veritech-z

yeah, no factory car I'm familiar with has an exit right behind the front tire, though the SRT-4s don't have any mufflers, just a cat and a straight pipe if I remember correctly.

Don't major in studio art, it's a thoroughly useless degree (ask me how I know...)

You guys may not have gotten the memo (I don't remember if I put a cover sheet on my TPS report or not...) that today was Ninja day, but it was. Ninja on cheesy background day, at that. The only reason I'm still at this job is because I'm waiting to get confirmation from school. It would start in August, so it doesn't make much sense for me to find something else, go through the trouble of getting trained, and then find out I'm moving to Orlando for school after a few months. If I end up not getting accepted, I'll leave anyway, but I just want to know where I stand before I make a move.

http://www.tboblogs.com/index.php/newswire/story/north-dale-mabry-closed/ Looks like it's over...

They're pretty reliable I suppose, at least average, if not a bit better depending on the model (Relay mini vans are garbage, anything with a VTI transmission WILL end up in the shop, but most everything else is pretty good). But the problem is that I'm a satellite dealership only 5 miles from another saturn dealer that's been there longer. I'm the only one in parts, we don't deliver for wholesale, and we don't get a lot of new/used car sales either. Plus the whole industry has been pretty slow for awhile now, all my vendors are saying the same thing. I really need a career change.

Bet it wasn't as crazy as mine. I work in parts at a Saturn Dealership (figured I'd give a little exposition for those who don't know), and across the street we've got a raw wood furniture store, a gun range, and a laser tag arena. Well, around 4pm today, we realized there is no traffic going up and down the 6 lane highway we're based on, and a there are in fact at least 8 squad cars with the attendant officers pointing guns across the trunk/hood/open doors towards the front door of (get this:) The GUNRANGE of all places! It seems an unknown assailant was holding about five people hostage in the gunrange. I'm dying to know how that situation played out...I always kind of suspected that that was EXACTLY the sort of thing that drove people to go to the gunrange in the first place, the idea of being prepared to overpower an armed assailant...but anyway, how does one guy with a gun take over an entire business full of people that are in the process of shooting guns? Long story short: by the time I was locking up the parts department (I'm the only one in that department...see the many drawing threads for information about how I spend my time all day...) we had a parking lot full of Deputies, and two snipers in the shop. Wearing Gillie suits...so far as I know the situation is still in progress.

Ah-ha! The Spirit Garage Car! I love that thing...I was checking it out in HS30-H's gallery on classiczcars.com...

Finished this one today, I was feeling like doing a retro-future (Barbarella: Queen of Space/Space Ace/Heavy Metal) space babe and the ever popular tentacle monster. Did I tell you guys I've got the most boring job in the universe? I'm sure I must have mentioned it once or twice...

The upper hose was the real problem. There would still be space if there were somewhere else for that to go. I always wondered about those metal flex hose kits you can get from speed shops or summit? I never see anyone running them, I wonder if they work...

I've had a lot of interesting dreams. I have a recurring Zombie attack dream, sometimes it's all good like Charlton Heston's "Omega Man" where I'm the last regular guy, but it's ok, and other times I'm getting attacked and it's panic time. I had a dream once where I was a whale, and I was following a car on a road that ran near the sea. I jumped off a waterfall (one of those wtf?! moments that don't get questioned until after the dream) and then my view pulled back a little bit and I could see the blue whale that was me majestically soaring through the air with a Golden Gate bridge below and in the distance with whatever car I was chasing still driving on it. By far the best was the "crab hunter" dream I had. In the crab hunter dream, I went to an island with a bunch of strangers, where you check in at a desk so they issue you some black powder firearms. Then as a small group we went out to hunt some large crabs that inexplicably lived in a giant mound like termites in Africa. I remember their claws waving around fom holes in the mound, and we shot a few. Then it kind of turned into this wierd deal where one of the guys was trying to sabatage the trip and kill everybody. I don't much remember the rest. I drew a picture based off of it, I had written in down right after I woke up because it was just too good to lose (I was planning to make a short comic book from it and submit it to a contest I found out about www.tokyopop.com rising stars of manga-but I never finished it).

Thanks guys! I used the Smoky Nagata Celica as a reference for the top one, and just opened up a random side view of a late model Carolla from cardomain and shortened it into a two door hatch back. Every once in awhile my scanner gets wierd and makes my pics look funny, that one looks a lot more proportional in person.

There isn't much room between the engine and radiator if you are running the KA throttle body and the mechanical fan/shroud combo, that's why I ran the pipes in front of the radiator.

That pic isn't quite as amusing as the one of the guy with his head in the other guy's underwear for some reason...

I see it now, but that was supposed to be a welded pipe...that's what I get for a quick sketch I guess...I don't think there'd be any benefit to running two intercoolers inline, I suspect boost response would probably suffer.

Still waiting to hear back from the program, but here is some more art I've been working on in the mean time. I started a drawing thread at www.japanesenostalgiccar.com that not too many people have joined in on (just one person for now besides me...), but we were kicking around ideas for retro-styled remakes of celicas and carollas. The carolla one got squished in the scan, so it looks a little distorted.

I wouldn't be using a front mount, I'd be using a top mount with a front intake. the air would come in from the front, and go through the intercooler from underneath, then out the louver strip in the hood. The pipe layout would be a bit long if you were going to route a front mount that way, but no reason really that you couldn't do it.

Looking for something like this?

does this help? That's the plan for now, anyway. I won't know if it's workable until I actually get in there to do something with it...

I was thinking that if they had an angle to the front, like the 280z vents, but long, then that would look pretty nice.

I've no idea, really...It's just an empty uerethane fascia right now, it will probably weigh a bit more once I stiffen it up a bit.

I found a bunch of Louvers on ebay in different deminsions. I wasn't sure if I would do a strip like that, or do a sqaure in front of the power bulge. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Mack-CH-CL-Stainless-Hood-Louver-Set-NIB-No-Res_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ6755QQihZ004QQitemZ140104351211QQrdZ1 http://stores.ebay.com/928-Motorsports_Louvers_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZQ2d1QQfsubZ8QQftidZ2QQsclZ0QQtZkm Seems like there used to be a better selection, but this was all I could come up with right now. You may come out better having them made if they can do it at $1 a louver, plus you could just make them to your own specs that way instead of trying to make them fit.

For the record, tire compound will most likely give you a higher return on your investment than wider tires will. That being said, 10" is most likely too wide to not need a flare. On my S30, I've got a 255/40R17 on the back on an 8" wide wheel. These wheels use spacers, but the corrected offset is 0 (giving them 4.5" of backspace). That tire visibly sticks out, but not enough to necessitate a ZG style flare. Here is an Old pic, but you can kind of see what I'm talking about: I wish I could be more help with the S130 dimensions, but I've never owned one, and haven't had to deal with it. The limiting factor on the early cars is the strut housings, the wheel will rub on that if you have too much backspacing. I know that coilovers will change that spacing, but I don't know by how much since I don't have those either...