Lawson's 818C

  • General: The car is officially my “daily” for the time being. I did the 75 mile drive back to Atlanta with it and it is my only car here on campus at Georgia Tech. Certainly not the most practical of vehicles, but it has been good to spend some time with it in the driver’s seat both to enjoy it and also identify things I need to fix. Planning to put more miles on it driving around this weekend so we will see how everything goes- might even have to encounter a little rain.
    • Issues:
      • The only things broken so far is I had to remove all my black mesh trim I put on because it was coming loose. I think rivets plus the silicone is a requirement. 
      • Need to fix drivers side rear wheel liner rubbing.
      • Slight rubbing at full lock for the driver’s side front wheel.
      • Have an annoying squeaking sound coming from the firewall or belts.
      • People think it’s a Ferrari because it’s red
  • Air Conditioning
    • I have charged the A/C system and everything is working! Very glad because I was not ever able to test my compressor or the fan circuit until the A/C was charged so I kinda just had to hope that it would work. Blows nice and cold now :).
  • Radio
    • Since I’ve been driving the car more I have started messing with the Android radio features more. Overall I really like it but I am working on a better solution for digital gauges. My major hurdle is my Japanese ECU does not support OBDII so I can’t use most diagnostic readers on the car. Right now I use an app called BTSSM that works with OBDlink bluetooth devices and my Tactrix usb cable. I don’t like having the cable dangling in the open and I also don’t like that it stays powered on if I leave it plugged into the OBD port. I am looking into trying an SSM to CAN converter that a forum member used an Arduino to do. He’s basically done all the work and I could use realdash (which is very pretty!) to show my digital guages. I’d still have to use tactrix and BTSSM to check engine codes and such but that’s not a big deal.

  • Painting the mesh


  • Engineering new seatbelt mounts


  • Attaching the pressed front mesh. Only ones that stayed attached.


  • Side mesh


  • Moving seatbelt mounting locations


  • Rear mesh


  • Looks good!


  • Interior cover panel to fill the gap around the shoulder- not installed yet.


  • Driving around town!