What Now?

Well if I’m being honest, the two previous chassis didn’t really teach me much. I didn’t know a thing about this Kouki. That would soon change as education is forced with these cars. If you’re lookin’ for a first car that’ll teach you about cars and the modifying world, get one of these. Anyway, can you take a wild guess at one of the first things I did to this car? Well aside from this dash mat that @notkouki gave to me:

If you guessed, “get the car smogged and registered under your name“, or “drop some money to address the cesspool of issues this car was plagued with“, then you’re 100% correct! To fix some of these issues, I spent $2,200 on some chromed out 18×10+19 AVS Model 5s, courtesy of @justinzenki! I think we’re totaled at $9,200 now?

Along with this my girlfriend (@therizzamejia) bought me some PBM Subframe Risers and Differential Bushings for my birthday and I grabbed an open differential from my friend Sal (sg14k) for $50 which was immediately welded by a dude who goes by Tato (@tatomotorsports) for another ($65). Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of this process but I’m sure it looked something like this:

I think this was for Sal’s (@sg14k) subframe, you should check it out on his Instagram, he made it real nice.

A few months later I took a trip to the Philippines with my girlfriends family and still ended up dumping money into the Kouki. One of the guys just had to send a sale post of a pair of 17 inch chrome AVS for $650 and well, I needed it. So I got it. They weren’t in perfect condition but I figured I wouldn’t find another pair of chrome 17×9 AVS for a long time. AND they had centercaps! I had one of my sisters send a photo when they arrived, beautiful. 

When I got back after two weeks, I was not only jet-lagged but I think I caught a flu. Massive headaches, I felt like shit, didn’t want to do anything and it sucked moving around. But, someone (@buuudoy) was selling an absolutely gorgeous OEM Kouki hood for $400 all the way in Fairfield – something like an hour and fifteen minutes away. I shot right up and took my dads truck and started heading over there. I ended up being sick for an entire month, seriously, no exaggeration there. It probably wouldn’t have had such a long duration but hey, I got a brand new Kouki hood:

This photo actually works as a segue into the next post! PS: Everything is totaled to be at $9,200 + $125 + $650 + $400 = $10,375. Fun!