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Humble Wagon Refinement or A Gradual Descent Down The Rabbit Hole

soviet_merlin
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soviet_merlin Experienced

soviet_merlin

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I have been meaning to start one of these for a while. I always enjoy reading people's build threads on here. And I like the idea of having a log of what's being done to the car. This one is going to be quite basic and humble. But maybe that's just how it starts before some kind of derangement takes place and the cheap-ish Japanese import ends up with a billet engine and a samsonas sequential and spends more time on the hoist than on the road.

Storytime. Kind of. It's 2021 and I don't have a car. And whilst I don't strictly need one, I want one. I'm also increasingly sick of using Goget economy shitbox rentals by the hour. I have always liked cars and enjoyed driving and I want something Japanese. Not that there is anything wrong with other cars, but I grew up in Europe and Japanese cars were rare and special. And Australia being somewhat close to Japan and also driving on the right hand side feels like it makes it convenient and affordable. It also must be fun to drive. And it must be manual. And it needs to have character. And it needs to be somewhat practical for taking two dogs, i.e. 4 doors. Initially I had my eyes on the FK8 Civic Type R as it ticked pretty much all of those boxes. And every single person who drove one was raving about how much fun it is. Hideously ugly, though the looks grew on me after looking at them for a few years. But then Honda stopped making them, the 2021 facelift model became unobtainable, the prices went up, and paying big on finance for several years seemed not that attractive anymore.

Queue weeks and weeks of looking at all kinds of used cars on Carsales. None of them quite right. But there was someone in the neighbourhood with a yellow wagon that I had never heard of or seen before. It was always parked in front of one of the apartment blocks. It was lowered, had a big exhaust, tinted windows and various lifestyle stickers. But it was still looking somewhat understated. And it was boxy. Oh so very boxy. Kind of like my dad's Volvo 940 back in the day. I didn't know what it was and I had been noticing it every few days over the course of months. And at some point had a closer look to find out. It was a Nissan Stagea. Turns out they have some of the Skyline pedigree and are actually somewhat affordable. So it became another car to look out for on carsales.

In the end there were a handful for sale at the time. I didn't know anything about them other than from what I got from browsing through various stickies here on SAU. I decided to aim for something in the middle of the power range. This one had a bunch of work done already; including a reconditioned engine, quality parts and workshops, reasonably low kilometers, it was fairly clean and the description was written by someone who seemed nice and seemed like they cared. In the end I contacted the seller on a Thursday morning, arranged to look at the car in the evening that same day, transferred a deposit that night, got out a cheque for the remainder on Friday and did the handover to pick up the car on Saturday. As it turned out the seller cared a whole lot about the car and was super nice. I had learned about the typical Stagea issues in the buyers guide here on SAU, and he was very up front about those as well. In the end I didn't even drive the car myself. It was a bit of a "holy shit!" experience when he drove it and full boost kicked in and I was just too intimidated. I had driven cars with similar or more power in the past, but they had been German and super refined. This was raw and a bit nuts and quite unreasonable and I loved it.

The specs at the time.
- Factory manual RB25DET. Full engine rebuild 4000km earlier with rings and bearings, metal head gasket and ARP head studs, timing belt, water pump and Nismo engine mounts
- NPC heavy duty organic clutch
- Tuned to 260awkw
- Haltech Elite 2500 including Haltech patch loom
- Alcon Grex front brakes with 2 piece rotors
- R34 GTR rear Brembo brakes
- Garret GTX3071R turbo
- MCA Street Essentials coil overs
- Fujitsubo Legalis R exhaust
- Prodrive forged wheels
- Koyorad radiator
- Walbro 460 fuel pump and Bosch ID1000 injectors
- Cusco rear strut brace
- AEM X-series wideband
- Aeroflow FMIC

Some photos from the next day. Looking pretty good in my opinion. Very understated. On our way home we stopped at a set of lights and a whole group of ratbag teenagers crossed right in front of us. Not a single look from any of them. So great success on the flying under the radar front.

IMG_3226.thumb.jpg.c4cafa467d6c49db4010a85dffe795cb.jpg

IMG_3228.thumb.jpg.93313923cc31c5427dd587a9d9345e35.jpg

IMG_3206.thumb.jpg.bda92c5e4dbb9aadb2478eb84e4af32f.jpg

TBC

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