New Front Suspension

While we were waiting for our wheels to arrive, I wanted to take advantage of the time we had, and we decided to scrap the H&R Race Springs for some custom coilovers. We ended up saving about $100 from our budget. I took the stock struts and cut the spring perches off. I then sectioned the strut in order to lower the placement of the threaded sleeve. I have done the same on my street car without lowering the perch, and the lowest setting is not low enough for this car.
I then Re- welded the parts back together in the new order. Basically i cut out a 1" scction from below the perch and moved it above the perch. It was a lot of work, and if I had to do it again, i'd probably only grind off the existing perch and weld i a new one instead of cutting everything apart.


A lot of time was spent griding in order to get the sleeve to slide on with no problems.



I shot them with some green paint, and they are good to go.

Work has started again!

Well, it has been a while since i posted any updates, but we've been busy behind the curtain acquiring parts and coming up with a game plan for this year. These are the plates I designed, and my dad machined out of some scrap aluminum. They will allow us to bolt up some wide-5 wheels (15x10) to our 4x100 bolt pattern.




We got our new Hoosiers! Got them for free too! 275 35 15. Look at the difference between stockers and those!



A quick shot of where we expect the offset to be on the rear. I used my DD because I was working on the wheel bearings, and already had the wheel off.





Another quick shot of where we expect the offset to be on the front.

How wide can you go?

We're back and we're working on the car big time now. We want more grip for the autox, and we still want the car to look good, so we have devised a plan that will blow your mind. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Kirkey seat install

We've had this seat sitting around since last year's challenge. I'm sure Jimmy is smiling below because its not in his garage anymore! We picked up this seat for cheap because it was used, and the previous owners didn't fit in it any more. It was mounted in a fiero that I believe now competes in the 24 hours of lemons. You can see the large aluminum panel we had to cut off of the back of the seat.
We took apart our driver's side seat, and we are using the stock seat rail as the base for our custom seat slider.
We cut all the unnecessary brackets off the slidersWe picked up some 1" x 1" steel bar and cut it to fit the sliders. This will keep the sliders aligned. We're using the L brackets that came with our used seat.
I had to mount the L-brackets backwards in order to keep our square tubing square whileI welded it to the sliders.
Jimmy heats up part of the slider in order to bend it more easily.
Completely welded, with all mounting holes already drilled. We had to drill them before welding.
It all bolted together quite easily because we took our time and didn't make any mistakes.
Here I am tighetening the seat rail bolts
There it is. A used Kirkey's seat, some square bar and an old seat rail.

New steering wheel & homemade hub!

I ended up pulling this steering wheel off of my daily driver because it would not de-activate the turnsignals when turning. Its a great match for this build because of the low cost of the wheel, and the DIY hub. I think it definitely looks more at home in this car!I have copy/pasted the original post from my other blog below so you can see how I created the hub.

So, I found an old steering wheel at the Junkyard. I really liked the retro look of it, so i bought it for less than $6!





I brought it home and began looking for a hub that would work. Everything i found was $$, and I really didn't feel like paying $60 for a new MOMO hub. I grabbed the stock steering wheel, and decided to cut it up into a custom hub/adapter.




I began by separating the wheel from the stock aluminum hub. I had to cut and grind a lot of parts off including the airbag wiring and horn wiring.

After about 30 mins of cutting, I spent some time sanding the surface smooth on my belt sander. I then drilled 3 holes on the hub and 3 matching holes on the steering wheel. THis is the finished product.

Here is a side shot of the clearance i have between the wheel and the column. I'm really happy with the final product and the way it makes the car feel even more responsive.



I used some stainless nuts and bolts to install the wheel. I am still planning on refinishing it, and wiring up the horn.

Autox Video

Well we took a bunch of video footage during the challenge, but I've been too busy to compile it and convert it and re-size it.... I had some spare time today, so I created this short video of one of our autox runs.



Turbo BMW e30 at the 2008 GRM Challenge autox from Carlos Mendez on Vimeo.

Chop top?

Well... ive been thinking about what to do for next years GRM challenge, and I had this idea last year, but jimmy and I decided against it, I don't remember if it was because of time, or better judgement. In any case I decided to do a photo-chop. let me know what you think in the comments section.