Moving along steadily, made some serious acquisitions in the last couple of weeks. Ebay strikes again...
Ezywire 18 Circuit loom + Oil pressure, water temp, and volt gauges. Might also get myself a tach from the same guy as I like the style and the price is very reasonable.
Feddy 595 RSRs, 195/50/R15. Cost about $250+shipping but will be so worth it. Will actually have proper front end grip. Definitely want to get these fitted up to the other half of the steelies asap!
After talking with DrewZa86 a fair bit about the design, who has helped me come up with some very cool ideas, I have made a start on the cabin and engine bay to get them up to scratch before I tackling the rewire. Spent a couple of hours chipping away at all the old insulation, and over the course of the week I'll break out the wire wheel and buzz the whole lot back to prep it for chassis black and paint.
Thinking either straight black of olive green in keeping with the A6M theme.
A little bit of plating to do
Driver's side only has a few pin holes in the sill and up at the firewall.
Also finally got around to doing this:
The heater tunnel won't be needed, so I'll finish cutting it all out and hopefully take a donor piece from somewhere. Believe it or not I don't have a clean shell to take one from, apart from maybe the diesel, but I'm not ready to start ripping bits off it yet.
I've made a tentative goal of August 31st (Winter Matsuri), as the latter half of this year is full of good events, including at least two drift schools, Stadium drift round 3, and hopefully a few practice days. I won't rush though, as that will only leave me where I was back in January.
Budget wise things might get interesting though, as along with everything else I have recently found a lady-friend, and we all know how that combined with a race-car works out (though to her credit, she is enthusiastic and supportive, at least for now...)
Lastly, as mentioned earlier I have been bouncing a lot of ideas around, and one of them is something I've seen to a few Japanese drift cars from time to time. Sometimes you see something along the lines of a mural painted under the bonnet. I like these, and thought about what I'd like to have if I went through with it. After getting an idea in my head, I went searching on the internet and found this:
Absolutely perfect, right down to the pose!
Now, I realize that there aren't many on here who are big Anime fans, if any, but it's one of my hobbies outside of cars, and I like to find ways of melding my interests together when I can. I've seen this sort of thing done a few times with Anime girls in Japan, but none here in Aus. I've also seen small Chibi girls on local cars from time to time (think ISC's logo, or on the bonnet of Drift Cat's old Onevia), but like Ita-Sha isn't really the look I'm going for.
