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A little late to reply haha but thanks!

It's been a while, so time for another update I guess

Where to start...well, I wanted to do something different with my interior for a while, started looking at hydro-dipping it, but I didn't want to try the DIY kit and screw it up, and the cost to get it professionally done is a little pricey so I decided to paint it in the mean-time. Nothing crazy like blue or red, I wanted to keep it subtle and still OEM-looking. So I got a SEM metallic grey spray bomb from work (technically for plastic bumpers but it's all the same stuff). I took apart my interior and replaced everything with the spare set I had (which is actually in better condition than my stock set so I decided to paint my stock set) and got to work. Sprayed everything with SEM plastic adhesion promoter, then gave it all a few good coats of the grey.



I gotta say, I'm really impressed with the SEM paint. It goes on very nice, even when I tried laying it on a little thicker I did not get any runs. And it's held up for a few months now with no signs of wear so far. I'm happy with the results, nice and subtle.





Next, I decided I wanted to do something a little different with my trunk as well. Not sure why, but I fell in love with the hardwood trunk look. So I went to the hardware store, bought some MDF and some hardwood, and got to work. Stripped the trunk and it was filthy underneath



After trying to clean it up a bit. Don't know where that black stuff on the right came from lol.



Glued the hardwood to the MDF, took the carpet out of the trunk, laid it down, traced it, then cut.





Next, I attached my 10" JL sub and Phoenix Gold amp.



Threw it in the trunk, installed my rear strut bar, and I was done! The markings were there because I was originally going to make a hatch to get to the spare tire, but I couldn't see an easy was of making it work, so I just left it. It isn't too hard to lift up in case I ever need my spare tire. I have not found the time to wire in the sub, so I'm not sure how it sounds just yet. I'll be having a wiring party in the spring so if it doesn't sound nice, I will build a box for it underneath.




Next, I had my fenders rolled because my tires were rubbing with my spacers. They still rub slightly, but not enough to worry about for now. When I do eventually lower the car, I may have to go with very slight negative camber in the rear, nothing crazy though. Just to avoid rubbing.



had some black plasti-dip laying around so I decided to try out the "angry eyes" look on my highs. Actually turned out pretty nice, although the dip peeled up a bit when I peeled the tape off, will have to redo them in the spring and not wait so long to peel the tape off.




Also got finished with all the rust fighting (for the most part, have a few smaller spots to do but the bigger areas are done). For the driver's side rocker panel, I had new metal welded in by a customer of mine, then painted and cleared it myself.



At the same time, while I was doing some painting on the back of the car, I peeled the tape off my bumper and this happened.



The paint should not have just peeled off that easily, so I took it back to the shop that had fixed the bumper in the spring, and they admitted it was their fault and they will be repainting it next week.




THEN, disaster struck. One day when I was leaving work, I went to put my car into gear, and it wouldn't go at all. Tried forcing it and it just grinded like crazy. So me and my coworker had to push my car into the work compound and I grabbed a work car. After getting it into the compound, I tried putting it into gear again and it finally went in but I decided I didn't want to take a chance and took a work car anyways.

I kept driving my car for a couple months with no issues. Fast forward to late September, on my way to work after getting gas I went to shift into second, and it wouldn't go at all. Put it in neutral and it wouldn't go into any gears, so I had to coast it onto a side street. Sat there for a few minutes trying to get it to go into gear, but nothing. Something was screwed. Luckily I was only a couple blocks from home so I left the car there, and walked home. My car sat there for a few days until we took my brother's truck and towed it back to our garage.



While it was in the garage, I decided I may as well take the valve cover off and paint it sprayed it with some VHT black wrinkle paint, although I think it was too cold so the paint did not wrinkle at all.




It sat in our garage, and I had my girlfriend's dad (who is a mechanic at Honda) have a look at it. He came to the conclusion that it had to be something with the clutch, great news...since we didn't have the time nor garage space to get that done, I drove it onto my street (started it in second gear and drove it) and it sat there for a couple weeks while we waited for a family friend to have time to replace the clutch.

Finally he had time to get it done, so I drove it down to his place in second gear the whole way, and he got to work on it. A few days, and $675 later, I had my car back and it was glorious. He showed me my old clutch, I had broken 2 of the springs.



Then the snow came and it was time to put the winter wheels on. It's crazy the difference in wheel gap between my summer and winter tires.




And that's basically it. This is mostly how she'll sit until spring.





Also, here's some random shots I took of my car over the summer / fall:






I wanted to get some fall shots of my car so I took it to a local park one day and messed around. Realized I forgot to put my front splitters on for it Also this was my first time editing with Lightroom and I love it!

Not really an update but I did this the other day when I was bored...just an idea of the direction I'm thinking of going

What Is your obsession with tiny wheels! Haha... the 'shop looks great, but would look better with 17's

I prefer a little meat with my wheels haha. Plus our roads are awful here, even with the amount of tire I have I still managed to bend a rim on a pothole...

Also a little teaser of what I'm planning:




This post has been edited by PegGTS: Jan 10, 2015 - 9:57 AM

Don't let him get to you, I'm Mr. Sidewall. I need at least four inches of sidewall for it to look right to me. I just can't get into the low profile look.

Also, GOLD!!!!

Yeah I've never been a big fan of the look either, sometimes I don't mind if it it's done right. Although I think with my next set of tires I'll go down to a 205/50/16 or something similar instead of the 205/55/16 I'm running now.

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Almost 5 years on a 40 series, and no problems. Must be user error

I've seen the way you drive though, swerving to avoid potholes and shiz

^Generally that's the name of the game.

yup. I'm sure I swerve more sober than I would if I were drunk. lol.

Haha, reminds me of road tripping in my Mustang when I was over in Cali, 18" Saleen reps with 35 profile tires, stiff lowering springs and not very good shocks..... that thing got uncomfortable

I'd probably had been the only one in a Mustang GT with 15" rims, white letter tires are where it's at.

Soon to be featuring low! Ordered a set of Tein S-Techs today and will be ordering KYB GR-2's by the end of the week.

You could say, *takes of sunglasses* our victim was chopped.

>>YEEEEEAAAAH!!!!!!!>>

I'm not chopping my springs!

I know, but nothing else fit the situation and sounded appropriate.

OOOOHHH WAIT!!!!

I guess you could say, *takes off sunglasses* our victim was slammed.

>>YEEEAAAAHHHH!!!!!>>

Went for a photoshoot yesterday, can't wait to see how the shots turn out!

Also, my Tein S-Techs came in today!

Wooooo springy spring springity spring!

Well, time for an update!

So since the last update, I received and installed my cluster pods from The_enD! Really happy with them, they're very high quality.





Fast forward to last Saturday, I installed my KYB struts and Tein springs! A friend let me use his uncle's shop with a lift to make things much easier. We got to work and within less than 5 hours we were done! It took a lot less time than I thought actually I was completely expecting all the bolts to be absolutely seized in there but they weren't bad, probably because I used about a whole can of penetrating oil on them the night before But as always, things didn't go as smoothly as planned.

After everything was put back together, I had some nasty sounds. We couldn't get the rear strut mount nuts to tighten all the way because they just kept spinning, so it was making a rattling sound in the rear. Tried everything; impact gun, holding the piston while tightening the nut, but nothing worked. Eventually found out that the nut was actually running out of thread, so threw a couple washers on and it tightened just fine.

Also the front was making a clunking sound when turning the wheel. Had a look at it yesterday and it turns out the strut mounts aren't turning smoothly with the wheels, they are getting caught up and making a clunking sound. I'm going to have to take them apart again and see what the problem is. Any ideas?

Anywho, here's some pictures to look at. Just look at that pre-springs wheel gap!





On to the show...we have lift off!




And finally:




The other night I threw my summer tires on, got an alignment, and today I went for a "I'm finally lowered" photoshoot Unfortunately the car isn't as clean as these shots might suggest, I had to photoshop out some rust that was ruining the pictures Once the weather warms up a little bit, I will be treating the rust along the rockers (Once again) and throwing some POR 15 or something similar on them. This should hopefully be the last winter this car will see so I'm hoping that will put an end to that rust.

Overall I'm very happy with the drop and the fitment, other than the fact that I have some fender rubbing happening when going over big bumps with passengers. It's not bad enough for me to be worried but I may end up bringing the spacers down a notch, try and rolling the fenders a little more, or adjusting the camber a little bit.

Here's some more pictures to look at.









There's a LOT more where those came from on my Photobucket in case you're interested for some reason.

Well, that's it for now...

Yay more low! Someone else recently had a similar issue where the rear struts wouldn't tighten up, apparently there's some kind of spacer that's supposed to be there.

Yay, my product!

Nice fake license plate.

Your car needs skirts, I might have white ones in a few weeks!

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Yeah it was strange, I never got these supposed spacers with the mounts. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of that problem until now...oh well, washers works just as well.

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I wish I could drive around with that plate all the time

I do need skirts! Unfortunately I'm very broke right now haha, I'll be starting work for the summer again at the end of April so I may get in touch with you then! Unless you want to hold onto them for me until then...

Well today I took out the front struts and had a look at them to try and find out why I was getting a clunking sound. After reading a few threads of people with a similar problem, I found out that I didn't have the arrows on the struts pointing outwards like they should have been. Aligned those, put everything back together, and NO MORE NOISE!

Now she rides beautifully, no noise whatsoever! (Other than the fender rubbing ) It's amazing how much of a difference the new struts and springs make, especially since the old struts were pretty screwed lol. Handles like a brand new car again

In other news, I had to swap back over to my winter tires again today. For the 3rd time this year. I hate this city.

Was just about to comment about the arrow being the culprit, Guess that's not needed now haha.

Haha yeah it's not very obvious that the arrow is meant to go outwards, honestly it just looks like a part number or something Glad it was just that though and not something else.

Come to think of it, it was actually one of your threads that I was reading through

This post has been edited by PegGTS: Apr 3, 2015 - 7:55 PM

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Yea, I also learned the hardway of doing it wrong, and had to basically do a strut/spring job twice :unamused:

The things I do when I should be studying



Anyways, not much to update since I've been so busy with school.

Plans once I'm done exams are to roll the rear fenders a little more and play with the front fender liners to try and get rid of all my rubbing, hopefully pick up a set of skirts, get my wheel fixed, and try out a little something on the wheels. I'm also looking into getting the cracks in my hood repaired pretty soon.

Brilliant read, Ive been glued to this all evening. WOW, how much do you love your car - well done!

Love the black wheels so much...but, not the green ones lol. Fantastic job!!

Thanks man! She's come a long way and lots of work put in, and unfortunately things have taken a turn for the worse this weekend.

Friday I noticed my engine started making a slight ticking noise. Didn't think much of it at the time, thought it could have something loose along the exhaust. Sunday rolls around and the ticking has gotten a lot louder. I finally decided that it was time to investigate and realized that this was definitely no exhaust rattle. It was coming from the engine...great. Between 2500-3500 RPM you could hear a fairly loud knocking sound coming from the engine. Did a bit of diagnosis and found out that pulling out the first spark plug wire caused the sound to stop. Great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hRAJhEtz04...czy4rwb2chw5a04

Now I've been driving it to and from work this week since I've had no choice and it's been getting worse. I'm no engine expert so I had a few people have a listen and they all seem to come to the conclusion that it's
a rod...

Tonight, I took my car to my uncle to have a look at it and he said it could be a rod but I'll have to pull the pan so he can have a look and find out for sure. On my way home, she was bogging down like crazy and barely able to drive. Stalled once when trying to make a left turn into traffic...that was a little scary lol. Got her home and parked it in the garage where it will rest for now.

Poor Celi

Well I pulled the oil pan off last night and I must say that was a huge pain to do just for a simple job like that. Anyways when I pulled it off it didn't look good in there, lots of metal shavings. Gonna have a look at her tomorrow and try and see what happened.