Lucky's Series 3

[Lucky]

lol, yeah, but that would have cost me money, unlike these which cost me only dragging them out of a spider-infested drawer in the garage and cleaning the dust off them

[codge]

lol, yeah, but that would have cost me money, unlike these which cost me only dragging them out of a spider-infested drawer in the garage and cleaning the dust off them

Next Old Codge coming up the ranks there then?

[Lucky]

Right, well progress of sorts is being made. Slowly lol.

First things first, I bought a set of open-ended steel wheel nuts. Not the most exciting part of a car, I know, but I needed some slimline nuts for a few reasons; the holes on the Watanabes are too deeply recessed to let the socket grip on the short stock Mazda nuts, they're also too tight a fit for the wheelbrace so I have to have a socket to undo them. And most importantly, they're shiny chrome so look crap.

So, these are nicer to look at and longer so avoid those problems neatly


In additon, they're driven by a massive allen key so it should mean they're pretty theft proof and I can do without the locking nuts. This matters for a few reasons too, one being that the lockers are chrome and look crap lol. The other is this...




not that I'm advocating this produces racecar levels of weight saving and will transform the handling lol, BUT coming from the bike world, the common wisdom is that saving unsprung weight is three times as effective as sprung (anything supported by the suspension) so these are saving 48 grammes per corner. Wowsers. In addition, I guess there's not much point in having your wheels balanced and then having one wheel nut weigh half as much again as the other three. It may be a minute difference overall, but I'm a big believer in paying attention to small details. Why be lazy and let it make a difference if you don't have to?

...and speaking of wheels, finally got them back. In the end I went with something totally not like any of the options I discussed earlier Doh...

I chose Wicked Wheels in Guildford because I'd heard good things about them, and because it's near to Ada and Jo and I could keep being a pest and scrounging tea when I was up there. A delightfully grumpy gnome in the curmudgeonly British artisan mode did a lovely job of the refurb. They're acid stripped back, finegled nice and smooth and then painted in black with a very light blow-over of Bentley Storm Grey to keep them really dark, but they dunt arf pop in the light

Then I dropped down the road to Chessington Tyres (01483 533632) for some rubberage. The dude there Rob runs an FD, in Vintage Red the best colour, and he drifts the hell out of it so he knows about tyres lol. He did me a great price, so worth giving him a bell and asking for a rotary-friendly price if you need tyres. The only shame was they didn't get the tyres in until a day or so after they said, next time I'll order in advance and wait for them to come in before dropping up there cos I had to make two trips which was annoying. In their defence, 14" sporty tyres aren't the sort of thing many places keep on the shelf, most things with 14" wheels these days are 4x4 fitment.

So, now with Marangoni on the front and Firestone on the back, I picked them up today. Only downside is I haven't had time to fit them yet. But they do look nice, even off the car;









Mmmmmm...

Not tooo much else to report yet. The spoiler that I took a punt on arrived, and initial fitment trials look promising 8) I'm still not telling what it is yet though, keeping y'all in suspense for a while longer... and just in case I gnaws it up completely I won't look quite such an arse. I need to take some brave pills and bash new holes through the rear deck, too, so that'll take some working up to lol

I now have my lovely Belgian gasket, and this arrived from Steve;

so a thousand thanks for that, dude, I owe you a beer or few Means when I get some time when I'm not likely to be interrupted by naggin wife or screaming kids I can hopefully fix the water leak. Other than that not much to report, only I changed that stupid white paper hoover pipe that supposedly sucks warm air off the headers to the air cleaner. It was such a shoddy piece of disgraceful tat it enraged me every time I opened the bonnet. Plus it was all torn and manked where the spring clips for the airpump hose had abraded it. Utter shatulation. So, the next time you see this

It should be leak-free and minus the airpump nonsense completely Positive thinking, y'see...

...oh yeah, there was this one other thing. I decided to give the pros a go and I can always step back to ghetto angle grinder stylee modification if that doesn't work out. So with that in mind this box arrived today...



Ooooh Is it wrong to get all tumescent over springs?


Actually, I don't care. I've been rubbing myself against these all evening now . They're sooo nice


Coming next month (overtime allowing) will be new shocks and we'll monster all four corners. Top bombing.

Oh, by the way, Mike Liao at Racing Beat was helpful as you like, took four working days to Fed-Ex them here from Anaheim, cost me £197 to my door. That's two quid more than buying from the *cough* British RB distributor.... BEFORE he adds VAT and carriage Worth the punt, then

[MelloYello]

Good stuff. Keep that angle grinder handy for the rear springs

[Lucky]

Need I say more...

[MelloYello]

How was your day out with "CAR" magazine?

Do tell.

[ian65]

looking very nice...

[RX7SA]

Wow! What a great photo and your car looks fantastic. Loving that sign, "The Old School"

[Lucky]

Cheers, guys. Passed the place on the way to this photshoot thing and couldn't resist it Speaking of which...

How was your day out with "CAR" magazine?
Do tell.

Just resizing some pics, dude. I'll put up a thread

[Lucky]

Right, where to start? Errm, wheels maybe?

Well, as previously reported I go them back from refurbishing by Wicked Wheels in Guildford, who did an ace job of very dark Bentley Storm Grey. Trouble was, I only got them on the car for ten minutes before I had to put the stockers back on for that photoshoot. That was long enough to show me that they looked epic... but....

The centres looked rubbish. Where they had no centre caps the end of the stubs were manky and rusty and cack, and would look pony even if I painted them up. So, I hit the 'Bay in search of centre caps. This proved problematic, the Sharaks have a centre bore of 75mm and the only cars to use this are Mercs and VWs, both of which have logo'd-up caps, the Merc ones being worst because they generally have an embossed tristar on them too Eventually I scored some from a caravan supplier Hey, whatever works lol

The Watanabes were even trickier. I didn't think they'd work with flat centre caps, it would have just looked wrong. Again, the Bay of E rescued me, scored three shop soiled old skool Wolfrace alloy dome caps for dirty cheaps. I found out why when they got here;


"shop soiled" clearly means "mullered" hahaha. To be fair, the guy was upfront that they were mutilated, no point grizzling about it. I got to work onthe worst dents and roughing the surface up for paint. Clearly they couldn't stay alloy, that'd look poor with the dark wheels



Got the worst of the dents out, but some I just left. I quite like the used and abused look. What wouldn't do was the profile;



Bent . A bit more panel beating had them fitting sweet



Then on to the fun stuff... primer;


Shiny black in best Halfrauds' rattle can stylee


then a gentle blow-over with Ford Graphite Grey. Couldn't find the Bentley one in rattle cans, not surprisingly . This is close enough, slight miss-match, but it'll do. Shame I didn't have the caps to give the refurbishing dude, really, would have been easier lol


The same process for the flat Sharak centres, and a few coats of lacquer. Now comes the clever part, the finishing touch. I got onto Pete at Purple Panda graphics and he was superb, did exactly what I asked and always got back tomy stupid irritating emails same day. Incomparable service, the guy's a legend. So, my bespoke one-only centre caps now look like....



BOOM! They're shiny chrome vinyl though that doesn't really show up in the pics



I'm definitely feeling the love for these puppies