It’s been awhile since there’s been an update on the GR86 or just this blog in general. Life has been pretty crazy and I’ve recently moved places and about to make the crazy move across the ocean. More on that later…

The plan for this car has always been to drift it. I have contemplated on buying an import like an S15 or JZX but I couldn’t justify the price. These days it seems like it’s a solid 30k USD to get into anything that is worth it. Not only that but you are also buying a 25+ year old car that WILL need maintenance. I just don’t have the time as I used to and I’d rather just get to modifying and driving.

That being said I bought the Kazama knuckle kit. It was an impulse buy at TAS earlier this year and I’ve had it sitting in my garage since February. Well you can say it’s been long overdue and I was pretty unmotivated to do anything to the car as the plan was to just drive it as it is. All it took was one drift day with the homies and that all changed. The drift bug bit pretty hard and now more than ever I wanted to get my car together to drive.

So with one week before going driving again I decided to chuck the knuckles on.

It’s not my first time installing knuckles as I’ve done countless times on the S13 but it was refreshing to work on something much newer where the hardware wasn’t completely seized from being on there for nearly 2 decades. Probably the most painful part was removing all the under paneling on the car.

The Kazama kit is almost a complete kit for the front knuckles. It comes with the knuckles, extended lower control arm and inner and outer tierods. After comparing inner tierods it seemed like all you needed to change was the outers but regardless I changed the inners anyway and plan to keep the stock inners as spares. The only thing the kit was missing was the high clearance sway bar. After looking at the amount of lock the kit gives I decided to remove the sway bar for now and have ordered a Kazama sway bar. I guess I’ll see how the car drives without sway bars I may disconnect the rears as well and stiffen up the whole car.

With the additional 20mm added to the lower control arm it gave significantly more camber than the stock arms also lowering the car quite a bit. I knew I needed to raise the car but severely underestimated how low the car would still be. At the moment with the 18” CE28 up front it scrubs quite a bit at lock.

I plan to add spacers and have 17” RPF1s to throw up front with some spacers to add in some scrub radius and hopefully not have rubbing issues.

Unfortunately I ran out of time to get it all back together to go drive it with the 17s as I realized that the Brembos and the RPF1s do not play together well and will need a spacer. We will try maybe a 20-30mm bolt on spacer and see if it will clear. If not it’s back to the drawing board.

Currently it’s sitting raked up in the front just to semi clear with the 18s on.

Well I’m on a plane headed home so hope to get this thing all finished up this week and aligned! So stoked to drive!

Ps. Thanks to my brother for getting down and dirty to help me put these on and my sister for letting me use her garage!

-D.*