Well, its already over. But as the weather is turning sour, I figured it would be worth documenting how I rounded out the last few months of good weather.

By pure chronological order, shortly after the S13 was back together, I went to Brazil for work to visit a major OEM airplane manufacturer (you can probably guess which one). I’ve been to Europe when I was younger, but South America is a whole different ball game. I took a lot of photos, but I can’t publicize a lot of them for NDA reasons. Lets just say, big airplane hangers don’t get old, and I made some incredible friends from all over the world.

Upon my return, I had barely driven the S13, so more tinkering and testing commenced. I got to playing with my recent Marketplace score of a cheap set of Longacre scales. It’s one of those things I’d always wanted, but wasn’t willing to pay full price for. Very grateful to the friends that have loaned me them in the past, but I’m glad to have some of my own.

The passenger seat bracket also arrived, so I was able to get the second seat thrown in. Same Profi XL, same Defworx bracket, same location as the drivers side. Something about the symmetry down to the position really appeases me. I also got my Schroth Flexi 2×2 6 point harness installed on the driver’s side. I ended up doing eyelets with backup plates drilled through the floor for the sub belts (cry me a river, the cage already put holes in the car), and it worked out perfectly.

I installed the Takata 4 point ASM harness on the passenger side as a holdover until this winter. I’ve had S14 belts since I bought the car (literally my first purchase for it), but installation will require removal of the half cage and a bunch of interior bits, and taking the car apart to do that is less fun than driving it. I took the risk of daily driving a 6 point, and I live to tell the tale.

I can’t wait to have normal, fixed seatbelts though. I considered going full CamryOnBronze and sourcing all of the coupe-specific bits (including the Silvia fixed belt specific headliner), but after reading through his article about all the stuff you need, I elected to stick to tried and true S14. It works, and honestly given the seating position, the little guiding arms that bring the seatbelt forward would be counterproductive with my bucket seats.

I have picked up another Flexi 2×2 since then that will be installed on the passenger side. I need to add sub belt mounts, but otherwise it will drop right in. Having a matching pair of harnesses to go with my matching seats will be another thing checked off the goals list.

At this point, I started driving the S13 a ton (almost 2,000 miles, which feels insane to me). It didn’t help that my truck was down multiple times for scheduled maintenance or trips it got booked for, so it was my “do everything” car for a little bit. Definitely a way to get acclimated with the car.

Since this is more of a recap and life update, and I hold the keys to the kingdom and I can talk about whatever I want, a quick tangent down a related path.

I have been tapped on toolbox capacity for years now. My beloved Craftsman triple stack box has carried me through many years and locations, as has my small collection of hand tools. I have accomplished a ton with a very barebones set of tools, but with larger projects on the horizon, I decided it’s time to make some investments in the garage before I get buried with the mechanical work. I’d started to acquire tools, however I bought so many that I had to fill a drawer of my roommate’s toolbox just to keep them accessible, as my box was entirely full.

I’ve been back and forth for years on what to buy, and had narrowed the new options down to a US General Series 3 56″. My roommate has had a 42″, and I am really impressed with the build quality and finish for the price, enough so that I bought 8 of them for the machine shop at work.

To borrow a phrase from Matt Moreman: “I liked it, but I didn’t love it.” But then I found something that I loved. A lot.

I got ruined early by machine shops, as high weight capacity and high duty cycle drives a ton of what they demand in a storage solution. I’ve been an absolute sucker for Lista ever since I first used them in 2017, and I have lusted over an industrial-grade setup for years. I’ve been scanning Marketplace with the search terms “Lista” “Vidmar” and “Rousseau” (good luck on that last one) for years, praying that something compatible with my criteria would arise. Any of you who have been around these high-end brands know how unlikely that is. Lista primarily does cabinet arrays, not roller boxes. When they do, they are usually only 34″ wide tool carts with relatively shallow drawers used in production facilities like Boeing to house a certain set of tools for a job. I need something bigger than that, and I don’t own a home, so I can’t do a permanent cabinet array.

This particular box blew my mind when I saw it, and I made the very impulsive decision to grab it, especially for the price. It was only a couple of hours in between seeing it and pulling cash.

This is a 56″ wide, 28″ deep Lista Modular Drawer Cabinet originally utilized by a local facility producing satellites. It isn’t without it’s flaws, but literally none of it bothers me considering it was used daily for 4 years (2021 build date. Found the final inspection checklist from new buried under the drawers). At least I don’t have to worry about putting a scratch on it. The critical attribute is the correct outside dimensions with DEEP drawers for sockets and taller tools. This is incredibly rare for Listas as machine ships usually prioritize large surface area with minimal depth, as cutting tools and their associated holders aren’t all that tall.

It took 4 hearty fellas to lift this thing into the bed of my truck upon purchase, and another 4 to get it out onto our “loading dock” (front porch) and down the stairs safely. With all the drawers in it, it weighs close to 600lbs, and is obviously rated for far more than that. It is evident that this is beyond overkill for my use case, however this has been one of those little life pursuits for me, and I couldn’t be happier with the purchase. I’ve gotten it cleaned up to an acceptable level, but it is in desperate need of some serious organization. I plan to do Gridfinity this winter, and to continue to expand my tool collection as deals and needs arise. I’d also like to put a worktop on it, so I’ve been after either a good piece of stainless or a suitable piece of butch block. Little upgrades for later on.

Anyway, on to the Civic. Still the collector car, still barely drive it. Only really when I go up north to visit my parents. I installed shorter lug nuts on it (not pictured above), and I like the car way more as a result. I had intentions to autoX it this year, however I got cold feet after thinking about polishing out cone scratches, so I just elected to drive the S13 instead.

I did actually have to work on it though. After a weekend of driving in it, right before I put it back into storage, the car started inconsistently stumbling in VTEC. While not immensely impactful when you are driving like a normal person, I frequently find myself not doing that. I decided to throw all of the “it sits a lot” maintenance at it, which includes a battery (transformative if you’ve been around the car at all), fuel filter, spark plugs, coil wires, and cleaned the fuel injectors. Cap and rotor looked immaculate, so I just replaced the gasket.

While better with all the maintenance, it was not perfect. The issue persisted, and the coil was the culprit. While not OEM as they are NLA, I opted to replace it with a new NGK rather than robbing my spare distributor units of it. A 10 minute replacement, and we were back to being a nuisance on public roads. The car is still due for a major service, primarily a timing belt (age) and transmission refresh (my fault), but I don’t foresee that happening this winter. I’m hoping next year I can find some time on a lift to drop the motor/trans and go through everything in great detail. This car deserves it.

Jumping back to more exciting happenings, the S13 did its first (and second) double header weekend, autoX on Saturday and drifting on Sunday, with CSCC. It was far better at cone racing than anticipated in the dry given the 20 year old Stance GR+s and 4 year old Conti ECSs.

Unsurprisingly, the car did exceptionally well at drifting. All I had for drift spares were a set of 255/40/17 Dunlop Direzza Star Spec Z2s that came on my RPF1s, which were fresher than I remembered. I couldn’t run this setup for autoX as the spokes hit the calipers in the front, and I don’t have enough wheel stud for the amount of spacer required to make it work, so they got relegated to drift spares.

Despite way too grippy of a tire, the stock angle, T28 SR20, and Nismo GT 2 way diff performed exceptionally well, and I had an absolute blast. The car was a rocket ship due to the torquey powerband and the big tire. It drove the whole day with no hiccups or complaints, and left me questioning why I am even building a high horsepower car with angle when I got so much satisfaction from wheeling a stock angle, lower power car.

To cap that weekend off, I even convinced Nick (fellow IS owner and longtime college friend) to take his freshly manual swapped Sportcross (had been buttoned up less than 7 days prior) 5 hours from home and beat the hell out of it all day. I knocked down every excuse he had (a place to stay, food, logistics, drift spares, tools, entertainment), and it was absolutely worth it. 2JZ-GE and stock angle, and the car did great all day + didn’t even go through a set of tires. Its always fun driving with/watching your friends shred. Definitely one of those days that reminds you why we put up with all the headaches for this hobby.

While I had done two previous drift days in my Miata, this was my first event in a “real” car, and I learned a few things:

1. In the mornings, when it’s wet and there are massive puddles (which there were at both events I did this year), keep your windows up as much as possible to avoid hosing you and your interior in dirty water. I now have to clean the inside of my back window, as well as the cage and rear interior, due to the spray that came off the front tires. Live and learn.
2. Rubber will get absolutely everywhere. My helmet and entire interior was coated in a thin layer of tire dust; While I expected the outside of the car to get filthy, I had to do more interior detailing than expected. There were even significant chunks on the headliner, which I found rather comical (only because they came off without leaving a mark)
3. Trust your machine. The car can take the abuse. Let it. It’s a fairly violent activity with the way my car was set up, but it didn’t feel like I was asking the car to do something it wasn’t capable of. Slower clutch releases and smooth inputs kept everything happy.

Either way, worth the experience 100 times over. I am now extra excited to get my IS300 into a confident, capable place so I can go drive with friends at bigger and faster tracks.

From there, the summer was kind of a blur until the next event weekend. I just drove the car a lot, and life just happened.. Turns out the old people are right, and time acceleration is real as you get older.

The second double header weekend for the year was fast approaching, and I had made the decision that if it was going to be worthwhile, I wanted to collect data to evaluate necessity of changes in the offseason. One of the big questions in my head was oil cooling, and if an external cooler was required to get the car to run 20 minute track sessions without needing excessive cooldown laps. One of my goals leaving rotary land was to be able to actually turn laps without constantly watching gauges, and I knew from friend’s experiences that it could be done.

The car already had an extended capacity, baffled oil pan, but it was the Tomei one, which is intended for low cars and is tucked far above the subframe. For my use case, the Greddy pan is far better suited, as it is flush with the subframe, has even more oil capacity, and the cast aluminum and large fins allow it to be a cooler in it of itself.

I threw the pan together a week before the event. Getting the old pan off was mildly painful and quite messy, but with the small details finished on the new pan, I went for a test fit.

I will be the first to say that I have been incredibly lucky over the course of my automotive career with aftermarket part compatibility. This was not one of those times. This is the car at full droop, and suspension compression causes the bar to rotate backwards, straight into the pan.

Sure enough, with a quick search of Zilvia, the Tanabe swaybar does hit the Greddy pan. I didn’ think to google it, but you live and learn. These things happen. I evaluated all the optiions, from rushing a Progress or GK swaybar order, to doing a swaybar relocation intended for K-swaps (which I did purchase and never even bother unboxing). In the end, I just decided to put the Tomei pan back on and run the car in the same configuration. It works, and I don’t have to worry about changing a bunch of bits to make an event.

Made it to the weekend in good shape considering the oil pan fiasco. The car was beyond frustrating in wet autoX. Too much camber in the front, a ton of torque, and a diff that was too tight for the low traction situation meant that driving with any amount of throttle was a nonstarter. I was pretty dejected that day, as it was a cold, soggy puddlefest of understeer, but we made it through, and I had drifting to look forward to the next day.

No further notes from the first event. Car rips. Went through my other pair of Star Specs. Kept my windows up more in the morning. Lots of old friends came out, and it was pretty much an impromptu reunion of people I hadn’t seen in the better part of a decade. Really great time.

It is pretty evident by the photos at this point that we are well into fall, and thus only have a few more weeks of good driving remaining. To capitalize on that, I decided to put the S13 in storage and bring the Civic back to my house to enjoy it for the last bit of the season. Fall has historically been my favorite time to drive, despite the fact we get so little of it before the weather turns sour. Ambient hoodie temperature, the colors changing, early sunsets, and blasting through leaves is permanently romanticized for me. Maybe it was watching too many Petrolicious videos growing up. Who’s to say.

Did bringing it closer make me drive it a ton? No, not really. A backroad rip or a trip to get food here or there. I’m still somewhat timid in the sue of this car due to it’s condition and irreplaceability. I want to expound on that separately; I believe it deserves it’s own discussion. It’s still beyond special.

My truck does bear some mention, as it is the facilitator of all of the nonsense, and my practical vehicle to commute in. While not being the cosmetic restoration summer that I hoped it would be (I still dislike how “ugly” it is), it did receive almost all of the mechanical work it’ll need for a long while. The brakes have been slightly warped for a bit, and finally one of them complained enough to trigger some sort of action.

I ordered all new brakes for it, as I had been meaning to get it on a good towing pad since I had such a positive experience on my last Tundra. On top of brakes, it finally got the other big driveline service it needed.

The rear wheel bearings have been mildly moaning since I bought the truck *checks watch* two years and almost 50,000 miles ago. While not any worse than they were before, its been eating at me for most of that time, and I knew I didn’t want to go another winter with a howling rear axle, for fear of actually needing to replace them in a time of need in the pouring rain.

Rockauto carries Timken, and Timken sources from Koyo, which cut the cost way down compared to OEM for the identical part. I spent a Saturday morning yanking the axles out and dropped them off at a local Toyota specialist shop to get bearings pressed on. The cost of the service was marginally more than the tool required to do it, and as I have had previous wheel bearing debacles, I didn’t want to ruin a bearing due to my inexperience with this style of axle. I got the axles back later in the week with new OEM retaining sleeves and seals that I had provided, and I now had a much quieter highway experience (after I un-taco-ed the dust shields caused by the shop pressing on them)

In summary: I did a lot while feeling like I accomplished very little. Scrolling back through photos to compile this article, it is clear that quite a lot got done despite my internal dissatisfaction. On top of the normal responsibilities of everyday life, I’m in better shape than I have ever been, and odometers moved on pretty much everything I owned. I got to see a lot of friends all over the place, and I did spend a ton of time outside. You know what, maybe it wasn’t so bad. Definitely learning how to enjoy a calmer life.

The goal for next summer is to definitely drive more events, either drifting or track days. I’m pretty confident that is the void I am feeling. I am rolling into the offseason in a good spot with all the projects, and the excuse to stay inside and build cool stuff is very much welcomed. Ready to get stuck in on another big project like my RX-8 was in 2022-2023. And this year, I might be doubling down (two builds at once, pray for me).

Until next time.