Just another vert. A white one.

[Northern]

Looking great.
And looking forward to your thoughts on the X-brace.
Their older bolt together version looked janky.

Agree with this.

[Driftin]

I'll take some more pictures of the pieces and how they go together. I think the quality looks pretty good. I've seen some pics of the older ones, and they did not look as nice as this.

[m2d2]

Looking good! Nice build. I'm definitely going with DriveShaftSpecialists if the aftermarket drive shaft I purchased doesn't work or look to be good quality!

[Driftin]

Got the wheels and tires up. Took the kids out on an errand and then back to its winter lair. 🙁 Getting a little rubbing on the front when wheel is turned pretty heavy left. Tires are 205/50/16 Firestone Indy 500. Wheels are 16x7. I'll have to dig in and see if the liner panels need to be adjusted, tightened, etc...

Suspension is h&r cabrio springs and Bilstein b8.

Definitely changed the look of the car.

[Panici]

Looks good!
Big change from the bottlecaps.

[Driftin]

Well, it looks better with the caps on the wheels. It was nice enough in Utah today to head out and drove around and work on stereo tuning.
No updates on cross brace yet. Still sitting on the shelf. But. The stereo is most of the way done. Grabbed a use d pioneer dehx6910bt for $50, and I had some speakers from an e34 and an amp and rack from my 944 turbo I recently sold. So, I snagged some wires, and got to work.
Front panels are not back on yet as I have new Dayton audio 5.25 and tweeters coming for the front. I'll put the e34 mids in the back seat. I tossed a small 8" JL sub behind the passenger seat for now. Check it out.

[Driftin]

Few more pics. I'm gonna need another amp to fill the other side of the box and provide output for the rear mids. Sounded light years better than the crap that was in there before.

[Driftin]

A front bumper trim full piece has been sitting on the workbench since Christmas.
Now it's on. A bit of sanding smoothed out the 3d print lines and brought the color to match my faded trim. Sweet
I was gonna tuck the bumper, but I drilled one of the shocks, and it didn't spray oil, it bled... Snow. Some sort of weird white powder oozed out for a little bit. It wouldn't really compress so I just put it back together.
Weird.

[Driftin]

I got the second amp installed. I wanted a matching alpine unit for the subwoofer, so I went to that auction site and found one in Japan for a little over a hundred bucks. Showed faster than I expected. I tested it with a scope before hooking up into system and it works great. I then setup the filters on all the amps to run the system as a two way active with a sub. The pioneer head unit supports active crossover controls as well in network mode. So I set the controls on the amps as a failsafe, with some margin for adjustment and made initial tuning adjustments in the cabin with the head unit.
With the final install complete, I got comfy in the drivers seat and started listening and tuning I fed pink noise though the unit and used a spectrum analyzer to help setup the equipment and make further crossover adjustments. Pretty fun stuff. You get to sit there and listen to tunes and fuck with the stereo. I can do that for a while.
System sounds pretty good for being a cheapo system. Only new items were the parts Express dayton mid bass drivers and dayton tweeters. I already had dynamat in the garage, I sold the Orion amp that was in the previous car, replaced it with a matching alpine unit, pocketed $30. Yanked the old Kenwood unit out and sold for $50, and put a much nicer pioneer unit that I sourced for $50, a wash. $75 for new speakers, and about $40 of wire for hooking it up. That's it. Cheap. Sounds nicer than my e39 540i dsp system.



I still haven't touched the xbrace, but I will soon. Kids hockey is almost over and time will present itself again. I placed an order for a late valence and parts.
Gonna go for this look (found on Google, probably from r3v).... But with body color bumper surround as it's already body color.

[Driftin]

Finally moving forward again.
Got the old valence off.
Classic euro parts got me a new metal one from Latvia in about 10 days. This valence has taken a little finagling to get the center trim piece to mount securely, and same with the brake ducts and the fog lights. A couple hours of work tweaking everything seems to have the pieces fitting like they should.
Gonna try to cut those tow hooks off tonight and see if I can get the valence mounted tonight, and if everything mounts up ok, then disassemble and paint some stuff...

[Driftin]

Making progress...
The classic euro parts valence is "ok". Bunch of work to get it to fit satisfactorily. But it's better than what I had.

[Driftin]

Much much better I must say

[Driftin]

Alright. I finally got around to putting the x brace on. It really was very easy, it came with new hardware for the lollipops and the steering rack bolts. Simple bolt on affair.

I put the strut brace on a while ago, and it made a big difference. There was still some shake, but it was a big improvement. Driving around today after installing the cross brace, the chassis again feels significantly tighter than before. Shake is again significantly reduced over bumpy sections of road. More importantly, the car feels "sportier". It feels like it has improved turn in and grip. A positive upgrade to be sure.

Some of you were asking about the construction of the garagistic cross brace. The pieces appear to be well made to me, and they fit together very precisely. I was generally impressed with the construction and installation.

[Polygone]

Was looking at the X brace. Will.be putting one in mine in the near future.

[CavemanGB]

I need to order one for mine.