cameras ready prepare to flash

[s14brent]

so live and learn.....i thought mounting a flare under the body line would be better looking...i think it works but only if you're running like normal LCA's and not a stupid wheel size ::sigh:: where to start.....

so first off....decided to test fit the 16x8+0 GTA's. The barrel barely clears the SLR knuckle block but the style 5's were super close too. The main issue was the e36m3 calipers. I needed to run 17mm spacers to clear that (-17mm).





mocked up the BDC universal 70mm flares up front. used self tappers first then used "self-aligning rivnuts" which was a good call since most of the bolts are going down into the fender vs a flat surface





as cool as this looks, i needed to raise the car up about 25mm (in total) to clear the fender at full lock. In attempt to get all the clearance I could I sanded down the inner lip of the flares with a finger sander, but it wasn't enough. I tried raising the car little by little, but ended up having to go the full inch unfortunately.
The next day I added the fender welting to kind of clean up the line where the flare meets the body



^ that's ideally where i'd like the ride height to be


I threw on the old uuc 22mm sway bar (you can see all the rubbing on the LCA and sway here that was happening in the old setup. The larger bar helps out a ton with front end flex - just by judging from pictures at the last few events I went to so this was definitely something I wanted to throw back on. I forgot to take a picture after but I've got so much clearance now, at least a few inches




I removed the AKG lollipops for some SLRSPEED ones that i picked up locally. They have the upgraded oilite brass bushing vs the delrin insert that they normally come with. I also gained maybe 2 threads of adjustment LOL, every bit counts apparently. I also liked being able to throw the jam nut on the back side of the block, running the AKG one without was kind of sketchy tbh. Of course one of the AKG's slid off like its supposed to, the other one was almost seized on there, i had to mock up a ball joint removal tool with a nut that fit through the bushing, PITA. cleaned up the bolts and the LCA and threw a little anti-seize on there this time around.

here's how shitty it looks raised up for steering clearance lol




I'm not sure where that leaves me....I'm probably going to lift up the rear 1/2-3/4" to get rid of some of that rake, might throw another 5mm spacer in the rear while i'm there. I was thinking I could cut/trim the flares for clearance and drop it back down, but I really hate messing with fiberglass and I'd like to just run it as is since there's an event on the 12th I'm trying to make and technically the car is sound as is....just sucks to look at LOL. shit update, hopefully I can find some kind of happy-medium.
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EDIT: 01/27

So this morning I couldn't stop thinking about the gap and figured I could hit it with the finger sander. I lowered it about 6 threads on ea side (not much since I think I did about 16 total)




still a bigger gap than I'd like but I dont want to run it at the minimum also, so here's the happy medium with full clearance at lock.

[moatilliatta]

I was happy with my roll bar from Ben Simpson. Makes using factory seatbelts tough.

Cage work is like paint, if you don’t go all in, it’ll bite you later.

Looking like a strip club in there. It takes some work to get the seat right, luckily your short.

[econti]

A cage only has to work once to be worth the money

[s14brent]

sorry in advanced if your eyes start burning....i got side tracked from doing the flares and will be doing those well...eventually. I started to notice (a while back) that the recaro ls/lx seat (back) kind of rattles when i'm driving hard it has a bit of play not in the base but the actual back i'm not sure why, my recaro SE's had this too- it's better when someone is sitting in it for sure, but I did not need the extra noise to worry me when i'm on the track. I was looking for a race bucket similar to what i have (bride zeta ii style) but i wanted higher leg bolsters (like the bride zieg ii). I've been noticing the price on those old seats have been sky rocketing and it had me looking at STATUS seats for a bit but I always opt for a local deal to save on shipping. Well, low and behold I found someone locally with the most ridiculous Thrash racing circuit spec beta 1 in "Fancy Jaguar" with the carbon shell. I hit them up and ended up doing a straight trade. Unreal. That night i ordered a matching garagistic passenger side floor mount and another set of seat adapters. I had the most frustrating time getting this seat spaced out correctly because the seat is shaped like " \_/ " so there is only a few mounting holes that line up on each corner while keeping it as centered to the wheel as possible.


i'm pretty sure i adjusted the seat over 8x (with spacers, without, different brackets, all the different seat mounting angles, all while trying to get the ergonomics right, while maintaining helmet clearance. Anyways....it ended up looking something like this

passenger side was delivered and installed almost immediately - i had to modify the little seat belt receptacle bracket and the fire extinguisher mount to still be usable. The extinguisher has to be on the passenger side because I have the floor mounts on the 2nd set of mounting holes because i'm short LOL!

moved some cushions around and voila!

because of the seating angle with helmet on, I was a bit further away from the wheel (arghh) so I reinstalled the momo hub and it's perfect. I spent like a month trying to get the perfect shorter combo a while back. what a waste!

I may have mounted the passenger side a little too far back. I'll readjust it another day but it's actually in a pretty comfortable spot NGL.


I think the next step is roll bar/safety equipment. I'm not sure if i want to ball out and go custom roll bar tied into reinforced shock towers with door bars, but I think I'm going to try to find a bolt in solution in case I ever need to swap chassis (and I won't have to drop the fuel tank for install - which would be super nice. And yeah, there's no point in having back seats anymore as I think I'm at the point where I need to run harnesses as the stock seatbelts don't feel well....safe. The one good thing i can't help but laugh about is that at least with a roll bar I'd have a good spot to mount my gopro!

[s14brent]

Mmmm, Yes, yes.. Updates!

If you're not all in on paint, id to wrap. Fresh paint needs PPF after it cures if you're going to use the car properly. Any soso paint will peal and chip.. ect.

Did you do billet door handles Front and Rear? They so nice, I replace all my bushings in the linkage and now the door pull action is crisp.

yeah i'm leaning on light bodywork and wrap most likely! - tbh not sure if that'll get done anytime soon. I have so many other home/house projects I need to sink my money into first. As for the billet door handles - I only have the fronts, nobody really ever sits in the rear seats! I also don't want them too as i have the 90 degree bulkhead fittings for the hand brake under each side of the rear seat . I've been thinking about a rear seat delete panel lately, but I'd have to really figure out what material to use that could hold up the abuse and not weigh a ton.
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I got a clean, used oem driver side fender finally. I bought it and mounted it up almost immediately.



busted out the reciprocating saw and flap wheel and prepped it for the new front flares.



will be ordering hardware (m5 button heads/rivnuts & cleco's) from mcmaster later tonight.



will have to reapply the 3m double side tape on the skirts when its warmer out for better adhesion as it was raining at the time.

[moatilliatta]

Mmmm, Yes, yes.. Updates!

If you're not all in on paint, id to wrap. Fresh paint needs PPF after it cures if you're going to use the car properly. Any soso paint will peal and chip.. ect.

Did you do billet door handles Front and Rear? They so nice, I replace all my bushings in the linkage and now the door pull action is crisp.

[s14brent]

Nice to see updates!

thanks! this whole thing has been on hold while i busted my ass playing catch up this year. I'm trying to get in my end of the year mods LOL

[ForcedFirebird]

Nice to see updates!

[s14brent]

i've been trying to get parts to make the e30 look better before deciding to either wrap or "cheap" track car paint job the whole thing in 2023. waiting on finding an oem driver side fender now and the 70mm big duck club universal flares to ship out (ordered about a month ago already).



i picked up this fender from the local pick a part maybe 4-5mo ago. the driver side was in worse shape unfortunately. i'll have to do some prep on it to hide those scratches but its in good shape otherwise.



added IS sideskirts and a zender style w/gurney flap onto the rear

I still haven't had time to get the tires swapped over - I'll be trying to get that done hopefully soon so i can dial in the front steering/flare clearance/wheel fitment.

I've been thinking about finishing up the rear fuel system, but I'm a bit confused. How does one convert the lines to -an? does the fuel pump pickup work with the -an adapters or do they need to be cut/welded on. also how about the fuel tank?

[s14brent]

So this summer has been brutal heat/temp wise in vegas. Been MIA, I rarely had the time to even drive the e30 at all. I haven't even put on the wheels/tires that I bought in the last post. I also have been working as much as possible playing catch up for 1.5 years of not working. Met my goal end of september (f yeah!) so I finally started mess around in the garage again.
A buddy of mine unfortunately sold his e30 recently and gave me 3 open diffs that were in his garage taking up space. The plan was to rehouse the LSD core from my 3.46 for a back-up differential I guess. (basically if i ever sell the car it will get the 3.73 lsd and I'd keep the kaaz unit).



turns out there was a 4.1 and 2x 2.93's. I ended up cleaning up the 4.1 and straight traded across for a 3.73 open diff locally.



swapped over the crown gear from the 3.73 open onto my spare lsd core (from the 3.46)



ordered all new bearings/seals again from FCP, but this time I needed a differential side bearing removal tool. The kit from OTC worked out perfectly.



pressed on the new bearings and installed the new seals/races



Reinstalled initially with 1.6/1.8 shims and the gear pattern was decent but the backlash was reading .002/.003 which is a bit too tight.



ended up using 1.5/1.9 racingdiff shims that I had from the set (last time I used 1.4 / 2.0).







Ended up with a spare LSD for the price of seals/bearings/tool. Pretty happy with that, and this time the whole process felt faster. I was thinking of rebuilding the actual diff to 3-4 plate setup, but it's literally a spare that will sit on a shelf for quite some time. May end up ordering a poly diff bushing around cyber monday to throw on it before actually sealing it up! Felt great to wrench again after quite a long time!

Only other thing I've done since then was replace the broken door handle surrounds with the leogrande units up front.





------------------------------
different typeface but none the less, 6mm stamps acquired.

[s14brent]

That's great, thanks. Yeah my mates was ridiculous, there was no progression, it behaved much like a Detroit 4x4 locker. Around a gentle corner it would bind and lock, and pitch the car sideways a bit. Great for drifting but in the rain it would be very risky.
The noise doesn't really bother me as much, just having smooth progressive engagement.

yeah, i got stuck in a rain/hail/snow storm driving back from a socal track day in my s14 (long ago). it was easily the scariest drive i've ever had. definitely call ray at kaaz usa and ask him what he recommends.

Great updates!

I also got dooped by trying to get a personal specific wheel hub. The genuine one I get from vac was a 15 pound pot metal pieces from China. But Crowders was able to order 4370.95.0604 which ended being the collapsible hub I was looking for. I like that rubber boot look too on the adapter.

I was running a drilled out momo one but the turn signal cancel was 30* off.

Film picks turned out great!

Interested to see how the GTA wheels go. I’d be all over them If the E36 suspension setup allowed the clearance for me.

so I actually had some nardi mounting plates made up- I was going to shorten the hub cut/weld but it took so long for the plates to arrive I already went through that whole hub fiasco.





I guess it can be a project for another day......

Not rushing on the GTA wheels - Maybe if i have time later this week I'll try to get some tires mounted/swapped. It's not a huge priority at the moment. I was kinda thinking i should just buy grippier fronts and have those mounted as the fleva's kinda suck up front - but that was also when it was almost 20 degrees difference here in vegas - so they might be "good enough" for now LOL

And thanks man! I'm super glad the roll actually came out. I remember messing up a few rolls in highschool/college. Hopefully will start shooting more and more film (i'll still bitch and complain about prices) And I already shot a roll of 3200P Tmax. Hoping to drop that off later today actually. Should be some really cool content - hoping there are some keepers as I actually took it to a charity event and shot some performers with it. Really getting that film GAS and want to get a 67 next.

[moatilliatta]

Great updates!

I also got dooped by trying to get a personal specific wheel hub. The genuine one I get from vac was a 15 pound pot metal pieces from China. But Crowders was able to order 4370.95.0604 which ended being the collapsible hub I was looking for. I like that rubber boot look too on the adapter.

I was running a drilled out momo one but the turn signal cancel was 30* off.

Film picks turned out great!

Interested to see how the GTA wheels go. I’d be all over them If the E36 suspension setup allowed the clearance for me.

[econti]

That's great, thanks. Yeah my mates was ridiculous, there was no progression, it behaved much like a Detroit 4x4 locker. Around a gentle corner it would bind and lock, and pitch the car sideways a bit. Great for drifting but in the rain it would be very risky.
The noise doesn't really bother me as much, just having smooth progressive engagement.

[s14brent]

How do you find it on the street, feels the same as an OEM? Mate had a KAAZ in drift spec in his S13 and it was very harsh, but I'm told they can be set up to have more progressive engagement which I would want

So this is my third kaaz differential - I too had a 2 way in my s13, and 1.5 way in my NA miata. (the 1.5 way was significantly quieter (however i did run full interior and was on new(ish) oem rubber bushings all around. The clunks usually come at slow speeds/decel and the decel ramp on the 1.5 way is much larger (guessing its something like 35/65 - i would ask ray @ kaazusa for specifics). I also had a Tomei 2 way in my s14 - all of the 2 ways are about the same from my memory but all of them are set at 100% out of the box from the manufacturer
.
However keep in mind my oem bmw lsd did make some noise on slow turns in the pits/parking lots - definitely not kaaz level clunks but it was definitely noticable and may have been loud due to no carpet and poly bushings..

Both the kaaz 1.5 & 2 ways can be setup at 100%/ 65%/35% (if you wanted to you could literally ask them to set it up for you at that percentage you want when you order it from Kaaz and they will ship it out like that), if not they should include a diagram how to set the clutch plates/shims for each setup in the box or its easily available online. The "super q" is supposed to be even more quiet, but fyi it is louder than my oem diff...which was to be expected from a 2 plate oem diff to a 12 plate setup.

not sure if that even makes sense but I hope that helps.

At prices of used diffs now days - and costs of rebuild kits (changing ramp angles+additional clutch plates) I think the kaaz unit is a great way to go even at msrp. I'll be sure to give more thoughts/impressions on this when I actually get to take it to an event.

[econti]

How do you find it on the street, feels the same as an OEM? Mate had a KAAZ in drift spec in his S13 and it was very harsh, but I'm told they can be set up to have more progressive engagement which I would want