Long Distance Kidnapping: Smudgeous' WRB 6MT BRZ Limited (Orlando, FL)

[Kido1986]

Originally Posted by Smudgeous

Yeah, I'm a bit bummed about not being able to check out the Tail of the Dragon on the way back. That's still on my to-do list. At least when I do it, she'll be fully broken in now

I'm really getting antsy to take new pictures after the tint/tips, but with this whole tropical storm + tornados bother going on, it seems sunshine is at least another couple of days away.

August 1st... Dragon... BRZ... I cant wait!

[bestwheelbase]

I like the pictures of your family members in the driver's seat. Fun for the whole family!

[Smudgeous]

Originally Posted by bestwheelbase

I like the pictures of your family members in the driver's seat. Fun for the whole family!

They were pretty surprised and happy to hear from/see me, as I work a ton of hours at work. That whole weekend seemed rather surreal

[bestwheelbase]

Originally Posted by Smudgeous

They were pretty surprised and happy to hear from/see me, as I work a ton of hours at work. That whole weekend seemed rather surreal

Good memories.

I got to surprise my dad by showing up with a sports car we'd both lusted over when it was new. He didn't know I had saved up and finally acquired one. I drove across the country to bring it home. He was so delighted to drive it, he took me down his favorite country roads with the radio off, windows down, nothing but the straight-six singing and a big grin on his face.

Those are the special moments.

[Smudgeous]

Originally Posted by bestwheelbase

Good memories.

I got to surprise my dad by showing up with a sports car we'd both lusted over when it was new. He didn't know I had saved up and finally acquired one. I drove across the country to bring it home. He was so delighted to drive it, he took me down his favorite country roads with the radio off, windows down, nothing but the straight-six singing and a big grin on his face.

Those are the special moments.

I was actually extra sneaky with my uncle and grandmother. I called him on his cell from inside the house and asked him what he thought of a visit in the near future. When he asked when, I said "how about right now?" as I popped out from the doorway to the basement.

When he asked me what I was doing back up north, I walked up to the front door and opened it fully, showing my car right in front of the house. The first pictures in this thread are from just a couple minutes after that.

As it turned out, she had evidently seen a glimpse of the car when I showed up, and commented on the lovely shade of blue (her favorite color). He hadn't looked for himself, as he was cooking dinner. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay long, as I had another couple of friends to visit about an hour further north. Definitely saw how happy he was for me though; his pride was definitely showing.

[Smudgeous]

Originally Posted by Kido1986

August 1st... Dragon... BRZ... I cant wait!

I'm definitely jealous of the location, but August 1st is the day I fly out to Japan! My JDM girlfriend will be showing me around for a couple weeks and then coming back with me, as her final semester there will be done. I'm excited as hell for pretty much that entire month, as once we're back, I get to introduce my lady to my girl.

[Smudgeous]

Debadging:

Today I decided to finally remove the "Subaru" and "BRZ" lettering on the rear of the car.

First, let's get the before and after shots:



The actual process was remarkably simple, even in moderate temperatures with high humidity (and plenty of water droplets still on my car). I have pretty much nothing in the way of fingernails, and was still able to get under the badges and remove them with no prior heating via a heat gun (don't own one currently). I had decided to record a short video of the process after realizing how easily the first 2 letters came off, but unfortunately, my phone decided to stop recording right before the first letter was removed on film.

I also opted to try out the fingernail method before breaking out the floss, which I never wound up needing. The only snag I encountered was the 'B' in "BRZ" was quite stubborn and caused my nail to bend backward and crack about 1/3 of the way down, which led to some smarts and a little bloodshed (though it's a necessary requirement if I ever want to claim putting my blood, sweat, and tears into it :P).

I also had the majority of the adhesive residue adhere to the car rather than the badges, so there was additional time spent using the pads of my fingers to pull off the residue. The entire process was done with only the fingers on my right hand, making this the easiest exterior modification I've ever done.

Example of the residue left behind

[Bonburner]

Looks great, what did you use to get rid of the residue?
I want to take off the FR-S crap on the car haha

[Guff]

Congrats! Enjoy it! And I hope your finger feels better!

[Smudgeous]

Originally Posted by Bonburner

Looks great, what did you use to get rid of the residue?
I want to take off the FR-S crap on the car haha

I picked off all that I could with the pads of my fingers. For the bits that were too small to grab, I used my YMCA membership card to push the foam parts together to make them grabbable. Finally, when all that was left was just the glue itself, I just rubbed it with the pad of my thumb until the combination of heat from friction and force of my thumb removed it.

[Smudgeous]

Minor additional exterior mods:

After getting home from a post-work party early yesterday morning, I saw that the first of several packages of new goodies for the car had arrived, so I figured I'd set to work getting them installed before worrying about sobriety setting back in. I finally took a moment to see how it all turned out this afternoon when I got to work, and I must say I have study drunk-hands

The mods in question are the chrome fender trim and Subaru valve stems (because I'm a consumer whore, that's why). The order also came with a Subaru T-shirt and wheel locks, but I decided to save those for when the new wheels get in. So for now, here's what's new:

For reference, this is pre-tint and trim:


Chrome fender accent installed:


Close-up:


Valve stems:

[Smudgeous]

New WC Lathe Werks custom shift knob:

After doing a little shopping around at different online sites for shift knobs, I kept coming back to both TWM and WC Lathe Werks. For those not familiar with WC Lathe Werks, it's a one-man operation in Whippany, NJ run by Chris, the founder/owner/hand-machinist. He offers a number of shapes, materials, and customizations for his knobs, including a custom laser etching option. He also has a cool half sphere/half conical knob shape, which really struck my fancy.

I sent Chris a few emails back-and-forth, trying to learn about the limitations of the design that can be etched, and found out his machine takes in a scalable vector graphic (SVG) for input, and can output the image onto the curved top of the knob just fine. As an avid Miami Dolphins fan, I set out to get the Dolphins logo in a 2-color SVG file, which I could not find online. However, going to Wikipedia, I was able to track down the logo in color:


After getting the artist on my team at work to give me a hand converting it into a black-and-white image, I further touched it up and was left with this:


I verified that Chris could use this SVG, and he said it should work fine. A few days later, I got an email saying it came out perfectly and had shipped. Then today, I checked my mail, and found the knob in the mail, wrapped in a paper towel (it's a small touch, but really makes it feel more like a custom, special, real-person made item, as opposed to some mass-produced carbon copy) inside of all the packaging material. Once I finally got to the shift knob, this is what I saw:


Compared to the stock knob:

Another comparison:


Standard view of it installed in the car:

Side view, showing that the blued titanium is carried over into the grooves of the silver portion:


This thing makes shifting a joy compared to the stock shifter. I love feeling the little ridges on the length of the knob as it's in my hand, and it's easy to move your hand around on the half-sphere top portion (I do this a lot when double-checking I'm in neutral with my neutral wiggle back and forth). The added weight (a bit more than twice the stock shifter) makes the shifts feel even smoother as they find the gate I'm shifting into. It's also a lot better looking in person than I seem to be capable of capturing with my phone's camera.

In any case, I highly recommend giving him a look, as his work is outstanding.

[zoomzoomers]

Very nice!

[Snoopyalien24]

Originally Posted by Smudgeous

New WC Lathe Werks custom shift knob:

After doing a little shopping around at different online sites for shift knobs, I kept coming back to both TWM and WC Lathe Werks. For those not familiar with WC Lathe Werks, it's a one-man operation in Whippany, NJ run by Chris, the founder/owner/hand-machinist. He offers a number of shapes, materials, and customizations for his knobs, including a custom laser etching option. He also has a cool half sphere/half conical knob shape, which really struck my fancy.

I sent Chris a few emails back-and-forth, trying to learn about the limitations of the design that can be etched, and found out his machine takes in a scalable vector graphic (SVG) for input, and can output the image onto the curved top of the knob just fine. As an avid Miami Dolphins fan, I set out to get the Dolphins logo in a 2-color SVG file, which I could not find online. However, going to Wikipedia, I was able to track down the logo in color:


After getting the artist on my team at work to give me a hand converting it into a black-and-white image, I further touched it up and was left with this:


I verified that Chris could use this SVG, and he said it should work fine. A few days later, I got an email saying it came out perfectly and had shipped. Then today, I checked my mail, and found the knob in the mail, wrapped in a paper towel (it's a small touch, but really makes it feel more like a custom, special, real-person made item, as opposed to some mass-produced carbon copy) inside of all the packaging material. Once I finally got to the shift knob, this is what I saw:


Compared to the stock knob:

Another comparison:


Standard view of it installed in the car:

Side view, showing that the blued titanium is carried over into the grooves of the silver portion:


This thing makes shifting a joy compared to the stock shifter. I love feeling the little ridges on the length of the knob as it's in my hand, and it's easy to move your hand around on the half-sphere top portion (I do this a lot when double-checking I'm in neutral with my neutral wiggle back and forth). The added weight (a bit more than twice the stock shifter) makes the shifts feel even smoother as they find the gate I'm shifting into. It's also a lot better looking in person than I seem to be capable of capturing with my phone's camera.

In any case, I highly recommend giving him a look, as his work is outstanding.

NICE (and yay Dolphins!)

Okay, I really like this and want to know about the Copolymer