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aaronlosey · 02-10-2013, 05:06 PM

Little update....

So I tried to get the second Tyler S14 running so I could take it out to play with it soon, his old missile car. Of course it wouldn't start, and after tracking down electrical problems, charging the battery, checking the oil, and figuring out the car has no ignition key we finally got it started. But then it would never restart again, except for that one time. So I figured it was the starter. So I pulled it off and went to go toss the racecar starter on it to see if it would fire up again, and low and behold after something like 30 minutes of attempting to bolt it up to no avail, I realize the threads had been drilled out of the starter mounts so it could be reverse mounted!!! LOL. Oh well, with the electrical system working a bit better and a battery in the car, I attempted to finally get the windows up, but it has a bad window motor. Getting a bit frustrated and wanting to accomplish something I took it upon myself to clean up the headlights. They looked like this.

Now they look like this. Basically I bought one of those little head light cleaning kits and followed the directions carefully. They came out pretty darn well in person, I was really pretty happy with them. Takes about 30 minutes of sanding per headlight, and some other steps. Not difficult at all. Everyone with crappy headlights should do it. I then did a bunch of little stuff like gather up some Zenki body panels for it, and tried to make a list of things it needs. It is in pretty terrible shape, blown turbo, tons of broken parts, more broken parts, but I want to go drive it for some reason. I started ordering parts for it in the hopes of making it running again.

Back to the main car, the blue one. I used my contacts with our BC Racing Racer Program to get a set of custom setup coilovers for the car. I had Chelsea Denofa take my list of wishes for how I want the car to behave, along with the power and tires I plan to put on the car, and he put something special together. The box was custom modded too. Big thanks to the guys over at BC Racing for hooking up so many of our drivers with discounts this year.

I started mounting the coilovers and lots of other cool parts on the car, such as Derrick Rogers Knuckles ( Tyler got to the modded knuckle scene a bit late, swearing them off as a crutch and making other drivers boring, but when he came around, he fell in love with the idea of knuckles and silly angle ), custom extended tie rods, new bearings and hubs, and lots of other cool little stuff. I had been holding back on some of those things until the coilovers got here, but now I figured I would put them on. That goes for the brakes too. I am still really proud of the brake choice, I really think Tyler would like these things. He probably would have painted them a crazy sparkle color or something, and they aren't quite the full Project Mu effect, but they are matched front to rear and hopefully much more functional, maintainable, and enjoyable.

Here is one of the front brackets being lined up for the Akebono big brake kit. With no instructions, and tons of parts, I just sat on the ground for about an hour making piles of where I thought everything went, fitting things and testing them over and over, then beginning the assembly. The kit is really nice, with giant aluminum brackets that mount the calipers that normally wouldn't even come close to fitting on the car. A few things to note:

The calipers are giant and won't fit 17 inch wheels up front.

There is some trimming involved even if you use the crazy extra spacer pieces the provide which I didn't really use. You will need to trim the caliper in addition to where they already trimmed it. In addition I had to trim one of my rear spindles due to what I imagine is a casting tolerance issue or something, but I had to take a few MM off of it with a flapper wheel.

The calipers are very light and aluminum. I really like them. The rotors though, dear lord are they heavy. If they slid off during the fitting they probably would have broken my leg. The fronts are 14.8 inches, and extremely heavy. If this car was going to ever really get raced, I would switch them over to aluminum hat multipiece thingies.

My mess of parts figuring out where things go.

Making some clearance for opposing bolt heads that mount the bracket to the spindle. They did provide a half moon 1 + inch aluminum spacer for the feint of heart that don't want to make room for like this, but I decided this was a much cleaner look than a giant extra washer in an odd shape.

And here is a corner of the car all buttoned up! I think only one corner actually got the brake line attached at the moment, all the other sides had missing or broken bake lines! I have fancy stainless ones but there isn't anything to attach them to, just like everything else on the car! Everything has to be made from scratch, or found at a junk yard, or ordered online.

Here you can see the clearance created in the caliper for a bolt head. This was provided by the kit company, and had to be slightly modified as they didn't fully fit over my rear spindles. All in all a very nice kit that had to only be lightly massaged onto the car with slight cutting of a couple mm at most.

I had to modify some spacer pieces a bit, so I tossed them on the lathe. Thank goodness Autocomp has so many tools and lets me use them!!!

02-10-2013, 05:06 PM	#6
aaronlosey Zilvia Junkie Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: texas Posts: 321 Trader Rating: (2)	Little update.... So I tried to get the second Tyler S14 running so I could take it out to play with it soon, his old missile car. Of course it wouldn't start, and after tracking down electrical problems, charging the battery, checking the oil, and figuring out the car has no ignition key we finally got it started. But then it would never restart again, except for that one time. So I figured it was the starter. So I pulled it off and went to go toss the racecar starter on it to see if it would fire up again, and low and behold after something like 30 minutes of attempting to bolt it up to no avail, I realize the threads had been drilled out of the starter mounts so it could be reverse mounted!!! LOL. Oh well, with the electrical system working a bit better and a battery in the car, I attempted to finally get the windows up, but it has a bad window motor. Getting a bit frustrated and wanting to accomplish something I took it upon myself to clean up the headlights. They looked like this. Now they look like this. Basically I bought one of those little head light cleaning kits and followed the directions carefully. They came out pretty darn well in person, I was really pretty happy with them. Takes about 30 minutes of sanding per headlight, and some other steps. Not difficult at all. Everyone with crappy headlights should do it. I then did a bunch of little stuff like gather up some Zenki body panels for it, and tried to make a list of things it needs. It is in pretty terrible shape, blown turbo, tons of broken parts, more broken parts, but I want to go drive it for some reason. I started ordering parts for it in the hopes of making it running again. Back to the main car, the blue one. I used my contacts with our BC Racing Racer Program to get a set of custom setup coilovers for the car. I had Chelsea Denofa take my list of wishes for how I want the car to behave, along with the power and tires I plan to put on the car, and he put something special together. The box was custom modded too. Big thanks to the guys over at BC Racing for hooking up so many of our drivers with discounts this year. I started mounting the coilovers and lots of other cool parts on the car, such as Derrick Rogers Knuckles ( Tyler got to the modded knuckle scene a bit late, swearing them off as a crutch and making other drivers boring, but when he came around, he fell in love with the idea of knuckles and silly angle ), custom extended tie rods, new bearings and hubs, and lots of other cool little stuff. I had been holding back on some of those things until the coilovers got here, but now I figured I would put them on. That goes for the brakes too. I am still really proud of the brake choice, I really think Tyler would like these things. He probably would have painted them a crazy sparkle color or something, and they aren't quite the full Project Mu effect, but they are matched front to rear and hopefully much more functional, maintainable, and enjoyable. Here is one of the front brackets being lined up for the Akebono big brake kit. With no instructions, and tons of parts, I just sat on the ground for about an hour making piles of where I thought everything went, fitting things and testing them over and over, then beginning the assembly. The kit is really nice, with giant aluminum brackets that mount the calipers that normally wouldn't even come close to fitting on the car. A few things to note: The calipers are giant and won't fit 17 inch wheels up front. There is some trimming involved even if you use the crazy extra spacer pieces the provide which I didn't really use. You will need to trim the caliper in addition to where they already trimmed it. In addition I had to trim one of my rear spindles due to what I imagine is a casting tolerance issue or something, but I had to take a few MM off of it with a flapper wheel. The calipers are very light and aluminum. I really like them. The rotors though, dear lord are they heavy. If they slid off during the fitting they probably would have broken my leg. The fronts are 14.8 inches, and extremely heavy. If this car was going to ever really get raced, I would switch them over to aluminum hat multipiece thingies. My mess of parts figuring out where things go. Making some clearance for opposing bolt heads that mount the bracket to the spindle. They did provide a half moon 1 + inch aluminum spacer for the feint of heart that don't want to make room for like this, but I decided this was a much cleaner look than a giant extra washer in an odd shape. And here is a corner of the car all buttoned up! I think only one corner actually got the brake line attached at the moment, all the other sides had missing or broken bake lines! I have fancy stainless ones but there isn't anything to attach them to, just like everything else on the car! Everything has to be made from scratch, or found at a junk yard, or ordered online. Here you can see the clearance created in the caliper for a bolt head. This was provided by the kit company, and had to be slightly modified as they didn't fully fit over my rear spindles. All in all a very nice kit that had to only be lightly massaged onto the car with slight cutting of a couple mm at most. I had to modify some spacer pieces a bit, so I tossed them on the lathe. Thank goodness Autocomp has so many tools and lets me use them!!!