N2 car.
More recently he has been drifting this trueno, and recently won a round of Drift Kingdom in the clubman class, an event organised by keiichi Tsuchiya. Follow him on Instagram for lots of ae86 and 4age goodness @koitaro86.
Back to my car. These were the first pictures I got of the car once it had landed in Dublin, and been released by customs. I was beyond delighted with it. There were a couple of body work (rust!) issues, which was partially to be expected considering it's age and the price I paid. I'll get into all that a little later anyway. Excuse the quality of some of these photos, most of them are just taken with a camera phone a few years back.
Engine wise it had a stock 16v big port engine (still does), with a complete fujitsubo stainless exhaust. Being a Gt-apex model it also had air conditioning and power-steering. The chassis had just over 200k km on it when it arrived, but seemingly the engine had been replaced pretty recently, which seems plausible as its given me pretty much no problems whatsoever.
The RunFree bumper is cool but it never really seemed to fit the rest of the car. Heres a couple of pictures after installing the Goodline front bumper. This is THE front bumper as far as I'm concerned, I'm grateful to those that make it available.
I enjoyed this look but from the outset I knew I wanted the car to run on 14 inch old school wheels.
So I picked up these pairs of SSR mk2 and mk3, in 14x8 and 14x7.5 respectively. The black lab is my dog Billy, his interests mainly lie in food, tennis balls, going on walks, and soft toys.
Heres a better look at probably one of my favourite wheel designs ever, in near perfect condition. They have not looked this clean since this photo was taken a few years back, and they are probably due some love.
This was pretty close to how I wanted it to look, and despite a couple of small details taking away from the overall look it was cool.
The small details are what really make a car though, and its stuff that only someone who really knows what they're looking at would pick up one, but has such an effect on the overall visual impact a car has. just as an example it always annoyed me at this time that the swage line on the front wings didn't compliment the more 'bubble' style of the rear arches, along with the fact the side lights were zenki but had kouki head lights, all stuff to be taken care of down the line of course.
I was very much enjoying ae86 ownership at this time though, it was the first summer of owning it (2016) and I was driving it at pretty much every opportunity.
Neil was nice enough to invite me down to the juicebox BBQ at the end of the summer. Note: kouki side lights have made an appearance here.
This photo was taken in November 2016, at which point I was making plans to strip the car and give it the refresh that it really needed, after enjoying the car for nearly a year it was time to take the plunge.
I have so many photos of this car in this exact same spot at various different stages, it's my favourite place to go for a quick spin. I'm lucky enough to have this on my door step, and the trip up is made up of some pretty good driving roads.
I think I'll leave it there for part 1, I'll get into the teardown and welding in the next part.
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