The xB

My first car, first build.

Scion xB RS 4.0

Tons of hours spent throughout college with my best friends.   

Inspired by VIP cars and bB Squad.

It has been given to some friends for a totally custom makeover.

 My first car was this Scion xB.  My sister had a thundercloud metallic Scion xB as her first car and I thought it was the coolest. Once I got my driving permit I would drive her car around and it was pretty fun to drive.  I spent hours online looking up Scion xB's which lead me to find out about bB's and the wild tuning culture of Japan, including VIP and Drifting.  I found forums like ClubxB and bBSquad and websites from Japan like Minkara and from there I learned about body kit companies like TRA-Kyoto, Fabulous, Garson etc.  I had a choice to buy a scion xB or an s-chassis.  I wanted a drift car so bad but I knew I was going to get myself in trouble so I decided to start with a safe car I couldn't possibly do illegal things in.  We bought a 2006 Scion xB RS 4.0 in Torched Penny Mazora from Servco Scion second hand.  It was used by Servco at the First Hawaiian International Auto Show with the color matched AXIS wheels.  It was then sold to its first owner and shortly after repossessed due to failure of payments.  

First thing I did was buy drop springs off of craigslist and I met two local xB guys, Nick and Phil when I went to pick them up.  We quickly became friends and they showed me how to work on cars.  In fact they helped my install the drop springs which we had run into my first big issue for a "simple" job.  The car didn't come with a lock nut key so we couldn't get the wheels off.  I was too eager to install it so we managed to install the rear springs without removing the wheels and I had to drive it around with a reverse rake until we found a tire shop that had a spare lug key we could buy off them.  In hindsight I should have waited for the lug key to do all the springs at once haha.

I started with simple modifications.  Nick painted my fog lights and side markers amber, candy red the inside of the tail light lenses and we both blacked out the headlight housings.  I bought rain visors and wheel spacers for a little bit better fitment.  Other silly thigs like sticker bombing the front lip and having an exhaust shop weld on a truck tip that stuck out of the back and definitely sliced/burned my leg many times haha.  

I also did my first terrible sounds install, literally 2 12" alpine type R sitting on hopes and dreams.  The idea was to use the whole trunk area as the box, although not sealed well, and still have storage space.  The wood eventually broke in half and the speakers fell so I sold them to buy 2 10" kickers in a pre-built box.

At one point we had a crew of 4 RS 4.0's!

Got air suspension! Then I entered Hella Flush Hawaii Aloha Kings with a couple of xB friends.  Although I had whack wheels and fitment, the sticker bomb lip was a hit.

Started going to all sorts of meet and shows and even had the honor of Mr. DohcResearch himself shoot some rolling shots of my car on the way home from one event.  He even gave me an amazing deal on factory option chrome door handles (inside and outside) and factory option chrome window moldings.

Mr. DOHCResearch's xB in front that I inherited a lot of rare JDM option stuff from when he eventually parted it out.

Time went by and soon enough Hella Flush was coming around again.  I knew I needed to fix my fitment for this one so I ended up borrowing a set of 17x8.5j Work VS-XX from a friend for the show and the fitment was just too perfect, with a spacer in the rear.  The RS 4.0 Modelista grill fell off and was run over just a few days before the show so I had to put on an OEM grill with a bB emblem.

Ended up buying the set of 17x8.5j Work VS-XX off of my friend a few months later.  Only problem is that in that time they were professionally painted matte black faces with gloss black lips and purple anodized hardware.  I spent weeks tearing them apart, stripping all the paint and anodization, having the faces powder coated gold and reassembling them.  But this time I got some wider outer lips for the rears so they ended up being 17x10j on a 215/45r17 Yokohama S.Drives.

Got rid of most of the sticker bomb while I was prepping the car for its new wheels too.

First I used a fender roller, then tried the jack handle trick, then tried the phonebook trick and finally I just beat the hell out of the rear arches with a big hammer to get these wheels to fit.  Something I would come to regret a little later in the future.

Custom shaved grill made by Nick and hand made sonar projector headlights that was Colin made and he gave to me when he parted out his car before he moved to Japan.

I redid my interior by covering all of the lower pillars and headliner with black denim and the A&B pillars were wrapped in Rogue Status t-shirt that had an all over print of machine guns to go with my revolver AC knobs i bought of a guy on the ClubxB forum.  The t-shirts faded super fast in the sun.

While I was at it I added some bits to the interior with a JDM Kouki bB center counsel with light up cup holders and lower storage compartment, JDM bB door panels, JDM lower kick panel that holds a flare (they actually shipped the flare with it from Japan lol) and a JDM bB cargo cover to hide the air/sub setup.

All of my stereo stuff got stolen so I kind of just drove around without a radio or subwoofers for a while.  I was heavy into riding fixed gear bikes at the time and Nick had made some mounts that attached to the headrest of the back seat and fit the bikes in the back perfectly.

Around this time I also wanted to redo my air suspension and subwoofer setup.  Previously everything was hidden in the spare tire well.  The old air setup was starting to fail, lots of leaks and the valves were sticking so I wanted to simplify it to manual paddle valves.

Since my 2 10" Kicker subwoofers were stolen from the car I decided I wanted to go with a Pioneer Carrozzeria 8" sub and amp unit to go along with the Carrozzeria third window speakers made specifically for the bB.  Surely no one would want to steal an 8" sub...

I wanted to do a visible tank with copper hard lines and dark stained mahogany floor.  I had a beautiful mahogany OBA steering wheel that I wanted to incorporate more into the interior so I made matching mahogany floor mats and dash insert for the paddle valves of the air suspension while I was at it.  It was my first (and last) time making hard lines so it didn't come out that great but it was good enough for me.

You can also see above that I had an OEM radio delete panel as my previous double din alpine stereo was also stolen from the car.  I actually hooked up a tablet dock to an single din radio set behind the panel and just used my android tablet as a removable radio instead.  You can see the port poking out just above the AC controls.

You might notice in the above left photo that the seats look different thank xB seat.  My dumbass actually bought and paid insane shipping for a full set of bB bench seats. I think the seats were like $200 and the shipping was like $1500.  I worked as much hours as I could at the restaurant as a busser and was making a lot in tip money so making dumb financial choices was fine then with no other financial responsibilities lol.

Couldn't afford the insane priced for a DAMD Shield so i bought GTS tinted headlight covers and grill cover from amazon which gave the same effect as the DAMD but could fit USDM/Kouki headlights and it wasn't seamless.  I really bought it for the grill cover as I thought it looked cool on it's own but went with the whole set anyway.

You can kind of see it in the picture below but I glued a Vans Aloha Print super thick canvas on all of the upper interior pillar.  I got the material from a big Vans window display I took from work once we tore it down.  The faded gun shirts had to go and this was just too cool to not try.

Someone decided that my hatch should be inverted.  Something tells me my exhaust tip might have had something to do with it...

Probably something like my property hurt someone's leg so their leg hurt my property...

So I cut it off and found a perfectly shaped tip for the hole in the bumper.  I also began my affinity with making my front bumpers meet parking blocks....

I found my dream wheels for a decent deal on the bBsquad forums.  Wheels that never came in 4x100 but were filled and redrilled by the previous owner as he had planned to put them on his xB but had a change of heart.

17x8j/9j Work Emitz and they fit perfectly right out of the box.  They needed some love and they had to wait as I had big big plans to completely overhaul the look of the xB.  I just had to wait for some very big boxes to make it overseas from Japan.

Ever since my sister got her xB and I was scouring the internet for modified xB's/bB's, I knew the dream kit for me would always be the Garson D.A.D LX kit. I used Nengun to source stuff from Japan and they went above and beyond to get just about anything I ordered sent to me in Hawaii.  I think I paid $600 for the kit and $2000 to ship it uncut.  I also got Kouki JDM HID Headlights and Crystal Taillights while I was at it.

 I was dumb. I know. 

Tip money is great.  

It was also necessary replace my hatch with the giant dent and to complete the look with the Garson kit having a zenki style rear bumper with the license plate inlay. I found a JDM Zenki bB hatch on eBay for $800 but it came in such a flimsy box that it had been damaged in shipping. At least the shipping was free.  

A big choice had to be made and that was paint.  The RS 4.0 came in a torched penny mazora color, and at that time you couldn't go into any automotive paint shop and get the exact color, nor would it be affordable or lay down remotely close to the original paint.  The choice was between spending an insane amount of money on the paint, then paying a very skilled painter to color match the body kit and hatch only to most likely have it be off in different angles of the sun OR paint the entire car a different color that I wanted anyway and do it all with my friends.  The later choice was taken as I really wanted to paint my car a nice dark green color and my group of friends decided we would all paint our cars to match.

So the body work began, and not just on my car but just about all of our cars.  The first step was learning to work with fiber glass to repair the body kit.  It was a steep learning curve and took especially long to get the curves and body lines right at the section between the fog light and lower grill.  

My parents left me the house for almost two weeks so we decided to get as much done on my car in their garage as we could, including turning it into a makeshift paint booth to paint the entire interior and door jams.

One of my best friends, Stone, was the painter/welder/fabricator in our group.  His family was big into old school VW's and had a fascination with body work an paint.  Through the VW community he had gotten us a time spot at a paint booth of one of the best painters around.  We towed my car to the booth, pushed it into the booth, prepped it to paint and Stone started to spray the black epoxy primer down.  

The owner of the booth took one look at the car with the black epoxy primer and kicked us out.  The car was not ready for paint at all and we essentially just wasted half of his day.  To be fair we really didn't know what we were doing, just college kids winging it.  So the car came back home early that day now in matte black and multiple shades of grey and it had to be put back together as it was my daily driver.

I really wanted to keep all of the audio Pioneer Carrozzeria and the yellow cones of the Carrozzeria speakers were just so iconic to me.  I went ahead and put in some Pioneer Carrozzeria mid/tweeter combo speakers in the doors and matching smaller 2-way speakers in the dash to match the TS-DRC1BB's in the rear windows.  

I then managed to driving into a parking curb (again) and destroy my bumper in the exact place I spent so many hours perfecting once before.  Also shortly after that one of the air bags managed to get a hole rubbed through it damaging a fender.  Oh joy.

Over the course of the next year we fixed all of the major and minor issues with my car while simultaneously body working and painting the other cars in our group.  Starting with repairing my fiber glass bumper...again.

I think Stone ended up using the my unused paint to paint his 67' Porsche 911 that he restored and I ended up buying my friend, Eins, his paint so that he could paint his AE86.  We spent so many of our college nights laying body filler and sanding instead of studying and doing homework.  These were some of the best times with the best people.

We tried to make a bozer hood like the VW Golf guys were doing but had to scrap it since we didn't seal it up well and it rusted quite a bit in a short time.  It probably wouldn't have went with the overall look in the end so it was good that it didn't make it to paint haha.

We decided to take a less is more approach, and by less it meant less people as it caused a lot of the imperfections and things missed the first time around.  Stone and I slowly made it through panel by panel finishing them off in primer as we went.

 I also found time to throw on my JDM bB factory option N.Y. Package seat covers. 

The body work was almost complete and we were getting ready to paint.  By now I had graduated and started working full time but we were still as invested as ever into painting our cars.  Stone took my car for a final once over as he had the best feel for imperfections.  He went ahead and painted the inside of the doors and hatch while he had the car.

We rented a cheap paint booth for two weekends.  The first weekend was for the body kit.

Lexus Midnight Pine Pearl (6S6)

The second weekend was the moment we had been waiting for for so long. Final Paint!

After letting the car sit in the booth overnight to let the paint cure and harden, we came back to partially reassemble it for the drive home.  I had to take a lot of moments to just stand back and look at it in pure joy.

First pics of it in sunlight.

Next was to cut and buff the entire car before final assembly.  Stone did all of it in a day or two as he wanted it to be the best it could be.

Final assembly with the full kit meant one thing...Photo shoot with the other two 6S6 cars!

I daily drove it around like this for a while and went to different meets but the gold faces of the VS-XX bothered me when I had the kit on.  

I also scored another modelista grill and stripped the paint from it to reveal it being fully polished underneath the paint.

Before I took care of the wheels I decided that the interior needed some upgrades.  More specifically the lighting as I wasn't much of a fan of the blue LED's of the subwoofer setup and of the bB cup holders.  I especially didn't like that the blacklights in the Carrozzeria window speakers didn't match any other lights in the car.  I changed all of the LED's to soft white LED's and added matching lights in the exterior door handles and the oh-shit handles of the interior.  Also my subwoofer and window speakers got stolen again so I had to replace those.

While I was tearing out my interior for the wiring I decided to redo the headliners, sun visors and upper pillars in burgundy micro suede.  I had my mom help me with the sewing for a better fit and finish.

Ended up changing the air tank setup as I wanted to sink it down into the trunk more and ditch the wonky hard lines that liked to leak air occasionally.  Probably should have done something about the exposed air lines but I was over it and just wanted them to not leak.

I messed around with making some custom headlights with LED DLR stuff but in the end decided to abandon that project, although I think I still have all of the components somewhere in my storage. 

So instead of the headlights I got the Emitz back together and put some tires on...but not without issues.

I am an avid believer that you should drive your car low, even on air suspension...and well maybe I drove it a little too low and messed up a fender.

You might also be wondering "Why did you put on the Emitz but take off the body kit???" Well you see one of my side skirts decided it didn't want to be on the car anymore while I was driving on the highway.  It got run over by a few cars and was in many many piece when I finally could retrieve it.  As an added bonus my modelista grill fell off near my girlfriends house a few days later and someone kindly placed it in the trash pile for me.

Also the body kit had taken a beating and had cracked in a bunch of places so with the side skirt falling off it only made sense to remove the whole kit and fiber glass and paint everything all at once.  And yes the front bumper broke in the same place I had repairs twice before.  And you guessed it, it met another parking block.

On a side note, the kit didn't come with the fog lights and Garson D.A.D didn't sell them separately from the bumper on their website.  On my first trip to Japan we were planning to go to Osaka and I made it a point to plan to go to the Garson D.A.D store.  I popped off the rivets for the label plate on the front bumper and slid it into my wallet to bring with me just in case I needed it for some reason.

My girlfriend (now wife) and I went to the store, walked up to counter and she asked them if we could buy the fog lights.  They explained that they don't just sell the fog lights without you buying the bumper or proof of you already owning the bumper.  I quickly busted out the official Garson DAD label plate from my wallet and handed it to them.  To their amazement they took it and looked up the serial number to see that I was legit and they let me order fog lights.  I had them delivered to our hotel in Tokyo only a couple days before we left Japan.

FINALLY THE BIG DEBUT!  

I got the car completely together just in time for WekFest.  I think most people looked past it and it didn't get any awards but I didn't care at all I was just so stoked to have it all together. 

My vision came to fruition.

I also had a bunch of custom one off mahogany interior piece made by Nick at Ryujin Unlimited and I installed it all for the show but for some reason have no pictures of any of it all installed which kind of kills me as he did fantastic work, a true artisan of his craft.  He made a VIP table for the dash, speaker covers for the dash, door card inserts for the JDM door panels, lock pulls with LED lights, AC dials with acrylic inlays, Dash inserts, window switch bodies, VIP table for the dash and a giant VIP center counsel for the rear seat.

The only pictures I have of most of it installed.  Unfortunately the OBA Wheel was removed when I took these photos.

The OBA steering wheel had been sent off to him to strip and refinish it.  He also made a one off wooden t-handle for the automatic selector with functioning button that I will keep forever as it I think it was one of the coolest parts on the car.

My great friend and talented photographer, Reese shot my car while it was still fresh right after WekFest.

Went to some more meets and shows and then something I never thought would happen.  Something incredible.  Something I never even dreamed of.

bBSquad.  The bBSquad.  Not only the most infamous team of xB/bB's in the United States but honestly probably the best in the world.  They invited me to be part of the team.  

This team...

I didn't believe it was true, this was the ultimate dream come true for me as a bB nerd.  This was the peak of everything I had done to my xB to make it exactly how I always imagined it.  There is nothing better than this.  

No better modification to my car than this sticker right here.

Stone sold his Porsche and built a jaw dropping 2jzgte vvti jzz30 soarer and decided to paint it the same color.  Our good friend Colin did a photoshoot of all our car as Stones was just finished and I was about to move to Japan.  A perfect send off.

Bonus picture of the final friend to finish his car in NoInvite (our unoffcial team name). Casey's SR20DET Zenki S14 after he completed it with matching paint.