the yellow top...

so i picked up the yellow top battery yesterday from pann. when i got home i opened it up and put it in my car. and it looked like the same issue i had with Jon's battery. the terminals wouldnt reach. i would have to turn the battery around and flop the connectors. i didn't want to mess around with the connectors so i called one of the guy's from the shop and let him know my situation. he told me that he would look at it the following day, which is today.

so i went to the shop today to get it looked at. brad was occupied with another vehicle so keith helped me out. he did his thang and made it work out. so now im rockin a brand new optima yellow top battery! bring on the car audio stuff!

borrowing battery

i had to call into work and tell them my car situation. i sent my friend joaquin a txt and let him know whats up. so pretty much my day was shot in terms of working... no 8 hour work day for me, which means no money.... oh well.

so today i called pann auto and placed an order for a yellow top battery. thanh told me they were able to get it that day... but found out that there driver wasn't in today. so they weren't able to get it for me today. so i had to figure out how to get to work the next day and to pick up the battery.... i went down my phone list and called people. Jon, an MR2 owner said he had one. i went to his pad and picked it up. when i got home to put the battery on, the terminals were weirdly placed. i couldnt reach the terminals with my connectors. i was thinkin that the battery were made specially for boats. so i wasn't able to use that battery.

i called a few more people and had no luck... so i tried one last person. David with the red evo 9, who i met at a s2000 meet. he was at dustin's (silver evo) house working on his car. he told me that dustin has a battery i can borrow. but i need to drive up to escondido. so i decided to make the trip there. i took the echo and made the 40 min trip.

i got home and installed the battery and it works...

battery is dead...

another issue has come up on my road to going twin turbo. last night i decided to go out and get gas for my car so i wouldn't have to worry about it before i go to work in the morning. little did i know that my car wouldn't start. the little beeping sound was faint sounding and the warning lights were dim. i knew there was an issue right away. so i opened the hood and made sure all the fuses alright. so i txted my friend and told him my battery was pretty much shot. my dad suggested that we jump start the car, which didn't work. so when jarv arrived from sherilyn's place he helped us pushed my car into the drive way. i didn't want to leave my car parked on the side walk.

today i have to look for a battery. i talked to several of my friend's online and they told me just to go with the optima yellow top battery. i looked at the optima website and noticed that it was good for car audio and other gadgets. seems like im going optima. good thing this issue came up before i went turbo. i didn't want to worry about the battery dying down the road.

the email...

yesterday when i got home from the shop i got an interesting email from Yuki (the guy selling me the 2jzgte motor). anyways it says

>>"Hi JOEL

>>DO YOU REALY NEED ENGINE?

>>

>>I HAVE A CUSTOMER WHO HAS INTERESTING TO GET WITH 5SP

>>

>>PLS. UNDERSTAND I COULD NOT HOLD ENGINE FOR U WHITHOUT DEPOSIT

>>NOT MUCH TIME"

that email immediately caught my attention. i replied to his email and told him that yes I'm interested in the motor. i was slacking off and didn't send him the deposit for the motor. so i took my check book wrote down the amount and fill out the envelope and ran to the mail box (like that will speed things faster). i emailed him again and told him that the check is in the mail. i called him a few times but he didn't pick up.

so today i called him this morning and told him my situation. he said the guy who was interested in it wanted to drop it in a Toyota Cressida. But i told him that i will pick up the motor on the 9th of June (saturday). he was cool about it. the motor seems like its locked in for now.

tired of the springs...

it's been over a year now since i got my lowering springs installed. at first i was glad to see that the front was gone. but for some reason my car looks really slammed in the front and not as lowered on the rear. they are suppose to the drop the car 1.25 but it looks a bit uneven. i tried to get the car aligned and everything and it wasn't perfect. i scrap a lot if i dont slow down on the bumps and my tires seem to wear out more often. so im plannin on going back to my stock spring set up. i'll probably sell my springs on supraforums and use that money for my swap....

stereo install

i finally got my replacement stereo unit installed today... snoop, the audio guy at the shop helped with the install. he made the install look easy. he disassembled the dash with ease. i would say it took him about an hour or so to put everything. at first we might've thought that we had the wrong wiring harness for the head unit. so i had to go to kragen. so i phoned snoop and informed him that that the harness in kragen was the same as the one i purchased from s2k jeff. he gave it a shot again and told me i wouldn't need to purchase one and told me to just buy him and the guys some food from burger king.

so when i got back from burger king they were listening to my stereo. pretty cool. so i checked everything out and everything looked okay. however, when i was fiddling with some stuff around and i noticed that my dome lights weren't working. after some quick diagnostics we found out that one of the fuses blew. snoop found a replacement and sure enough it worked.

i drove my car home with my ipod hooked up. which i might add was pretty cool. now i don't have to listen to shitty radio any more. after watchin' heros i found out another issue. i tried to play a cd but when i pressed the open button the head unit wouldn't move. for some reason it seemed stuck in one position. i also had some issues trying to detach the head unit. so i txted snoop my issues and told me that he forgot to unscrew something. hopefully tomorrow everything will be perfect.

other than that everything is fine! now im tempted to buy some nice speakers and a sub!! noooooooo

road trip to OC, North Hollywood, stanton: part 2

onward to north hollywood to see the 2jzgte motor. prior to our trip to OC i had called several places to inquire about a 2jzgte jdm supra motor. first i called JR Auto Parts. I called them the day before and they told me to call up the next day since all there sales reps were gone for the day. so i called the following day and inquired. they informed me that they sold the motor already. so back to the drawing board.... i did a google search and looked for jdm engines california. i found a few places but most of there 2jzgte motors were coming from Aristos...

for those who don't really know what aristos are... they are a japanese equivalent to our own GS300. in japan they had a model that had the 2jzgte in them. however they varied in a couple ways... water pump was hydralic, oil pans were front facing towards the pulleys, and other things. anyways, i got lucky and found a place. i asked him to send me pictures of the motor. when i received the pics it looked like a supra motor! i was really excited and called the guy. i told him i would be driving there to check out the motor myself.

back to the trip...

we were leaving santa ana to go see the motor at north hollywood and it was david's turn to drive. i did the driving to the first location. but we were really hungry but we were running short of time since the place closes at 5. so we decided to forego lunch and go straight to hollywood. it was going to take us a good hour and half... but i had a feeling we were going to hit traffic. sure enough we did. on our way up there i had to call up Yuki and notified him that we were going to be a little late. he said he was going stay probably till 5:30.

so with the extra time we able to make it by 5:30. the location looked a bit isolated and ghetto looking. we parked the rental and went to the store. we walked into the office. nobody was manning the front office. but i noticed there was another room full of motors. so i looked in there and found somebody working on the 2jzgte motor. i asked him if he was yuki and sure enough that was him. i introduced myself and my friends. we walked over and looked at the motor. david was inspecting it making sure it was indeed a supra motor. and it was. i snapped a few pictures and asked a few questions. he told me the motor has been sitting there for quite a while. however, it was a complete motor. it might needs some work... change out the alternator, water pump, and the maintainence. i was able to talk to him about the price and everything. in the end we were able to work something out. hopefully in 2 to 4 weeks ill have a 2jzgte motor.

afterwards we went to the nearest fast food restaurant to get our grub on. you couldn't believe how excited i was. i feel like i'm getting really close to being twin turbo.













next stop stanton for autobacs...

road trip to OC, North Hollywood, stanton: part 1

today was the road trip i was planning the beginning of the week.

as a recap from my previous post about my cd changer. i've been looking on ebay for a suitable short term replacement. i already had an alpine head unit in mine after seeing them in person at best buy. they looked really clean. justin my bro has an alpine head unit and it works great. my main focus was the ipod compatability. theyre the pioneers of that technology. i was planning on purchasing an Alpine CDA9883 deck. i've looked through ebay and found a place in Santa Ana that had the one i was looking for at the right price. so i called up the place to see if they would allow local pick ups and told it me it wouldn't be a problem.

back to the road trip...

david, jon (MR2 guy), and i decided to go up there yesterday. we rented a ford focus from enterprise. when we arrived, we drove around the building a couple times to find the store. when we walked in the store reminded me of a small computer store. we looked around for a little bit and waited for somebody to assist me. i talked to the guy and asked if he had the Alpine headunit and mentioned that i saw it on ebay. he told me that he sold the last head unit today.

i was disappointed. i drove there from san diego to purchase it and now i couldn't get it. if i didn't get anything it would be a waste of a trip and gas. so i talked to him about other alternatives. there a couple of older alpine head units that were available. he asked me if i were stuck with alpine. i told him not really. i just wanted something with user friendly ipod compatability. he responded that the panasonics were the way to go if i wanted to go with the ipod. good thing i brought my ipod and asked if he were able to test it out on the test unit. after he showed me a comparison between the alpine and the panasonic. i realized that the panasonic provided the best ipod usability. it was a tad bit more than the alpine i wanted but i guess it will be worth it in the end.

so i ended up purchasing the Panasonic CQ-C7205U with ipod cable and toyota pocket.

next stop north hollywood...

s2000 projectors with HIDS

i finally installed my HIDs in my newly retrofitted headlights.... they look soooo good. im very impressed. they look way better than my plug-n-play philips kit. the lights light up the road really well. i must say this is one of the best upgrades ive done in a long time. i had my buddy david check to see if my lights do the cool flicker. when we went to the freeway i was a few car lengths behind him... and when we parked in the denny's parking lot he told me it does flicker.... i was so excited hahah. anyways, ill post some pics as soon as i get them.

broken cd changer!!

i think my CD changer finally died on me... it doesn't load any of CD any more. it just cycles through all the CDs. now i have to listen to crappy radio until i find something. ill probably just find something affordable at the moment then upgrade later on next year with a double din. right now i can't buy anything super expensive since i'm focusing on my swap again.