A couple weeks ago Masaki from Apexi hit me up via AIM to see if I had time to do a touch up tune on the Apexi Formula D drift FD3S. It went like something like this:
Masaki said, “They converted it to right hand drive.”
I said, “Oh you guys brought the old D1 car from Japan?”
“No, they converted it.”
“Who converted it?
“Ron [Bergenholtz], Keith [Apex], and Chuck [Apex].”
“What the fuck? No Shit?!?! Did they chop and weld a new front clip?”
“Na, they just uh….converted it. You’ll see.”
So I went down to Apex to make sure the car was running alright. To be honest, I thought it might have been a bit of a hack job, but it was pretty damn clean. Apparently Ron had extended the engine harness and part of the main electrical harnesses. That’s 150 wires. Keith and Chuck cut out pieces and used some of the components out of a JDM front clip, and patched it on, welded, or used the pieces on the USDM chassis. So there was no cutting of the original unibody which is a good thing. I climbed in, started it up, and sure enough it fired right up. Apparently Ron did a pretty damn good job on the wiring powered by Red Bull. The car made the same power: 400whp on “A” and 430whp on “B” with the old reliable Apex AVC-R boost controller. The Power FC ECU is always reliable so not much mapping was needed.
Here’s the cockpit before in USDM form.
Here it is in RHD form. Except its still a USDM chassis.
Here’s the engine bay before.
Here it is after. Notice the location of the brake and clutch master cylinders.
Ron said that they had to make the car RHD to accomodate Ryuji Miki the driver. I wish all crew cheifs were that nice. Props to Ron, Ed, Keith, Chuck, and Masaki for the hundreds of hours of hard work and the clean mods & fab.
