Back to the SC.  I've been stockpiling parts for a while now, and have accumulated quite a collection.
First one was a really old but really cheap tire that I picked up to replace the blowed up 255/35/18 falken, a 255/35/18 michelin that I went to town on w/ the white tire lettering crayon just for shits nd giggles.  Found a couple nails in it so I may have to just get another 255/35.

Then, a friend of mine had bought a set of 17x9+17 Buddy Club P1's, a surprisingly agressive spec for buddy club wheels.  A bit too aggressive for my friend's sw20 mr2's fronts, so he decided to sell me a pair for $300.  I quickly agreed and picked them up.

18 lbs for a 17x9 isn't too shabby.  Got some cheap 215/45/17 on them as I won't be driving the sc around on these too much.

Then, I started preparing myself for when the sc goes up on stands.  My plan is to give my sc a whole drivetrain overhaul, in addition to the rack rebuild that I'll have to do.  After all this, I should have a perfectly running sc with no oil dripping out of anything.
First up, rear main seal.

ARP flywheel bolts, W58 tranny mount, pilot bearing, and clutch release bearing.  Found out later that I could have just saved my money and not bought the bearings.

Why I could have saved money on the bearings? Because they came with the clutch kit.  Exedy oem replacement (not really pushing any more power than stock) and a lightened Comp Clutch flywheel which weighed in at 11lbs.

Seeing as I've taken my whole intake system apart to do a thorough cleaning of the insides but never touched the ignition system, I decided it wouldn't hurt to do a complete refreshing. Also, at my last smog check, everything was well under the passing limit, except for hydrocarbons which leads me to suspect that the sparks aren't as strong as they could be.
Distributor rotor/cap

Wires and plugs

Waiting for parts to roll in was boring, so I went out, bought some plexiglass, and made some clear corners

After waiting for all the parts to roll in, I jacked up the car and got to work. After a couple hours of preparation to drop the tranny (removing exhaust system, driveshaft, etc etc), we were able to unbolt the bellhousing from the block, pry the 2 apart, and get the transmission down on the floor.

Took off the bellhousing and tranny mount plate to clean out and the shifter extension to change out the plastic cup thingy, and just to see how the tranny works, as I've never seen a FR tranny that doesn't have the shifter going right into the transmission, rather, using linkages in combination with an extension to shift.

After several rounds of industrial cleaner, the bellhousing finally looked acceptable

Then, I turned my attention back to the motor to replace the clutch, flywheel, rms, and pilot bearing.  After hours of trying different methods to get the pilot bearing out, I rented a slide hammer from o'reilly's and the bearing was out in a matter of seconds.  The rms was then replaced, followed by 20 minutes of scrubbing. 

At this point, I turned back to the transmission as I had realized that a pair of the extension portion's bushings had been worn down.  Doing a bit of research, I found aluminum bushings made by APE, and although the price was high, the though of having precise shifts pushed me over the fence and I ordered them.  The extension portion stayed blown apart as I waited for the bushings to come in.

During the wait, I moved up to the front of the car to resolve another major leaking issue, the rack.  The rack's seals had apparently been worn, as ps fluid would randomly torrent out of the boots.  After undergoing one of the messiest processes I've ever been through, the rack came out with ps fluid dripping out of everything.  Took it to ABC axles and got a rebuilt rack in exchange for $100.  Took the new rack home excited that it wasn't drenching me with atf fluid anymore, and took apart the inner tie rod to install some tie rod spacers for a tiny bit more angle.

Right as I finished the rack work, fedex dropped off my ape bushings and threw them in the freezer.  Took them out the next day, greased them up some, and pounded them in
Before with the old bushings burnt out

After with new bushings

A friend of mine came over one day to help with the various things going on w/ the sc, and decided we should start the ignition, so we got to it, and even tackled the motor mounts, though we learned that it would've been 100x easier with the tranny bolted to the motor.
With new plugs, wires, distro cap/rotor

Aaaaaand the old motor mount that was fortunately changed out with something that wasn't so beat to hell

I then decided one night that I was going to tackle the reinstallation of the transmission, and with some sort of strike of luck, the splines matched up and the bellhousing was somewhat bolted onto the motor after an hour of jacking the front of the motor up to lean it back a bit, checking clearance, raising the tranny a bit, checking clearance, raising tranny, etc etc.
Put everything back together and got the car on the ground, got it aligned, and drove it down to sd.

Too bad my clutch started slipping on my way back home, and found out a couple days later, that I had started to leak oil yet again.

Unfortunately, amongst all the stuff I did with the SC, I decided to finally put in some work on the tC that were long overdue, so I had to shell out the cash and garage space to get my tC back up to dd condition.

Meanwhile my sc became the dd to get me to/from work.  Solid bushings and 18kg/12kg springs do not work comfortably with LA roads.  Nevertheless, it got me around town until the Falken blew up, so my tC stayed in the garage for close to a month while I got all the isht it needed.  Though the sc was reliable in that it functioned normally, it slowly started deteriorating over this time, with exhaust leaks, more fluids leaking, the tire, etc. 

Then, for the past few years, the paint on my side mirror covers had been fading for some reason, seems to be one of the many common problems that tC's have.  So, I took them off, broke about 3 clips in the process as usual, and realized the passenger side cover was cracked.... Probably due to one of my attempts to park as closely to the pillars on the side of the parking stalls at work...
Eh, w/e.  So I sanded them down, epoxied the back of the cracked portion, filled in any low spots, laid primer over it, and sprayed some 0209 bsp that I got from automotivetouchup.com.  Even came in an aerosol can, pretty cool.

I had a bit more 209 left after both sides were done, so I decided to kill the can off on my lip spoiler that I had been laggin on getting repainted (i banged it up a bit during storage) and installed. Finally got around to it.

Also ended up replacing my axles which had developed a pretty ridiculous amount of play.

During the midst of all this, I started getting bored with real cars, so I started working a bit on the r/c. 
I got a new body, painted it blue and backed it with silver. Came out pretty good, considering it was my first time using semi-transparent paint.

Then, I rebuilt my shocks, added softer springs and sway bars, and cut a bit out of the steering system to allow it to turn a bit more.

My suspension/interior stage has pretty much finished, next up will probably be transmission and engine.  My wish list atm is a Kaaz 1.5 or 2-way LSD, a new Exedy stock replacement clutch and a lighter flywheel.  But before that, I’d probably do a few steering mods, as my rack needs a rebuild anyway with atf randomly driping out of the tie rod boots.  So in the upcoming months, I’ll probably get a rebuilt rack, steering spacers, and even maybe a shortened knuckle for more steering angle.

For the moment, though, the sc sat like:

Credit to whoever shot this picture at one of the local meets.

One of the issues I had wanted to address was my rear swaybar endlink.  Because of the shortened lca, the endlink was now at an epic angle and in a situation where it was just waiting for the balljoints to explode or for the shaft to bend. 

So, I finally scrounged up the energy to get off my ass, pause my drift tengoku video, and head to lowe's to buy bolts, nuts, washers, spacers, etc to go with the heim rod ends that I had ordered a couple weeks ago from mcmaster.
 
Went from:

(because the top of the endlink was rubbing on the coilover)
to

then finally  to:

Another thing that had been bothering me about my car was my rear stretch.  The 18x10+22 in back are far from illest,bro fitment, so the 225/40 stretched onto them looked 1. out of place and 2. ridiculous. 

So, I picked up a pair of new-ish 255/35/18 fk452s (not my fave, but they’ll do) for $200 off zilvia.  The beads turned out to be damaged, but thankfully, a friend at Pep Boys was able to get the beads to completely seal and all was good.

After pounding down the bump that runs inside the wheel well right where the tire would sit, I slapped the wheels on, torqued them down, only to realize that I could've gone wider. Dammit.

Then to my surprise, the Friday before the annual VIPFest held at AutoFashion in SD, the Bride seat rails that I had ordered 6 weeks before were awaiting my arrival back home at my doorstep.

Giggling like a little girl, I grabbed it and headed to my room to tear open into the box and start assembling it.

Threw my seat into the equation

Then went back to the car to take off the 5 bolts and 1 plug that held the seat to the floor. The biggest issue I had with this whole process was this step.  Though the process was incredibly straight forward, wiggling a seat that I later found out to be 70 lbs out of the car proved to be a huge pita.  Thankfully the new seat rail and seat combo came out to just about 30lbs.  

Once my back got some rest, I went back out and quickly bolted the seat in at the lowest setting. 

The lowest setting turned out to be a too low, so I took the seat out and raised it 1" or 1 hole to the middle setting, and all was good.  Drove it down to SD, 2 hr long drive each way, and got out at the end of the day with a deteriorated spine and squished hips.  Thankfully, this process apparently got my body used to the seat reeally quickly and from the 2nd day on, I felt more comfortable in this seat than any other stock seat.

Unfortunately, the next day after my trip to SD, one of my newly acquired 255 falkens in back decided to go out in an epic fashion on my way home from work, so I'm thinking of saving up for a bit while rollin around on 1 steelie to take this opportunity and go 265 or maybe even 275 in back, just because I can.

Since getting the process of getting the sc up and running was not only just a whole lot of labor, but also an immense amount of waiting for either funds or the availability of a part/service, I had to keep myself entertained somehow.
[pic dump]

older 50/50 drift chassis setup, ta-05 ver.2

new countersteer drift chassis setup, ta-05-ifs, most of which is converted to ta-05 ver.2 parts solely to help part interchangeability between both my chassis.

Decided I'd want to get a bit back into shape

especially if I want to fit into

Helped a friend do a 5spd swap on his sc. Now a '97 5spd sc300 with a legitimate '97 m/t ecu. pretty cool stuff

and for the lolz,

I'm now re-thinking my tire size choice b/c of...

[/pic dump]

Took off the hub and sent it to a local pep boys to have them press in a new wheel bearing.  Got it back a few days later due to my schedule.  Started putting on new brake shoes that I had gotten from R1 concepts.  %$@#ing stupid brake shoes and the goddamn springs.  I will personally falcon punch whoever came up with this goddamn design in the crotch if I ever come across him/her.

Once I was finally done yelling my whole repetoire of curse words at the hub and its brake shoes, I put it all back together onto the car, and trekked 14 miles to Battle Version on the world's worst alignment ever. 

I stated my wishes to Mr Alex Pfeiffer: As little camber as possible in the back, as well as more fender clearance to allow for fatter tires sometime down the line.  0 toe all around as well.

He totally understood because he did had done the same on his car to fit something like 10.5 -1 wheels for the rears of his battle version sc,with pretty meaty tires.  After a couple hours of thoroughly going through my car (thankfully, since I never did), he was able to get the specs down to -1.8 camber in the back with still enough room to run a bit more tire, keeping the fronts cambered in at around -4 or -5.  The drive home was a blast.  The car felt so much more direct, so much lighter, though it was still the 3546lb hunk of metal (as I had found out earlier from battle version's scale when he corner balanced it).  I jacked up the car the next night to tweak some things that needed fixing.

The lca was shortened right around where the reinforcement plates/gussets were welded in near the subframe.
Because shorter lca had a couple noticeable effects.  It raised up my rear just a bit due to the lack of negative camber and also the more vertical angle of my coilover.  It also brought the coilover closer to the swaybar, enough for the endlink to make contact w/ the coilover. 
So, I jacked it up, and moved the endlink to the other side temporarily.  A few more fixes will come in just a bit. 

But before that, I decided I'd change up my exhaust game and get rid of the custom y-pipe that I had made a bit over a year ago, and got myself a fujitsubo since they seemed to be clearing them out at tein headquarters 20 miles away from my house.  Headed over and picked one up.

Ever since I heard the fujitsubo system on a friend's s2000 in high school, I've always wanted one.  The subtle yet attractive tone always had me hooked.  Few problems though.

The custom midpipe that led to the cat, which then got bolted onto the fujitsubo catback sytstem, was, well, custom.
The length of the piping that went from the header to the 2nd cat was different from stock, so I had to get it modded.  The flanges that connected the cat to the y-pipe was also horizontal, instead of angled like stock and the fujitsubo. 

Thinking I'll just uninstall it myself and take it over to a muffler shop to have 12" or so hacked off, I took the pipe off the car, only to see one of the shittiest piping work ever.  I didn't take a pic just because it was a pain to look at, but at the bends, the straight portion of the piping continued through the bend so what should have been a 2.5" piping was now cut in half due to piping being inside the opening of the piping, if that makes any sense . It didn't help that the welds looked like diseased and dying gorillas somehow got hold of harbor freight arc welders and went to town on the joints.

So, I put it back on, and drove it over to a different muffler shop than the one that originally made me the y-pipe and had them make me a whole new front portion, going from the cat on the header to the 2nd cat on the midpipe.  They also  replaced my now very smashed up cat with a smaller cat so that I wouldn't scrape it on lane dividers anymore.  Had them install everything and I started it up.  At first, i thought it was stock because the tone was so quiet, but after a drive around the block, I liked it.  A group of e30 m3's that had come to get work done stared as i quietly drove off.  Seeing as fujitsubo used resonators that trump the stock resonators in size, the quiet tone didn't really come as a huge surprise. 

Another reason why I got the y-pipe re-done was because the y-pipe that was customed was a bit too short, so it pulled the axleback back, and in doing so, because of the swinging motion of the axleback hangers, it also pulled it up.  This cut into the clearance that should be there for a rear lip, so getting it all redone was perfect.  Painted the remaining parts of my kit that were still unpainted and slapped them on.

After a couple more cans of gloss black rustoleum and duplicolor clearcoat, they went on. 

Once I get the wise wing's primer to work well with the paint, I'll be putting it on and giving the sc a wash for the first time in a couple years.