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For some of my high school and most of my undergrad career, I drove a 1991 Plymouth Grand Voyager SE.  Technically our family was the fourth owner of it (it was stolen from the original owner, driven around by the thieves and then retrieved and sold to the third owners, and finally to us.)  My folks knew I'd be a fast driver so I was given the "minivan handicap" to slowdown my supersonic highway speeds.  Nevertheless, I always got to my apartment in Davis in 1 hour 5 minutes.  She's served me very well, and though The Van is rather brutal on our three trannies, I have almost always arrived on time. 
Nostalgic, eh?

Not everybody knows how to handle it.  You have to compromise with its size, tricky gearbox, somewhat soft suspension, and little interior nuisances, but I have figured it all out and taken it to its maximum utility: party transport, drive-bys, snowboarding trips, roadtrips up and down Calif, people packing, furniture moving, even taking it up to the twisties.  Open up the liftgate, turn the music up loud, and eveybody's hangin out and chillin.  People are lucky to ride in it.


Spits or swallows?, definitely swallows it....WHOLE.  Ol' Previa looks on with humiliation.

NOBODY disses The Van.  Tho who are familiar with it give it complete respect.  Some initially laugh and joke at it, but ultimately there's nothing but praise for its abilities.  My friend Brandon "Baylo" hooked me up with a Sony cassette deck that went nicely with some Prelude SH speakers another friend Jim "JimJay" gave me.  I found a set of KYB GR2s on Ebay for $60 and my old housemate Danny and I spent a day scraping our knuckles.  I also bought the upscale model instrument panel that included a tach, battery level, oil pressure, as well as the other necessities, only $5.  Along with www.ALLPAR.com I was ready to drive The Van to the ground.

One of the earlier pictures of my high school possession with The Van.  I must've spent close to 3 hours washing and waxing it; that roof is HUGE!  Check out the ricer Integra GSR exhaust tip.
Once every twenty or so years, the City of Davis gets cold enough to drop a "blanket of snow."  How privileged.

Being one of the longest vehicles in the lot, it's only appropriate to back The Van into its spot instead of torturing that steering pump and parking forward.
 The Van was sold in December 2002 to a well-deserved family who needed a hauler for the Flea Market.  It was pretty hard letting her go, but I guess it was time to move-on.

Define MINIVAN.   The new van sits on the right while The Van engulfs sofas, folding tables, mattresses, blankets and futons, while the new van takes the smaller hardware. Here's where the transition to "new van" starts.
 In order to carry-on the minivan legacy, I was assigned to the 2000 Nissan Quest GXE.  Yeah, it's a Nissan, but it started out as a complete piece of shit.  The cheap General tires were mounted on 15" steelies.  The body rolled all over the place.  The front stabilizer bar was off-centered and creaked if I turned too hard.  The brakes were lousy, there was no overhead light, and interior space was at a limitation.  The engine, however, was the proven VG series, which has been in the Nissan stable since the 80s.  This particular VG33E pumped out 170 Clydesdales and 200lbft of torque, adequate.
Pretty much in its stock form, the Quest is on our Tahoe trip.  The tires were unbalanced, so 75-80MPH was rumpshakin' time.
Here's one of the best mods I did for the Quest, the rear stabilizer bar. GXE means cheapness, so I went to Courtesy Nissan and shelled out almost $200 for this.  Although most of the part numbers were wrong, they all fit perfectly and my van noticeably rolled less.

Another great mod is the 2000 MAXIMA GLE wheels I acquired.  I did some research and came up w/ the perfect tire match: 225/60/16
Bridgestone Potenza 910.  Grip heaven here we come. 
You KNOW you're special when you get to eat in the Quest.  That's Vicky.  That explains everything.  Make good use of that light baby!

A clean picture of the Quest after 2.5 hours of washing and waxing (smaller than The Van).

The Quest sits ready for its next adventure, inviting guests to enter from both sliding doors.

I tried lowering the Quest by shoving eight people on the left.  Looks pretty good, but the rear's about to bottom-out.  The above pic shows the Quest blending out of the trailers.









A host of other mods adorn the Quest.  I found the matching overhead console on Ebay for $20 (regularly $150) and did a clean install.  The TV/VCR combo was ditched for $200.  I took out the silencer and put in my own CAI and routed the duct to the foglamp opening.  HELLA airhorns are carried over.  The huge sub from hell hogs the rear, and an MP3/CD/Tape/Radio deck dishes out the beats.  Let's not forget the static strip.
If ONLY it looked and performed like the Asia-only Nissan ELGRAND (NISMO model shown).  VQ35DE, RWD, one SWEET instrument panel, fit-anything interior, triad-transport grade, I'm gonna import it here.
But for now it's the Quest.  I've slowly transformed it to fit my tastes better.  Here it stops on HWY 1 to sit pretty for a picture with that hot chick in pink (I guess she's got the CalPoly "pink" fever as well).

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