World's First 2JZ Swapped Tesla SEMA 2024 Part 5

What's going on YouTube family? Welcome to part five of our SEMA build. This is the world's first 2JZ swap Tesla. I chopped it in half, made it a two-door, and we're going to continue on because we only got seven days till SEMA, which is absolutely insane. It's coming really fast, so we're going to try to do as much as we can. We got bodywork, fabrication, installing turbo kits, everything else, all kinds of crazy stuff. Let me just go ahead and start walking around, showing what we got going on. So what I'm currently doing is I'm putting all the panels onto the body and checking panel gap to make sure everything lines up, everything looks good, because I have to either fiberglass, epoxy, or use panel bond to bond some of these things in the fix-it because it needs 24 hours to cure before we can actually start sanding and painting it. So Jose came this morning to work on the bodywork. It looks absolutely great. Huge shout out. He came very last minute because other people flaked, which is crazy. I can't believe it's this hard to find good people in Vegas. But everything is looking good. Let me walk you out here to the front. Dude, this thing is so freaking mean. I love it. Once we slap that 2JZ in, hopefully it'll start ripping. But this side's looking good. This panel just looks awesome, how he finished it out. All one piece, all seamless. This is all going to be primered by tomorrow because I need it to dry so we can go ahead and move it to getting wrapped. So we got a little bit of bodywork up here. We're going to have to fill in all the back stuff, all the little sensor holes because we don't have sensors, fix all the gaps, everything else. So today's going to be a long night. I still got to finish the trans tunnel. So I got to weld all this up and then, like I said, use seam sealer and bonding agent to make sure that's watertight and everything is good. And then put the rest of the metal plates in so this way the firewall is completely done, along with the trans tunnel. And then from here, I decided we're going to go ahead and paint the engine bay to match the actual cage. So the cage and the actual interior bay, or excuse me, engine bay will match. The only thing that'll be different is the actual cross member because once I weld this, I'm just going to paint it flat black like the rest of the suspension. Oh, also something else that just came in. It came in today. These are one-off custom shocks from Maxpeed. They just sent them to me right now. I'm super excited. So we get to put this thing basically fully slammed here shortly. So I'm going to video me doing that as well, probably in this video, but this thing is going to drop about four and a half inches, which is just going to make it look absolutely clean. Look at that. This thing looks so sexy as a coupe. I'm actually really impressed. The body lines, everything really flows. I think this thing is going to be a killer at SEMA. So what I'm doing now is I filled in all the cracks right here with panel bond. The reason I did that is because I want this to be one smooth surface on the quarter panel. Also here, I took off the bumpers. Everything fitted good, but I had to cover up the sensors. And the reason I use panel bond is because one, it's strong, and then two, it flexes. And then I might put some fiberglass behind it. I added on the wide body wings to the bumper, put the mesh in, filled up the sensor holes. I'm still not sure if I'm going to cut this out and make more vents for the intercooler, or if I should actually just open this up and get a custom grill made for it. So let me know in the comment section what I think, or what you think I should do, because we're getting close, but the car is looking good. Absolutely love it. So now that this is all done, Jose can come in the morning and start prepping all this stuff. So hopefully next video you see, this will all be primered in one color. So it's a new beautiful day. I'm working on the bumper. I got to grind all this stuff out to make room for the exhaust. I got the front bumper chilling there. We got the smart car. That one's also going to be at SEMA. I got to do some other stuff to it. We got some tires and some lights to install, and the bodywork is getting done on the Tesla as we speak. So little by little, it's coming together. I know my place looks like a nightmare right now, but it's looking good. So what I got going on today is I'm going to go ahead and finish up the engine before we paint the engine bay. So I'm going to go ahead and paint everything, clean it up, replace some gaskets, bolt on the turbo. We got our new short shifter that just came in, so I'm going to bolt that on. And not like we're on a crazy time restraint, I got a last minute call and we got another entry into SEMA. This is Smarty. I don't know if you guys remember them, but I winded up getting a sponsored booth with Hankook tires. So we're going to be putting 30 inch tires, which they're already on there. I'm putting on a bumper, a winch, some other cool stuff, making it very similar to my other smart car, but this thing's going to be at SEMA as well. So make sure you come check out that one. But this is all the fun stuff I got going on. Like I said, we're gonna have to clean all this up, take off the head, replace the gaskets, all that fun stuff in the next basically 12 hours. So I'm going to do all this while the bodywork is basically getting done. So wish me luck. So here is the short shifter that I got. The reason why I got this one is because it brings it back almost six inches. So it's a little bit easier to shift because we're going to be sitting in between right here. So right there where that hole is, is where the actual shifter is going to come out of. So before the shifter was all the way back here. So if it's between the seats, I'd literally have to reach around me to shift. But now that's lined up, I'm going to go ahead and finish that. I still got to finish the tunnel. I keep doing other stuff. I already seam sealed this. I still got to cut these brackets out, put the seats in, but there's a lot of work to be done today. So now that Jose finished up the exterior of the car, I'm going to show you what we did. So he basically blended everything in, primered it because like I said, we are going to wrap this car for SEMA. There's a few more spots like right here, over here in the quarter panel that I got to finish up. I got to get this bumper to fit. If anybody's ever bought in a fiberglass kit, you know, nothing fits. So that's taking me a bunch of time. But the good news is, is I got the exhaust cut out. Yay. So hopefully I'll be able to install that. Once we put the motor in, it's basically just straight pipe the whole way back. So it's going to sound absolutely insane. I got to finish this one as well, because like I said, nothing is lining up on this thing, which is a big pain in the ass, but he did great body work. Look at that freaking cut right there. Absolutely beautiful. So everything is looking good. Well, at least good enough for wrap. I just got to finish this right here. We got to primer this and grind this down, but this is all one piece now. And so I seam sealed all that stuff. I still didn't finish the damn tunnel, but I'll work on that. But now that this is done, all we're going to have to do is basically install the hood here to see what it looks like. So while I'm going to do that, I'm going to put the camera down and put the hood on. Wow. Look at that front end. This thing looks mean. Wide as hell. The camera doesn't do it justice at all. It's another seven, I believe seven and a half inches wider. Just looks absolutely clean. I remember a lot of people telling me that I could make this a cool looking two-door coupe and you could see what the teardrop windows, it looks sleek for a two-door. Absolutely insane. Now it's starting to look like it's only going to be seven days before we finish. Before, I mean literally the other day before the primer, it just looked absolutely horrific because it was all multi-colored and ugly. So let me go ahead and put the camera down. Let me get back to work. So sometimes I forget to turn on my camera when I'm kind of in the zone and I just start cutting and grinding and doing all these other things. And so I forget. On top of that, like I said, it's very hard to film a lot of this stuff with just me here, which is a big pain in the ass because I got to set my camera up and when I'm cutting, spraying, painting, I don't want to burn my phone. I actually burned my phone when I was doing the 6x6 because I was grinding, had it all the way maybe five feet away and it winded up screwing up my camera and then winded up screwing up my phone. So hopefully I'll get a videographer soon. But in the meantime, I'm going to tell you what I've been up to. Now today has been an absolute insanity because the paint and body is pretty much almost done. The guy just has to come back and finish the bumper. Shout out to Jose. You know, I had like five or six other people. They all flaked. I don't get it. Everybody wants to be a part of SEMA and work on cars and do pit my ride and all these other crap, but they never actually show up and put in the work, which is crazy. So huge shout out to him for finishing this up. All I got is the front bumper, back bumper. I'll go ahead and give you a walk around, but I have a big problem. Two things. First, I've been blowing up the phone of this company that's sending me the wiring harness to the ECU. I ordered it over a month ago and I told him it was for a SEMA project. I need it ASAP. And so I don't know what it is. He gave me a tracking number. Tracking number's not real. So I basically called him up today and told him, you know, are you bullshitting me? You're full of shit. What's going on? And so he told me that, you know, they're trying to get the harness out, but they're still working on it. And I'm like, even if you FedExed it to me from, they're from another country. I won't say the name of the company, but make a long story short, even if they FedEx it to me, I don't think I'll get it in time. So who knows? On top of that, I went and got paint and I had it mixed by two separate different colors just in case I could choose. And both colors they sent me were wrong. So now I'm going to have to go to Home Depot first thing tomorrow morning and buy some freaking rattle can safety blue, which is like a bright blue. It's what they paint the handicap symbols for and all the signage. Safety blue is like a really rolled around color. I got teal and like baby blue. So, you know, it's just one thing after another. Actually, here, let me close the door so you guys can see it in all of its glory. Ta-da! Looks beautiful. Anyways, it looks beautiful to me, but just like an ugly girl with makeup, it's good from far, but far from good. But that's only for today because we're going to be doing a lot of fun stuff. I got to give a huge shout out to Mario. He put the brand new suspension in for max speeding. We got coil overs, we got adjustable control arms. So once we lower this thing, we're going to have the camber angle just right. Don't mind the spacers. They're just temporary till I get the wheels in so we can find out what our actual fitment is. But man, these coil overs and this suspension looks freaking awesome. It looks so clean compared to everything else. These nice stainless steel shocks. And here I'll show you what I'm doing to the engine bay. I decided just to paint it flat black since they gave me the wrong color. So I got this all painted and cleaned out. So I'm going to actually put the motor in tomorrow and this is the last time I'm going to be pulling it out. I just got to finish up the welding and put some plates over the control arms and the, what is it called? Crossmember. But it looks very, very clean. Now there's my beautiful can of safety blue. That's what I'm going to be rattle canning this whole interior because unfortunately the paint I got absolutely sucks and I've already wasted $400. I'm not going to go out and spend any more. But this is the issue with the car. And not only that, like I said, I am still working on the engine. We got the turbo hooked up. I got to clock this a different way. So this way it's pointing up so I can run the tubing. Added the gaskets. Changed some other stuff. Going to clean this up one more time. And then we got Smarty. Now I got the actual bumpers fixed. We got the Hankook tires. Shout out to them. They are the tire sponsor for this build and that build and my 6x6 whenever that gets out. So I may have three cars at SEMA. It just depends if it gets out paint fast enough. But I basically got to do this, build the exoskeleton, put all the lights, the winches, all this crazy stuff. So not only am I trying to get this thing done, I'm trying to do two other cars as well, which is absolutely insane. We got our pedals. I got that pretty much set up. I'll show you that here in a little bit. Here's the winch for Smarty. It's like a little ATV winch, which is hilarious, but I'm going to put the brackets for the bumper. Here is our awesome intake and our throttle body. This thing is massive. So we got to get all this stuff fixed up. So we're getting there. It's very close. Like I said, it's very hard to just stop and film and do stuff, especially like I said, when you're in the group, but hopefully soon I can find a videographer or somebody that can help me out doing this stuff because after this, I still got more builds. I am going to be starting a second channel because I don't know what it is. For some reason, I can literally fart on the microphone and get 10,000 views. I post this video of this car cutting it in half, putting a 2JZ, 5,000 views. I don't get it. Every other view at any video I do, 30,000, 80,000, 200,000, but these ones, for some reason, my build videos don't do well. The only one that got over 100,000 views was my smart car, which is crazy. We put a turbo in it and I guess some people liked it, but I think this is going to be a big hit at SEMA and especially after SEMA. So I've already had a few people ask me if it's for sale. Not yet. If I get a stupid enough number, I might think about it, but my whole goal is to get this ready for SEMA. So this is the very first look after putting the coilovers and the suspension of how low this thing sets. It looks freaking awesome. Let me see if I can get back here and kind of show you guys how low and mean this thing is. Now, we're at the bottom settings. We even actually had to cut a few things just to make sure it goes as slow because without the battery, it's 1,800 pounds heavier. Let's go check it out over here. We're mounting the rear radiator right now. I got to check on my finger. I chopped it up, but I got to build the brackets there. He just left, Jose left, primed the rest of the bumper and then I called a friend, Oscar. Shout out to Oscar. We're going to grind all this stuff out here because this has got to be painted tomorrow. So this way I can go ahead and put the Raptor liner, the paint, and then it goes off to wrap after that. But as you can see, we're almost there. So now I just got to put the motor in. So last night was an extremely late night. Tonight it's going to be another late night. I'm going to be here until probably about four in the morning, basically putting the finishing jobs on my amazing paint job here. The paint that they gave me from the paint shop was unfortunately like a tealish green, not safety blue. So I had to literally go out and buy, I think this is like $11 a can for enamel safety blue. So I'm going to have to do the whole entire cage. Engine bay is all pretty. Once this is all done, I'm going to go ahead and start installing the engine. And once that's in, I'm going to go ahead and start installing the seats. And once all that's done, hopefully tonight, probably three or four in the morning, it's going to go off to Miguel at Purple Flare Wraps here in Las Vegas. It's going to go to his place on, which is basically going to be Friday. And then they're going to have a day and a half to wrap this thing. And then I'm going to take it straight from there to SEMA, because even though SEMA starts for the fifth, for everybody else out there, we have to have our cars there by the second. So it's going to be really tight. So I just wanted to show you guys this. I'm going to go ahead and do some footage of me doing some amazing paint jobs. All right, guys, I think I'm going to call it a night. I got about 10 minutes before we have a Halloween party, but this is where we're at. We're almost done. Now it is Thursday. This thing is going to go to get wrapped Friday, and then I'm going to get it back Saturday for just a few hours. So we have a lot to do. So probably after the party, I'm going to come back out here and work on this thing some more. But I'm going to go ahead, flip the camera around, and give you a walkthrough of everything we got going on. All right, let's go ahead and start up front here with the bumper, headlights, fenders. Everything is fitting good. Now we're going to be working on the engine. I have to install the intake, which is getting wrapped. There's going to be an Easter egg or a surprise for you guys if you're going to SEMA. I have to run the intercooler piping all the way around. I have to build a bracket for the intercooler itself. Unfortunately, I will not have the harness till the day of SEMA, so this thing won't be running. But that's okay because you can't actually drive these things because somebody crashed into somebody years ago. We got the interior of the roll cage painted. Shout out to Oscar for helping me last minute. What I have to do now is do some brush-on bedliner for the flooring, so this way I got some grip. I hate the smooth floor. I actually like it textured. Even though this thing's supposed to be light, it doesn't weigh anything with the battery. I got the shifter there. I got my beautiful lightning bolt set up. I'm going to have to basically mount my seat to make sure everything fits. Go back here to the back. I have the brackets made for the rear-mounted radiator. That's good to go. All I got to do is bolt it in, and I have my quick disconnects right here. I have to run the exhaust basically straight up through here and add my tailpipe, which you can see right there, my beautiful Lamborghini tailpipe. But this thing is looking awesome. It's hard to believe that we came this far in 60 days, and I got another day to go, which I'm pretty sure is going to be an absolute nightmare. Right now, I'm actually painting the hood. We're putting on the first coat, so this way, this is going to be open to show the 2JZ at SEMA, which I think will make a lot of people laugh because now this thing is together and it's this low. I don't think it comes through on the camera. This thing just looks absolutely mean. Now, this is going to be the last time you're going to see the Tesla in this form. The very next video is going to be the actual unveiling at SEMA. I'm super excited. I can't believe we did it in 60 freaking days, which is insane. You're going to hear a lot of SEMA stories. Oh, we took a year and a half to build it. The fact that we made it this far is truly a blessing. I have to give a huge shout out to everybody that helped me out. Shout out to my sponsor, Copart. Thank you guys for trusting me with your very first build at SEMA. I know you guys are going to be super excited when you see the car. I think we're going to get a lot of traction. I've already gotten a bunch of interviews from overseas, a bunch of people commenting on it, so I'm super excited. Even though the views on the videos don't get really high, I'm just excited to be doing something I love again. Hopefully, this will spawn either a second channel of me doing a bunch of fun builds. I'd like to do a build every single month, not this crazy, but just a fun build to show people how to make money, how to do amazing things with regular cars and a regular garage with regular tools. That's what it's all about. Once again, huge shout out to Copart. Thank you guys for sponsoring the build and believing in me and the channel. If you're thinking about getting into this, whether you want to buy a crazy car like this, or if you want to buy just a regular car for your daily driver, Copart and Copart Select has you covered. They got cars, boats, jet skis, motorhomes, even your grandma's wheelchair. Make sure you check them out. Definitely, if you're in Las Vegas, come by and see me. This is at the entrance of the center building or central hall. Copart's actually in the business end, which is the north hall, but the lobby's under construction. That's where this car was going to be, but now it's going to be in the front of the central hall. It'll be right there in front of the main opening there at SEMA, which I'm super excited. We'll be outside. Hopefully, it's a beautiful day, which right now we just got a bunch of wind. That's why I'm wearing a sweater because it's cold, but I want to thank everyone again so much. Like I said, I know a lot of people don't watch the builds, but just to let you guys know, this is what truly makes me happy is something like this. Hopefully, with things going right in the world and hopefully SEMA kicking off and you guys loving this thing, and I can't wait to actually get it running where we can do some drifting events, this is just the beginning of this car. We're going to do a whole lot more campaigning, racing, doing some fun stuff. I'm super excited. I can't wait for SEMA, and we'll see you guys next time.