Wrapping things up

Now I know a few things about wrapping a vehicle.  The first thing is that you should not do it yourself!  Man I have some wrinkles in there for sure but it's kinda hard to see.  In the end I really see the value in having a pro wrap your vehicle for you.  It took forever and I really feel like the results (which were 100% the result of me trying to save the team some money but oh well) ended up not very perfect.   I wish I would have just done some accent graphics and added the sponsors after.  At least the logos that go on top are ending up smoother.  More pics of those soon.  Almost done.

Oh, and did I mention that Tommy's fine work in cutting the hell out of our wheelwells and re-welding them have netted us a much better stance?  We added miata fender flares (weird, but they fit) and 30!mm wheel spacers.  Now the BBS wheels look proper in the opening and after a tiny adjustment now we've got no scraping at all.

Test run with the new suspension

We decided it would be good to shake down the car before our first event, so we went on a little jaunt through the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive from Brookfield south all the way past Whitewater and back.  After some minor fuel pressure regulator changes, the car seemed to be pretty much sorted out.  I'm more than a little amazed that it came together so smoothly.

Engine is back together and tightened up.

Everything is in now, along with a racing radiatior, oil cooler, and new injectors.

For a good head job call Mraz

Well Tommy finished putting the cams back in the head the other day, so we decided to get busy and put that sucker in.  It really does look incredible all sandblasted and new; amazing how much that does for appearance.  Not to mention the performance upgrade!  I think we milled 4 tenths off of it?   Not sure but I'm sure we won't be dripping oil anymore, that much is for sure.  Well, we'll cross our fingers just in case...

It was right about at this point that Tommy decided it would be best to drop a 10mm nut into the engine, from the top!  So we spent the next 2 hours jiggling a wire with a magnet on it around to try and fish it out.  It worked!  Tommy gets the credit for both, dropping and extracting.  Good thing, because we would have been taking the transmission off again if it wouldn't have turned up.

Here you can see the intake all going on; soon the rest will be connected.

We got the motor back in!

After a long, sleep deprived night, Tommy got the transmission all mounted up properly and then we put the whole motor back in.  Our new badass stage 1 motor mounts were a little crazy to figure out but after taking apart the old ones we figured it out and installed them, along with the whole subframe going back into place.  Now we're just waiting on the head to come in and we can start putting the motor's top end back together.

Also we got the new racing radiator from Afco this week, I'm still not exactly sure how we're going to mount it but it should fit no prob.  It has something like 175% of the surface area of the stock one, so it should provide mega cooling.  (hopefully)

Tommy installed the new bearings in the front wheel hubs too, which should be much nicer.  There are so many things that were probably fine but after 100,000 miles you've gotta replace stuff while it's apart or it for sure will come back and getcha later.

The interior is finished for the most part, I put in a momo steering wheel and pedals but that's about it.  There is talk of installing a drifting style park brake and possibly racing seats with 5 point harnesses, but who knows...

Installing the racing clutch and stuff

After a little time off we got back at it on Saturday and started the process of putting her all back together.  For starters we put the new lightweight BBM flywheel on, followed by an ACT stage 2 clutch.  Top it off with a racing pressure plate and reconnect the transmission.  I was pretty blown away that Tommy got it all lined up on center and installed so quickly.  While we were in there I started wrapping up all of the gnarly parts on the electrical wiring.

Getting the crap out

We started tearing absolutely everything on the car apart, especially the engine bay. It was super clean to start (or so we thought) but sfter getting everything out we realized there was a lot of wotlrk to do.


So I hosed down the whole engine bay with degreaser and then pressure washed it off. Then i went through with a rag and sone carb cleaner and got to business on the grimiest spots.



Then I had to make a little plastic scraper thing to get the tops of the pistons super clean, but it worked out great!



Heres a pic of the new (used) H&R coilovers we got from the Bahn Brenner Corrado.



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