Kirk's Ride...

[Kirk]

Stud, thanks for the suggestion on the tail lights.

As for the paint... well I was going to do the bumper myself with a buddy's paint rig. I took the whole bumper to a shop to have the paint matched. They did a great job. But then when spraying the primer I found out that the paint equipment was not going to give me the quality of job that I wanted. So I broke down and took it to a body shop that used the same paint system as what I had purchased. They then used my materials to paint the car and to adjust the tone if necessary. They had the car on-hand for the match. They painted a part of the old front bumper and a section of the front fender to check the color match and then just cleaned the paint off when done. I'm not sure if they had to adjust the color or not, but the match came out pretty good. It's still not perfect and probably wouldn't be unless they blended it in with the surrounding panels. But it's good enough for me and I'm pretty discerning.

I think I'm mostly happy because I took the time to really discuss it with them ahead of time and make sure they understood fully what my standards were and what my expectations were. They then worked to do the job to those standards and I was happy. Whether with painting or managing people (I'm an engineering manager) I think that's half the battle towards getting good results - just making sure people understand what's expected of them when doing a job. Now that's not to say that they can't still screw it up, which may be what happened in your case. But if you've clearly spelled out your expectations ahead of time and they don't do it right, then that's when you say, "Nope, that's not good enough, do it again (at their cost of course)".

[Kirk]

I like shinny stuff. I think it comes from my days of owning a cruiser motorcycle and the chrome addiction that many cruiser riders fall into. So I've got some dabbles of chrome on my ride, like wheels with a polished lip, a chrome license plate surround, clear/chrome tail lights, and lots of chrome bolt covers inside the trunks.

So when I recently took the lower stress plate off my car to change the transmission oil I decided to clean it up a bit. Lots of bits and pieces of the suspension are aluminum which can polish up pretty nicely to a chrome-like shine. Well... here's what I ended up with. I know it will get dirty and won't last, but I don't care.... it's shinny.

Parts sitting in the sun:


Installed on the car:



Kirk

[blinkwatt]

Kirk what did you use to clean them? I have to install the Bristol bar and that stuff has to come off anyways,might as well clean them.

[Kirk]

Originally Posted by blinkwatt

Kirk what did you use to clean them? I have to install the Bristol bar and that stuff has to come off anyways,might as well clean them.

It looks like the underbody parts may have a waxy kind of undercoating. I thought it was totally unnecessary here in beautiful, sunny California. To get the majority off I used a razor blade and very carefully scrapped it off. Then I used some paint cleaner and a green scrubbie pad (for washing pots and pans) and scrubbed the rest of the stuff off. You have to be careful though as even the green pad can scratch the aluminum and fine scratches won't give you a good shine when you're done.

Kirk

[Franco]

Originally Posted by Kirk

I like shinny stuff. I think it comes from my days of owning a cruiser motorcycle and the chrome addiction that many cruiser riders fall into. So I've got some dabbles of chrome on my ride, like wheels with a polished lip, a chrome license plate surround, clear/chrome tail lights, and lots of chrome bolt covers inside the trunks.

So when I recently took the lower stress plate off my car to change the transmission oil I decided to clean it up a bit. Lots of bits and pieces of the suspension are aluminum which can polish up pretty nicely to a chrome-like shine. Well... here's what I ended up with. I know it will get dirty and won't last, but I don't care.... it's shinny.

Parts sitting in the sun:


Installed on the car:



Kirk

Hi Kirk, your car is starting to excite me more than your assistant
On a serious note did you think of clear coating those aluminum parts so they shine forever.
Love your ride

[Kirk]

Originally Posted by Franco

Hi Kirk, your car is starting to excite me more than your assistant
On a serious note did you think of clear coating those aluminum parts so they shine forever.
Love your ride

Thanks Franco! YES, I definitely thought about clear coating the aluminum parts. I'm going to see how long they last with just the waxy coating of Mother's Polish on them before I go that route. I garage my car and usually just drive it on Fridays and weekends. I also live in sunny California so the car never sees snow and seldom sees rain. So the parts may actually stay pretty nice for a long time without the clear coat. We'll see and if I need to paint them I will. That's an easy project. Thanks for the suggestion!

Kirk

[Kirk]

I've got one of the front coilovers in and will get the second done soon. What a royal PITA. Running remote reservoirs without quick disconnects is no fun, but do-able. It doesn't help that there is very limited info on the web. I'm waiting on upper spring seats for the rear, so those won't go in for a couple weeks or so.

After using a jig saw and several Dremel attachments I enlarged the hole above the front shock enough to allow the reservoir to pass through. Now it's mounted in the front trunk next to the battery. I'll clean up the install with the nice brackets to make it look better. The reservoir has a valve on it where you can adjust the nitrogen pressure between 150 to 250 psi. The nitrogen pushes on oil inside the reservoir that then creates oil pressure inside the shock. This is basically a way to increase the oil capacity of the shock without making the shock itself bigger and without increasing the mass of the moving shock. Pretty kewl...

Here's the reservoir mounted:



Here's the shock mounted. You can see the reservoir hose behind it that runs to the bottom of the shock. The lower helper spring keeps the main spring in place, even at the extremes of wheel movement. There's a bump stop under the dust shield. Gotta love those big Porsche/Brembo calipers too.



The camber plate is a Schnell piece that gave me TONS of front negative camber plus a solid mount at the top instead of flexible rubber.



Kirk

[kabel]

^awesome, they look even better installed. And yes Kirk's "assistant" is very nice indeed, but she is not a permanent installation on the car now is she?!

[Kirk]

Finally got my JRZ coilovers done! What a royal pain in the ass! In the front I got the front remote reservoirs hard mounted (no more zip ties) with some custom brackets and I had to remove the shocks again (3rd time) to get them shimmed up a little more. Fit seems to be just about perfect now, ride height is set, and alignment is near perfect (still needs some toe work though). I'm running about -2.3 degrees camber with the camber plates. Only down side is that the sperical bearings in the camber plates are damn noisy. I'll have to get used to that.

Here's the new reservoir mount in the front:



The rear shocks turned out to be a lot more work than what I had expected. It turns out that you can't get the reservoir through the shock mount in the wheel hub because the drive axle is in the way. The solution? I had to remove the rear axles. The only problem is that they're held on with 340 ft lbs of torque. I could NOT get the nuts off the axles. I thought maybe a local shop would loosen them for me, but I second guessed that as I doubt anyone would let me drive home with loose axle nuts. Finally, as a last resort, I borrowed an impact socket, 3/4" drive breaker bar, and 4' (yes four FOOT) cheater bar from the millwrights at my work (they work for me, so I get some special treatment). I got the nuts off, axles out, shocks in, and remote reservoirs run to the rear trunk. Then I used a HUGE torque wrench from my work to get the axle nuts tight again. All in all it took two weekends of work. The car is way too low now, so I still need to raise it up more. It's a bit of a game though as the wheels can rub on the outside fender and can rub the coilover adjustable perches. I need to raise the perches just enough to get them past the rub point. The 275 mm tires on 10" rims are just pushing the absolute limit of what can fit. I'll go to 265 mm tires once these wear out (too soon I'm afraid). I'm running about -3.0 degrees camber in the rear, but I haven't done an alignment yet.

Here's the remote reservoir mounting in the rear trunk:





I won't really push it until I get ride heights set better and a more thorough alignment done, but some quick test drives have suggested that the car is now unf_cking believable. It corners so damn hard and fast that it will make your neck snap. It is just totally insane for public road driving as the limits of adhesion are so extremely high and I've still got the shocks set to their softest setting. I have GOT to autocross this car can take it to the track!

I'm also working on a nitrogen setup. I've got the valves, gauges, regulator and tank. I've just got a friend making some custom hose for me. Then I'll be able to adjust the nitrogen pressure to get the ride stiffness where I want it.