Innehållsförteckning för No 241 January 2017 från NZ Performance Car

Power, it’s a target everyone seems to place more and more emphasis on. Hell, we’re even guilty of this here at NZPC, having created the kW clubs for God’s sake, and believe it or not the 400kW club is more popular than the 300 these days. But the truth of the matter is that power, or better yet, having excessive amounts of it, should rarely be the end goal for your project. I am often asked how much power a car needs to make to be featured in NZPC, or how much power a particular car makes, so someone can make sure their vehicle has more. But this unquenchable thirst for power figures can and often does ruin the enjoyment we can get from a project. Overstretched budgets, super-stressed drivelines,…

The start of the Demon Energy D1NZ National Drifting Championship is just around the corner, at Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr on December 2–3. But if you can’t make the hike — just like the 85,000 people who tuned in last year, you will be able to watch the event live thanks to the wonders of the internet. The live stream has proved extremely popular over the past three seasons, and this year the team is pushing to increase the quality of the production even more. To help with this, a pay-per-view system for the battles has been put in place, with qualifying and the lead-up streamed free. The move towards a pay-per-view system was made to ensure the series doesn’t sell itself short, “The final round at Pukekohe Park Raceway last…

German automaker Volkswagen has confirmed it will pull the brand from the World Rally Championship at the end of the 2016 season, with its final appearance in Australia, on November 17–20. The news came just a week after the Volkswagen Group announced it has pulled the plug on Audi’s Le Mans racing programme, too. Despite its domination of the top-tier rally series for four years running, and hopes that VW could be granted a single-season extension to make use of the all-new 2017-specification Polo R WRC that it has developed, a recent board meeting at Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg extinguished the brand’s future in WRC. The automaker began its WRC campaigns in 2013, and in the four seasons since it has won 39 rallies and four consecutive championships — dominating…

If you’re heading along to the 2017 Leadfoot Festival and plan to travel there in your Nissan performance car, then forget those backpaddock car parks, you have the chance to be selected to park your baby in the Nissan VIP display area. Nissan is launching the Nismo range at Leadfoot, and will have the impressive Nismo GT-R for you to check out, alongside some special race machinery it is bringing in specifically for the event. There will also be a crowd-voted ‘Best Nissan’ award, with the winner taking home $5000 cold hard cash. So if you own a GT-R, Z car, S-chassis, or Skyline, make use of that VIP treatment and register your interest at nissanleadfoot.co.nz.…

Taranaki’s Glenn Smith was the class act in the invitation GTRNZ field at the Hampton Downs 101, winning all five races over the Australian GT weekend. The first points-scoring round of the Tradezone GTRNZ series, which of course features grids for the GT1/2 specification cars and a grid for the slower, and often home-engineered GT3/4 cars, begins at the first of the Speedworks Motorsport Championship events at the Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, Taupo, over the weekend of December 10–11. The grids will feature the most diverse selection of racing machines in New Zealand, with endurance cars like the Kiwi-designed Daytona Prototype Crawford chassis that Smith drives, through modified Supercars like Nick Chester’s machine, SuperTourers, regular GT cars like Porsches and Ferraris, and a few very special Kiwi-built Mazdas and Evos.…

NZ Performance Car is putting the power in your hands — decide which feature car stands above all others and most deserves to be crowned Castrol Edge Performance Car of the Year 2016. Each issue, we select three feature cars to go head-tohead for that month’s spot. Who’ll take it is up to you, so jump on themotorhood.com each month to vote for your favourite. Once we have our 12 finalists, these will be put to the vote once more, and you will get to decide who will be crowned Castrol Edge Performance Car of the Year 2016. So, what are you waiting for? Get voting, and let us know who you think should be crowned champion! THIS MONTH’S NOMINEES JAMES MANGIN’S S15 Here in New Zealand we have a…

Fifty years have passed since the running of the original Waimate 50. The rules have changed a little since then, but the reincarnation known as the ‘McKeown Petroleum Waimate 50’ certainly turned things on for the occasion. Labour weekend in South Canterbury saw action aplenty, starting with the Vines Hillclimb on the Friday evening. Brett Stevens came out on top in his Evo V with the fastest run of the evening. Saturday’s events moved to the main streets of the Waimate township, with tyre bundles and concrete barriers in place ready to accommodate the Ellis-Lea Farms Invitational races staged throughout the two days, featuring 18 drivers and cars with historic racing pedigrees. Door to door they battled, but it was Brent ‘Bones’ Collins in his Buick V6–powered RX-7 who finished…

NICK SAID THAT THE POWER GENERATED BEFORE WAS TOO MUCH, AS IT WAS DELIVERED ALL IN ONE WHACK AT THE HIGHER RANGE: “NOW, IN FOURTH AND FIFTH [GEAR] YOU CAN BURY IT AND NOT FEAR [FOR] YA LIFE” With age comes different tastes — but we aren’t talking breaking-out-the-tobacco pipe-and-chucking-on-your-best-plaidblazer-and-bowler-hat types of change; what we mean is, the things that you find amazing today may not evoke the same emotions in you in four years’ time. This is the biggest factor driving the constant development of cars, something we see coming across our desks on a day-to-day basis, whether the pics are sent by the hands of the owner who originally built it, or the latest one as it embarks on a new chapter in its life. Nick Jeffries is…

The world of Instagram is a great one for those of us looking for a little build inspiration or simply a never-ending dose of car culture from all corners of the world. Through the use of hashtag searches, you can locate and pinpoint any damn thing you want — from something as wide reaching as ‘#drift’ to as targeted as ‘#K20swappedcivic’. If you’re not on Instagram, get on there and get yourself started! Here are six accounts we follow that we think you should, too. @USED.RACINGPARTS Dream of Bride seats (the real ones), rare wheels, and other drool-worthy parts that are hardly ever listed locally? This account is a US based online retailer who must scoure the depths of the web to bring us a seemingly endless supply of quality…

NZPC: Hey, Andrew. How did you end up piloting an Integra track car? Andrew: I drive a truck every day of the week for work, and doing a consistent 90kph on the open road just doesn’t satisfy you. I like to go fast and push a car to its limit. I’ve owned a range of vehicles over the years — Toyotas, Subarus, Mitsubishis, Nissans, and Holdens — but never particularly liked Hondas because of the bad rap they always get, thanks to a few munters. A good friend of mine, Nick, got one and did a few years of racing, and I liked how that car ran, so I picked up this one to build my own. What state was it in when you bought it? It was originally the…

Christchurch’s Jayden Dodge is stepping up to the brutal power and packed grids of Porter Group V8 Ute racing this season, driving the Stadium Finance Ford Falcon. Fresh from winning the 2016 SsangYong Actyon series, 22-year-old Dodge says the move to the V8 category is about “taking your time”. “The speeds are higher, the braking points change, and the competition is still very close, so it’s very busy out there. You have to be more deliberate, and I find myself working with the car more of the time,” he said. Dodge raced his new Ford at the ITM Auckland SuperSprint Supercar event at Pukekohe, and will head out for the second round at the Speedworks Motorsport Championship event at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, Taupo, over the weekend of December 10–11.…

Kei Miura and his Rocket Bunny brand are legends in the scene — his kits were once hard to get outside of Japan, but, slowly and surely, they have begun popping up for sale all over the world, some genuine, and many, well, not so much. Make a few rapid-fire clicks of your mouse; jam in your credit-card details; and, a few weeks later, some rather large boxes of cool will show up at your doorstep. Now there is nothing wrong with this type of transaction; it’s becoming the norm in our industry, and it truly has opened up doors to parts we otherwise would never see on our shores. But regardless of how convenient this method is — the fact is that Kei Miura is an artisan, a craftsman,…

There’s nothing like standing on pit lane as millions of dollars of high-end exotic race machinery bang past on the pit lane limiter. McLaren, Ferrari, Lambo, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes — the line-up numbered 27 GT cars, the likes of which have never been seen here at Hamptons Downs. The venue was absolutely buzzing, the stands were packed, and a certain electricity was in the air for the impending 101 laps of the new international circuit for the inaugural Hampton Downs 101. Six corners had gone to 10, the length from 2.4km to 4km, and this would be the first time anyone would race the full track at speeds of up to 300kph. All those involved faced a very challenging few days in the lead-up, as engineers, teams, and drivers…

Heading into 2016’s instalment of the everevolving spectacle that is the World Time Attack Challenge … When the news broke that Keiichi Tsuchiya was not only going to be present at the event, but was going to be driving — no, drifting — Beau Yates’ freshly rebuilt AE86 Corolla, the news excited thousands, and not just because the drift king would be there. You see, Beau’s AE86 is somewhat of a cult car in Australian drift circles, and it’s only recently returned from a three-year leave of absence following an involuntary retirement after its last competitive outing right here at Sydney Motorsport Park, so a rise from the ashes coupled with the master of drifting himself at the helm was surely going to be a sight to behold, more so…

Over the following few months we will dive headfirst into the mystical art of building a street car, to bring you a comprehensive step-bystep guide of the process. We’ll start by looking at how to source and import a car from Japan, and move on to modifying the internal and external engine components, wiring in an aftermarket ECU and getting it tuned, upgrading the driveline to suit your new-found power, getting the car to sit at the perfect height and making sure that it has the required stopping power, flaring those guards and tucking your favourite set of wheels beneath them, then seeing them shod in the correct rubber, painting some metal or wrapping it in vinyl, tinting the windows, installing a big e-points body kit, and and tricking out…

You may recognize the name Glenn Hodges. He’s best known as the brains behind the crazy scratch-built Nissan Navara featured in NZPC Issue No. 231. Now he is back with a build even more mental than the last — so much so, the local loony bin is due to turn up with a straitjacket any day now. After completing the last season of the NZ Superlap series and encountering a dicey high-speed late-braking situation into turn one at Hampton Downs, safety was an important factor for Glenn. He originally planned to install a roll cage into his 300ZX track car to accomplish this, however, when doing the maths, he realized adding that much extra steel into the car would only bring his lap times down, while turning to the power…

Toby Nikolas has loved watching the British Touring Car Championship, and playing TOCA touring car games on PlayStation, since he was eight years old. After moving to Japan for good, the now-adult Toby picked up his well-known purple R33 sedan and spent many, many hours drifting it around all the local tracks. However, as time went on he learned more about the Japanese Touring Car Championship (JTCC), and found that in 1994 a small team campaigned a R33 Skyline for a few rounds. From there, the urge to build a circuit car took hold, and it was the perfect opportunity to combine his favourite type of race car with his favourite car, the R33 sedan. “Pretty much in my head, what I’m building is what would have happened if Nissan…

If you have an event you’d like to see in the Gig Guide, email editor@performancecar.co.nz with all the details DECEMBER 2-3 DEMON ENERGY D1NZ 2016: ROUND ONE FORSYTH BARR STADIUM, DUNEDIN NOVEMBER 26 SPEED SCIENCE DRAG BATTLE — ROUND TWO MEREMERE DRAGWAY, MEREMERE One for the Honda boys, featuring engine-class elimination rounds and grudge-match drag racing at its finest. After the success of their previous events, the guys at Speed Science have teamed up with NZHondas.com again to bring you a full day of non stop, pedal-to-the-metal action, which will now sport Compulink timing for ultimate bragging rights. Check out ‘Speed Science’ on Facebook for more details. NOVEMBER 26 OPEN TRACK DAY PUKEKOHE PUKEKOHE PARK RACEWAY, PUKEKOHE The no-frills and no big bills way to test your car — this…

AARON MAI As a Kiwi living the gaijin life in Japan for many years, Aaron has long used his camera, smooth charm, and allegiance to NZPC to get into places most people just can’t access — and certainly not if you’re on the tourist trail. These days, he is back here in New Zealand, but he plans regular, and ridiculously busy, trips to Japan to exercise his ability to pry open those closed doors. We salute this man’s ability to share with NZPC a world that, for the most part, you can’t even find on the internet. Aaron played a pivital role in building this months cover car, and actually the photo above was taken on said mission to 6666 Customs - read all about that on page 22. RICHARD…

We shared the news not long ago that off the back of his first full-season Demon Energy D1NZ Pro campaign, Jaron Olivecrona had hit the shed to transform his already gnarly 500kW RB26DETT-powered S14 into a fire-breathing, 12-cylinder-packing monster. With new sponsor The PartsTrader onboard, Jaron and his dad Kester embarked on arguably one of their wildest builds yet — shoehorning a Toyota Century V12 1G-ZE into the S-chassis. They intended to pull a minimum of 522kW with 950Nm-plus of torque out of the V12, so a full list of custom componentry was required. Unfortunately due to a miscommunication with an overseas supplier, the wrong parts arrived and the correct ones needed to be reordered, setting progress back by a good margin — which means that the V12 won’t be…

With the first round of the Demon Energy D1NZ National Drifting Championship at Forsyth Barr Stadium drawing closer, teams are coming out of the woodwork with some seriously updated builds. Brad Smith is one of those, with his previously supercharged VQ38-powered Nissan 350Z going under the surgeon’s knife to cut the supercharger off and slap a big ol’ snail on. “The supercharger worked well, but it was about the way it delivered power,” he told us, “It was very flat, where the 14psi of boost was only achieved at 8000rpm”. Limitless Motorsport has supplied a Precision PT7675 turbo and twin 48mm wastegate set-up, which is rated to 1000hp (745kW), although that’s not the number he is chasing — he says it’s not about the figure, but how the car will…

The team behind the Demon Energy D1NZ National Drifting Championship has never been known to shy away from bringing us new and exciting venues for drifting, but building a track inside Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin is by far the biggest challenge it has ever undertaken — what a way to kick off the 2016–’17 season! The Friday night before the event the teams from D1NZ and local roading crew M3 will move in and begin the process. To protect the ball-sport turf, plywood will be laid, and then boxing made up and plastic will be laid inside that. “The plan is to have half of the track down by 6am to 8am on Saturday morning to start pouring concrete,” Brendon White of D1NZ explained. After this half of the…

Defending Toyota 86 Champion Ash Blewett dominated the first races of the 2016–’17 championship at Pukekohe, taking two wins and one second place as crashes blighted the opening round. Blewett won the opening race on Saturday from pole position, in a clean flag-to-flag victory that kept him clear of multiple crashes which took four competitors out of the race. His toughest challenge came from CareVets Racing’s Ryan Yardley, with Australian Will Brown tagging onto the rear of Yardley’s car to form a three-car draught down Pukekohe’s long front and rear straights. Tom Stokes and Mike Lightfoot tangled on the back straight on lap five, both cars suffering extensive panel damage as they slid down the safety barrier walls. Australian Drew Ridge then went off on lap 10, making contact with…

I f you haven’t heard about the Project ’64 Bonneville Mini, what internet-deficient rock have you been under? Though the small New Zealand team that decided to take a 1964 Mini Cooper S to Speed Week will try to tell us that the result isn’t a big surprise, it really is: three astonishing times across the Utah salt flats. Most people will agree that, generally speaking, the sequel will never beat the original. The team campaigned the ’64 MkI Mini Cooper S back in 2012 and returned triumphant with a top speed record under its belt. The car had originally ran a British Motor Company (BMC) A-Series 970 Cooper S engine, packing a whopping 48kW from factory, but the two examples used in the Project ’64 car had received a…

In 1986 the sport of rallying was more romantic and flamboyant than Formula One. Cars which reacted quicker than the human brain, drivers with nerves of steel, and spine-tingling ribbons of tarmac and gravel all culminated in the world’s most promising duo burning to death in the bottom of a ravine in Corsica, while trapped inside their car. Rallying had spiralled into insanity, and on May 2, 1986, the sport changed forever. It was time to welcome in a new era — Group A. For many fans and drivers alike, the change was torture. The rules were tightened, and to ensure the sport was heading in a new, safer direction, homologation numbers went from 200 to 2500 units, while power was wound back from 485kW to 179kW. The cars out…

TREAT YOUR CAR THIS CHRISTMAS Planning a holiday season getaway? Don’t stress about the return to reality — wash off the grime that your car is sure to accumulate with Luxxio’s Merry Frosty Christmas car-care pack. With a 500ml bottle of Luxxio Frost Lquid Spray-on Wax, two wash sponges, three glass cloths, two all-purpose cloths, 10 Luxxio Luxury Wash sachets, one drying towel, and one claypaint decontamination towel, what more do you need? The Merry Frosty Christmas Kit is just $60 down from $170 — a steal, for unparalleled shine, and water repellency, for interior and exterior. Visit luxxio.co.nz for more information. Available until January 10. POWER ON TAP Flat batteries happen, it’s a fact of life — albeit a pain-in-the-arse one — meaning that no garage is complete without…

We were quite surprised when Hamish Mann contacted us about slotting his Honda Shuttle build into Under Construction — firstly because not many people are building turbo B16A-powered Shuttles, and secondly, it’s the same turbo B16A engine that was pulled from the Honda Civic featured in Issue No. 167, now shown above. That’s right, Hamish and Heyden both independently contacted us about two different forms of that car. It’s rad to see two new builds being built out of one. For the Shuttle, the first incarnation saw a LS VTEC installed — a hybrid Honda engine that takes the displacement of a 2.0-litre B20 engine, and combines the DOHC VTEC head from a B16. As he came from a 373kW Evo, Hamish wasn’t overly satisfied with the output, so the…

Yet another ex-feature car has made its way back into NZPC — LOOS32 appeared in Issue No. 127 back in ’07. She’s since traded hands from the original owner, and is now taken care of by Ben Hooper. The car was purchased the day after his 21st birthday, and although the NA 13B it came with was a healthy example, it eventually let go. Luckily Ben worked at a Mazda dealership at the time, so sourcing parts was easy. It was rebuilt by PPRE and three years passed, and with only 6000km on the clock, one particular outing saw the 13B lose oil pressure — which was found to be caused by a seal getting pinched during assembly. Rather than go down the road of yet another rebuild, Ben made…

OWNER: JOHNNY ROLTON LOCATION: CHRISTCHURCH OCCUPATION: CAR DETAILER NZPC: Sweet little KP, Johnny. How did you come to own it? Johnny: Thank you. I’ve always had a soft spot for them ever since I was young, and have owned a few of them over the years. This example was on Trade Me, advertised as an unfinished, non-running project. It was pretty rough, and the guy told me that he wanted to “upgrade to a Silvia”. How did the 4A-GZE come into the mix? It was actually part of the original purchase, which I put into my KE70 Targa / track car for the boosted set-up, and I planned to put a 4K into the KP to sell it off. The KP turned out to be an awesome wee daily, and…