Thanks dude! It’s like normally a $400 wheel new from Momo but I got it used for $80 shipped from Upgarage in Japan. Not perfect, but it’s going in a '95 van… Gotta have a sick aftermarket wheel on a JDM car for sure. Just need to fit the proper horn button that actually fits.
Thanks man. I agree. They’re SSRs, but yeah very similar to a classic BBS RA-style wheel. Pretty classic Japanese wheel. You see them on a lot of 86s and the like. They’re legit 2-piece wheels. If I get bored in the winter I might disassemble and paint the faces and polish the lips. Whoever refinished them before me did it with a paint brush I think…
I can’t decide if I want to work on making some of these things nicer, or embrace the blemishes, imperfections, and dents since it’s literally a work van. The dings make it feel period correct in my opinion.
Ordering lowering blocks for the rear today. I need it a little lower, to help with loading and unloading the kart of course, not for stance points or anything…
On a side note, this thing cruises nicely on the interstate, no problem, even loaded up. But when you get behind a semi, the buffeting is pretty nuts. You can really feel the turbulence behind the trailer.
It sort of looks similar to the older VW camper van with the hard pop up top.
We owned a 73 VW van growing up and it was a sail. In very high winds I recall the vehicle sliding laterally against the wind gusts! Fortunately it was limited to “slow”. This looks like it would be a handful in a hurricane as well.
No doubt. The only issue is my van is the cargo model so it has a flat load floor and no wheel well humps. Which means rear tire clearance to the top of the fender is compromised, so I can’t slam it. But I think we can easily go an inch or two lower.
It’s a torsion bar front end and leaf spring rear so lowering it is the cheapest ever. $40 for blocks on the rear and just twist the front bars down to lower it.
Ha, Ha! We owned one too for a few years while we were overseas. Between my Dad and two teenage boys, it was hard to all fit in the Datsun (2 Seats and a Rear Deck). He ended up picking up an old VW Van. It was our family outing mobile. Took many a ski trips through the Alps in that thing. Whether cruising down the Autobahn getting bounced around by a truck in front of you or cresting the top of a mountain getting nearly blown off the road by the crosswind, that thing did not like turbulent air. Slow was an understatement! Pop used to joke it had a top speed of 80 Kph on a downhill run with a tailwind. He kept talking about putting in a Porche 356 engine (direct fit), but would have to add wheelie bars. Personally, I would have loved to see peoples faces when they got passed at 120 Kph in VW Bus.
what was funny is that Mercedes and 914s, 911s made the same exhaust noise. My sister and I had many a false alerts staying up too late, watching TV, listening for the folks coming home.
Greg, our parallel lives continue… My family had a VW Westfalia camper van (with dual Weber carbs, so it was just slow, instead of unbelievably slow). When there weren’t any races in the San Francisco Region, we would pile in Friday evenings (after school/work), drive 5 hours to Willow Springs, or 6 hours to Riverside, spend the weekend at the races, then drive home Sunday night to zombie off to school/work on Monday morning. My parents had the bed in the back, I got the one in the pop top, and my sister slept in the hammock like bed that was suspended above the front seats.
It didn’t matter what was going on in the SoCal Region, we were there; regional at Willow springs - cool. First national of the season in February at Riverside, literally cool - it snowed during the Formula Alphabet race. F1 at Long Beach, extra super cool because that was before F1 had a stick up it’s a$$. After each day’s activity, you could walk into the big building where all the teams were paddocked (next to each other, and separated by ropes) and check everything out. I was looking at the McLaren cars, when I heard two guys about 10 feet away from me discussing what tires to use for the race; the guys were Teddy Mayer and James Hunt. I know I’m an old fart, but man I miss the ‘good old days’! Then again, maybe I’ll just be happy I got to experience them.
The hamster van had its first test run as a real transporter today. I moseyed on down to Dousman to break-in an engine and get my new kart squared away. And to have some fun before the season closes out.
50 degrees, leaves on the track, old tires, no weight on the kart… much sideways fun was had. Kart was cooking.
And the van worked pretty great. Still working on organizing and securing things, but it swallowed basically everything I could need for a race day with room to spare.
That narrowest I can get it with the wheels on is a tick over 53" on the rear. With the wheels off, the pods are just slightly narrower than that. The widest part of my van’s rear opening is 53", so with the pods on, I could probably squeeze it in there, but I take the plastics off to make it easier. The rear bumper is slightly too wide too.
With the plastics and rear wheels off, the front is the widest part and that’s probably about 46".
It’s pretty quick and easy to get the pods off the bars and the rear bumper off. Just 6 bolts for all of it. With an electric ratchet it’s easy. Plus I like to take that stuff off at the end of the day anyway to clean the kart.
Sick Delica! They are becoming more popular here, and are now very expensive (for what they are) to import. Cool vans for sure with some sweet off-road capability. There’s a couple popping up around the Midwest as well as I’ve seen a couple around town, and they are quite popular to import in Canada or the Pacific Northwest. The Delica is built on the same platform as the Pajero so it has legit off-road cred. Great for an obscure overland or camping build-out. I’m thinking my next van will be of a similar build.
I got it with about 46,000 miles on it, so it’s barely broken in! I think I’ve put about 500 miles on it since. I’m trying to drive it once or twice a week.
The bulletproof Toyota reliability was part of the reason I was looking at JDM stuff in the first place. I had a Cadillac CTS Sportwagon before I got my Golf R and I was pretty annoyed with how poor GM’s build-quality was. That car also had about 50k on it when I bought it, and it was falling apart. So I wasn’t really interested in looking at beat old Chevy or domestic cargo/work vans.
It’s very dumb. Claiming that the grey market imports don’t meet safety standards is a baffling stance, obviously a cop-out, when you’ve got plenty of USDM classic cars driving around without any safety considerations at all. Or uh… I don’t know… motorcycles?
Might be time to off-load the hamster van prematurely! Wisconsin doesn’t do emissions testing and generally seems pretty laid back on these kinds of things but you never know. As someone said in the comments, might want to start an LLC in Montana.
The only redeeming thing is that the effort seems to be against kei cars/vans/trucks (tiny 660cc vehicles) in particular, so even if your import technically would apply to the language they’re using, it doesn’t seem to be the focus of this effort. Though in the Northeast I know they are revoking/refusing registrations for full-size JDM vehicles as well.
After browsing that article it seems like a non-profit supported by what Im guessing is dealerships or others in the automotive business who might be hurt by people importing vehicles over 25 years old, which seems to have exploded since R32 Skyline became available.
While I wouldn’t be super concerned, Wisconsin did crush 2 Skylines. Though they were never brought in legally or even had a vin. The owner was driving them for years before trying to sell them and got caught.
what was funny is that Mercedes and 914s, 911s made the same exhaust noise. My sister and I had many a false alerts staying up too late, watching TV, listening for the folks coming home.
