Damn that would have been a sweet spot for an Ecu.

 

that roof rack looks terrible... how much more stuff can you possible put in that thin clam shell?

 

the one last posted? not much, mine is bigger, and it will hold enough inventory and suppplys to set up my booth and take a road trip.

 

I like the roof rack

 

floor pans prototype done, now i just got to lay up some carbon fiber ones for meeself =)



Making a customer a custom dash, nice to see some visuals so i can get a better idea how i want to make my dash... Mine will be something like this, with a center console coming down with swtiches and some how try to figure out how to utilize the stock gauge cluster... This is raw, mine will be wrapped in black suede with some CF trim =)

 

figuring out how else i could ruin this FD...
I came up with this..


I photoshop worser than you..


Fronts are styled/inspired from j's racing s2k
rear are styled and inspired from Rmagics 7
side skirts will be a modifed version of what i was previously designing
Rear bumper will just be trimmed so the bottom "valence" are is straight across vs curved
Front bumper will be a Frankenstein 99spec/RE-amemiya, and my own creation.

I plan to switch over to RPF1's cuz im boring. idk i have some fetish for them... 17x10 +18 all around, 25-30mm spacer up front w. 255 , 50mm spacer in the rear 265/275? in the rear. dunno yet.

dash:


it will be a hybrid of aluminum wrapped in suede/CF trim

 

Interested to see what you come up with for a dash setup. And I hear you on the RPF1s. Ive owned a good amount of wheels for my FD, from Volks to CCWs to HREs, and whats it sitting on now? RPF1s haha. They just seem right.

 

Heres what the customers dash ended up looking like







@ Rxmfn7 the enkeis are so played out, but there is SOMETHING about them that keeps driving me towards them, i think they are so nice lol. plus, light, and 1100 shipped to your door???? how can you beat that................!

 

Really nice job dude

 

Thanks darling


Been busy with so many projects lately i havent really had time to work on the car.. Unfortunately the place i was suppose to move into had some chemical pollution and we found out the day we were going to close it was a superfund site as well. womp womp.. hopefully I can find some place so i can get the FD inside on level ground to get to work on the widebody kit.

for now, just restoring some old spare bolts. I hate chrome and silver, so i went with an black oxide finish... hopefully it holds up! we'll see


They look greasy as hell because the last step is to saturate them in oil to "seal" them and i was to lazy to finished wiping them down lol

 

How did you re-plate those bolts? What product did you use?

Dale

 

Mr Clarks of Dale,

1 strip bolts- I used my vibrating tumbler with glass media to get them to a nice metal finish (ill get pictures later today)

2 rinse/clean

3 soak in black oxide solution

4 seal with oil

I used Castwell platings solution and regular motor oil to seal it
Black Oxide Kits - Metal Finishing Solutions - Caswell Inc
^^this is there kit, i only used the black oxide solution

DIY reference i used
Some black oxide pics - The Garage Journal Board

not sure how they will weather, we'll see by end of next year? ahhaha

 

Very good, thanks for posting that up! Any new techniques I can find for enhancing and restoring stock parts is gold for me .

Dale

 

FYI black oxide typically doesn't hold up that well to corrosion, but I hope it works for ya

 

Glad i can help! Its a lot more work, but I find it satisfying restoring old use parts vs buying new.

True and false, Based off my understanding, Black oxide is actually a type of corrosion, a good corrosion. The chemicals used to corrode the bolts its what actually turns its black. as far as holding up to other corrosion like rust and stuff, it depends. Black oxide alone doesnt hold up very well and thats why the last i soak them in oil. This is to "seal" the black oxide which should make it hold up longer, but not sure how long

 

All black oxide fasteners come "oil sealed" they still don't last long in the elements from my experience.

 

What was the temp of the solution while doing the coating?

 

Well the car hasnt been touched in months and not much desire to work on it at the moment. but still keeping busy, up next is my CNC machine to help make a few parts/ideas i have in mind =)

Cnc router style table
steel construction
linear bearings/rails
blah blah blah, im sure no one cares and i dont really know what i have since i bought all this crap last xmas and just been getting around to working on it ahah

 

Is anyone here running a closed coolant system? aka no overflow tank? I could have sworn i saw someone do it and thought to myself I wanted to do the same thing but i forgot who did it lol

 

I remember seeing that in a 2jz build thread on here.

 

Ben, I just read all 60 pages of your thread, over the last couple days.

I run a closed cooling system, using a VW reservoir. I'm fairly certain there's a pic in my build thread (linked in my sig).

I enjoyed reading through your whole build and look forward to applying some of your lessons learned with my own upcoming FD build. It's an aborted LS swap, so we'll see how hard she fights me.

 

Here you go:



The reservoir's bottom fitting is t'd into the lower water pump hose. I swapped the S4 radiator neck onto the water pump housing and put the regular S4 flat cap on it. Then the nipple is plumbed to the upper fitting on the reservoir. The VW cap is rated around 13psi. I haven't had any issues with the setup at all. In fact, I was even able to wire the VW level sensor into the factory warning buzzer.

 

haha awesome! hope you learn from my mistakes..


However i wouldnt consider your cooling system "closed" when the pressure builds up the spring on your cap releases pressure and coolant into the reservoir. I've seen someone who eliminated the reservoir and spring loaded cap. i cant remember who or what the benefits were...

 

No no, there's no spring loaded cap. The cap on the water pump housing is the factory flat cap from the S4 FC. It doesn't have any spring loaded pressure relief, it's just there to keep the coolant from leaking out. Coolant moves freely to and from the coolant reservoir.

 

Was thinking of doing it to my FD. But I was just going to use the stock AsT in and out.... Then I just got a new ast, saves room and looks better