Here at Garage-D we see tools as the bedrock of our business. Our constant involvement in motor sports requires us to be able to rely on the quality of the tools we have in the heat a moment. For over 15 years Mac Tools has been the brand we have trust in situations where everything fails, and only our skills and tools can get us through. With a history dating back to 1938 Mac Tools provides us the experience and reliability that we can trust.

We have had the recent pleasure of being able to cooperate with Mac tools on our new Garage-D/Mac Tools R34 Skyline. We were honored to be able to unveil the project last weekend at the 2011 Mac Tools European tools convention. Having the convention at Silverstone let us also present it at the 2011 Trax BDC Championship round 5, which resulted in an overwhelming public response that has left us at Garage-D thrilled with the new MAC Tools look. After this incredible response at the “home of British motor sports”, we are looking forward to what the future will bring.

:: Garage-D

We are very excited about the year ahead for Walton in the JPP Subaru. With a solid base being laid out last year we will be pushing forward for some top podium finishes and backwards entries!

Eoin

Here is a sample of their range and a few words from Nitto themselves:

“NITTO’s philosophy has always been to provide a NO COMPROMISE top end quality component at an affordable, competitive price. NITTO components have been designed and thoroughly tested using the latest computer technology, aiding in the development and design of all components. The latest machining techniques and many years of hands on research have been employed including being actively involved in all aspects of the motorsport industry to produce a component that will meet the needs of the most demanding applications.

All components have had countless hours of on track testing to finally produce a product that far exceeds the quality of our competitors similarly priced product.

At NITTO we believe in continuing development of our products, devoting countless hours assuring our components are always at the top end of the performance spectrum, making it impossible for the informed purchaser not to consider NITTO products.

NITTO products have been designed “by the Racers for the Racers” ensuring we understand the needs of the performance industry.

Nitto Performance Engineering”

Conrods…

Crankshafts…

Oil Pumps…

Pistons…

Gaskets…

Of course the most interesting pictures for us have to be these…

A crankshaft from Nitto’s 2.7L Stroker Kit for a power hungry customer with a Street-Legal R34 GTR coming to a circuit near you…

We are taking enquiries and orders for all the Nitto products, we are aiming to keep the full range of RB components on the shelf but in the future we will stock their full product range for immediate dispatch. Please feel free to contact us on 01923 251 588 or email info@garage-d.com

If you want to browse the full range of Nitto’s exciting products have a look here Nitto Performance Engineering

Eoin

]]> http://www.fastclassics.co.uk/garaged/?feed=rss2&p=702 0 http://www.fastclassics.co.uk/garaged/?p=691 http://www.fastclassics.co.uk/garaged/?p=691#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:04:00 +0000 admin http://www.fastclassics.co.uk/garaged/?p=691 Make sure to vote for the Jap Performance Parts/Garage-D RB25 Subaru in the Banzai Car of the Year 2010. If you enjoy the car as much as we do, please vote! You have to email banzai@unity-media.com with your top 3 cars – subject heading ‘Banzai COTY’.

Heres a video made by Jap Performance Parts to help you make your mind up…….

Eoin

I was up at 7.30am and travelled to Ebisu with the Dutch Crew “Paul, Vernon, Dex, Lars, his brother and the Girls”. I had entered the G1GP as a laugh as Paul had done the previous year. Only to find out arriving at Ebisu that it was a very serious affair with 72 entrants, mainly crazy Aussies with cool cars and plenty of track experience.

With the exhaust blow on the 180SX getting worse and having only driven the car for the first time, getting to know the track was difficult as I only had one practice session and the first corner was a blind down-hill 3rd gear entry! With the second session being qualifying and struggling with an unfamiliar car/track i was delighted to have qualified against tough, experienced competition. In the top 16 i got drawn against Polody from Poland who was driving a Team Orange S14 and had already competed in an event on the same track, it was looking to be an interesting battle until my turbo fell off and he over-took me on the last corner. This explained the exhaust blow wasn’t a gasket as the turbo had broken off the manifold causing the lack of power.

With repairs being done Saturday morning, which is the start of the Matsuri, the pressure was on to get out drifting with every one else. Thanks to Andy at Powervehicles for supplying the essentials to keep us all skidding, including the use of a good welder that i repaired the manifold with and added a bit of extra bracing.

With the turbo/manifold repaired and fitted including a full “Garage-D inspection” i finally felt confident about the car including assistance/tools from Drift Samurai who was using the garage next door. Time to go DRIFTING!!

Having a great time with everybody i drove most tracks until late Saturday night when i was shifting hard from 3rd gear to 2nd on the transition coming off the wall at Kita circuit i broke a selector in the gearbox. With every one being so helpful and getting a tow down to Andy’s garages there was no way of contemplating a gearbox build as there were about 20+ cars in various states of repair being worked on throughout the night. I had a bite to eat and put my head down in the back of Vernons Cefiro. I was woken up by the sound of  “Initial-D” as an AE86 was drifting the Touge at 5am even though it was still dark outside, with this i started into the gearbox re-build on the 180 using another blown box for parts.

By the time everyone appeared in the morning the re-built box was going back in and i was out drifting by about 10am. With Sunday being the best day i got to drift all tracks having an awesome time trying to link the jump on the Minami course (the D1 course) and rub the wall carrying the drift into the bottom corner. Even though i was running 16 inch tires with 4 bar of pressure in the rear and less than 300HP the speed and commitment needed was frightening! Saito Daigo (Blue Strawberry fronted 180SX with a 500HP V8) and Koguchi (Battered Blue S14, Good Spec) were fast and made this look very easy. Robbie Nishida tried my 180 and even with 8 bar of tire pressure WTF!! was still finding it hard work.

Whilst being at the Minami course it gave me some time to take some pictures, Amatuer style

Saito Daigo’s Left Hand Drive V8 powered S13 with S15 Front, as you can see a lovely car with a serious spec!

Cool Mark 2 wagon with 1JZ powers and everything else to match……

My jaw dropped when I looked over to see Kuroi’s original RB26 Onevia drive in complete with yellow paint/door shuts from years ago and his business partner who still runs River Side since Kuroi’s death last year……..

Of course there were casualties amongst the other amazing cars to be seen……

Come Monday things were starting to quieten down as most of the Japanese had returned to work which left nearly all tracks, 6 or 7, open for quality time. This gave me plenty of opportunity to master the Minami course with minor battle scars and blue paint on the back right quarter panel.

Heading back up the garages for tires there was a scene of destruction, with Andy’s JZX90 having a bit of a collision with an S14? but easily fixed…….

Along with other similar stories……..

Finishing up Monday night with Andy’s birthday and my first touch of alcohol plenty of drunk stories were being swapped with every one, mixed in with bad karaoke. We headed back to Tokyo on Tuesday where we managed to get out for a “different” night on the town in Narita with the highlights being……

Having had a great time in Japan, special thanks to the Dutch Crew and everyone else who made it possible and i will leave you with the limited footage that was found by chance…….(click the picture of my poor 180SX and the missiles in the background to view the video)

Julian

Garage-D is proud to announce it has secured a dealership with Gizzmo Electronics. We are now available to offer the full range of Gizzmo products at competitive prices! Gizzmos’ product range varies from Shift Lights to ECU Upgrades.

We have been supplying Gizzmo Boost Controllers to our customers for quite some time now and always recommend them for there fantastic quality, outstanding value and excellent working ability. We have never had one Gizzmo returned for any fault!! I have run one in my car for over a year now with absolutely no issues.

For the full range on sale check out the Gizzmo website by clicking HERE. But don’t forget you can purchase all the range direct from us with next day shipping on our online shop HERE.

The car has been a joint project between Garage-D, Jap Performance Parts and  PR Development. It started life as a completely standard STI Type R V4 1998:

After some time at Jap Performance Parts and PR Developments it started to slowly transform:

The car became a mix of  Skyline and Subaru parts to make everything fit correctly,  the front subframe and the transmission became hybrid parts, along with some other trade secrets.

Jap Performance then brought the Impreza to the first round of the EDC at Donnington in April 08 looking meaner with 22B arches, they received a large amount of interest and some very shocked looks…..

The difficult job of wiring up the car began soon after. Jap Performance wanted to only have the essentials to keep clutter and the possibility of electrical issues to a minimum. As you can see there is a rats nest of wiring to work through:

We were told that Paul spent two days on the wiring alone, glad i didn’t have to do it!

A modified front entry plenum was used to make life easier with intercooler pipework and room in the engine bay:

And a blow through AFM sat on the cold side of the intercooler:

Th car was coming together at a steady pace at this stage, there were some issues with wheel clearance on the arches though. So they built some custom arches to make things an awful lot easier on the eyes:

The wiring was nearly complete and the fuel lines were run inside the car. The standard clocks were ditched for a custom gauge build with Rev counter, speedo and water temp and further oil pressure, exhaust temp and boost in the centre console:

The oil cooler was mounted at the top of the engine using the Subaru vent as a cold air supply for it, space was not to be wasted on this build and this was certainly an very smart way of using it:

At this point the build on the car slowed as the main work had been done but it needed attention from a specialist. Sajid spoke to Walton of  Garage-D and in March of this year the deal was finalised for Walton to become the driver and to help complete the build and set up of the car.  The car then came to Garage-D for some further modification……

With this being the kind of work that Garage-D thrives on, Walton worked on modifying the front subframe, suspension and transmission of the car to improve the geometry set up. Walton used a Subaru V10 front cross member and heavily modified it to allow the RB engine to drop straight in. Here are some photos during the final stages of the subframe build:

With Garage-D carrying out this work on a large amount of cars already, modifying the front hubs to greatly improve steering lock and reduce Ackerman angle was also done. Walton made some custom bottom wishbones to increase camber and caster on the car to help with handling in a Drift specific set-up.

For the rear of the car Walton used the Subaru subframe modified to fit an R200 Differential and halfshafts from an S14, he felt this would be best to gain both the strength of Nissan and the geometry of Subaru. Again here are  some photos during the build of the rear subframe:

A large amount of the technical knowledge and ability from Garage-D had been put into the build of the Subaru at this stage and after it left it was far wider than when it came here just from these modifications. This is the Impreza sitting beside an original Type-R:

Next it was on to painting, Sajid from Jap Performance brought it to Customize Bodyworks and after seeing the work first hand they did a fantastic job:

And finally the finished article:

Then it was Waltons turn to visit Jap Performance to work on the engine. Walton and Sajid fitted new Tomei Cams, adjustable cam pulleys, uprated fuel rail, the front entry plenum and larger injectors.

Sajid concentrating very hard:

After some careful manoeuvring around the freshly painted shell the engine was sat back into place:

The car was then free to move around on its own four feet:

The car was mapped with an Apexi Power FC by Greg Gush, Protuner.co.uk, and spun an incredible 458BHP and 400 ft/lb of torque at 1.2bar of boost. Of course Walton and Sajid were extremely happy with this and the car didn’t have any issues while being mapped which Greg found very impressive.

The first time the car was driven outside the industrial estate was at JDM All Stars in Newcastle. The car ran faultless for the 2 day event, which for a project built from the ground up, was extremely impressive. Walton felt very confident and comfortable with the car during practice and decided to run for qualifying which slide him nicely into 8th place within the top 16!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And my favourite shot of the event:

Walton was knocked out in the Top 16 however by Jon Calvert who was on storming form for the weekend after the dramas of the round in Donnington. Jon then went on to a podium finish of second place in the S13 rebuilt after a week!

Overall with the performance of the Impreza at its first event both Walton and Sajid were ecstatic! The weekends results really proved the amount of effort and time put in by Garage-D, Jap Performance Parts and PR Developments. With Walton getting more and more seat time in the car I can see some podium finishes in the future.

Eoin

http://www.japperformanceparts.co.uk/images/MISC/DSCN0611.jpg

With the Garage-D/Blitz car sneaking around it was hard to trap it for a photo, it is a beast of a car after all…..

This one in particular belongs to Julian and Waltons’ father Neil, as far as we know the first to arrive in Ireland about 6 years ago! Sitting on dished steelies, stock steel wheels with a 2 1/2 inch band, that Neil made himself, personally i LOVE the look of this car…..

And now for the arty one……

Just a normal day in Garage-D!!

Eoin

The trip began with myself, Roisin ( my other half) and young Smith leaving Garage-D in Watford to pick up the Aussie Drift Legend Mr Luke Fink and his soon to be “Number One Single” selling girlfriend Jacqueline Rajić down at Severnside Imports in Lydney. With the R34 loaded, the BMW full of fuel and Walton full of energy drinks we were on our way. We picked up the Aussies after 1am and continued down to JDM Garage in Devon. The journey was filled with stories of Lukes’ exploits in Australia as he made his way to becoming the champion of the Australian Drift Series, i felt like i was stuck in an episode of  Neighbours after a while with Walton’s New Zealand accent starting to show through as well as Lukes’ Australian!! Luckily we made it to Devon without running into any “Roos” or “Dingos” on the way!

After some kip in a local B&B we were up and heading to RAF Chivenor for the day. All i can say is Factor 30 Sun Cream FTW!!

The event was much larger than we had expected and in its first year is already looking to be one of the main events for motor sport in Devon in future. The runway was still open during the whole event which made for some very interesting moments with planes taking off as we were making our way around to the pits for the Drift Demo. Having this in your rear view mirror doesn’t help though……

Also having to catch a glimpse of the legend that is Paul Howard from JDM Garage can be slightly un-nerving  ( especially when he caused us to get only 3 hours sleep the night before – THANKS PAUL )

The demo was to run three times and would include Walton in the ER34, Luke Fink in the JDM Garage AE86, Brad in the Dragon Performance RX7 and Martin in the AE86 Corolla. With the sun baking the strip it made for some serious smokey drifts and sun burned Irish!

Brad in the RX7 was pulling off some very smooth driving and really got smoke pouring from the back of the Pink machine……

We all know Paul from JDM can handle himself but he really got the crowd going in the ER32……

Martin in his AE86 was half of the non-turbo team showing off their skills at the demo……

Of course having two people with roots from Down Under you’d expect a slight bit of competition and young Walton and Mr Fink delivered on the day…

An interesting moment came when Luke decided to do a 360 in front of Walton going back down the straight, according to Walton it looked amazing, luckily we had some spare underwear in the BMW……

I think the heat started to become too much for Luke who started to drift with his door open…..

Then the two boys decided to try to round up some lost ladies that were roaming the track, look out for next years craze of Model herding with Drift cars….

As always I’ve got a favourite photo from the event and this has to go to Paul for some nice cone skimming…..

There were other events running throughout the day including a Gymkhana track, Rally-cross, WRC and Super-cars, the RAF Falcons Parachute Display Team, the Royal Signals Motorcycle Display Team, Renault Formula 1 car, the Bloodhound Project World Land Speed record attempt, Jamie Squibb – Motorcycle Stunt Rider, the UK’s number 1 FMX rider.

With the day over and my head well and truly red the cars were loaded for the trip home. As always the trip home goes faster and the banter in the car was flying so we had Luke and Jackie back in Lydney in no time. Although it took an awful lot of convincing to get them out of the car, everyone falls for the Irish charm! The rest of us got back to Garage-D at a reasonable hour, no thanks to the roadworks on the M25!!

So what have we learned from this weekend:

1. Put sun cream on your head too!
2. Aussies swear a lot ( but don’t mean any harm, we swear Danny!)
3. Don’t let Paul go to a wedding before an event
4. Never drive up a lane that has a sign “not suitable for heavy goods vehicles” unless your driving a HORSE
5. ALWAYS ring your boss to keep him up to date when you have his debit card, two of his cars and his trailer

Thanks to JDM Garage for the invite to the event, to all the crew from PETROC for setting up the event especially Christian for getting us safely across the runway and Mark from JDM Garage for taking the photos, more of which are available here Photobucket

Eoin

It started very early on Thursday morning like this……

Led into plenty of this……

Still working on it through Friday and the trailer ready for it to go on straight off the ramp, anything to save valuable time

All the work paid off with lots of track time for both the Blitz/Garage-D 600BHP Drift Taxi and……

the Street Candy/Garage-D 400BHP demo car…….

However the Smith way ended up with both cars being like this

(PLEASE EXCUSE THE NUDITY IN THIS SHOT, GARAGE-D DOES NOT PROMOTE WALTONS STOMACH IN ANY WAY, OTHER THAN FEEDING HIM CASTROL AND BITS OF OLD TYRE)

Two blown gearboxes is nothing for these guys to sort out. Luckily a spare gearbox had been brought for the Street Candy car, Julian had to rebuild a gearbox for the Blitz car using parts from both blown gearboxes!! He’s some man under pressure!! Thanks to  Little John and Gavin Cummings for lending a hand with the gearboxes and Bonbon for securing his passenger ride by sorting out tyres

Back out again and Walton managed to completely destroy a Federal with the awesomeness that is his right foot…..

Which in turn caused Julian to do this with his right foot…..

With Japfest at an end for another year the trip home began with another skyline in tow. I got a phone call at about 9 to say that the convoy was taking a quick break in some services……

Big thanks to Will Epps of Will Epps Photography and Drifted.com for the above photo, it all happened by complete chance as the cars were parked this way without even realizing it!

After a 3 hour nap the team made a move again and eventually arrived back at the garage with our special guest (Bon is wearing this summers ultimate fashion trend )……

Julian and Walton eventually got to lie on a horizontal surface at about 6 on Sunday morning! No one can say we do things by halves here at Garage-D, and with both our mechanics working anything can be achieved. All I can say is we need to get Julian and Walton out on track more often….

Eoin