I bought a rusty AE86 unseen of yahoo auctions. The car had been sitting for over eight years, has rust, faded paint, and an expired vehicle inspection. I plan to restore this car as my weekend car. My Japanese is not great, so buying and restoring an old car will be quite a challenge, and a fun learning experience. This is the story of reviving my white-over-black AE86 Levin GT-APEX!
In my last post, I described the effort my friend and I went through to get the AE86 road-safe. Sweat, tears and a lot of elbow grease later, the AE86 had new tires, working brakes, was refueled and no longer made strange noises in corners. We, on the other hand, were completely drained. In fact, we couldn’t even communicate properly anymore: my mind was so exhausted that I didn’t remember much Japanese anymore, and the same probably happened to my friend. It was time to hit the road.
For this trip driving home, I don’t have many pictures. We were too exhausted to spend much time taking photos. However, there were still a few memorialize things that happened that I want to share with you. Hence, today’s post will be rather traditional blog post, with lots of text and little pictures.
By the time I was sitting in the drivers bucket seat, my watch showed past 10PM. The navigation app calculated over 4 hours under normal motorway speed. I didn’t want to push the car too hard and aimed for a cruising speed of 80km/h (50pmh). It would take at least 5, probably 6 hours to reach home.
I sighted, and with a strange twist of my left leg, depressed the clutch pedal, and put the first gear in. Remember, I am 2m (6.6feet) tall, and the bucket seat was too small for me. Whenever I tried to clutch, the side support of the seat would push my leg against the steering wheel. I had to do some strange aerobics to press the clutch.
Nevertheless, finally, we were on the way back home. For the first section of the expressway, we drove at most 60km/h (37mph). Even at such low speed, the engine was screaming through the broken flex pipe at the manifold. During driving, I noticed that the electric mirrors didn’t work, the instrument backlight went off from time to time, and the fuel gauge didn’t seem to be very accurate. Instrument lighting went off and on.
We stopped at the first parking area on the expressway, and did a quick stop to check if there were any problems. I opened the bonnet, was greeted by a shower of rust flakes, but the engine was looking good. No overheating, no air bubbles, all brakes worked fine, and the only thing leaking was the rainwater that collected in the pockets and rocker panels, and started dripping out. All good. Relived, we increased the speed to 80km/h.
After driving for 45 minutes, we stopped for a longer break, to have dinner. Japanese highway parking areas have delicious choices of food. You can’t compare them with the stations from Europe. Even at close to midnight, there were still four food stalls open, selling high quality Japanese food and tea. While the choices were good, I realized I pushed my body to far. I haven’t eaten for 12 hours, but just the thought of eating made me feel sick. I only managed to chew a few soba noodles and drink hot tea. Both of us were too exhausted to talk much, so a very quiet 45 minutes later, we continued our trip. Still, there wer over 4 hours left to drive. We had barely left Nagoya. When I started driving, my friend flagged me to stop: I had left my bottle of tea on the roof of the car. I was obviously very exhausted.
As we continued to drive, my brain was on high alert. The risk of some part of the engine failing was quite high, so I tried to listen extra carefully to identify any sort of suspicious noise. What would I do if the engine stalled or lost power? Where would be a safe spot to halt the car? How do I call roadside assistance? Will they speak English?
Thank god, there was no need to answer these questions, as the engine continued working flawlessly. The only thing that worried me was the fuel gauge. The needle remained at 3/4, from the moment I refilled the car (to max). Even after several 100km, the needle didn’t budge, as if it was screwed at 3/4. I got a bit concerned.
At somewhere 2:30AM, having made roughly half of the trip, the fuel warning light turned on. Now, I had contradicting information: a fuel gauge indicating 3/4, and a fuel warning light. I involuntarily had to think about pilots and their training for partial instrument failure. “Which would I pilot do”, I asked myself. Running low on fuel within 200km would either need a serious fuel leak, or an engine consuming massive amounts of fuel, both unlikely. I decided to continue driving. Two minutes later, the fuel warning light went off again. Nevertheless, I refueled the AE86 at the next highway gas station. This time, the fuel gauge broke loose, and went up to maximum. Finally, an indication that seemed to be correct.
About 100km before Yokohama, we briefly stopped at a parking area. When I got off the car, I heard a voice with an American accent: “nice car!”. I turned around, and saw a guy sitting in his parked Jaguar. I wasn’t really in the mood for small talk (Germans never are), but I didn’t want to appear rude, so I walked over and said hello.
This fellow had a to talk about: without further ado, he started emptying his heart, and told us he was looking for his “disappeared” Japanese girlfriend, and that we was on the way to meet his father to question him about her whereabouts. He mentioned that his girlfriend suddenly disappeared, didn’t answer the phone anymore, and even her mother didn’t give him a proper answer. He has been desperately searching for her without success. Even the police didn’t help him, and he hasn’t slept for two days.
I felt pity for this poor fellow. Obviously his ex-girlfriend wanted to break up, but didn’t have the guts to hell him directly, and he didn’t get the message. I was tired, wanted to get home, and not really in the mood to act as the relationship advisor to a stranger. Unfortunately, my Japanese friend (he is such a kind soul) decided to come closer and involuntarily joined the conversation as well, and asked a few questions about the Jaguar. The fellow replied with “Oh, you want to hear the engine?”, and offered us to rev the engine. At 3AM. On a parking lot in a residential district. My goodness.
He came up with lots of weird details why his girlfriend could not have wanted to break up with him: the dress he bought her for 300USD was still there (how would she leave such a valuable item behind?), the mother is crazy and should be to admitted a mental institution (I didn’t inquire further), and the ex-girlfriend must have done something illegal because she carries two IDs with two different names. He showed me a photo of her IDs, carrying two different names. While I have no idea why she has two IDs, is that something you would share to complete stranger on a parking lot? He showed us picture of his flat, her belongings, her toothbrush (“if you leave, you would take your toothbrush, right?”) and the mentioned dress.
It got worse, when he started mourning about their past awesome sex life. Again, not something I was interested in hearing. He even pointed to the bonnet of the Jaguar, where a pair of butt cheek prints were still visible. Luckily, my Japanese friend didn’t get the complex English he used to describe this scene. He would have been shocked. I explained it to him a day later.
A rant about Japan, the bad English skills of Japanese, the bad Japanese politicians and the terrible flaws of the Japanese administration followed. According to his opinion, Japan is a terrible place to life, without future. Several suggestions what needs to change in Japan followed.
I was shocked! If you were Japanese, how would you have reacted? I probably would have just walked away without saying a word. My Japanese friend, however, in his super kind way, answered: “Yes, I think some of these points are right, and there are lots of things we Japanese needs to improve upon, but in this (specific) aspect I do not 100% agree with you”. Wow. I got a lot to learn from him in terms of tolerance and discussion culture.
We were desperate to keep going, but this guy just kept talking. Somehow, we managed to put an end to that conversation, saying that it’s late and we still have a long way to go. We’ve already wasted over half an hour here. We wished him best luck in the search for his girlfriend, and decided to move on.
I don’t want to make fun of this guy. Breakups are sad, and sometimes you just need someone to talk to. Especially if you are in a foreign country, this kind of social things get difficult if you don’t have someone to talk to in your native language. I get it, and I really felt bad for this fellow. However, that story was just something super weird that added to the long list of remarkable events that happened on this AE86 pickup day.
Finally, this was the last weird encounter on our trip home. The rest of the trip went flawless. At about 4:30AM, we finally reached my place in Yokohama, and parked the AE86 a bit outside of the residential district. Because of the leaking exhaust, I didn’t want to wake up the neighborhood, and decided to drive the car into my carport on the next day.
My friend continued his trip to his place, and by 5:30AM we all made it back home. Our goal was achieved, and the AE86 has reached his new home!
