Day four of our journey was true freedom; we decided to stay in Gotemba, as it was getting us down the road towards Osaka, and we needed to head down to try to remedy the plan and see where to go next. We didn’t realise that Gotemba was close to Fuji Speedway, so we decided to have breakfast at Fuji as it would have been rude not to. Waking up with nothing to worry about, getting into our newly acquired profession and hitting the road were some of the best feelings we’ve ever had.

The trip was starting to feel like a proper adventure. Our first stop was Breakfast at Fuji, which we hoped wouldn’t take too long, but we got easily distracted.

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So, after the buzz of Japan in a van, right in the middle of editing the series and getting it online at the height of COVID, I decided to book another trip to Japan. Rob suggested that I buy an AE86 and drift it on a track, and that’s what we planned for this trip in September 2020. I sent money and got my hands on a rough-and-ready door, Levin, privately sold to me through Koizumi. Rob drove to Nagano to pick it up, and we hoped this COVID stuff would blow over real fast. Unfortunately, the world had other plans.

The pandemic only got worse, and we had to put the 86 into storage Stack in Osaka; as time passed, I felt like the borders would never reopen, but somehow, in early 2023, they said travel would resume as long as you were vaccinated. Most of you coming here will have seen episode one of our series by now, so I won’t part too much of what was said in the series on here. Looking back at these photos, reliving the emotions playing as we did the long flight is funny. Travelling from Ireland to Japan usually takes about 20-plus hours due to getting up at a weird time, driving to the airport, and then flying. We landed 35 hours into this and got thrown into quarantine. We had less than half an hour to comply and book the hotel. Here are some photos from the first few days in Japan. Covid messed up the plan, but Andrew Joyce came to the rescue, and we tried to salvage what we could.

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The final paint and AE86 assembly with Jackie and Barry before it comes home

Here are some of the photos from our visit to Decky Halls AE86 restoration shop, to be honest looking back I didnt take too many at all which is a shame. Decky didnt want to be on camera but eventually oepned up so I spent most of my time just trying to capture a story with him and then we hit the road.
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We visit an AE86-only restoration shop, which rebuilds these cars to an incredible factory fresh finish.

The videos are flying along, I guess because we have met a deadline for the 86 unveil(which is a good thing); Im trying to catch up with that progress, which makes the timeline for the rest of the videos a little weird, but we will figure it out. These photos are from late last year; when the car came out of the booth and received another coat of lacquer, we started fitting panels, and things hit me when the glass was fitted to the back paired with the ever-so-good-looking redline tails. I think I was almost sexually aroused by that rear end the first time we finished it; as strange as that is to say, I’ve probably fantasised about having this look for way too long. It’s been such a fucking journey with this car, and it’s insane to think that the mega building aspect of it is coming to a close; here are a few photos from this time, a bit of Barry welding, Bryan helping put stuff back together and Jackie working his magic on the tail lights.

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Bryan and Barry double team assembly on the AE86 while Jackie fixes the redline Trueno tail lights

Barry welds my bumpers, and we begin the assembly of the Trueno.

Here is a massive photo dump from Dorifest last June. Dorifest is arguably one of the most excellent drift events in the world, and it’s very underrated. It’s such a simple formula that places in the US have adopted with Finalbout or halfway hangs in AUs, get some good-looking cars together to do some skids, like a rolling show. We took the plunge to drift land in Scotland to see Josh throw his car about amongst people we were happy to meet in real life. Most of you have seen the video from this event, so please fill in the blanks with the images. It’s a 10/10 trip that we would happily make again. Sadly, there are no hot tub photos from this trip for anyone looking anywhere in the photo dump. Enjoy.

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We head to Scotland to Dorifest at Driftland, an event focused on style and fun driving.

Here are a few photographs of the New K11 March before it went under the knife. Some are from when I picked it up and threw some Drag wheels on it, which came on the black March, an excellent eighties wheel that showed up locally. Then, when we slammed it on the BC coilovers with the Enkei wheels, these wheels are called Enkei Formula J M18’s and were used on open-wheel race cars in the early nineties. Whats also really cool is that most of the March Cup cars also ran these in the ’90s. It’s a wheel I’ve been chasing for many years, as 13 inches is the magic formula for these cars. The Enkeis are just right. The little lip is fantastic. What’s funny is I always end up almost loving this look just as much as the finished product; these cars look great with very little, and even though we did the Tommy Kaira look, this appeals to me just as much.

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We modify the little Nissan K11 March/Micra and unlock the car’s potential fun.

I share the unexpected inspiration for painting my AE86 black.

This post is a monster photo dump. The 48 hours photographed below were some of the best hours of my life. It’s a corny thing to say, but this intimate object has brought me so much joy and misery over the last seven years, from mega highs to mega lows and everything in between. I felt like this day would never come; there were points in this build where it felt like we hit a brick wall with the progress during the pandemic, times when we hadn’t the money or no motivation or similar.

When this weekend finally came, it felt like a dream; the night before, we pulled a super late one to get as much done as we could, and I’ve said it many times, but Jackie and his level of m motivation, even Dylan, who threw some hands-on whenever he could, made this one of the most memorable weekends ever. You have seen the video so that I won’t ramble too much on here, but I know there are people like me who enjoy looking at the photos. I tried to capture as many pictures as possible; I think I have about 400 photos of the same thing on my hard drive, and I kept shooting the same photo in disbelief. Anyway, I narrowed it down to about 60 from that weekend below. Enjoy the most significant milestone on the build!

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The day has finally come! We get some paint onto this AE86 Trueno after six years of work.