Took off the hub and sent it to a local pep boys to have them press in a new wheel bearing. Got it back a few days later due to my schedule. Started putting on new brake shoes that I had gotten from R1 concepts. %$@#ing stupid brake shoes and the goddamn springs. I will personally falcon punch whoever came up with this goddamn design in the crotch if I ever come across him/her.
Once I was finally done yelling my whole repetoire of curse words at the hub and its brake shoes, I put it all back together onto the car, and trekked 14 miles to Battle Version on the world's worst alignment ever.
I stated my wishes to Mr Alex Pfeiffer: As little camber as possible in the back, as well as more fender clearance to allow for fatter tires sometime down the line. 0 toe all around as well.
He totally understood because he did had done the same on his car to fit something like 10.5 -1 wheels for the rears of his battle version sc,with pretty meaty tires. After a couple hours of thoroughly going through my car (thankfully, since I never did), he was able to get the specs down to -1.8 camber in the back with still enough room to run a bit more tire, keeping the fronts cambered in at around -4 or -5. The drive home was a blast. The car felt so much more direct, so much lighter, though it was still the 3546lb hunk of metal (as I had found out earlier from battle version's scale when he corner balanced it). I jacked up the car the next night to tweak some things that needed fixing.
The lca was shortened right around where the reinforcement plates/gussets were welded in near the subframe.
Because shorter lca had a couple noticeable effects. It raised up my rear just a bit due to the lack of negative camber and also the more vertical angle of my coilover. It also brought the coilover closer to the swaybar, enough for the endlink to make contact w/ the coilover.
So, I jacked it up, and moved the endlink to the other side temporarily. A few more fixes will come in just a bit.
But before that, I decided I'd change up my exhaust game and get rid of the custom y-pipe that I had made a bit over a year ago, and got myself a fujitsubo since they seemed to be clearing them out at tein headquarters 20 miles away from my house. Headed over and picked one up.
Ever since I heard the fujitsubo system on a friend's s2000 in high school, I've always wanted one. The subtle yet attractive tone always had me hooked. Few problems though.
The custom midpipe that led to the cat, which then got bolted onto the fujitsubo catback sytstem, was, well, custom.
The length of the piping that went from the header to the 2nd cat was different from stock, so I had to get it modded. The flanges that connected the cat to the y-pipe was also horizontal, instead of angled like stock and the fujitsubo.
Thinking I'll just uninstall it myself and take it over to a muffler shop to have 12" or so hacked off, I took the pipe off the car, only to see one of the shittiest piping work ever. I didn't take a pic just because it was a pain to look at, but at the bends, the straight portion of the piping continued through the bend so what should have been a 2.5" piping was now cut in half due to piping being inside the opening of the piping, if that makes any sense . It didn't help that the welds looked like diseased and dying gorillas somehow got hold of harbor freight arc welders and went to town on the joints.
So, I put it back on, and drove it over to a different muffler shop than the one that originally made me the y-pipe and had them make me a whole new front portion, going from the cat on the header to the 2nd cat on the midpipe. They also replaced my now very smashed up cat with a smaller cat so that I wouldn't scrape it on lane dividers anymore. Had them install everything and I started it up. At first, i thought it was stock because the tone was so quiet, but after a drive around the block, I liked it. A group of e30 m3's that had come to get work done stared as i quietly drove off. Seeing as fujitsubo used resonators that trump the stock resonators in size, the quiet tone didn't really come as a huge surprise.
Another reason why I got the y-pipe re-done was because the y-pipe that was customed was a bit too short, so it pulled the axleback back, and in doing so, because of the swinging motion of the axleback hangers, it also pulled it up. This cut into the clearance that should be there for a rear lip, so getting it all redone was perfect. Painted the remaining parts of my kit that were still unpainted and slapped them on.
After a couple more cans of gloss black rustoleum and duplicolor clearcoat, they went on.
Once I get the wise wing's primer to work well with the paint, I'll be putting it on and giving the sc a wash for the first time in a couple years.
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