Category: Cars

the car, she is black now

Car Restoration Vertigo

I finally got my Crown out of the body shop that had taken her hostage for five months… Now she’s in my friend’s car audio/accessory shop getting shit done that was supposed to be done by the body shop, plus getting shit fixed that the body shop screwed up… They even lost a bunch of parts: Interior panels, various covers, the entire glove box (!), plus pretty much every type of clip, screw, bolt, pin and other fastener needed to keep everything together.

My pal, Ot, and his guys at Wattana Sound are busy refitting chrome parts, repaneling the interior, crafting new doors, making a new glove box (haha), plus fitting a bunch of cool secret stuff.

I actually have to take the Crown back to the shitty body shop to attempt to get some of the paint job fixed (they couldn’t even get the paint done right in five months). They promise it will be fixed in one day. We’ll see. Meanwhile, I’m taking build photos whenever I visit Ot’s shop and am getting obsessive about certain details, which is a good sign of progress… It shall be done soon, I swear.

Dogs and Cars

The story of restoring my beloved Kujira Crown is long and unimportant. The sad fact is that the shop promised to be done in a month and a half and it’s been four and a half months with it still not quite done. On the upside, I won’t feel bad for getting it done so cheaply because promises are being made and broken on a weekly basis. I’m a simple guy. Don’t waste my time and you will be duly compensated. Fuck with me and I’ll make you suffer… Is this somehow on me? Did I ask for too much? No. The owner of the shop has some family issues and let it affect his business… He has acted most egregiously and will have to pay for it. But really, that’s not the most important thing; I JUST WANT MY FUCKING CAR BACK!

Soon, the Crown will come home. Fuckin’ eh.

UPDATE: This is what my MS-60 Kujira Crown looks like now: http://cosmicbuddha.com/2012/03/the-toyota-kujira-crown-reborn/

Bang up

Ah, dammit. Today started off kinda bad, and I’m flat out busy. I went out in the Cefiro to buy fried dough crosses for Max and Mina before they woke, and rear-ended an old pickup with no bumper, at low speed while exiting our neighborhood. He decided to run away and I let him since I was at fault anyway… Cracked a headlight lens, scratched the bumper kinda deeply, bent the goddamn hood, but it all looks easy to fix. Luckily, the HID bulb didn’t break so hopefully the repairs won’t be too costly… but my other goddamn car still isn’t out of the shop!

Damn.

Things I replaced on our car over summer vacation

You may understand part of the pain and frustration we experienced if you can recognize the complete set of gaskets and ferrofluid engine mounts (replaced with solid urethane mounts). Yes, the whole front end of our Cefiro A33 (USDM: Infiniti i30) was taken apart and put together again. It runs really sweet now, except for a noisy power steering pump, another set of wheel bearings, some paint bubbling up on the roof, etc., etc., and so forth…. And my car, the 40 year old Kujira Crown, will be totally done sometime this year, hopefully (that’s a story in itself; not enough space or patience to cover it here).

Gecko Peter Parker

Last night, I was driving alone down the highway into a headwind and a small gecko suddenly appeared on the outside of the windshield, probably blown up through the bodywork from wherever he was chilling down below.

Geckos are good to have in your car because they eat bugs and are just cool to watch, but it sucks when they die inside because they stink for ages. Anyway, I have always been fascinated by their sticky feet. I decided to test just how much grip they have by flooring it. I got to about 170 km/h when he suddenly crouched down low in a spiderman pose and leaped off the side of the windshield. The thing is, I have a feeling that the wind carried him into the open window. If so, I hope the little guy eats his share of the mosquitoes that torture Mina in the back… and eventually dies peacefully outside.

Tiger Joker 120S

Since my Crown is being worked on for another month or so, I really needed to find a cheap motorcycle. It took some looking (thx Yon) and trying (thx Matt) and bargaining (thx Nam), but I finally found the perfect ride for my needs, for which there is a serious lack of information on the net.

The ride I picked up was manufactured by Tiger Motor Company of Thailand (website is hosed as of writing this). The Model is the Joker 120S. I have no idea what the S stands for, or what the different grades were. It’s a 120cc carbureted 4-stroke, front disc – rear drum, four speed autoclutch, extremely ugly bike that I would have hated to buy new, but I picked it up for a good price used. The equivalent Honda or Yamaha would have cost three times as much (Honda is the only overvalued brand of both cars and motorcycles in Thailand; for cars it shares company with Toyota and Isuzu in this regard, and with motorcycles, Yamaha). Plus, I fell in love with its Mad Maxed muffler ( I call it a ghetto supertrapp) and getthefuckouttamyway exhaust pitch.

Of course, the trade off for not buying Japanese is that the electronics are Chinese-inspired level cheesy and most were probably broken beyond repair a couple months after it rolled out of the dealer. So I have to do without an electric starter and fuel indicator, which isn’t a big deal.

The big plus is that this bike has loads of torque, which I’m going to attempt to convert to power with an after-market rear sprocket. Anyway, here’s a few photos of this increasingly rare motorbike, which surely looks better slighty rusted and beat up than it did new:

Hunting Parts for a Kujira Crown

After owning a 1971 MS60 for a few years now, I can tell you one thing: It’s been pretty damn near impossible to find spare parts for it. After spending countless hours trying to find parts overseas on the internet (because there were almost none advertised in Thailand even last year) that I could afford to have shipped here, we lucked out. Parts sellers started advertising in Thai forums.

So to start with, I’ve ended up with a shipment sold as a set:

My car is not missing any of these parts, but these are in better condition(the guy who sold me the car aptly described it as “faded glory”). Some of them, like the taillight lenses, will be dissected and combined with my existing ones to make better parts.

Most important to function of the car is the full set of weather seals for the door. I’d heard rumors that new rubber was still being made in Thailand for virtually every Japanese car ever produced. Now I have proof. Perhaps even more important than the parts themselves were the labels on the bags containing parts numbers and bar codes, with which I was able to trace the manufacturer. Do you need rubber seals for an old/rare JDM car? I can probably get them now (as opposed to all of the Toyota dealers and parts specialists I talked to, who most decidedly cannot).

So what’s my purpose here? Why am I searching out parts for my old Crown, of the only generation of this make that was a complete and utter market failure (while being the first Toyota Crown – earlier models were Toyopet)? Let’s just say I’m trying to restore some glory…

UPDATE: This is what my MS-60 Kujira Crown looks like now: http://cosmicbuddha.com/2012/03/the-toyota-kujira-crown-reborn/

Sure formula

Yesterday I slaved out in the hot sun, carefully detailing our black car.

After that, I watered the garden heavily because it looked dry.

Today I woke to the sound of heavy raindrops hitting banana leaves.

This is only the second time it’s rained in four months.

The first time happened after I washed both cars.

—

I am a level 3 shaman with powerful rain juju.