ETS Drift Ute – Assembly time

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Its friday night, I have just had a shower and can spend a few minutes reflecting on the week thats been and the one to follow.

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Whats been happening? I picked up my rear quarters, front quarters, bonnet, tailgate and doors from Breakwater Panels Geelong, Tim and the team did a fantastic job, all flow coated in factory 2002 Toyota white, the quality is flawless and the panels look arrow straight, you wouldn’t pick them to be FRP.

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Piecing the rear removable assembly together was an exciting time, the clear powdercoated steel has this brilliant deep glossy bronze finish, the FRP is the cleanest white, combine that with this amazing millspec loom and stainless hardware its a match made in automotive heaven!

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Once the rear was all assembled I quickly started on the doors, these are steel but are internally guttered so are pretty light, ill eventually move to FRP doors once I get the chance to mould some. I remade the windows with larger cutouts to allow me to adjust mirrors on the run and also allow safety officials to electrically cut out the Racepak PDM module.

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Breakwater panels did a flawless job on the paint and prep, I shaved the doors and it wasn’t perfect so they cleaned them up and made them arrow straight.

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Again it was a special moment to screw the new 3mm polycarbonate windows in with M5 stainless hardware and carbon mirrors to finalise them.

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I have some special plans for the entire reassembly (more on that later) but I have been completing a few of the smaller jobs, one was to fit the fuel lines and power cable lines in the chassis.

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I covered these in heat shrink and the join sits under my heel plate, this will stop any rattles and protect the paint on them.

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The throttle cable (stock S13 type) mounts like so.

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Unfortunately the Driftmasters don’t clear the Z32 brakes, I had 25mm bolt on spacers on this before but I didn’t like them because the centre ring was non existent. I pulled the hubs off, added long studs, pressed the studs out of the spacers, went to my mates engineering workshop and spun the spacers down to 20mm, made a centre ring and pressed everything together. Now everything slips tightly together nd the studs simply hold the wheel on the hub but dont bear any sideload as the centre ring does that job.

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The swaybars are all back together, as are the suspension arms, the clear on these has to be seen to be believed.

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Its nice to have mates in all the right places, Ryan knocked up this stencil for me.

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I did this with it, a little ETS under the PWR.

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All bolts have a place and I know where everyone goes.

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Alloy 80mm tubes fit tightly over 3″ stainless to create the tips.

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The steering column is all back together, putting all these parts together for the final time gives me flashbacks about what I went through to get these to what they are now. This steering column gave me nightmares and took maybe three shots before it became what it is now. Its a piece of 1.5″ tube sealed bearings either end, a solid 19mm shaft, lifeline steering spline and uni joint on the rear thats holds it all tight.

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The air jacks slip into their fresh new home, these have a story behind them aswell but ill leave that for another time.

Tomorrow is Saturday, lets see how much I can get done…..

1 Comment
  1. Its finally here been sitting in class drawing my version of your logo, once again. inspirational man

    Reply

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