The initial foray

     Now everything was 'legit' and I didn't need to move the car anywhere anymore I could park it in my garage and properly start to dig in and see what was really going on under the surface.

I'd arranged to leave the NSX with a friend and fellow track enthusiast from work.
  His garage space is seriously perfect and one in a million in Los Angeles.

All tucked in for hibernation while the 86 gets teardown.

    Meanwhile, back at home with my ISS sized workspace I put the car up in the air for the first time. I needed to get my head around what i'd need to buy and whats already on the car that I could salvage. Also, Rust was a big worry for me. I'd never bought or owned an outta state car so I dont know the first thing about any sort of rust repair. Out here in California we're lucky in that regard I needed too see how the frame was holding after an unknown amount of time on salted roads and rain.

   Now I can say I wish I did a more in depth documentation of the original state of its arrival. Basically you can say it was 'as advertised' but there was a lot more jank involved than I was hoping. I'd seen that on day 1 when i first sat in it; but this was the first day I could really see what was what. I'd planned to focus on the interior since I knew that it needed work anyways but now I could find out what was really lurking below.

 I was most curious about the wiring. It was running an AEM ECU for the f20c, the PO had gotten a tune and told me he was never happy with it, I figured that was most likely the cause of the shitty power delivery and wanted to start there for any obvious issues.

  I have no idea who tuned it but after pulling back the curtain to expose the wiring harness i couldn't fault them entirely.

   I'm sure it was missing about half the grounds it should've had and god knows what else. The under dash harness was hardwired directly into the engine harness with butt connectors and in some cases ye' olde twist and tape method. At this point i triple checked the battery was removed and went and printed the Toyota wiring schematics. I tried to make sense of what went where but clearly there wasn't any rhyme or reason to it, there were Honda relays sheet metal screwed into the kick panel and being jumped off of a 12v source from random places like say wiper motor or window retractor. what a mess.  The whole system must've been surging and drawing current in all states . This i'm guessing is why the car also had a battery kill switch fitted, which i found had its metal leads uncovered and exposed ready to arc with whatever you put in the trunk that happened to brush up against them.


There were also some Autometer type aftermarket gauges plummed through the fire wall and tapped into, apparently, whatever was easy to get too.  Then there were the little things like the firewall sound deadening pad that was just ripped off at the bottom and not actually removed. Stuff like this speaks volumes about the mindset of the previous builder.  That told me that whoever had done the original work clearly DGAF about fit and finish. He was likely just testing voltage and tapping wires where ever he felt like. The combination of exposed hot leads and old school organic fiber sound padding were a fire waiting to happen. I'm surprised this thing even ever passed the most minor cursory tech inspections.

The car ran so poorly I had to snap a pic of the serial number to see if it was even running a compatible ecu

Tying to get my head around the wiring

Junk in the trunk. literally.

track ready water set up

sweet trans tunnel.

Seat was bolted directly through the thin sheet metal floor pan, Yikes!

    At this point I started to realized I was looking at something of a more involved build that I'd set out to do. Certainly a more expensive one. I am all about doing things 'on the cheap' when needed or function over form; but it has to at least has to meet some sort of quality bar, at the very least fire safety; call me old fashion.

  Seeing how everything id dug into so far had a running theme of being clustered beyond fucked I started to change my thinking. It'd gone from 'what can i modularity fix as i go' to more of a 'Nothing shall remain' scorched earth policy.
   Echoing lessons id learned from my past cars (and certainly my previous ae86) I knew any stone left unturned would likely come back to haunt me. This is not to mention also im pretty particular about my cars. Just KNOWING something is hacked up, even if it works just wont fly.


 So here was the turning point. It went from 'just something i can track' to something much more involved; all in the time it took me to pull the dashboard. just what i needed.


But the decision had been made, I was already invested, now how far do I take it.