Shifting With Style!

So for a few years now I've been wanting to make a custom katana handle shift knob.  Finally after staring down the Kirin Ichiban katana style tap handle, I decided one of those should do the trick.  I set to looking around on the interwebs in order to find one and not only did I succeed I also found out that Sapporo (my fave Japanese beer of the two) also makes a katana style tap handle.

What did I decide on doing you ask? I bought both!

I can't wait for them to arrive, gonna need to make an adapter for them then test em out in the car.  I'm thinking I'll rock the Sapporo one in my 240 and give the Kirin one to Becca for her 510.  Then we can both be shifting with style!

テクニック☆スライド

So lately I've been really working hard on some "logo" ideas for Technick Slide.  It's been super hard.  Spent a few months toying around with little sketches here and there but nothing really looked right.  Then a new Anime show came out that caught my eye.  It's called "Space Dandy".  Really diggin the show and found it to be super awesome.  So much I began thinking about getting a decal of the show title on the car.  That's when I was hit with a killer idea.  Replicate the show title with Technick Slide!

With the idea in my head I set to work.  First thing first, how to spell Technick Slide in Japanese... Got in touch with an old high school friend who moved to Japan to be a teacher.  Quickly he got back to me with some ideas for it and we both came down to the conclusion of going with テクニックスライド for the spelling.  It reads as "tekunikku suraido".  Now with that figured out it was time to sketch up a drawing.  Sorry it's not all that pretty, all I have to work with is Microsoft Paint so I did what I could without spending a crazy amount of time on it.

As for the Space Dandy logo that I replicated.  This is what it looks like.

Now I just need to get Adobe Illustrator so I can make a really nice version of it and have it made into a decal!

GKtech Custom Steering Arm P1 Testing

Yesterday I found a chance to head out to my garage and test out version 1 of my prototype steering arms.  I must say things went a lot better than I had expected them to.  Fitment was perfect, plenty of clearance for everything, and the most important bit, more steering angle was achieved.

On to the pics!  Please when looking at them keep in mind they aren't going to be all that pretty.  I would like to point out a few things.  Yes, I know my brake lines are too short and I'm going to get longer ones SOON. I also know the bolts holding the arms on are sticking out, reason for that is I only put them in with my fingers, with the arms locked in place from the grooves and bolts in there, I didn't see any need to tighten them down since I had to re fit them multiple times trying the arm at multiple heights.  The pics I took of the arms attached are at the highest height and I'm aware that I shouldn't run them that high, I also tested them at the next two lower heights, just didn't take pictures of each height since that would get rather boring to look at.  I think that should cover it all :)

Shots of the lead angle and trailer angle at full lock.

I tested, and tested, and tested the arms at various mounting heights, suspension heights, with the suspension at full droop and under full compression (well attempted full compression just had the cars weight on it so when I hit bumps it'll obviously compress more).  With each setup I did a quick alignment (not perfect ones but close enough).  Everything went very well and I'm confident that with a few more changes I should be capable of obtaining another ~3 degrees of angle and reduce my ackerman some more to get it down to an area between 3-6 degrees which is where I want it.

Want to see what the version 2 (P2) prototype arms will look like?  Check it out!

Rather crazy looking when compared to the P1 design!

More to come soon! :D