17/02/2026
The first real look at the car happened once the car was moved from KMRD to my friend’s garage nearby (this was when I discovered the car was named Jennifer). It was a cheap place to store the car but quite narrow and only 150cm high. I started the teardown to see the condition of the body and quickly realized I needed more space to really make progress.
Not knowing many people in Tokyo with garage space for rent, I turned to FB groups and asked for help. Through a Japanese Hakosuka group, I met Aoki san who has a home with an awesome garage in the western part of tokyo. He rented me space, access to his tools and without his knowledge, I would have been lost. He even helped me build a rotisserie/Carbeque and vinyl house to sandblast the car! Absolute legend!
At his place, in the space of a few months, the car was disassembled and was ready for body work. Aoki san originally had a Hakosuka 2 door 2000GT but the owner of a body shop in Gunma offered a restored 4door Hakosuka as a trade for the shell. Through him, I was introduced to the company I thought would handle the rust repairs and body work for the car. That company picked up the shell, all of the green rust repair panels from KF Vintage, and a 50% deposit for the amount I was quoted for the work.
While the car was away, I still went to Aoki Sans place to work on individual parts of the car that were removed. This is when we battled the infamous rear control arm spindle pin... Ugh
Many other bits were torn down and inspected for wear and to determine if they could be reused.
Time went along and the fire started to fade for me. It was a two hour trip from my house to Aoki sans house and I could only go on Sundays. With the shell being at the body shop, I started to lose interest in making the long trip to clean steering knuckles and rusty crossmembers. Eventually I stopped going and was going to wait for updates on the body work before starting again. Unfortunately, this is where things took a turn for the worse.
