[Mountain-man]

Well, I finally got my wheels and brakes installed. Weather was below par, I had no help, but I got it done. Took a while though. Had trouble changing out one of the hoses as I rounded one of the flare nuts and had to use a vise-grips to break it loose (it was really seized good). And I also waisted about 2-3 hours of my time trying a "gravity bleed" which really sucked. Unlike some people who have weather perfection 365 75 degree days a year, I did my work in 40 degree and breezy weather. And it was supposed to snow again on Sunday, which it DID do. :mad My goal was to drive my car on Saturday, which I did meet.

My center caps are STILL on their way from JP, but the important parts are on the car! :clappy :w00tz

Unfortunately, I have no GOOD pictures of my car finished. The only "good" pic is RIGHT after I took it off the stands (first pic), and the suspension has not settled after being ON stands since November of 2008. And because it was dark outside and dim in the garage, the camera flash screws up the colors a bit. But you'll get the idea.

 

[Mountain-man]

Oh, yeah, specs are:
Spoon 4POT calipers and Racing Brake rotors
Goodridge SS hoses
Volk GT-C wheels
18x 7.5+50 w3mm spacer front wearing 225/40 tires
18x 9.0+47w/o spacer rear wearing 255/35 tires
Tires are Dunlop Direza Z1 Star Specs

 

[therealnapster]

Oh, yeah, specs are:
Spoon 4POT calipers and Racing Brake rotors
Goodridge SS hoses
Volk GT-C wheels
18x 7.5+50 w3mm spacer front wearing 225/40 tires
18x 9.0+47w/o spacer rear wearing 255/35 tires
Tires are Dunlop Direza Z1 Star Specs

good setup, and good looking exhaust

 

[jon]

looks good, now it just needs a drop

 

[Accelerazn]

nice!! and nice spacers ;] the 3mm H&R is sick.

 

[Mountain-man]

looks good, now it just needs a drop

Thanks guys!

The drop is coming . . . soon I hope. I'm looking at Buddy Club Race Spec dampers and I'll go with a custom spring setup. There's a place close to where I live that has something a lot like this. They'll do a custom setup with spring rates for my driving and then I'll have the struts along with that. Fully adjustable in case I want to go to a track or autox with it at some point in time.

Hey Accelerazn, how those spacers working out for your setup? I'm assuming you bought the same ones I did.

 

[Mountain-man]

Here's a pic of the car in the daylight.

 

[Accelerazn]

Thanks guys!

The drop is coming . . . soon I hope. I'm looking at Buddy Club Race Spec dampers and I'll go with a custom spring setup. There's a place close to where I live that has something a lot like this. They'll do a custom setup with spring rates for my driving and then I'll have the struts along with that. Fully adjustable in case I want to go to a track or autox with it at some point in time.

Hey Accelerazn, how those spacers working out for your setup? I'm assuming you bought the same ones I did.

yessir! i put them in and they are perfect. thanks again for the reference. i will post pics of my setup as soon as i can get them

 

[Mountain-man]

^^^ Awesome!! :tu

 

[rnstein69]

looking good :tu

just wondering though, are those stock calipers in the rear? do you find that the front is doing too much braking? ie.. is the braking "unbalanced" now?

 

[Mountain-man]

Those are indeed stock rear calipers. I just painted them silver because I couldn't find a good blue to go with a Spoons, and I don't like the drab cast iron gray. Gives the car a much better "completed" look.

These are my rear calipers off the car-

I havn't been able to see if they are totally unbalanced yet as I need to go easy on the tires and brakes for about 500 miles. (and it's still annoyingly cold here, so rubber of that compound turns to hocky pucks on the street.) BUT, from everything I've read, 99.99999% of the people who upgrade their brake calipers in the front don't bother with the rear. I think Stoptech makes a race only rear caliper application, but that's another $1k.

I can say that with the SS hoses on all four corners and the Spoon calipers definately made a difference in braking feel though. I may need to do one more bleed just to get the last tiny air bubbles out of the calipers (I hear it's pretty common when installing virgin calipers, or ones that have been drained of all fluid), but otherwise the pedal feels pretty solid. I test drove a car with the Spoons and SS hoses before my car was done and then one with stock brake system at a recent meet. The difference between the two in terms of pedal feel was amazing. I wasn't going to go hard on either system, as neither were my car and if I screwed something up I would have been a dead man.

 

[Accelerazn]

i had no problem with the brake balance with my bbk btw. and this is after several 100-0 and many 60-0ish stops after break-in procedures.

 

[cam043]

rims look great, cant wait for tha drop

 

[Mountain-man]

Just sent a message to the guy at the shop about the coilovers. Hopefully I'll have them on before the end of July. . . . Yeah, I know that seems like a LONG way off. But I got my sideskirts and front lip that need to be addressed as well. I was able to salvage the sideskirts from my old car. The front lip was toast though. Since my LED project lip V2 won't be done for quite some time, I'm going to need something simple like an OE lip to substitute so it doesn't look goofy.


. . . not to mention a climbing trip coming up which will take money away from the coilovers. . . . for a time at least.

 

[Accelerazn]

which coilovers?

 

[Mountain-man]

I'm going with a custom variant of the Buddy Club Race Spec dampers and some other brand of springs. (the guy mentioned Hypercoil or Swift springs)

Have to talk to the guy at the shop to get the right springrates for me and get all that other stuff figured out before swiping the big plastic.

 

[IntegraXTR]

nice setup. i finally got my bbk and rims put on as well

 

[Mountain-man]

nice setup. i finally got my bbk and rims put on as well

Yeah, saw your Project Mus and Advan wheels posted in the S2k pic thread. That's a really nice brake system. I'd drool on that.

What wheel size and offset are you running up front?

I thought Project Mus were really big (bigger than Brembo, Endless,) and required more space. You got a lot of clearance between the caliper and wheel too, though I noticed that your spokes are convex, and look like they stick out from the fenders a bit.

 

[IntegraXTR]

yah, i actually have a lot of clearance between the proj mu caliper and rim. my advans are 17x8.5 +45 with the GTR face so gave it some room to fit. i test fitted the advans on my friends spoon setup and it barely cleared because he was using stock size rotors, so the caliper would set closer to the hub.

the project mu caliper is sitting on a 355 rotor, pretty massive haha. i had to talk to christina at mackin industries to get the specs of the calipers, rotors and barrel of the rim haha...

 

[Mountain-man]

Ok, so the rotor hat sets the disk in closer to the center of the car? I noticed this with Stoptechs when I printed out their test-fit template. I used that as a basis to find out if the Spoons would clear. I'm working (sort-of being lazy about it) on a Spoon caliper fitment template. Spoon doesnt have one and I was scrambling for a while to get the specs.