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Operation Tokyo Drift

orange395w

orange395w

OG MEMBER
Staff member
On Thursday I will be picking up this Honda Integra owned by a friend/ co-worker of mine and bringing it to the shop. For 2 years he has been wanting to convert his car to right hand drive. They made the same cars in Japan only everything was a mirror image in the engine bay.He finally located someone selling the conversion and he swooped it up.

We will be doing some serious work on this car. We have to cut the firewall and many other pieces out of his car and weld the right hand drive stuff in it's place.



Right hand drive donor

 
Mustangcwo

Mustangcwo

Crew Chief
Staff member
Board Member
I will have to tell my son about this mod...we just swapped a Japanese 16V Vtech motor into his 93 hatch.
 
orange395w

orange395w

OG MEMBER
Staff member
Well I've been working on this car for 2 days now and have made some good progress. My friend had drilled out all of the spot welds and pulled some pieces from behind the dash, so we could cut out the firewall without cutting anything else. We would have to plug weld everything back in later.

I wanted to leave 2" all the way around the firewall and then, but the new firewall up against it. Some areas still need some extra attention.

Here is the first rough cut of the existing firewall.



Next I cut the right hand drive firewall out of the donor car. After some trimming I was able to get a rough fit.



Here are the problem areas I was speaking of. Since the upper portion of the car could not be touched due to the vin not being cut the rain gutter is flipped and caused a few issues for us.

Rain gutter dips in on this side



We had to cut into the rain gutter on the "new driver's side" to get the firewall to sit flush.



My first order of business today was to get the rain gutter patched up, so that he wouldn't have water leaking into the car.

I formed a piece using my beverly shear a hammer and a vice.



Rain gutter patched in. Not pretty, but at least it isn't a hole. We will run some seam sealer around it to be sure it doesn't leak.



I used the beverly shear again the cut and form a piece of sheet metal to fill in the large gap on the " new passenger side" of the car. I used sheet metal screws to pull the firewall tight to the old piece of firewall the remained in place and then started welding it up.



Started tacking the whole firewall in place.



Sealing it up.



Once I welded it all the way around, I erased the weld seam on the patch that was made.



We started plug welding the pieces back inside the car and filling all of the holes.



We have a few more holes to plug weld and then we will move to the inside of the car and put the rest of the right hand drive parts in place.

 
orange395w

orange395w

OG MEMBER
Staff member
Well we are closing in on completion of Tokyo drift. The reinforcement bracket that sits directly behind the firewall has been welded in.



The brackets that hold the steering column in place were welded up. Some brackets had to be drilled out and moved to the opposite side of the car. Once everything was welded in We test fit the rack and pinion, as well as the steering column. So far so good.





I have to modify a couple more things like moving studs for his heater box and modifying the bracket that goes on the other side of the car. My buddy already made part of it. We are hoping to be done with this on Monday, but you guys know how that goes. :)
 
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