So normally I've been trying to do updates before/after drift days. Since I'm going to be taking off back to London on Monday I thought I may as well update this with where I am at the moment.
Drove round to a mates to swap over tyres, had been running 16's to cut about in since the drift day waiting on new tyres. Ended up having a last minute change of mind on what I was doing tyre-wise. I fitted some NS2 205/45/R17's onto my 7.5J Rays to run up front and put the 8.5J's into the rear. Since I hadn't thought about this I didn't really have tyres for the 8.5's so I left the 205/40/R17's on them... This was after seeing a photo of Ali Graham's PS13 at Driftland with what looks like not huge wheels with heaps of lock. Decided if the 7.5's were up front I could get more out of the superstyle knuckles.
The drive up and down the A9 with the car this low has taken its toll on the underside of the car. Playing "Dodge the cats eye's" with the exhaust was pretty intense, and a lot of the time I did not win. Que the fucked exhaust.
I had a few choices to fix: Cut out the smashed section and put in a new bit of plate just flat. Weld up a twin exit exhaust from scratch or Salvage what was left out of my old exhaust to make a straight pipe.
I went with the latter.
Basically bolted up a 3" section, Tacked, welded. Held up next section, tacked, welded. Originally I was going for a slight upsweep at the end as i'm a sucker for Bozo style exhausts but I think it looked a bit wank with how little i had and it being 3" wide so it was cut to make just a straight pipe.
I had been told to read Daze's S14 build for downpipe ideas by a mate. So from what was originally "find out what this downpipe is" - I ended up reading the whole thing! In this theres reference to spring droop. I thought fuck it why not. And besides there was still 10-15mm to be dropped on my rear coilovers. - Turns out there was about 10mm of preload on the rear. I won't try to pretend and understand what the benefit/problem is with this...
Whilst I was under the car I noticed the NS rear brake pipe was wet. turns out the bolt was slightly loose and got an extra 1/4 turn on it. Got my brother out to put his foot on the brakes and it pissed fluid everywhere. Luckily I had spare hoses left over from trying to get the mx5 brake lines the right length so bashed one of those in and cable tied it out of the way.
The leaky bastard
Now since I had introduced spring droop, I had lowered the car more... and it is sitting boss.
I fucking hate that arch
So with the Car sitting back on all 4 wheels I took it for a wee run. had an idea to go to the small town just on the outside of Inverness as I always see people take pictures of cars there with the Kessock Bridge in the background. What was originally meant to be an ironic photo for facebook, turned into me grabbing heaps.
that fucking arch man...
Turns out the 205/40/R17's on the rear with the extra lows made the rear far too low. I smashed my rear subframe/chassis rails about 10 times on a mildly bumpy road. The bangs had pedestrians shitting themselves. Need to size up to 225/45/R17's or something to get height in the rear.
!
