No more bouncing soon

Ordered the JIC Magic FLT TAR coilover set.

More information of the coilover can be found here. I actually had a few options in mind. Along with the JICs, I was looking at the KW Variant 3, Tein Monoflex as well as the HKS Hipermax III. Went for the JIC in the end because it was the cheapest. I don't think I'll track, so I guess the added performance I'll get with a high-end coilover would be kinda wasted on me. The KW came a close second though, I've heard fantastic reviews from a lot of people on these, but I got 2 quotes from different sources, and the price difference was about 500 bucks. I don't know, but I get a bit uncomfortable when prices fluctuate like this. No idea why though.

In any case, its going to be the new year soon, and I suppose its going to get sluggish in Japan as well. It'll probably take them a while to ship. I reckon I'll probably only be fitting the suspension in the later part of January.

I'm also getting the garage to check on this air intake kit from Beatrush.

More pictures can be found on the laile website here. Looks like a decent piece of gear. I like the Apex'i intake, but I have my doubts on how much more performance this kit has over the stock setup, seeing that its a boxed-in cone and there doesnt seem to be any heatshield or anything funneling air in through the front nose. I would actually prefer Autoexe's carbon ram air intake system. It looks really nice and it really does seem to do what its supposed to. Only problem is I can't bring myself to fork out more than 1.5k SGD for something like this. Thats almost 2.5 times the Beatrush's system!

And to top it off, I think Autoexe doesnt even use their own filters. From pictures I've seen, they seem to be using stuff from K&N. Quite a premium to pay for an OEM-look kit. Problem is, there aren't much MX5 users on these two pieces of equipment out of Japan, so its almost impossible to see/hear/feel/compare the real thing in action.

Soundup

Sent my car in for an audio tuneup the day before. The car spend about an hour with the tuner on the RTA setup. Here you see the mic in the driver's seat and the tuner looking attentively at the spectrum analyser.

After the tuning session, he mentioned that the MX5, like any other coupes, isn't really an ideal vehicular environment to do any serious sound quality setup in. I am a bit disappointed by this, but the sound did improve after the tuning session, although I will have some modifications on the door panels to rectify some of the troughs we see in the spectrum band on the RTA. I'll probably arrange another session with him come Feb next year, as both our schedules are kinda packed till then. Hopefully, I'll get closer to the sound I'm looking for.

Had a slight change to the steering wheel mod I had done previously. Now its virtually indistinguishable from a stock MX5 wheel.

Well, not exactly something to shout about, but I figured it does look unique, and its a mod that incurs minimal cost. And the best part is, I wasn't even the one who thought of it.

Lights

Its been a while since my last posting. Didn't managed to take any pictures of the HIDs since my phone decided to die on me and thats about the only digital camera I've got.
Anyway, here are some shots. I have replaced the small lights at the side with white LEDs as well, so it'll contrast nicely with the HIDs.

Here you see the side LEDs by themselves.


Frontal view.

Here's a pic with the HIDs.

Also had the silver parts of the steering wheel stickered up, as I would rather prefer the steering wheel not to have contrasting colours.

Close up of the sticker.

It looks a lot better in the flesh, Handphone camera doesnt really do the carbon stickers justice. Now I'm racking my brains as to what else I can stick next. LOL.

Tips

Went to an exhaust shop this morning to weld on bigger tips for the muffler. Its ironic really, here in Singapore, we can get our hands on every possible exhaust system from Japan with minimal lead times and the only option I have is this. No thanks to our country's policies on approved exhausts. Its a hefty fine if you're caught with one thats not homologated. Due to its low demand, there's currently NO approved exhausts for the NC, so that about limits my options to zero. No autoexe, HKS or Blitz pipes for me. =(

I was undecided about just getting bigger tips or going for some of those titanium tips with the bluetorched look. In the end, I stuck to convention.

Well, I'm kinda liking the look actually.

I also had HIDs done, though I did not took any pictures of the new lights. I'll probably post them up when I have the chance. Being a base model, my car did not come with HIDs, I was on the normal H7 halogens, so I had to look around for a HID conversion kit. The installation was tough, as anyone who had ever taken a look at the NC's engine bay would attest. Its a good thing I wasn't the one doing it!

Down Memory Lane

Was posting some pictures on photobucket when I happened to chance upon some pictures of one of my previous cars. I guess these pictures must have been in photobucket for close to 8 years. I've forgotten all about them and its nice to see them again

A friend took this picture. The intercooler is photoshopped. My car is NA.


Neons were quite the rage then. Practically (almost)everyone had them. Now I think its an extremely "ricey" thing to do.


This is a picture me and 2 other friends with identical silver imprezas took. Everyone's moved on since then.

Sadly, these are about all of what's left. I really do wished I had taken more pictures. I didn't even take any of the first car I've ever owned.

This is one of my favourite Mazda3 shots.

Rain

Took the time out to wash the car today. It has been a bad week. It's been raining sporadically and I didn't want to wash the car when it could rain any moment. Woke up in the morning and the sun was shining, turns out just a few hours after I'm done, the heavens opened up again.

Anyway, I did manage to snap some better pictures of the car before it started to rain.

Front shots



Close up shot


Side profile shots



I like this pic.

Rear views

If you look closely, you can actually see my reflection in the bumper. I took this picture without having a clear idea of where exactly I was pointing at. Good thing it didn't turn out too badly.

Au-tobahn!

Fixed up the kit today. The more I think about it, the more I feel I shouldn't have ordered the full au-tobahn kit. The sideskirts look almost identical to the stock ones. They're just a wee bit bigger, thats all. Could have saved some money for other stuff.

If you look at the picture, there's just a little bit of a bulge near the end. Thats about it. Oh well. I guess its the little details that makes all the difference.

Here are some pictures.

Hanging out to dry!

Here you also see an S15 and a AE86 in the background, both getting a widebody conversion, among other things. The silvia is a work in progress, but I was lucky to catch the Levin, which was receiving the finishing touches just as I arrived. The Levin was on a set of Works Equips with some unbelievable offsets. Close to half the wheel was out the fender!

Anyway, here's a side view picture of the au-tobahn front lip.

It seems from this picture there are some imperfections on the edges of the lip. Those aren't paint, but blemishes on the kit itself. Apparently the paintshop did not find it in themselves to smoothen these out before going ahead with the paint job. It seemed like such a simple thing to sand down the kit thoroughly that I am surprised, and more than a little bit puzzled why they will neglect to do this. In any case, the paintwork looks good with the exception of the edges, so I suppose I can live with it, since its not that obvious.

Here's the front view of the car. With the exception of the enormous cavity above the wheel, I think I have got almost all the appearance stuff covered. This is pretty much the final incarnation of my ride. I am probably going to be looking at my suspension options come next year. Current projects I have planned will be some miscellaneous stuff, such as stickers, exhausts tips and HID. I'm probably going to be changing certain bulbs to LEDs but I'm still on the fence with regards to that one.

The car is kind of dirty currently, so I didn't take more pictures. I'll post more pictures of the car tomorrow, after I've had the chance to give it a good wash.

Its here!

Finally, the long awaited au-tobahn kit has arrived. It took about close to 2 months to get it. I have a strong feeling I might be the one and only au-tobahn-kitted MX5 on the island.Haven't seen any around so far. Anyway, I was surprised when I went down to the shop to get it. The whole kit came in a box thats the size of a door!

Here are some pictures of the parts in the flesh. I didn't take any pictures of the sideskirts though.

I collected them yesterday but since it was already late, I didn't get to send them to a paintshop. The parts are still sitting in my sister's car as of now. I'll probably drop them off to be painted tomorrow.

Appearance package!!

Once the ICE project has been sorted out, it was time for a facelift. I had a hard time looking through all the bodykits available for my ride,as there were more than a few available. To be perfectly honest, this one below is my favourite.Followed closely by this one:
The unbelievably exorbitant price of the Mazdaspeed kit worked enormously against me going for it. That coupled with the fact that I have no place to store an extra bumper makes the Au-tobahn kit very appealing. And that was what I ordered. Order was placed sometime in the mid of September. I've just received word that the kit has arrived and I'll probably be picking it up this weekend. More real life pics will follow as soon I have these parts painted and fixed.

I also ordered the billet grille from gomiata, an ebay vendor. That took slightly more than 2 weeks to arrive, and I was anxiously awaiting its arrival the whole time. Indeed, I was not disappointed with the product. Here are some pics:
The package arrived securely packed with bubblewrap as well as some paper stuffing. On first feel, the grille feels very solid to the touch and very well-made. Its strange that the instructions that accompanied the grille was by Robert's Autosports instead of gomiata. The instructions, by the way, is the only thing I feel can be improved in this package. The grille comes with custom fittings and its not exactly easy to find out how these go in with the aid of the instructions, as there are no pictures at all, just words. Its not exactly hard to figure out, but I think some step-by-step pictures would have been nice.

Here's some pics of it installed.

I think the grille accentuates the car superbly. Although I do think it could be more secure if it actually replaces the stock black plastic cover, instead of attaching on top of it. It does have a bit of that Aston Martin feel, and I do admit that's one of the reasons I went for it in the first place. However, i think its far more subdued, quite different from this picture below.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Damd kit looks fantastic, but its just a bit over the top for my taste. I do think there are a few of these running around our little island though I have not personally had the opportunity of seeing one up close in the flesh.

Next up would be footwear. Its basically a tossup between these two.

On the left is the GC-010E by Prodrive and the other rim is the SA-67R by Weds Sports. Just looking at these two pictures will show some hint of my requirements. I wanted something that's gunmetal/grey, matt and multi-spoked. I liked the Weds design, it reminds me a lot of the stock wheel from the facelifted RX-8, which I think is one of the nicest looking stock rim out there.
Not hard to see why, is it?

The Prodrive however, has a timeless design. There are a few similar variants out there, from OZ's ultraleggara to Volk's CE-28NF. But there's just something about the Prodrive that makes it a little bit different. Its a mystifying thing that I can't quite place. Its also a forged monoblock , as compared to the Wed's casted piece, so that was another plus point.

Rims came on a good day, bright and sunny.
Was excited when I got the call from the wheel shop that my rims are in the house. Headed on down and my heart skipped a beat when I saw four Prodrive boxes stacked in a corner. I ordered 18x8, so I was anxious to know how heavy the wheels are. I was relieved to find that they weren't as heavy as I thought. I didn't weight the rims, but they felt lighter than they looked. A check online seems to suggest they are weighing in at about 8kg a piece, which I think isn't too bad for an 18" rim.

Some more pics.

As for rubbers, I was looking for Yokohama S-Drive or something along the lines. I wasn't considering high performance tires like the Neova AD07 or the Toyo T1Rs as that was not my objective. I wouldn't have went for 18 if this was the case. In the midst of doing my research, I found myself looking at another option, the Firenza st-08.
Kinda easy to figure out why. Look harder at the picture if you still don't get it. Apparently there was a lawsuit by Yokohama to stop the sale of st-08s in Japan due to this picture above. Now, I'm not sure if the similar threading is more or less it, but I guess the compound shouldn't be too far off if Yokohama bothered to file a lawsuit against Sumo. In any case, the price difference is quite impressive so it was a no-brainer decision for me. Now only time will tell if these serve me well.