Innehållsförteckning för No 262 October 2018 från NZ Performance Car

Motorsport, no matter on what level you participate, from grasskhanas to the top ranks of New Zealand circuit racing, is dangerous. We all know it; hell, do you think all those safety crews and ambulance staff hang out trackside poised for action all weekend just for the free entry? So, when one of the biggest tracks in New Zealand goes and makes head restraints mandatory for all competitors and passengers, at no real financial gain to its business, why are so many of us getting up in arms, screaming about how much it costs, when all we should be doing is asking, ‘Where do I buy one?’ Full disclosure here: I’m yet to purchase one myself, but I fully intend to before my first actual race event, even if that…

LINK ECU STREET FIGHTERS ROUND 2 BRUCE MCLAREN MOTORSPORT PARK, TAUPO It’s almost one year to the day since the inaugural event, but the age-old question still remains: Mitsubishi or Subaru, which is truly the better platform? Hosted by the team at Choice Events, this one will again take place on Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park’s International Circuit (full track) in Taupo and will encompass cruising, drags, burnouts/helis, race car sessions, and a show’n’ shine. While the event is predominantly aimed at Evos and WRXs, the team will accept entries for any Subaru or Mitsi — Libero, Forester, GSR, B4, or otherwise. Entry is set at $220 prepaid. Check out choiceevents.co.nz or find the event on Facebook for more information. ALL CLASSIC JAPANESE SERIES ROUND 1, HAMPTON DOWNS MOTORSPORT PARK Targeting…

HEART ENGINE: 180SX Type X SR20DET, 2000cc, four-cylinder BLOCK: Factory HEAD: Factory INTAKE: HKS mushroom filter EXHAUST: 2.5-inch straight pipe, twin 2.5-inch blast pipes TURBO: Garrett T25G WASTEGATE: Factory BOV: Blitz FUEL: 500hp (373kW) fuel pump IGNITION: Factory ECU: Factory COOLING: Blitz front-mount intercooler AUTECH HAS BEEN KNOWN TO DIP ITS FINGERS IN THE COOKIE JAR OF MANY PRODUCTION NISSAN MODELS OVER THE YEARS, ALTHOUGH THE SILVIA AUTECH CONVERTIBLE WAS THE COMPANY’S FIRST FORAY INTO SPECIAL-OPTION VEHICLES AND PERHAPS THE MOST AMBITIOUS, TOO A grinder is the staple of any car owner’s home workshop, fact. These trusty spinning discs of destruction are perhaps one of the most versatile tools known to man, making the perfect solution for cutting through all manner of material, cleaning back old parts ready for modifying,…

The beauty of being a young buck coming up in the car scene is running through a gaggle of rough-and-ready cars to learn what it is you’re soft on. A journey of trial and error, if you will. And the characteristics that cause you to fall in love with any given pile of steel aren’t always about what’s popular, fast, or looks the wildest, either — it can be as simple as having that perfect seating position or the way the exhaust barks on decel’. Hell, with some cars, there isn’t much of anything that triggers that interest and causes you to hold on to one that little bit longer than the others; you learn to love it as time goes by. It’s a phenomenon that almost all of us…

Back in the dark ages of motorsport, drivers with proverbial balls of steel would basically throw themselves into the cabin and chuck poor-handling cars into corners like absolute lunatics. And, for a good stretch of time, these antics were devoid of basic personal safety equipment that we wouldn’t dare to arrive at a track without these days — helmets, harnesses, roll cages, enclosed footwear, and race suits were nowhere in sight. Series such as Formula 1, the British Touring Car Championship, and the World Rally Championship (WRC) put drivers behind the wheel of serious and, ultimately, dangerous machinery, with the result being numerous injuries and deaths. As the years went on and motorsport developed beyond the basic pursuit of speed with nothing more than 37kW to play with (at best),…

NAME: LEWIS J FRAYNE AGE: 24 LOCATION: AUCKLAND OCCUPATION: MOTORHOME RENTAL MANAGER NZ Performance Car: Hi, Lewis. Not every day you see WRX made up to look like the great Colin McRae’s; how did you come to own it? Lewis: Hey, guys. It was a trade-in against a new car at a dealership that we usually buy from — in completely stock form, that is. They rang up and said to come check it out, so my dad and I went for a look, and it was nothing more than a plain white example — nothing fancy, just tinted windows, with a little dumpy, [an] aftermarket steering wheel, and two gauges. Memories of my first WRX flooded back — which had a stainless exhaust that would start riots but still…

As fast as it came, the Trueno is gone! The old girl was my first foray into the world of Toyota 1600cc four-bangers. It was a good time, albeit only a short time, and it showed me first-hand exactly why people love these things so damn much. But deep down I knew where my allegiances lie, and the want for another SR-powered daily-driver hankered me something rotten. That meant moving the AE92 on to a new home, which thankfully, came by way of a super enthusiastic fella in Welly, who took over custody and is busy giving it the love it deserves. It’s always nice to know a car’s fate after leaving your ownership, regardless of how much or little you put into it, especially when it’s one that you’ve…

Got Instagram? Want print fame on top of all those likes that fly your way each time you post a photo? Want ot show us your whip without actyally talking to us? Want to see what other readers are up to in their sheds? The answers to all these questions and why these two pages exist lies in the use of the hashtag #nzpc. Search it. use it. and thrash it! We keep a very close eye on it and will be choosing a bunch of hashtagged posts each month to print right here. And that's not all - the best shot will earn it's owner a little prize for theri trounle. So remember, next time you're gram'n', use #nzpc.…

When Wellington’s slipway facility was forced to shut its doors to the region’s drifters, it left everyone who had drifted that sliver of concrete high in the Brooklyn Hills overlooking the city with almost no options when it came to hitting the track sideways. For many, the dream was over. With nowhere to drift, they promptly put their drift cars on the market and moved on to other types of automotive exhibition. For Tom Warren, the sale of his S13 would introduce him to the world of all-wheel-drive Subarus, setting him on a journey that would eventually see him go full circle back to drifting, only this time doing it with a Subaru WRX STi that is underpinned by parts robbed from a Silvia. How Tom came to build the…

The car community are a pretty self-reliant bunch really; we don’t need fancy, purpose-built facilities or anything like that. Give us an empty corner of a car park, a few modified cars, and some like-minded individuals, and you’ll have yourself a damn good time that can drag on into the wee-smalls with people shooting the shit! At the risk of sounding like some geriatric banging on about how good we use to have it, if you wind the clock back a few years, the rotary scene all over New Zealand would have regular meets like these almost weekly in some instances. But, be it due to a crackdown from Johnny Law, owners getting older and life getting busy, or the even the price of petrol, they have been in heavy…

NAME: JAMES BANNISTER AGE: 34 LOCATION: TE AWAMUTU OCCUPATION: LANDSCAPER NZ Performance Car: Hi, James. Tell us, have you always been a Holden fan, and why? James: Hey, team. I was always a big Holden fan growing up, but just like a nice car these days. My very first car was a red VL Berlina, which was offered with the RB30E and had a manual box behind it. Even though it went well, I was always envious of the turbo Calais and wanted that kind of chuff, so, some 15 years later, I was able to buy this straight (or so we thought) one from Tauranga. But it wasn’t as straight as you thought? Nope. I stripped it down after finding a truckload of rust and sent it over to…

There aren’t many people who have the balls to buy a pretty much brand new car and chop into it something serious. Allan Grant is one of those people, having bought his 1995 EG Civic back in’98 and quickly transforming it into a turbocharged showstopper during the early 2000s. It appeared at the likes of Auto Salon and 4&Rotary events, collecting a gaggle of awards over the years before being put into hibernation when Allan moved over to Brisbane with the car in tow, where it spent the next 11 years under a cover. It wasn’t until that cover was pulled back, piquing Allan’s curiosity for what the car scene was doing now, that it managed to escape its prison. Allan has now stripped it back to a shell in…

HKS TRB-03 TO ATTACK WTAC Fresh off the back of carving up the Tsukuba Circuit lap record — setting a blistering 49.445-second hitter — HKS is set to take the TRB-03 (‘Tsukuba Record Breaker’) Time Attack weapon to the Yokohama World Time Attack Challenge (WTAC) Sydney 2018 over 12–13 October. Unfortunately, it won’t be going up against the current field of billet engine–equipped Pro Class cars, as it is being set up to run purely on slicks, making it ineligible to compete according to the Pro Class rule book. However, it will be driven in full anger by legendary Japanese wheelman Nobuteru ‘Nob’ Taniguchi during the Midday Mayhem entertainment sessions. And to see what the TRB-03 is really capable of, it will be put under the stopwatch, too. This car…

50MM INJECTION PERFECTION THROTTLE BODIES SIT ON WHAT AZ CALLS “MID LENGTH” RUNNERS AIMED AT PRODUCING SOME GOOD MID RANGE FOR STREET DRIVING HEART ENGINE: Dynamic Automotive–built Mazda 26B PP, 2600cc, four-rotor BLOCK: Lightened Series 5 NA rotors, South Coast Rotary (SCR) side seals, corner seals, oil-retaining rings, oil O-rings, SCR 2mm apex seals, SCR springs, peripheral-ported housings, Rotorsport Racing balancing, high-rev-clearanced race bearings INTAKE: Injection Perfection 50mm throttle bodies, 100mm trumpets EXHAUST: RSL two-inch stainless primaries, four-into-3.5-inch Pac Performance collector, Pac Performance resonator, Pac Performance muffler FUEL: Dual Walbro 465 in-tank pumps, 8x Bosch 665cc injectors, Turbo smart fuel-pressure regulator (FPR), custom fuel rails, MicroTech fuel-pressure sensor IGNITION: Godzilla Motorsport billet coil mounts, R35 GT-R coils, NGK race plugs ECU: MicroTech LT16c (modified for 26B), exhaust-gas temperature (EGT) sensors…

Whether you spent the week(s) leading up to Chrome furiously spannering at 3am every night in an attempt to make sure your car was, by some miracle, even remotely driveable come the weekend, or you simply spit-shined your shoes as you had already accepted the fact that you’d never make it in time, rolling through those fogged-out Hampton Downs gates early Saturday morning — or, on a solidly sunny Friday, if you’re a VIP-baller — whatever efforts were spent were no doubt well and truly worth it. The crisp, cold air mixed with the hefty aroma of fresh fuel and that soundtrack of nearly 700 cars firing into life is an atmosphere you need to experience for yourself, as no number of words will ever convey the kind of tingles…

Engine swaps have been going on since the Model T started rolling off the production line at the beginning of the 20th century; mad folks wanting to go faster than the factory ever intended or perhaps to obtain more reliability than the factory could ever muster. Whether it’s a later model engine into an older chassis, or one that makes four times the power without any mods — whichever way you look at it, Kiwis love engine swaps. But choosing the right engine for your project can be a minefield. First up, you’ll want to consider the most important factor of all: how the engine will actually mount and whether it will fit. Failure to get sumps clearing cross members or headers to accommodate steering shafts can spell the end…

It may have been a long time between laps for HKS in the Time Attack discipline, but, with a resume that includes the infamous long-timerecord-holding CT230R Evo, which went 53.58 seconds back in 2007, and HKS’s first Time Attack attempt weapon, the 447kW carbon Altezza, which went 55.8 in 2001 — both of which are miles ahead of their time — you know that when the team does throw its hat into the ring, the converted Tsukuba TC2000 record is not safe. The hat this time was TRB-03, a Toyota 86 running full AMB aero and a full carbon body, just like the previous two TRBs. When it was first launched, the 86 featured a supercharger kit, but, by the time it was ready to run Tsukuba’s TC2000, HKS had…

NAME: ZAC JACKISON AGE: 21 LOCATION: THAMES OCCUPATION: GENERAL ENGINEERING APPRENTICE NZ Performance Car: Hey, Zac. Tell us how you got into cars and what your first was. Zac: Hi, NZPC. One of my oldest memories with cars is of my step dad taking me for skids in his Skyline on my fifth birthday. I’ve been into cars ever since then, really, and my first was a loud and low Corolla. Was it that first taste of Toyota that made you buy the Corona? Yeah, old Toyotas are pretty cool in my eyes, and this one being an RT94 coupe made it pretty rare. When I first looked at it for sale, I thought to myself, “Wow, this has an awesome shape”, and it was one of those ‘I need…