After an exciting night in Osaka with Rob and his friends, we ventured out to the wilderness to meet with an old friend, Alex from Circuit Soul. He had moved to the countryside outside of Osaka, and we would get breakfast with him and head to the central circuit as we had never been.
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.
Here is a little photoset from the time we shot Tadghs S13 before he decided to emigrate to Australia for a year. Tadgh managed to win this car in a raffle in Ireland during the pandemic, and they gave him back 50 euros as good luck, so he essentially won this car for free. If you have not seen it, I recommend watching the video where he tells the story. It’s extraordinary to say you won your dream car for free. What’s incredible is he could then style it however he pleased. He went for the 90s vibe with the TBO bumper and Bwave wing. Enjoy this selection of photos we shot that moody September evening.
I realised I never added a little photo dump to sync up with when we fitted the Tommy Kaira kit to the K11; the Calsonic was past the point of no return, so I decided to go all in with this little one I had picked up during the pandemic. We had already fitted a 1.3, becoming the new base for fitting the parts. After searching for years, I picked this kit up in Japan on Yahoo auctions, but I want to delve into a story on that very soon on the channel. For now, enjoy this manic rush to get this thing up to an acceptable standard for LZ fest last year.
It’s hard to convey here just how happy he was to finish his seven-year itch finally. I’m not going into great detail here. I think we covered it perfectly in the video on the 86, but being able to finally do a shoot like this on an unusual April evening in the same spot I had shot this car seven years before. I don’t think the vehicle will even look this good again, but either way, I wanted to get these photos on the website for some time.
As sad as this sounds, and I know there won’t be a lot of people looking at these, I never thought a time would come when I could finally post my build on Juicebox; doing this blog since 2009, I was always out of capture whatever I thought was cool in Ireland and beyond. I hope to get my car to be proud of up here. By the time I got to it, blogs were essentially dead, so we’ve moved the story to YouTube, but it’s a real sense of achievement to shoot this car and post it on the blog. Please enjoy a generous amount of images from that evening. And as always, thanks for looking.
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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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.
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.
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.
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!
I never really appreciated the effort that went into blocking with a paint job because I had picked the best colour for body panels. Jackie was adamant that he wanted this car to be perfectly straight; I even started to lose track of the process, with the Trueno being blocked, spray-filled and then blocked again. Throughout the process, Jackie remained consistent with enthusiasm and attention to detail; most of the time, standing back and admiring his commitment, even after a full day of misery at work, was incredible. It’s been inspiring, and I’ve aimed to keep that mindset in my life as we advance. He wants to do the best he can all the time regarding his craft.
Here are the photos leading up to painting the car. We tried to get the best finish possible because, as I’ve learned, it’s all in the prep.
The Honda Accord Type R was such a blast to bring on track; leading up to the event, we thought the car would tear itself apart on track, but to our surprise, it was perfect; the only letdown was how soft the springs were. We fitted a new clutch and the Max Peeding free coilovers, some sticky used tyres and used brake pads, and a seat and off we went. We added that BTCC-style wing, too, which gave the car a budget touring look. Overall, this was a great success. I’ve thrown some photos from the shoot we did with it and pictures from the event at Mondello, organised by the Hiro racing lads. Top craic!
The TRD wing idea worked out perfectly; it all spawned from having Barry over to gap the panels before we permanently added the hinges and how we would try to make the TRD wing look like it was added from the factory, bonding it on to make the perfect fit was exceptional. These photos are from the excellent weather we had in June last year. It killed me driving up and down to Jdmdistro and then on to work on this, but looking back, Im delighted I committed to the mission; it is all the little things that take forever, but as always, I trusted the process with Barry and Jackie who were always enthusiastic about things related to this car.
Enjoy some photos from that month: Tip led, filling the gaps on the roof, collecting the Goodline bumper and painting the hinges, figuring out the perfect fit for the wing, and Dylan’s virgin S13 purchase; this was a good month!
Getting gifted a sim rig was such a surreal experience. We use it heavily in the shed at least once daily as we walk past to avoid a task altogether. Honestly, I can’t thank Laurence enough for giving this to us. It’s given us something cool to do when we get fed up with the real thing.
It’s ridiculous that he delivered this in his S13; we are forever in his debt for sorting us out with this. What a lovely moment this was!
Here are a few shots from the RC drift black hole we fell into in January 2023. It escalated, and I’ve loads more to show over the coming months on the channel. Bringing old shells back from the dead and building new cars is all good fun.
