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It’s the little things that make the biggest differences. Like cutting off the old rear view mirror to install a new button style one. It sits up 2 inches higher then the stock one to improve visibility. I’m 5’11” and the stock one always seemed to be in the way.
On another positive note, I reached out to NVY composites about my carbon fiber gauge cluster. It seemed to be taking a long time to ship but after my experience with retro-spec, I figured they where just busy filling other orders. Come to find out it had been shipped to the wrong address. That’s twice now that has happened to me when buying carbon fiber parts from two different companies lol. But their customer service was very good. They apologized for the inconvenience and said they would ship me another one and a carbon fiber arm rest to say sorry. I’m undecided if I’ll use the armrest as I like the black one I currently have but it’s always nice to have. I’ll post pics once I receive them.
Installed all the bushings for the rear suspension. I didn’t order the front diff bushing because I thought it would be fine but I was wrong. Needed a cheap quick fix so I welded it solid. Should work for now. I used the energy suspension front trailing arm bushings and am very disappointed in the quality. They have an unacceptable amount of play. I do not recommend them.
I I chained my name to my subframe, and never had any issue again
Installed all the bushings for the rear suspension. I didn’t order the front diff bushing because I thought it would be fine but I was wrong. Needed a cheap quick fix so I welded it solid. Should work for now. I used the energy suspension front trailing arm bushings and am very disappointed in the quality. They have an unacceptable amount of play. I do not recommend them.
Nice! I got the same setup I'll be installing this weekend alongside with a welded diff!
I’m torn between building a chromoly cage and keeping the full interior
why not both?
Originally Posted by FCSpoolyBoi
Thanks. I haven’t decided yet. Either a roll bar with door bars or a full cage that ties into the front strut towers. I’ll decide once I get new seats and see how much room I have to work with. The problem for me is I want to keep as much of the interior as possible. I’ve had other cars that I’ve gutted and I want something different. I have a full cage in my off-road Subaru so I’m used to climbing in and out haha. The biggest thing for me about full cage vs roll bar is I’d like to keep the headliner and the a-pillar bars have to be really tight to the body. I’ve only seen a few caged FCs that where able to do that. I’d build it to NHRA specs 1 5/8 0.083 chromoly.
Take a peek at my build thread, I managed to keep a full interior with a cage. With planning it can be done nicely.
Also haven’t read your whole thread so I’m unsure what the goal is but I’d personally go with a different cage spec then NHRA. They are pretty loose until you get to very fast times. SCCA or NASA or even Formula Drift are all similar but a better ruleset to follow if you want to do something besides drag. Also chromoly is more expensive in material and harder to weld then the usual DOM. Cages built to those specs usually pass NHRA tech up to a point.
If I could do mine again I would have used 1.5” as also being tall every inch counts when trying for head room. I know the 1 5/8” is spec for NHRA tho
Take a peek at my build thread, I managed to keep a full interior with a cage. With planning it can be done nicely.
Also haven’t read your whole thread so I’m unsure what the goal is but I’d personally go with a different cage spec then NHRA. They are pretty loose until you get to very fast times. SCCA or NASA or even Formula Drift are all similar but a better ruleset to follow if you want to do something besides drag. Also chromoly is more expensive in material and harder to weld then the usual DOM. Cages built to those specs usually pass NHRA tech up to a point.
If I could do mine again I would have used 1.5” as also being tall every inch counts when trying for head room. I know the 1 5/8” is spec for NHRA tho
Ive read your thread. Very nice work! Your cage install is definitely one of the nicer ones I’ve seen. I’ll probably end up doing something similar. The Chromoly is more expensive but if it’ll save me 30-40lbs then I’m willing to pay for it.
Picked up two new seats for the car this weekend. One is a carbon fiber Border that had been reupholstered recently and the other is just a cheap eBay bucket but it’s fairly comfortable and I got them for a steal. I don’t have seat mounts yet but I still had to put them in the car for mockup and pics haha
The wireless steering wheel controls came in yesterday. Still setting up the button placement but the plan is to take all of the switches out of the gauge cluster surround and have them on the steering wheel. I’m trying to figure out a way that I can have one button control two separate functions. One click for wiper low speed and 2 for wiper high speed or something to that effect. I can probably set up something like that with the Haltech whenever I get that.
Finished with the steering controls last night. Wipers control the on off function with a separate switch for slow/fast. The lights control high/low beam with a separate switch for on/off. Like I was saying before I’d like to have the controls be able to do on/off and high/low with a single button but for now I’m happy with it. Also installed some OMP pedals because the stock covers where old/missing. Still waiting for the carbon fiber gauge cluster surround to show up but hopefully that will be soon.
I have this uncontrollable need to take apart perfectly good cars into a million pieces. So I pulled the dash, carpet, and wiring harness out of the car again. I like the burgundy headliner but the faded red carpet always bugged me so I’m attempting to dye it black. I’m using the spray can dye and it doesn’t quite get deep enough into the carpet so some red is still visible. I’ll see how it looks in the car. Worse case I waisted $20 on dye and I have to buy a new carpet kit like I planned on anyways. I also took the time to remove all the factory sound deadening. All together it weighs about 18lbs. I’m also removing all the seam sealer and stitch welding the body seams and filling the holes in the firewall. I just finished trimming all the unused plugs and wiring from the body harness too. Next step it to mock it all up and start the car without the dash invade I missed something in the wiring.
I also took the opportunity to flock the dash while it was out. I’d say it turned out pretty good. Ive had a bubble in the dash for as long as I’ve had the car and I’ve always hated it. I tried everything I could think of to get rid of it. So I finally said screw it and slit it down the middle and drift stitched it down. It actually turned out pretty good.
Looking good! Are those brand new relays you installed into the chassis?
Thanks! Yes they are. I took all of the switches out of the gauge cluster surround because it’s now all controlled by the steering wheel buttons. So I rewired the headlights, turn signals, and wipers to use relays. It also makes it easier to diagnose/replace things if I ever need to in the future.
I like the burgundy headliner but the faded red carpet always bugged me so I’m attempting to dye it black. I’m using the spray can dye and it doesn’t quite get deep enough into the carpet so some red is still visible. I’ll see how it looks in the car. Worse case I waisted $20 on dye and I have to buy a new carpet kit like I planned on anyways.
I had a similar experience, our carpets don't dye well. It never gets deep enough, and it doesn't penetrate the fibers like it's supposed to. Like you said though, all you lose is the cost of the dye and an old carpet, so there's no harm in some experimentation.
If you buy an ACC carpet kit, let us know how it turns out. I've heard good things recently, but there have been a lot of previous complaints about the fitment so I'm curious if it's worth the money.
Things are coming along. The Street Faction seat brackets came in today. The fit to the body isn’t the greatest but it will work. My passenger seat is significantly larger then the drivers seat so I’ll need to modify the passenger side brackets to make it fit. The plan is to get the interior most of the way together tomorrow as it’s almost midnight now. I also decided to redo the jump post design and recessed them into the body to pull the license plate back against the body. While I was there I removed the spare tire well as I always hated seeing it under the bumper. I also plan on building a diffuser eventually and it would have been in the way. Bash bars are also planned but my local steel yard was out of the tube I wanted. I had a basic piece of carbon fiber plate laying around so I decided to make dash vent deletes as well but more on that tomorrow.
Wow it’s been a while. Crashed the car a little over a year ago and it’s sat since then. I didn’t have the motivation to work on it. Too many other projects. But now it’s back in the shop getting fixed. I built a new exhaust using the old exhaust from my AE86. I also picked up a Shineauto front half bumper, 30mm front fenders, and side skirts so I’ve been test fitting those. I also found a set of aero mirrors on yahoo auctions japan so of course I had to buy them lol.
Since all of my buttons that would normally be on the gauge cluster surround are now on the steering wheel I finally decided to fill all the empty holes. The plan is to skin it in carbon fiber to match the center console. This’ll be my first time doing carbon fiber so I don’t know how it’ll look but I’m going to try. Worst case it doesn’t work and I just paint it wrinkle black or something like that.
Things have been going well with the carbon fiber work. I decided to try a few test pieces before I did the gauge cluster surround so I did the mirror trim pieces and rear hatch lock covers. I’d say they turned out pretty good. I’m currently doing the b pillar upper interior trim. I’m going to attempt the license plate surround and gauge cluster tomorrow
I’ve also been working on building a splitter too. The back mounts are a quick disconnect to make lifting the car super easy.
Well what’s new? I decided to make more carbon fiber and got a little carried away. Now the bumper, fenders and hood are all carbon fiber. I also wrapped the rest of the car purple.
The stock S4 turn signals wouldn’t look right with the new front end so I got some clear covers and made my own rgb led lights.
And here’s the current interior. I decided to make the arm rest out of carbon too.
02-17-20, 12:32 AM
