REsuper7のブログ一覧

I started my search for a replacement FD with a few simple requirements:

1. No sunroof or moonroof! I don't know why, but this is always my number 1 requirement for an FD.
2. No body damage or frame damage - obviously right??
3. Any color. No real preference because I was planning to paint the car white anyway.
4. Preferably something with suspension and wheels so it could actually roll, but I did consider shells at one point too.
5. A clear title so that I could register the car to drive on the street.

With this small list of requirements, I began scouring the forums and Craigslist for another FD. But before I go any further, I need to talk a little bit about how I managed to convince my loving wife who, according to her, had not even gotten over the shock of my accident. Whether you agree with me or not, as a family man, it's already difficult enough to justify having such an expensive hobby as cars, so then, how can you possibly justify spending more money to buy another car to replace the one you crashed, especially in my case where the insurance company wasn't cutting any checks for the accident? Not only did it take a lot of pleading, and fighting, and more pleading, but I knew there was only one way I could justify going about reviving REsuper7, and that meant selling off my Ducati 848. This thought first crossed my mind soon after the accident, but it took two months before I could come to terms with actually doing it. Having had a long history with bikes, and this bike in particular because it was built to perfection in my eyes with all the right parts, the idea of letting it go was only second in difficulty to losing my car, but I knew if rebuilding my car meant that much to me, it had to be done. Finally, after receiving my wife's blessing (sort of...it's not something I want to get into here), I grit my teeth and started listing my bike parts for sale. The reason I chose to part it out was because I knew no one was going to pay what the bike was worth with all the upgrades I had, and even if they did I would still make more money parting it out. Within the first week of the listing, over half of my stuff was sold, but the most difficult part was the night I stepped into the garage and started to take the bike apart piece by piece. Before I turned the first bolt I stopped myself and walked back into the house to ask my wife if I should really go through with it to which she confidently replied, Yes! So I went back out to the garage and started taking the bike apart. I'll be honest with you, I felt dirty afterwards. I was basically cannibalizing my bike, but i knew I had to keep my eye on the prize, which was, by doing this, one day I'll be able to drive around again in REsuper7. The goal was to raise at a minimum $15k in order to fund the revival. I haven't quite reached that goal yet, but I've raised enough to buy a decent roller.

My poor bike...or what's left of it at least.


So going back to my search for a roller, I kept at it day after day but always coming back empty handed, or worse, finding the only available rollers all had sunroofs!! 😡😡😡 I eventually stumbled upon a Craigslist posting with no pictures but was somewhat local so I contacted the guy. He was quick to respond so I asked him to send me over some pictures. Turns out it was a 93 automatic base model, red with no sunroof or wing and 100% stock with full black interior. The caveat was it had been neglected since 2006 and it sat out in the sun for just as long. Nevertheless I was interested because in comparison to what else was out there, this was considered unmolested. The asking price was $7500 which was on the high side of what I was looking to spend for a roller, but considering it was more of a full car than it was a roller, I thought it was worth taking a look at. I set up a day to check out the car, and armed with my camera, I drove over to take a look.





The car turned out to be basically as the guy described. It was 100% stock, but the most amazing thing about the car was that it started on a dime, cold or hot, idled smoothly and pulled good vacuum (I brought my boost gauge so I could check it). I think in the end, the running motor is what really sold me on the car because I knew a spare long block alone in good running condition could cost close to $3k. Unfortunately I couldn't test drive the car for two reasons, 1. The car hadn't been maintained since 2006 which meant the oil was probably from that time as well, and 2. The car had no brakes. The brake pedal would just go all the way to the floor when depressed. Knowing that I was planning to tear the car down and use my own motor anyway, test driving the car wasn't a huge deal to me. I inspected the interior of the car which was pretty dirty but at least it had all the parts there, including the elusive driver side map door cover. The paint was in poor condition as expected but also a non-issue because I was planning a respray. Lastly, the cherry on top of the whole deal was it came with dual oil coolers! I know only R1's came with dual oil coolers but they also came with a rear spoiler and didn't come with leather. This car had dual oil coolers, no wing, a rear hatch cover, and leather interior. So to be honest, I don't really know if this car was a base or an R1.





As expected, the price was unnegotiable because apparently he had just listed the car when I contacted him which is why he didn't have any pictures up yet and he had a bunch of other buyers lined up eager to buy the car sight unseen. So I paid a deposit and told him I will arrange another day to come back to get the car as it needed to be towed back to my place. Not really having many known towing options besides calling random tow truck companies and with the seller being eager to get rid of the car, I struck a deal with the seller to have him tow the car back to my place for a reasonable fee. A few days later, I met up with the seller again, paid him the remaining amount, got the title transfer notarized as required by PA law, and drove back to my place with the FD in tow.

The donor car heading to its new home in preparation for a full makeover


Unfortunately with my old FD occupying 90% of the two car garage space, I had no choice but to park the car on the driveway. Officially becoming the owner of 5 cars and with only one car in the garage meant I had to keep 4 cars on the driveway at all times, and with it being January, this meant lots of snow on the horizon. But alas, I didn't have much choice. The only thing I could do now to rectify this parking nightmare was to finish tearing down my old FD and get rid of the shell ASAP, then I would be back to equilibrium...relatively speaking...owning four cars is not exactly normal either, but I digress. With perhaps the biggest check box of the revival process checked off, it was time to finish off phase 1, the teardown.

It took me 2 months, to the day, to get through my grieving phase, and now that i was able finally put the incident behind me, it was time to start the process of bringing REsuper7 back to life.

The reason I'm calling this a revival as opposed to a rebuild is because I'm not rebuilding the same car I crashed. That car, the original REsuper7, is dead. Rather, I'm bringing him back to life in spirit by transferring as much of the usable parts over to another car, but once I'm done with everything, REsuper7 will have been revived in a new body.



Before I came to the realization that I would need a new shell, I started by removing some parts like the wheels and hood. Immediately visible were the tweaked front frame rail, a few kinks in the firewall, and the damaged rear quarter panel.

Rear quarter panel damage




At first, I thought, "hey, it's not so bad, I think I could find someone to fix this." The glimmer of hope that REsuper7 could be resuscitated was soon quashed when I contacted a local frame specialist and sent over a few pictures of the damage. The guy responded immediately saying it wasn't even worth taking a closer look at to see if it could be repaired and he said I'd be better off finding another shell and transferring whatever parts I could over. It was a tough pill to swallow but I wasn't about to give up on the revival just yet. I eventually started looking for a roller, but I'll get into the details of that in another post. I'd like to focus on the initial damage assessment in this post.

Firewall damage


To add salt to the wound, I found out two of my four TE37 RT wheels were irreparable. From the surface it appears to be just a few dents to the lips of the two wheels. But after contacting a few shops, I found out the wheels had suffered lateral damage which rendered them irreparable. I was devastated. I couldn't believe even my precious TEs had succumbed to their wounds. I wasn't sure exactly what to do in terms of replacing them, whether I should buy a whole new set of four, or just buy two new RTs, or buy two TEs of any kind, not RTs, and have all four wheels refinished to look the same. The only thing I was sure of was that I would end up with another set of TEs.

My poor TE's


After coming to terms with the grim news from the frame specialist, the directive became clear; its time to tear the car down to the last bolt and dump the shell. I started the tear down in early January, and working primarily on the weekends, it took me roughly two months to strip it down completely. I started first with all the body work and plastidip. I salvaged and saved whatever I could along the way thinking I may be able to fix it and use it at some point in the future, but as far as my RE body kit was concerned, there was very little to be salvaged which means I will need to order all new parts from RE. 😭



My poor RE雨宮 body kit


Next I turned my attention towards the suspension. Like the TEs, my Ohlins suspension also suffered some heavy casualties. Two of the four corners remained intact, but the lower clevis mount on the rear driver side was damaged and needed to be replaced, and the front driver shock was damaged and needed to be replaced. Luckily, I contacted Ohlins and they were very accommodating with helping me get replacement parts. I gave them a list of parts that I would be needing, and they sent them over a few weeks later, not that I can do anything with them at this point anyway, but it doesn't hurt to have the parts ready to go. I was just glad I didn't have to order a whole new set of coilovers.

Damaged Ohlins coilovers

The one major upgrade that managed to escape unscathed were my Brembo monoblock calipers and brake rotors. That brought me a tiny bit of relief amidst the barrage of damaged parts I was uncovering. To boil it down to a high level list of parts I will need to get the car back into its pre-crash state would include:

Replacement Parts:
- FD roller
- two new TE37 wheels
- Drivers side Ohlins coilover replacement parts
- RE雨宮 N1 02 Bumper, undersweep, canards
- RE雨宮 AD-GT2 widebody kit
- RE雨宮 Sleek Light Kit
- Vmount Radiator

To minimize the amount of money I need to spend to get everything back to the way it was, there were quite a few parts that would need repairs, some more than others, but it'll definitely add to the amount of time required to get the car back on the road:

Parts to be Repaired:
- Vmount IC Kit - the intercooler itself is undamaged but all the supporting brackets were tweaked
- RE雨宮 Fender Diffusers, rear canards, rear diffuser, tail lights, AD9 hood. Basically not a single RE雨宮 part I had on the car walked away without some kind of damage 😡

The most surprising piece to have survived the crash was the RE雨宮 AD9 hood especially considering it was a front end crash and I had hood pins on...or perhaps it's because I had hood pins that the hood suffered minimal damage. But regardless, besides a few areas where you can see small cracks in the resin, there's no major damage anywhere else. Honestly, from a few feet away the hood would probably look brand new. The one thing that did break off was the metal latch for the stock hood lock which means I will need to secure the hood with hood pins which is fine since I had a set of Aerocatch hood pins waiting to be installed. The only reason they weren't already on the car was because I was hesitant about cutting into a pristine carbon hood. Now that it's longer pristine, time to cut away!

The road to recovery is a long one, and it's not going to be easy, or cheap, but at least I have some direction on what needs to be done. The process of assessing the damage helped remove a lot of the unknowns and and doubts about whether or not I would be able to revive REsuper7. Now I knew what needed to be done and it was only a matter of time. Time to put my head down and get my hands dirty.