Japanese Nostalgic Car

Welcome to another week of QotW!

We’ve seen a bevy of summer fun thanks to all the events that have been covered right here on JNC. I noticed several vehicles that appear at these shows are decked out in new and old-school liveries. Frankly, I like this trend (as long as they race them on the track!) as they show off the curves and accents of the exterior styling. Most prominently, the tarmac battlers of the 70’s have been getting a lot of love. This got me to wonder:

What 1970s JNC had the best livery?

The most entertaining comment by next Monday will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “JNC Challenge, Part 08”

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During the JNC Challenge Part 07, we were given the “tough” challenge of spending money on the newly-purchased AW11 (pictured above). In fact, we had a whopping $1500 to spend! Stuart Kayrooz gave several cosmetic suggestions as our winner. Here are the results below.

At first, we thought to get a widebody kit to help hide the rusty bits in the rear fenders and allow us to get some meatier tires. The engine is a stock “redtop” but we can pull quite a bit of power from the 4A engines (Formula Atlantic proved that..) The problem is, body kits are hard to come by, let along a widebody. Also, the ones floating around are pricey and frankly, ugly. They round all the edges and mute everything that makes the AW11 a wedge spacewhip… (yea, you read that right).

So, after looking around a bit, we settled on getting some generic “Japanese” overfenders, most likely re-purposed from a 240z that have been slapped on just about any J-tin you can think of. They were just a few hundred bucks for some thicker examples, which helps if we are a little rough with them. We can get a couple of fellow JNC’ers to help us trim the bananas to fit. Since the fenders are toasty, we don’t mind sinking some rivets in it. We dropped nearly $1000 on a set of T3 performance lower control arms and tension rods along with camber plates on all 4 corners. This beast is getting setup for a long overdue upgrades in “nimble”. Oh, and don’t worry, we replaced the fluids, pads and rotors.

So, here’s this weeks challenge. We are prepping the AW11 to have some serious agility and need to address the rims and tires. The overfenders will give around an inch of extra width to play with. What size rims do we go with? Offset? Vintage? “New vintage”? New School? What say you? Post up with links to pics for extra points. We have $800 to spend!

What wheels should we put on our overfendered-AW11?

The most entertaining comment by next Monday will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “What are your JNC plans this 4th of July?”

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If you couldn’t tell, this is possibly the most extreme photo of a Datsun Z overfender that also incorporates the United States flag. Why you may ask? Because July 4th is just around the corner. Even though the United States’ Independence Day lands on a Tuesday, more than likely many Americans are kicking off the festivities by taking Monday off as well. For myself in Japan, I will go to the office as usual but later I will find time to grab a burger and a beverage. Heck, I can even grab some fireworks at the local convenience store. Sadly, I will need to wait for the coming weekend to get my JNC fix. Baby steps to Saturday…

Since I must wait a bit for my plans, I want to ask about your plans. Do you have any JNC plans for the 4th of July? I can even open the question up to encompass this week for those outside the 50 states.

What are your JNC plans this 4th of July (week)?

Plans to take the JNC camping? A car show? weekly detailing? Parts install? The most entertaining comment by next Monday will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “JNC Challenge, Part 07”  Continue reading →