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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.

This is perhaps the most difficult post I have made and hopefully will ever make on Minkara. To be honest, it's hard to even pick a starting point because all memories of that day bring with it a sting that hasn't quite faded yet. But at the same time, I do feel like I'm ready to move on and this post is a part of that process. So here it goes...

November 1st, 2014 was supposed to be one of my highlights for the year as it was my first track day with the FD at NJMP Thunderbolt, a track I was very familiar with as I had been riding my bike there for the past 6 years. I had been anticipating this event for a couple of months and it was finally here. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a rainy and unusually cold day for that time of year. But thanks to my stubborn nature, the cold and rain wasn't going to stop me from getting out on track. So with a determined resolve, I woke up at 5am and got ready to head out despite the rainy and wet conditions. Ted tagged along, but as a passenger, not in his FD, as he's much smarter than I am and doesn't drive his FD in the rain.



It rained pretty heavily the whole way down to the track. We finally got to the track at 8am and it was practically a ghost town. I could count the number of people in attendance on my two hands. I guess it wasn't just Ted that was smarter than me, it was the majority of people as well. The morning routine was pretty much the same as always, tech inspection, riders meeting, etc. They told us we'd be running 30 minute sessions of two groups, one car group and one bike group, as there simply were not enough people to warrant any more groups. I was ecstatic as I knew this meant tons of track time. Armed with my GoPros and my lap timer I hit the track.





I did about 7 or 8 thirty minute sessions with a lunch break in the middle. I took it extremely easy the whole time, making sure I slowed down to let anyone behind me pass. As the day went on my confidence went up slowly, but still I was very careful to not push too hard, although on a few separate occasions the car did get a little squirrelly but nothing too crazy.

Coming down the front straight at Thunderbolt:


About the second to last session of the day, I went out as usual, not realizing the temperatures had started dropping, and by that point it was pretty much business as usual, especially considering I had already spent roughly four hours out on track in the same conditions by then. Needless to say, I was comfortable driving in those conditions, or so I thought. About 4 or 5 laps into the session, as I was coming up out of the bowl into the final chicane leading onto the front straight, I turned the car left to set it up for the final turn when suddenly the rear lost traction and I started sliding. Because of the cold and wet conditions I didn't stand a chance of recovering from the slide, not to mention that I was off track which might as well have been ice because there was 0 traction. In addition, that was probably the worst place to crash because there was zero runoff and going off track meant going into the wall. As I was sliding I knew impact was imminent, I just didn't know how bad it would be. I first hit the guardrail on the front drivers side at which point the whole left side started dragging against the rail, then the car careened off to the right across the track and crashed head on into the guardrail on the other side at which point the car finally came to a stop. Shock didn't even begin to describe what I was feeling, but at least I appeared to be unharmed, until I noticed I couldn't move my left thumb. The ambulance and tow truck arrived a couple of minutes later and I got out of the car and into the ambulance. I took my helmet and gloves off and saw that my left thumb was dislocated. I was taken to the small facility onsite where they assess you and determine whether or not you need to be taken to the hospital. First thing I did was call Jen to let her know what happened and also that I would be needing a ride home. Despite having a dislocated thumb, I was more concerned with how I was going to get the car home, so I declined the hospital trip and figured I would get the car squared away first then head to the hospital afterwards.

This is the most painful picture i've ever had to take of my car...i couldn't even look at this picture until recently when i came around and decided to make this post:


Luckily for me, car friends are always super helpful in times like this. Simon, who was with a bunch of other guys at Lightning, the other NJMP track, came over with Jeff and Tim to see if I was ok. Simon generously offered to call AAA for me to get a tow truck to get the car home and Ted offered to ride with the tow truck and cover any additional cost that might not be covered by AAA. Once that got sorted out I felt a little more at ease, but at the same time I was left sitting there with nothing but my thoughts which only served to drag me further into a depressive state as the shock of what happened started to fade and the reality of it all started to sink in. As difficult as it was to accept the loss of something so significant to me, I couldn't help but feel relieved that it wasn't the loss of a person, or more specifically a loved one. The car ultimately is replaceable/rebuildable but people cannot be replaced and I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude that I could still go home and see my wife and two kids. God was gracious to me, and I was thankful to him.

My brother ended up coming to get me and take me to the hospital where they x-ray'd my thumb and confirmed it wasn't broken, just dislocated. The doctor proceeded to numb my thumb and pop it back into place. Before that, the thumb was burning like it was on fire, but once it was popped back into place it felt normal again, despite not being able to bend it still. To this day I'm still not sure how I dislocated it. At first I assumed it was the steering wheel that knocked it out of place but there was this mysterious crack on my windshield which couldn't have been a result of contact with my helmet because the location didn't leave much room for the helmet, plus the helmet had 0 damage on it. After I watched the crash footage on my GoPro I started thinking perhaps my thumb hit the windshield but it happened so quickly that it's really hard to tell even with the video.

I got home that night and was amazed to find my car actually parked in my garage. Major props to Ted for going above and beyond the call of duty to help another rotorhead out. The next morning, I woke up and stupidly thought I could get started on tearing down the car. I managed to jack the car up on all fours, take one wheel off and one caliper off before I gave up and went back into the house. The next time I walked back into that garage was two months later, and in that time, I removed everything car related from my life, desktop/laptop/phone wallpapers, all pictures on my phone, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Anything that remotely reminded me of my car I got rid of simply because it was too painful to see. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I was depressed for those two months...having trouble sleeping, having dreams about my car, falling asleep randomly throughout the day. My wife said it was PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). But on the flip side, those two months away from cars allowed me to focus my attention on other things in my life, such as transitioning into a new role at work, and spending some quality time with my family. It wasn't until New Year's Day, exactly two months from that tragic day, that the cloud of depression started to lift and I set my sights on what needed to be done to revive REsuper7.

This is how i would like to remember the original REsuper7


The above photos are all courtesy of Peter who i had just met that day...thanks to his awesome photography skills i got to see some amazing shots of my car in its final hour.

Here are some additional bonus images that Ted took with my camera that day...again, HUGE thanks to Ted for being there to help me get through the day and for getting the car home and into the garage!

Bonus Images:

Continuing with my catch up series of posts, a couple of weeks after FCF, I met up with a photographer who worked for Super Street to do a shoot of my car at a local track called Raceway Park in Englishtown. He managed to get the track to let us use the drift track for our shoot, but that also meant heading out by 6am on a Wednesday morning to do the shoot, luckily I was still working second shift at the time which meant I had the mornings off so that worked out nicely. I got there just as the sun was rising and met the photographer and his brother at the front gate.

Here's a quick photo i snapped with my iphone that i thought came out pretty cool with the sunrise in the background.


The grounds keeper let us into the gate and we pretty much got started right away on the rolling shots. Since I'm not a drifter he simply took some shots of the car driving around the track at about 20-30 mph. It wasn't exactly super exciting, but it was fun to have the whole track all to myself even if I couldn't go very fast. Also, I thought it served as a preview to my upcoming track day that I had been anticipating for quite a while.

This picture was taken during a break of the rolling shots. I thought the color trees in the background captured the season quite well.


This picture was towards the end of the shoot where we stopped the rolling shots to do a couple of stills.


The whole shoot took roughly two hours but it was limited to rolling shots and a couple of still shots, that meant we had to plan another meet to do detailed shots of the engine bay and interior before it would be ready to be featured in Super Street. Later that day, the photographer sent me a photo of one of the shots he took, which I thought turned out pretty amazing. I guess that's why magazines hire him to shoot cars for them.

And here's the end result of one of the photos...i was pretty surprised by how good it came out...i would say probably one of my favorite shots of my car to date.



I have still yet to see the rest of the photos from that day but I have a feeling that'll never happen, but I'll get into the "why" of that in the next post.

Wow, it's been a while since i've done anything car related, that's not to say i haven't been to any events since last October, but rather i've been forced to take a step back from the whole scene for reasons which i'll get into at a later time. This post is meant to catch up my blog of all the car related events that i have yet to share from the 4th quarter of last year.

After Wekfest in August of 2014, I decided i wanted to try signing up for at least one car show just to see what it was like since i had never entered into one before. I ended up signing up for First Class Fitment (FCF) hosted by Canibeat at the Princeton Airport which was only a half hour drive from my house. Luckily, a local blog called SNTRL hit me up and asked if i wanted to be a booth car so i said sure. It didn't hurt to make some friends before the show so i didn't end up by myself the whole time. A friend of mine, Ted with the yellow RE FD, was also chosen as a booth car along with another S14 Silvia drift car with an itasha theme.

Here's a couple of shots of the booth we parked at:





And a closer look at the Itasha S14:



The day started pretty early as we had to get to the airport by 7:30am which meant waking up by 6. I met up with Ted at his place and we drove down together to Princeton. The drive was quite nice with the fall foliage and the route the GPS took us on just happened to be one of the routes I used to ride my bike on. After we got there, the first order of business was finding the booth. After a little guidance from the event coordinators we found the booth at the corner next to the main hall which happened to be an airplane hanger. That's what made the event unique, the fact that we were sharing space with airplanes and also there was tons of open space. The venue actually made the event look somewhat small just because of the sheer size of the facility.

To be honest, most of the action took place took place within the first hour of our arrival. We set up the booth and arranged the cars, and I spent some time doing some final cleaning. Also, prior to the event starting all the contestants got a chance to walk around and check out the cars which was nice because it was like we got first dibs at the show before it got crowded.

It was really cool to see the famous Signal Auto R34 from back in the day when it was brought stateside from Japan to compete in FormulaD.



Once the show started it was just mobs and mobs of people. At that point we just hung out at the SNTRL booth and chilled. Got to meet a few people which was nice, in particular, another rx7club member, Muibubbles, or Benny, which was cool because he's pretty active in the rx7 community and he also makes a lot of pretty cool custom parts for the FD.

For some reason i can't seem to find the pictures i took that day of the other cars, so i'm going to share a handful of photos taken by the guys at SNTRL:







The show ended around 5pm at which time we simply packed up and headed out. The caravan out of the airport was pretty cool as it was basically a long line of hooked up cars, so it was fun to be a part of that.

Ted and I heading out after a long day of checking out awesome cars and chilling:



Here's a group shot that we missed out on as we had already left:



For my first car show experience it wasn't bad, but I can't imagine myself doing too many more. If anything, maybe 1 a year at most. If I'm going to take a whole day away from the family for something car related, I'd much rather be at the track, even if it was only just as a spectator.

For more coverage of the event, feel free to checkout SNTRL's website:

First Class Fitment 2014 Coverage by SNTRL Part 1
First Class Fitment 2014 Coverage by SNTRL Part 2
First Class Fitment 2014 Coverage by SNTRL Part 3

One of the perks of working in NYC is that there's always something interesting happen. Yesterday, that something interesting made my day. Yesterday, Fiat Chrysler started listing their shares on the NYSE, and to promote their company and commemorate this day, they set up a display outside of some of their cars that are part of the FCA umbrella. And lucky me, one of those cars happened to be Ferrari's latest flagship model that replaced the Enzo...the LaFerrari!



Normally nothing can stop me from getting to/from work, not even the occasional celebrity spotting, but when i saw the bright red car sitting center stage and stealing the show from the rest of the cars out on display, i was stopped in my tracks. I quickly took out my phone and snapped a few pics after i wiped the drool from my mouth.







Even after i got to the office, i couldn't stop drooling over the car, and lucky for me, i could still see the car from a nearby window.



After seeing the Ferrari, i'm more inclined to get my car repainted red. Unfortunately, i don't really have too many updates for the car. The only thing i've done recently is install my quick release hub for my RE-Amemiya steering wheel and also fix my odometer that went blank recently. The next big thing will be modding the used RE-Amemiya GT-II wing that i bought to adapt it for my GT-III mounts, but the wing isn't expected to get here for a few weeks still, so that'll probably happen closer to November. The only other thing i've done recently is add some more stickers:





So not much has been going on recently, probably because i've been so busy with work, but i should have more updates soon, especially since there are two events coming up soon, First Class Fitment this weekend and the RX-7 meet the first weekend of November, so stayed tuned for some updates in the near future!