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MotoIQ Staff Report
Photos by David J. Dowling
A little understood fact about prepping a turbo car for reliable track use is that extreme cooling is needed and the off the shelf performance radiators and oil coolers on the market are not enough to keep a turbo engine cool under actual track conditions. The VQ35DE engine is kept cool by a custom Ron Davis C&R core dual pass radiator with swirl tank and large 13 row Setrab oil cooler. |
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By Mike Kojima
In part one, we made the conversion of our car from a HIN show car to a more performance oriented build. In part two of our series we tackled the difficult task of squeezing more stick and balance in the corners of an already finely tuned cornering machine without reducing its refinement as a daily driver. We also improved the stamina of its already powerful brakes in anticipation of hard track use and more power from the motor. In part two we will attempt to squeeze more power out of the EVO’s tried and true 4G63 engine |
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by Eric Hsu
What do you get when you mix a VW air cooled engine and a R34 Skyline? This very, very strange monstrosity. |
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By Mari Umekubo
Now that we have the sagging springs, excess lean in the corners, bottoming out, bouncy ride and high speed oversteer of Project Pathfinder taken care of, we now turned our attention to the front suspension in our quest to tighten things up and fix the weak points of the Nissan steering system.
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By Mike Kojima and Aaron Guardado
After we prepared two cars as seen in part one of this series. We proceeded to enter them in a destruction derby, the infamous Orange Crush event at the Orange County fair. We faired ok, making it through most of the event with only minor injuries despite the car’s taking some enormous punishment |
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By Mike Kojima
A lot of people in our industry bemoan the fact that the passion and innovation of the game is getting diluted by the influx of fly by night Asian companies that are in the business of making cheap knockoffs of parts made by the established performance companies. These companies sell their fake wears for a fraction of the original’s price using no cost marketing ploys on Ebay and other inexpensive direct selling arenas. |
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by Eric Hsu
German style sticker tuning at the Nurburgring. |
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by Eric Hsu
*by clicking agree you understand that all comments, opinions, remarks, etc. are opinions of the contributor and not motoiq*
In today's automotive high performance market for Japanese vehicles, there are many companies that are basically wannabe JDM and motorsport companies. Often times they sport Japanese or JDM or motorsport sounding names, but in actuallity they are either knock off companies or companies that manufacture products in China with poor quality control. The fact of the matter is that no decent company with a lesson in business ethics would attempt to be anything else other than what they actually are |
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By Wes Dumalski
We realize this installment's title sounds more like we are getting Project Nissan 200SX ready to hit the dating scene and quite frankly that is what all of the odd's and end's we have been cleaning up has felt like... Only our crunches were done tweaking under the dash and the shaving of weight was done via mail order rather than a strict diet.
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VIDEO: Calvin Wan - Thunderdrift
By Mike Kojima
Lately I have gotten to know Calvin Wan through my working with Falken Tires drift team where I have been helping him develop the chassis settings on the Falken S15. Besides being a super cool guy, Calvin is quite a driver, being pretty versatile, besides drifting he does grip driving in time attack and road racing in cars as well as motorcycles.
Thusly I would like to share this video of Calvin drifting Thunderhill Raceway in his personal Mazda FD. If you know about Thunderhill, you know this is an exceedingly technical fast course where his drifting and road racing skills merge. I held a lap record there and believe me, it’s not a particularly easy track to drive on and to see Calvin DRIFTING there with ease is really cool.
Drifting at the high speeds obtained on a road course like T-Hill is pretty difficult, more difficult than the stuff at your typical drift day and perhaps even what the pros usualy do. I am particularly impressed with the clip of Calvin drifting over turn 5. That’s a hard ass turn to just DRIVE over. So check it out and enjoy!
Visit Calvin's website here! |
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While performing a U-Turn you will....
turn right onto a two-way street.
turn left onto a two-street.
turn right onto a one way street.
turn 180 degrees and head the opposite direction.
Traffic School
by Eric Hsu
Tricks and tips to speed through online traffic school. Who needs to take an 8 hour class when you can complete it in 1 hour? |
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By Mari Umekubo
This month we tackle an area of serious deficient for most SUV’s, the suspension. We were faced with some tough decisions here. Since we use our Pathfinder for everything from daily commuting, to drives to the mountains hauling mountain bikes and gear to off road exploring, we had to come up with a reasonable compromise. Our main goal was not to build a car crushing monster truck or a Rubicon Trail bolder crawler but to greatly improve on-road handling, to eliminate the SUV characteristic of flipping over when pressed and to provide a safer ride when towing. We wanted all of this with improved off-road capability as well.
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By Mike Kojima
In our last segment of Project Scion TC Racer we had brought our car to Technosquare in Torrance California for the construction of a custom roll cage leaving the car in the capable hands of master fabricator Richie Watanabe. It’s no secret that many of MotoIQ’s project cars and staffers personal cars end up spending a stint at Technosquare sooner or later. Richie has many years of experience constructing Pro Rally and race cars, and is quietly proud of the fact that every racer that has ever crashed while driving a car equipped with one of his cages has walked away unharmed. The last Technosquare cage to be tested in such a spectacular manor is Taka Ono’s AE86 who flipped at a Formula D event at Irwindale raceway last year
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By Mike Kojima
In our first installment of project Spec-V, in an effort to turn an unloved econobox into a sharply honed time attack weapon, we stripped our car to a bare shell and started construction on a roll cage. The roll cage is more than just a structure to protect the vehicles occupants in a crash; the roll cage is also the most important part of a race cars suspension system providing a ridged platform for the suspension |
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By Mike Kojima
When we last left project EVO IX we had just tried out the most basic bolt on mods and ended up being pretty pleased with the results, picking up nearly 30 whp from stock with just a few hours of work including dyno time. Drivability was improved as well making our experience a win win situation |