MNTouge (Cars, house, garage and misc projects)

[euro]

My original build thread became defunct and hard to re-organize after a few years a few chassis's and Photobucket's timely warning about 3rd party hosting. I'm going to try to keep things moderately chronological of my current projects and re-host the images with flickr.
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Tōge (峠, also spelled touge) is a Japanese word literally meaning "pass". It refers to a mountain pass or any of the narrow, winding roads that can be found in and around the mountains of Japan and other geographically similar areas, like the Nordschleife in Germany.

I first fell in love with Touge when I was living in Montana for my first years in college. I was sort of familiar with the concept of Touge from super street and the Video Option DVDs and had always loved WRC, but didn't fully appreciate it until i rode shotgun in a RHD S15 Silvia flying sideways down Bridger Canyon Road winding through the retrofitted roads placed after a recent rockslide. At the time I was only driving around a Kia Spectra5, which for comparison sake was the shape of a Mazda protege5 and the engine from a type-r Honda.
[picture 1]
[picture 2]
I was honestly embarrassed to show up to local car meets which were dominated by Subarus, rare Japanese imports and SRT4's in a car that had the reputation of being a Ford contour knockoff. Astonishingly, I was well received as "That guy with the weird Subaru" and even more well received as "That guy with the rare South Korean car". I tagged along with Big Sky Subaru occasionally and hung out with a few regular guys making early morning cannon ball runs throughout my short time living there.

Cue my first project car.
My very first project car that I could actually call mine was an 1986 Mazda RX-7 FC.


I bought it as a rolling chassis(/garbage bin) for too much money with virtually no tools to my name less the craftsmen kit that i was given for Christmas years prior. Certainly not enough perform a full engine swap and rebuild of a car as rough as this one was but I was going to take my time and learn to do things right. Unfortunately, Major issues with my room mate's fiance (who could only be compared to the queen of hearts from alice in wonderland) that project never saw the light of day and i was forced to sell it in pieces to recuperate all the time and money lost into the now 2JZ outfitted RX7.

However, Luck would have it I found a new place to live and after a few months of rebuilding my saving account i was able to rent another garage and pickup another project car. My new garage was smaller, had one underpowered outlet but came with a workbench across the back of the garage. Initial thoughts were I could finally get a real Touge vehicle like an AE86! However after months of searching, I only was ever able to source an engine out of a doomed rolling shell of an AE85 (american AE86) so I tinkered with that for awhile and gave into buying a Volkswagen. Having ditched my 02 mini cooper and it's issues, I didn't have an European car for sometime but felt compelled to stick around Eurowerks since it was the first club that I've been a part of that actually reached out to help it's members. Which brought me to an 1989 Volkswagen Cabriolet standard. 1.8JH, 5 speed manual and it was the first convertible I had ever owned. (dubbed No3rds due to it loosing 3rd gear on my drive home due to very sloppy shifter linkage)
No3rds by Andrew Pedretti, on Flickr
No3rds by Andrew Pedretti, on Flickr
This one stuck around for about a year before i slowly gave into the fact that the rust was beyond repair and again I had sunk my money into a garage pile never to return. It was also around this time that I had decided I was fed up with the 60 hour work weeks at my manufacturing job and needed to finish school so i could get a real job and get some R&R from the last 4 years.

Soooo I worked at a liquor store in a bad part of town in St. Cloud making only about $11/hour and getting 12 hours a week. Not exactly enough to survive on, definitively not enough to survive on, pay for school and build a hill climb sleeper. I proceed to very slowly part out the Cabriolet not really knowing if i had enough good parts left to be able to get my money back for everything. Oddly enough my boss at that liquor store, that I only worked at for 3 months before getting picked up at my current place of work, had a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible that was mostly the same color, little rust and an engine that ran like a two stroke.
The beginning by Andrew Pedretti, on Flickr
The beginning by Andrew Pedretti, on Flickr
The beginning by Andrew Pedretti, on Flickr
They claimed to have spent over $1400 trying to get it to run right but it kept burning oil for some reason and the fuel pump had to be turned on with a toggle switch due to some short that didn't allow it to turn off otherwise. I brought that home for a cool $800 and fogged for bugs the 4 miles across town. #bluesmokeisgoodright?

That is what more or less brings things to my current build (iteration #52.5) TougeBunny.



a kind of 1 off, convertible, West German built hillclimb car.

20170801_185015 by Andrew Pedretti, on Flickr

current specs (turns over but has not fired up yet as of writing this):
engine: 1995 OBD I ABA from a Jetta
Trans: 020 5 speed (with Mk1 shift linkage, TT short shifter at 50% reduction, cheap rock auto clutch temporary, tt shifter rebuild kit)
spindles to axle flanges: 100mm 89 cabriolet oem, OMI axles
brakes: OEM 89 disc in the front, OEM 82 drum in the rear
wheels: OEM VW Steelies, tires Sumic GT60A 195/60R14
Exhaust: MK3 cast manifold, TT stainless downpipe from MK2/3 to Mk1 OEM cat back
miles: ?????

cosmetics:
ECS tuning plastic euro bumpers
OEM single round grille
70's Yellow Trabant foglights (NOS from Karl Marx Stadt)
Westy GTI air dam
Kamei hood scope
80's static clinge windshield banner
M&T manufacturing replacement top (doesn't fit at all)
Heineken Keg Can air filter shield

I am moving into a house later this year and will finally have fabrication capabilities again for which Phase 2 of my build will start.
Phase 2 includes:
Roll cage
fuel cell
rear spare tire well delete
rear diffuser
Removable Hard top (time permitting)
Removable Bikini top
MK1 aba swap capable strut bar (building with keeping the rain tray in mind for reproduction)
and if things are really going well I might start powder coating parts




My daily ride now days consists of a 2012 Hyundai Veloster 1.6L na which is also getting the touge treatment slowly (sway bars, coils, strut tower braces)



(pictures are pending)

[Die Frau]

Good read. Looking forward to updates and pictures!

[euro]

Figured out why pictures were not showing so what I have available should be showing now (less pictures imprisoned on my desktop in need of parts). Wife and I are going to be closing on our new home on the 2nd of October so progress on car stuff will halt after Eurowerks. I'm still planning on pulling an all nighter Friday night and will likely skip the rally Saturday to get the car running reliably. It really sucks because I'd much rather be driving winding turns than doing wiring but I also would like to make eurowerks this year in my car. I also recently picked up a hardtop from Aaron to build a removable vikus style hard top for the cabriolet since the soft top replacement was way too short. (more on that after we move into our new home.)

[sprstu]

full cage in the cabby? Looks like a super clean starting place though!

[euro]

Yep, it'll go in before the attempt at the removable hard topper for the cabby. I'm also picking up a 16v from devin to start a second itb Touge build.

[JUSTION337]

*Devan

[euro]

Justin helped me pick up my pile of parts today from Devan's. ended up getting an autotech performance header, 16v gti engine and a complete weber carb manifold for 8v's. General plan is to build the 16v to run ITB's from a R1 or similar proven out ITB Touge build and eventually build up a 8v carbed show car.

[euro]

Little update since I haven't been on top of this. We've been living in the new house for about a month now and we're still loving it. It's a 3 bedroom 2 bath rambler sitting on an acre of fenced land in Big Lake Township. The house is pretty plain Jane compared to all the other houses in our small neighborhood. We're the only ones with a gravel driveway, there are baseboard electric heaters for each room individually controlled by mismatched control knobs decades in age apart and every floor and wall has an interesting "improvements" holes, stains and other signs that this is a VERY worn house.

First thing we did after cleaning the house top to bottom was we went ahead and updated our washer, dryer and dishwasher as the old machine bled rust when ran. The old machines were too far gone to clean out or restore cost effectively so we said to hell with it. We also spent the better part of a week spackling every wall in the house as the previous owners had an fetish with floating shelving, wall anchors and screws directly in the drywall. At this point we haven't made much more progress on the house since snow started to fall so we're just unpacking, adding window film and preparing the office for paint and wood floors in the next month or two.

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TOUGE CONTENT:
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Yeti's Den:
I have everything unpacked in the garage now but still short on space until i get some of the old carpet from the house tossed out. Wife got me a nice industrial floor mat from her work that is basically brand new for my birthday and I got all my mancave decorations up now including the liquimoly flag i pulled down after Eurowerks this year.
TougeBunny:
I did get around to cutting the hole in the firewall larger and lining the holes with some edge trim. I'm hoping to have some time in a week or two to plug in all the wiring, drop a battery in and check for smoke. If that all goes well I might finish installing the downpipe and try turning it over. again assuming no fires or smoke I'll start buttoning everything up and doing basic maintenance before taking a test run.
Touge?????:
unofficially in the market for 1 of 3 cars as a "Non-Project" that i can rip around in during the summer if the Rabbit for some reason has extended issues that need sorting out as I expect it will. 2 of the 3 fit my touge itch and the 3rd fits my general Hoonage itch.
1. AE86(AE85) Toyota Corolla - 1.6L 16v dohc n/a
-generally my favorite Japanese car period
-Rwd and readily accepts ITBs, minimal tuning needed to make it fun to drive
2. Merkur XR4TI/Ford Sierra Cosworth - 2.3L sohc Turbo
-generally my favorite European (affordable) rallyesk car
-Rwd and generally fun to drive after suspension upgrades
3. Plymouth Roadrunner
-would be a ratty ride
-burnouts

I'll upload some pictures later after i weed through the hundreds I've taken since moving in.

[Pinkyman26]

Oh hai neighbor! We just went through all that on our house in Monticello that we purchased like 6 months ago. We gutted the whole thing, remodeled all of it, and took out the baseboard heat and installed a new furnace and central air. It was fun, lemme tell you..... Lol

[euro]

Yeah I'm actually in the process of repainting the office before the wood floors go in this weekend. So far this is the first room the has been reclaimed from the depressing paint colors that were in the house.

[TurboCrayon]

Eww, who would have a room black? Let alone one that small.

Got enough house projects yet?

[10001110101]

I don't feel so alone up here anymore...

[euro]

Eww, who would have a room black? Let alone one that small.

Got enough house projects yet?

Yeah, the whole house is a combination of depressed colors, 70's chromomatic scheme and "i picked two paint chip cards and chose ALL THE COLORS".

Office is a nice teal color now and we're picking up some wood trim to finish it off. next house project is probably running Cat6 throughout the house and setting up my server rack. I'm kinda hoping i have some time to work on the rabbit in the next couple of weeks.

[sprstu]

I just started work on my "finished" basement, removing all the 70's era "finishing touches" and making it bright and modern.

[euro]

Looking to pick up a garage heater in the next week or two and seal up the last of the drafts in the garage for the winter before picking up a tig and welding all the things. Probably going to start laying out the cage first and then moving to on to the chassis modifications and depending on how far i get this winter i may pull some suspension components to repaint them.