Fitment fail

A couple days ago, surprisingly enough for Wellington, we actually had another sunny day. With this rare situation in mind, I decided to continue repainting my smoothies. 

All 4 of them now have their lips coated in copper metallic, and are just a couple coats and sands away from the clearing process. Progress is motivating!

While in between coats of copper and tinkering with the MR2, I also got started on stripping the centres of my Rays in preparation for a sand and their new colour scheme. 

A fresh coat of stripper and let the centre sit and watch the paint bubble off, or in my case, go back to wrenching on the car lol. 

A few moments later and here's the result of it. 

Paint and the general crustiness from a 20 year old wheel just bubbling away. Pretty cool right? The fumes were pretty decent too, I'm pretty sure at one stage I saw Beetlejuice. Or maybe it was just some seedy looking person walking down the street....

While waiting for the lips to dry and the paint to flake off, I also made headway on repainting the bottom half of the car back to its former glory. Nothing like a fresh coat of black to give the underside of your car a new lease on appearance.

 Then for shits and giggles, I decided to test fit a 10 on the back of the car to keep me motivated and to check out any potential fitment issues. 

Perfect, but as I would later find out, the front 8s actually require spacers and some extended wheel studs due to them fouling on my 2 pot calipers on the front. As seen here....lol

The caliper fouls on the wheel and the studs barely poke thru the mounting point lol. I couldn't even get the Blox nuts on to see how they would look on the front lol.

Close up of the future look (possibly by June at this rate hahaha)

Exactly how I envisioned it in my head :) It's such an awesome feeling to see my idea all the way thru to fruition!

Another pic for good measure

While this was going on, I managed to borrow a soldering iron and some solder to do yet some more wiring (cheers Royce for the gear and Matt for the help!). I wired in my boost gauge and figured out a location where I will make a mounting plate for the gauge once I get a proper gauge and the car is all legal and back on the road boosting.

Spot the TRD short shifter which I dislike lol.

Here's the view from the drivers pew.

The steering wheel should hopefully be replaced soon as well with something a bit more my style. 

Fast forward to today where I woke up bright an early as a package was awaiting my pickup. What have we here??

A new pair of shoes, like I didn't have enough already....lol

I've always loved the look of mesh wheels, and I'd been searching high and low for a set of 14s I liked to fit the car till this set came up for sale. Fresh from Dunedin, here they are!

From the initial photos from the seller, I had expected these wheels to be in a lot worse condition than they actually are. But it turns out, I got them for a steal and apart from missing one hex key stud that serves no other purpose than to look good, these things are peeeerfect. 

I was contemplating repainting them, but from closer inspection, it would seem that they are salvageable and will come up pretty nice once the curbs have been hopefully redone and polished with plenty of elbow grease. 

What else was a wheel whore to do but try them on!

Exactly what I imagined they would look like on my car, but another fail, the wheel studs are not long enough due to the offset of this wheel. As a result, they don't poke through and I am unable to fit wheel nuts on lol. But it's a minor issue as I am now on the hunt for some spacers along with some extended wheel studs so that these wheels will fit me. 

The spacers are for the smoothies to stop me fouling on the brakes, and the studs are for the meshies so that I can actually mount some wheel nuts on the bastards lol. 

View from the top. I was too lazy to straighten the steering wheel hence the angle. It sticks out but once the car is on the ground and lowered on my Tein and Bilstein combo, it should hopefully be perfect :)

Another one for good measure.

I then test fitted the 8s again to check how things would measure up.

Apart from the fouling and wheel stud fail, it was perfect. 

After being hassled by everyone for not actually spending money on getting the car legal and on the road again, I am going to try my hardest to now devote every cent and moment of time getting this car a wof so that I can then actually drive it, instead of it just being an expensive paper weight. 

But lol, the last time I said that, I bought some more wheels so I will really have to try hard now. Truth be told, with the Shuttle going soon, I really need this car back on the road as I will be left without a mode of transport. Shock and horror, Lush Garage running out of cars?? Lol never thought I would say that haha. 

So if anyone knows of a sweet daily wagon that is CHEAP (emphasis on the CHEAP part as I have other priorities atm), feel free to flick me some dets. 

In the mean time...there's this really amazing set of SSR Flying Dragons that I am eyeing up....hahaha. Look out for a post coming soon on last Wednesday's monthly guys with cars meat at the local hood. 

Long time no speak

After an unprecendented period whee I decided to focus on other facets of my life, I decided that I should actually do a post to account for what has happened since we last left off. (That and I promised Charlie I would do a how to write up based around his car).

So while I was slowly returning my turbo to its standard ride height in preparation for its WoF check, I was interrupted by an interesting burble from the end of the grove. In a few seconds this immaculate beastie showed up. 

And for the record yes the car really is that shiny in the flesh. The mission of the day was to reinsert the Tein Type Flex that the car had originally come fitted with. I will be doing a full feature on this car in the near future, but in the mean time, here's a write up on how to install coilovers in a CL1. Please note that as per anything on the internet, you should only ever do this at your own risk and I hold no responsibility for any mishaps you or your buddies may have if you are noobs attempting this for the first time. However, all you need is a cool head and a sense of logic and common sense and you will come out of it with a sweet ride with a Lush Garage approved ride height ;)

Step 1: Jack up the car, but undo the wheel nuts while the car is still on the ground. 

I chose the front tow hook as seen here as my jacking point. Secure the car with axle stands.

Step 2: Remove wheel and undo fork pinch bolt

Step 3: You have a choice, you can either undo the bottom fork bolt now, or if you are like me and had help, you can undo the tophat bolts now ala

Step 4: Once they are all undone, the stress should be relieved on the strut, and you can remove the bottom fork bolt. You will need a long bolt roughly thinner than the current fork bolt to hammer the other one out like so

Step 5: Once you have successfully hammered that bolt out, once again if you have help, feel free to ask said minion to stand on the hub and force it downward and then wiggle the strut free from the fork. Ta da. 1 side down. 3 more to go.

Step 6: Now you will need to adjust your ride height to the desired height using your C spanners like so

Here's another view of this process

Please note to also clean the threads and apply a liberal amount of grease on it as I get really peeved off when coilovers seize due to incompetent owners. Cue the blurry action shot

Step 7: Reinstallation is just a reversal of the removal process.Insert the strut into its cavity and immediately bolt the tophat nuts to hold the coilover in place and to stop you from having to require 6 limbs.

Like this

Step 8: Reinsert into fork, tighten the fork pinch bolt, and redo the bottom bolt. 

Yes, I really do have 3 hands....

Step 9: Check that you have torqued up all the bolts correctly, remount wheel, undo wheel nuts, lower car, and bask in the new found awesomeness that is a lowered car :D

Winning! If it was me, it would be lower, but this car isn't that sort of vehicle, so this height is bordering on too low. Final tweaks are required for a more appropriate ride height. 

Repeat for the other front side.

Now for the rears.

Step 1: Jack the car up as high as you can get it, and secure it with axle stands. Remove the wheels.

Step 2: Remove the rear eye bolt, and the rear upper radius arm to give you some space to wiggle out the strut. 

Step 3: Remove the rear trim and undo the top hat nuts for the rear struts

 

Height comparison of the struts

Step 4: Reinstall the rear struts

Now its just a reverse of removal. Torque up bolts, remount wheel and torque up wheel nuts, and drop the car to the ground and repeat on the other side.

Relax and have a nice healthy, nutritious mean of trans fat filled fish and chips and enjoy your new ride height and look forward to all the joys of owning a lowered car. Crabbing sideways over speedbumps, avoiding potholes like the plague, or in my case, avoiding cats eyes like the plague lol.

So here is a substandard picture (not taken by me thankfully) of the car's current state of affairs. Looks much much better no? However, as brilliant as it looks to me there are a few reliability issues to sort out, so all will happen in due time. 

In the mean time you may be wondering why my car still doesn't have a wof, well it turns out I have an addiction and in spite of my common sense and knowing better, I decided to buy another set of wheels, just in case I should ever get bored of my current stock.

Here's a photoshop of what the car might potentially end up looking like, minus a few minor details

Alas, as much as I would like to keep spewing forth unnecessary information, some things should be kept a secret and I am dead tired as I now train 5 days a week, so I will have to close this blog post here. Big thanks to Sanit for the pics, and Matt for the help over the weekend. See you on the blacktop everyone.

Rauh Welt

No real update on the personal situation. Although there hopefully may be something interesting to add the the garage next week if it stays affordable. I'm heading up with some mates tomorrow to a local (well by local I mean 3 hours away) track to just watch. Sadly my car is currently illegal and sitting derelict so I won't be racing it. I'm still waiting on my dad's money to clear so I can start modding.........

In the mean time, here's a vid which has been doing the rounds. That noise, that colour scheme and those wheels=makes me very very happy!

Rauh Welt Night Session

Hopefully I remember my camera tomorrow and take some pics of the on track action. But knowing me, I will probably just forget about it and eat some chicken.