Innehållsförteckning för No 243 March 2017 från NZ Performance Car

If you’re a long time reader of NZ Performance Car then I would like to apologise for harping on about my E36 project for the past four years. The project has haunted my thoughts during nearly every waking hour. That’s 16,000 hours of conscious thought in which my mind has wandered back and forth through every conceivable way to build each component, how to change things, and how we can build something different to the norm. I have never been afraid to chop something up and bin it, only to start from scratch again if I felt it wasn’t right, or learned so much building it that I couldn’t not redo it. That’s effectively meant we have built three cars in the past four years. First the 30% completed 1UZ-FE…

Mad Mike’ Whiddett’s FD3S has travelled the globe, killing tyres from Asia to America, and all over Europe. The long-suffering FD chassis has been loyal to Mike. It’s taken down some of the best names in the business and banged doors with hundreds of drifters. It’s the car that Mike first learnt to drift in, and the car that propelled him onto the world stage. In return, Mike has shown the car some serious love over the years, constantly updating its look and keeping it fresh, even with newer, faster and more powerful ‘BUL’s appearing in his stable. You might think that ‘MADBUL’ would eventually be pushed into the corner and left to gather dust, but that could not be further from the truth. We introduce to you version seven…

HERE’S ONE WE DUG-UP FROM ‘MAD MIKE’S 2005 NZPC YEARBOOK FEATURE he year was 2004 and the venue was the Manukau Velodrome — an arena generally inhabited by Lycra-clad cyclists was awash with 1000s of car enthusiasts with a blood lust for burnt rubber. A blue 808 wagon made its way through the tunnel and emerged onto the pad, erupting in a cloud of smoke and wall of noise that only a 13B peripheral port (PP) could produce. Behind the wheel was a young ‘Mad Mike’ Whiddett — then a somewhat unknown FMX rider who proceeded to stamp his name into the rotary halls of fame, helped in part by a single wild stunt, one that is still talked about today. Mid skid in his Mazda 808 wagon powered by…

am Davies and Dave Steedman have known each other for over half their lives. From their high-school days to today, these two have been meddling with anything and everything car related. Somewhere along the way — no doubt with oil-stained clothing, grease up to their elbows, and a beer in hand — Adam and Dave decided to establish Team DSR (Davies Steedman Racing). It was 10 years ago that the duo first moved their street cars onto the track. Dave spoke fondly of his time as a beginner, but both he and Adam quickly realized street cars were not right for the level of drifting they aspired to. Dave recalls, “After a handful of track days I had the bug, and I decided to build my Nissan Cefiro A31 to…

Part of the reason we love the car scene in God’s own is the strong sense of connection here between groups of like-minded owners. This has prompted the creation of hundreds of car clubs, and while many of those have come and gone over the years, a few better-known examples have stuck around. There is something for everyone out there, including one of the new kids on the block, a South Island—based group known as ‘Rotor Pulse’. If it wasn’t glaringly obvious from the name, these guys share a love of rotary-engine (RE)-powered vehicles, and the group’s name is a nod to the iconic ‘pulsating’ these engines produce. The club had its beginnings in another rotary-specific group that began to fizzle out due to inactivity. Not content with that, Marc…

It reasured heirlooms may be more than the objects we usually think of, traditions and skills passed down through family history are just as valued. On a narrow back road in Saitama sits a house above a workshop, nestled against a narrow waterway. A faded-green concrete pad and a wooden bench seat sit next to a roller door, slightly opened to reveal the rear of a Kenmeri Skyline. It’s within this humble workshop that a true artist lives, and he’s passing on a dying art form from one generation to another. Shintaro Mizuno’s love for classic kyusha has become a way of life, and his son, Kazuki, could possibly be the luckiest 19-year-old in Japan. The Mizuno Works story is one of rags to riches. At the age of 18,…

NAME: MAX MILLARD LOCATION: CHRISTCHURCH OCCUPATION: SALES EXECUTIVE NZPC: Hi, Max. That’s a super tidy daily. How did you end up owning it? Max: Hey NZPC. I was working for BMW at the time and the M3 was owned by a regular customer of ours. The E46 was always that poster car for me when I was younger, and my dad also loved them, which is probably where I got it from. Anyway, the previous owner traded the car in on a new BMW 1M, and when discussing the purchase with the finance department, he said they could only take it as a trade if I were to buy the car, this coming after lengthy discussions with him previously about how I’d love to own it. I took it home…

Well, that went by damn quick! Hope you all had a sweet holiday break and managed to get among some of the fine, fine weather that we were treated to. I made sure to cut a few kilometres around the country in the time off and gave the new daily a good ol’ run in — and forget the same old repeating record; I didn’t get the track car done in time to take it out, not that I would have looked forward to forking out for that fuel bill. The roads between Auckland (via Matamata) and Taupo are pretty stellar, I might add, and, for the most part, it was smooth sailing the whole way down and back. But there was one part of my travels that irked me.…

Make an FIA Grade 1 track, a spattering of priceless and irreplaceable Nissan race craft from the ’60s all the way through to modern times, then add in 10s of 1000s of Nissan-mad fanatics, and you have Japan’s annual Nismo Festival, held at the end of last year on December 11. It’s run at the absolutely massive Fuji Speedway facility nestled in the foothills of snow-capped Mount Fuji, and the scale is so large that you simply get lost in the madness: unless you develop flying powers, experiencing the entire event is nothing short of impossible, considering that it’s held over a single day. But, for any Nissan fans reading this, book your damn tickets now — and here’s why. As soon as you come within a 10-kilometre radius of…

hen you think about the speed in rpm at which your engine internals are moving, both in a rotational and reciprocating (for piston engines) or eccentric (for rotary engines) motion, while you’re hard up the loud pedal, it’s somewhat mindboggling to think they can see upwards, and sometimes in excess of, 10,000rpm, especially when we’re talking rotary engines. The balance of these components is integral to allowing these types of rpm and not have your engine completely destroy itself — think of a washing machine on fast spin, with a cinder block inside. When dealing with high rpm, even the slightest variation in weight between any parts in the rotating assembly can cause vibrations. Any vibration in the engine is doing damage. So exactly how do you ensure your internals…

Which isn’t always good, often far from it after taking a good hammering from the stellar New Zealand weather system. Not only are our weather conditions debatable at the best of times, but burning hot summers, followed by never-ending rain, and constant exposure to dust and all sorts of other abrasive elements take their toll. You’ll see this quite a bit on cars produced in certain regions in the northern-hemisphere that have a different climates to ours after they’ve been driving here for a few years — seriously, the sun is notoriously harsh. Good thing for your wallet that surface protectant can be applied to your car to not only make washing it a hell of a lot easier, but also help extend your paintworks lifetime. This applies whether your…

One of the stories of the circuit-racing season so far has been the high quality of the racing in several of the national-level categories in the Speedworks Premier Motorsport Championship. With two rounds down at the time of writing, the Castrol Toyota Racing Series has produced several of its usual breathlessly action-packed races, but alongside that there have been fantastic encounters in the Toyota 86 Championship, the Porter Group V8 Utes, and, as people have come to expect, the Ssangyong Actyon Ute Series. The key to the Toyota 86 series is that all the drivers race identical cars, and those lucky enough to be at rounds at Pukekohe Park Raceway, Taupo’s Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, Christchurch’s Mike Pero Motorsport Park, and Invercargill’s Teretonga Park have seen some great scraps in…

DROOL-INDUCER One word: spectacular. There are many ways to build a car, and there’s never really a right or wrong scenario in our books, just varying degrees of cool. Matt Gaskin’s VK56-powered R32 Skyline hits the top of that scale and further cements its place there with every update we receive. For those of you unaware, the 5.6-litre is a Nissan-produced, American-built V8 engine that is more commonly known for its exploits in the V8 Supercars series and in speedway superstocks, though Nismo also uses the VK56DE for FIA GT1. Originally found inside a Nissan Titan pickup in the States, or a Nissan Patrol on this side of the world, it was based on the VQ series of V6 engines rather than the VH series of V8s used in previous…

GET YOUR DAILY NEWS FIX ONLINE: themotorhood.com D1NZ Pro-series driver Sky Zhao has dropped a surprise announcement that he will create the country’s first dedicated drift circuit at Meremere Dragway by year end. Needless to say this got a few people excited, and craving more information, ourselves included. After chatting with Sky we can answer a few burning questions. The approx. 1km-long Meremere Drift Park will be a tight, technical circuit that focuses on low-speed drifting where big power, or the need to carry lots of momentum, is not necessary — but if you have it, a damn good time is sure to follow. The idea is to create a facility that is friendly to both beginners and advanced drivers, with the former being able to develop their technique without…

For as long as we can remember, the show car circuit has treated us to next-level development by those who dare to push their builds to the limits, and there is a pair of Christchurch-based lads working hard to ensure such a spectacle is never forgotten. The dynamic duo are no strangers to our pages either, appearing on the cover of NZPC issue no. 232, and have become certified experts in pushing the boundaries of taste, style, and trends in New Zealand. When we last caught up with Jared and Blake, they had just destroyed the notion anyone might have been harbouring that colour-change paint, big wings, and chrome wheels were dated, with a pair of near-identical Nissans that stole the crowd’s hearts at the 2016 V 4&Rotary Nationals. 12…

It he needle on the tacho streaks beyond 8000rpm. Strapped inside this scarlet jungle gym, it’s the very definition of sensory overload. Beyond the firewall, the mechanical symphony of four cylinders reaches a fever pitch then subsides, as the madman behind the wheel plucks third, then fourth gear. We’re barrelling along at a pace probably slightly beyond the comfort zone of this virgin to a rallying silly seat, but with barely a lift off the loud pedal, the car tips left into a cambered, uphill turn. It’s not violent — at least it doesn’t feel particularly aggressive as the tail flicks towards the edge of the road while the nose points at the inside bank. Rather, the chassis motion is fluid, and the suspension absorbs the ruts and bumps. On…

We are now reaching the midpoint of the Demon Energy D1NZ National D ri fting Championship, with the newly announced Baypark round shifting from the custom carpark course to inside the 17,000 -seat stadium, before another first as the championship heads to Hampton Downs Motorspor t Park’s new club circuit, followed by the big one — the Puke monster But wherever the circus competes, Demon Energy D1NZ National Drifting Championship is home to a wide and often ver y wild array of weapons. With little in the way of rules that dictate what you can and can’t build, teams are increasingly stepping outside the box in the hope of finding that competitive edge over the competition. The 2016/’17 season has seen more crazy creations than any in recent histor y,…

NAME: BRENDON DIXON LOCATION: AUCKLAND OCCUPATION: DRONE PILOT ENGINE: Volkswagen ABF, 1984cc, four-cylinder (Mk3 GTI); Suzuki GSXR individual throttle-bodies, ported factory headers, Coby three-inch side-exit exhaust, K-Jet fuel pump, Megasquirt ECU, alloy radiator DRIVETRAIN: Close-ratio five-speed (Mk2 GTI 16v), Spax clutch, Spax lightweight flywheel; five-stud hub conversion, Mk4 GTI calipers, 288mm front rotors, 220mm rear rotors INTERIOR: Sparco seats, lap timer, carbon-fibre door cards EXTERIOR: Bare-metal respray in Volkswagen Arctic White WHEELS/TYRES: 15x6.5-inch (+43) BBS GTI Mk3, Achilles 123S tyres SUSPENSION: Bilstein coilovers, rebuilt and revalved by Autolign; (F) 450lb springs, (R) 250lb springs, strengthened factory arms EXTRA: Seam-welded body, six-point roll cage, swaged A-pillars, cross-braced doors CIRCUIT: 1.24s at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park (wet) NZPC: Hi, Brendon. The VW community is usually quite protective of its Mk1s. Did you…

TUFF AS Are Ford V8 conversions into Japanese chassis the next big thing? Who knows, but in the meantime all those rocking serious power through their ol’ Ford XR to XF engine, as well as the powerplant in some Mustangs, should check out the Tuff Mounts direct bolt-in mount. They are guaranteed to be unbreakable, 100 per cent captive and restrict movement to allow greater transfer of engine torque through the driveline. Available at $347 per pair — check out tuffmounts.com.au for further information. COOLING POWER Electric fans are a sweet way to rid your engine of that parasitic drain on the rotating assembly, while decreasing weight and most importantly, beefing up its cooling ability. The Derale Extreme High Output series of electric fans uses 10 thin, curved blades to…

If you have an event you’d like to see in the Gig Guide, email editor@performancecar.co.nz with all the details MARCH 11 NZHONDAS.COM NORTH ISLAND MEGA MEET — TRACK DAY ’17 HAMPTON DOWNS MOTORSPORT PARK, TE KAUWHATA FEBRUARY 11–12 SPEEDWORKS PREMIER MOTORSPORT CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ROUND SIX (NZGP) MANFEILD CIRCUIT CHRIS AMON, FEILDING Classes: Toyota 86, Toyota Racing Series, NZ Touring Cars, V8 Utes, Porsche, GT1 and GT2, GT3 and GT4, Central District Muscle Cars, and Formula 1600 FEBRUARY 11–12 ROTARY REUNION 2017 BRUCE MCLAREN MOTORSPORT PARK, TAUPO REunion is the place to be for all things rotang related. The previous events have drawn the largest gathering of rotaries seen on our shores, and year on year it continues to grow. REunion includes cruisin’, show and shine, drifting, and burnouts, and the…