As usual, forgot to write for a few months… here is everything that happened since late 2024, which leads up to the main topic of today: OFFSET 2025
So, since last November car’s been running great, not much needed fixing. Just did a few small stuff along the way.
Including getting my very own SR
Got myself some Dmax floor mats which I’ve wanted for a while, I also threw in a Vertex x NC wheel in there temporarily, nice but was a bit too big for my liking.
Then I drove the car as is for a while, took it to two track days. Had some fun but unfortunately it’s still not at the level I want it to be.
With the style of tracks we have here, low power is a huge handicap that I’m not skilled enough to overcome yet.
Thankfully that shouldn’t be a problem by next season as the solution to that is finally here.
An SR, S14 Notch top to be exact, so pretty stocked on it, this thing will get its own deep dive as I try to refresh it myself later this year, it came from a running car with good compression. But the cams are hurting a bit and so I’ll go over the whole drivetrain just in case, and might as well get the block and head decked with new studs and head gasket right?
But anyways, in early March I was still debating whether to refresh the car to bring it to Dubai or not, the cost to refresh the car wasn’t exactly cheep, and having an engine I need to rebuild was a higher priority. But then I changed my mind because you never know when you’ll get another chance like this. And I felt like I had to make the most of it and not let opportunity pass by. Next year I might not get the chance to go even if I wanted to, and money comes and goes at the end of the day.
With that in mind, I wasn’t gonna participate without aiming to impress, so just a month before the event I took the car apart and got started on a few things.
Raised it up and took the skirts and rear valance off, and the broken and missed up front lip.
Seats also had to come out, because I had something different in mind this year.
With that I did a few small stuff to the car before taking it to the body shop, I replaced the 3M on the side skirt with some magnet strips.
The fender pull was slightly adjusted, as I also took some spacer and camber out, as -5° felt like a bit too much for me after a while.
I was able to get it looking a bit better with very minimal rubbing on the inner side of the chassis.
Another small thing I did was “fix” the gas door latch. As some of you s chassis owners know, those things really like to brake one way or another, I tried fixing it the oem way first but no dice.
So I had to improvise, I instead got a cabinet door latch and modified it a bit to make it fit into the the quarter panel, it’s not exactly pretty but it works great so can’t complain.
I did damage the door a bit but don’t worry about it’s fixed now!
Plan was very simple for this year, only repainting the parts that got damaged and adding a few small new parts. Keeping the oem kouki styling with just a hint of spice.
I did that by replacing the oem valence with a G Grow Ideal style (Aero G) valance, a Dmax roof spoiler, and added the front plate cutout to the oem bumper. I also got some new mirror base plates from Garage Emperor that fit the CBR mirrors perfectly.
All that plus fixing up my cracked and burnt fenders would bring this to the bare minimum that’d be acceptable for a show car haha.
An extra thing I did as well, was relocating where the spoiler mounts. Last year I had it mounted where it should be on a factory Kouki 180 using a template. Unfortunately I found out that it was not mounted correctly by the shop I took the car to. And the spoiler was in fact not where it’s supposed to be. I thus decided to move it to where Ito and most of the Japan guys used to mount it, the edge of the trunk.
Thankfully the spoiler mount would still cover the old holes in its new position, as I only had to move it slightly back and to the left as it was off center. It’s now even on both sides and looks much better flush with the trunk.
It makes a very subtle difference but I much prefer the new position!
Fits so much better, and complements the lines of the CBR mirrors to fit the body much more. Super stoked on how well these came out.
Plate cut out came out decent, got it cleaned up before paint. I also got myself a set of oem r33 N1 vents. Got em painted but won’t be going on till I have an intercooler for em to lead to, as it looks a bit funny having the cutout just lead to the crash bar currently.
One thing I was doing on the side was some custom full red taillights.
I got myself a pair of beat up oem kouki tails and a set of aftermarket red lenses to replace the broken factory ones. The look of full red taillights is very appealing to me, but painting over the amber gives the taillight a subtle pink hue, which I’d prefer to avoid. Plus the tails on my car were brand new and I didn’t wanna risk ruining/not liking how they turn out.
I dropped em off at a “professional light repair” shop, which turned out to not be as professional as I hoped. The repair quality was less than satisfactory. Even though the look is awesome, they did a pretty bad job gluing the lenses in, and ended up cracking one side which infuriated me.
After painting the trim black they did end up looking a bit nicer, but then the next obstacle was the freaking lenses themselves. Once the show was over I noticed that the tails started to fade, and they’ve been continuing to fade over the past few weeks that they are almost completely clear now… I’m still debating what to do with em now, fix, replace or just go back to stock ones? Not sure
With these things done the car was off for bodywork, not much I could do other than wait anxiously. With only two weeks till the show, it was a very nerve racking time…
The G Grow valance had unfortunately been broken in half during shipping when I bought it a few months back, it’s originally supposed to be one piece across the entire rear bumper, unlike the oem 3pc style valance. This one is wider and lower, matches the side skirt hight and angles much better. The plan was to repair it back into a single piece. Which was done very well actually.
Unfortunately the measurements weren’t as accurate as one would expect, and the added material was too long, making the valance too wide to fit the rear end of the car.
Compromises had to be done due to time restraints, the new piece had to be cut to fit. So now it’s a 2pc part which looks decent but not the original look I was aiming for. Will consider getting it fixed at some point in the future.
Everything else went smoothly thankfully, the pained center garnish is a hit in my opinion!
Love the way the rear end looks with the new changes.
No really changes were made to the front end, just the plate cutout which gives it a more aggressive look, lip was painted and stitched up, stitches had to be cover by some stickers.
Blue tint on the position lights was also a nice touch, just something small that gives a cool effect.
With bodywork done, the last few touch’s were done at home.
Seats went back in, which consisted of: for the driver, Bride Zeta II Pro type (the same one from last year) but now with red fabric!
And for the passenger, a red Bride Ergo I won on auction, needed a deep clean but came out awesome afterwards. Red seats bring so much life to the interior!
The Zeta fabric popped up on auction as well which I’ve been searching for forever, a red pro type has been my dream seat and I’m glad I got it done in time for the show!
Last second touches don’t end here!
I found and won this license plate frame on auction for like $15, an old school light up led frame, wired up to the stock plate lights so that it works like factory!
Sticker tune always in order, took off a few and added a few. Pretty happy with how it came out.
Lowering the car was pretty much the last thing I had to do, and since I took some camber out earlier, that made the car sit slightly higher. So I get new springs to really bring this sucker down.
The new setup consisted of 7k 120mm swift springs+2k 40mm swift helper springs.
Due to the air cups I had to lower where the spring sits on the coilover by 30mm, which brings the collar very close to the upper control arm. Making sagging the spring to go lower not an option. And adding a helper spring would not possible either. So by switching the 200mm springs to 120mm, I was able to get more room in between the collar and upper arm, enough to fit helpers which would let the car sit lower by around 30mm.
The helper would be compromised just by the weight of the car, allowing it to go lower and having more droop.
With the coilover back in and fully maxed out, it ended up being a tad bit too low, tucking more than a finger from the wheel!
Raised it up around 10mm, and lowered the front to my normal driving hight, this ended up being the result.
With that the car was ready to be shipped off to DXB, truck came a few days before the show. With me catching a plane there the following day.
Both I and the car reached the hotel/venue at the same time the following afternoon, OFFSET had parked up a few cars as a teaser for the show in front of the hotel, and since mine was too low to go into the hotel’s parking lot, I parked mine with those in till the event weekend. For the first few days I opted to keep the car parked just to avoid any risk of damaging it before the show.
I only took it out once to go to the car wash. Which was a very long and miserable afternoon…
I did whoever clean the underbody which is a cool thing most car washes in UAE offer.
The day of loading in to the venue came and I made a last second decision to lower the front end, which was a great decision.
Clean threads and anti seize make adjusting the 326 coils a breeze, got them maxed out in the front in around 20min. And the car looked great!
From then on the show was a go, thankful to all the talented people that took photos of my car, here are some of the photos they took:
Second day I met up with @Fiji.raw who is one of the invited guest judges to the show so we can chat about my car and drift styling in general, he’s one of the organizers for NextLevel drift in Poland, a super influential style focused drift event. They are the ones responsible for the drifting portion of Ultrace, a super cool event btw. Super nice guy with an eye for style! What they do with NextLevel is want I hope to see more of around the world, especially here in the Middle East, the focus on fun drift events with less regard for competition and performance and more on style and showing off for the crowds!
Drifting is cool because you’re doing dumb shit in cool looking cars, taking the cool cars out makes it a lot less exciting to watch, but maybe that’s just me.
What really came to my surprise was what happened next, during the last few hours of the show is when the awards get handed out, so had low expectations as I felt like my roughed up drift car wouldn’t exactly compete with the show level quality of some of the builds there, but Fiji being Fiji chose to give a car show award to a drift car haha. I guess the charm overpowers some of the imperfections it has. Getting a Top 5 award was definitely not on my bingo card for this trip!
I and most of the people like, don’t do this for the recognition or the trophies, but I can’t lie… it does feel good to be appreciated after all the hard work you put into doing things, that most people wouldn’t even give a second thought to.
So a big big thank you to Fiji, Dan and all the other crew and judges at OFFSET!
Once the show was over we had a few hours to move our cars out, as everything had to be out before midnight, my car’s battery was dead from keeping the underglow and lights on for two days, just had to complete the look and grab people’s attention lol.
car started right up with a jump tho, so we moved it around the venue a bit for a few more photos.
And just like that the show was over, we went out to celebrate with some fast food, and called it a day. My car was scraping the subframe like crazy, so next day in the evening I packed up the tools and made my way down to flat12, jacked up the front and rear, raised 15mm. Put the lip back on and was done in 40min.
Car was back to perfectly drivable, and I took the opportunity of having a few of the other OFFSET participates around for a few photos!
The rest of the trip was spent driving around and looking for stuff to buy, a visit to Sharjah’s industrial area didn’t prove too successful, but I managed to find some cool stuff at a local wheel store in Dubai, and picked up a few goodies for my SR from my friend Omar (@Slidesquad)!
Officially the owner of a pair of Forged Mag TE37s 18×10! The OG TEs are 5×100 and are for my Sis’s 86, so looking forward to having both cars matching whenever I get myself a front pair for the 240.
One thing on my bucket list for this trip was to drive up Jebel Jais, which is around 2 hours from Dubai, plans were to go as a group but due to some complications that didn’t seem possible. So I made the decision and decided to head there on my own, as it looked too good to miss out on. And I’m glad I did that!
The drive there was long and a bit stressful, going 140kmh in the 240 is quite the experience haha. It did make it though without any issues (other than burning some oil from cruising at 4500rpm) but it got me there safe and sound and only slightly sweaty.
The views all the way up in till reaching the the gas station at the foot of the mountain were beautiful, unfortunately by the time I started going up it the sun had already set, nevertheless it was still a nice experience. And the driving was unlike anything I’ve done in the 240 before!
I enjoyed the drive to the top, and then decided to use my phone to film the drive down, here are the clips and photos I took.
The oil would slowly start getting hot after a period of hard driving, so some small breaks during the drive were necessary. Definitely getting an oil cooler for the SR!
The drive back was chill, the day after would be the last full day in Dubai, so I decided to take it easy with friends and just hang out.
Car was picked up the following day and I hitched a ride with the tow truck driver to the airport, accidentally went too early and was stuck at the airport for 6 hours, which is where I wrote the first half of this blog lol.
Car got back home safe, tested out the TEs on there rear later that weekend.
18×10+20 with zero spacers, fits but might need a tad bit more camber, I’d like to keep the camber to a minimum though, so plan on running a 245/35/18 instead of my usual 235/40 on the 18×10 modal 5s. After that the KA finally decided to break down, it’s not completely dead but it’s broken enough that it’s not worth fixing for me.
After a hot afternoon drive, as soon as I reached my destination the car started to overheat and run rough. Turned it off for a few hours to cool down. When I turned it back on it shoot out a huge amount of blue smoke (old burning) and started to heat up quick. Didn’t feel like finding out whether it would survive the drive back home so I got it towed.
Started it up the next day, coolant was a few bottles of water low, it started up but was smoking from the exhaust and the head. I’d guess valve seals went bad or something. But whatever it is it’s not worth fixing for me.
So with that, the engine swap journey begins, will slowly take everything apart to get the bay painted, while building up the SR on the side.
Don’t plan on going crazy yet, but will have to take the head off and assess the block’s condition and decide from there. I already got a few parts for it. Including a T28 from a GTIR, an aftermarket manifold, bigger injectors with a chipped ECU as well. A few more things are needed before I dive into that though.
So yeah, car was at its peak winning a car show, and now it’ll be down for at least a few months lol. Cars am I right?
Will try to write about the engine building process once I start dealing with that, and give an update on the car once it’s going to paint.
Wish me luck y’all!
MalekZain13 
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