Project Stu: The Afterbirth

[stu_]

Hello everyone

I've finally joined the 21st century and bought a digital camera. So to celebrate this event, I've decided to put up the obligatory project thread. However, there's no project as such, just me very slowly making my car slightly better, breaking it, fixing it, swearing at it, etc.

I bought this 2001 200sx touring back in 2007 as a very standard car -



I really haven't done much to make it any prettier, now days it looks fairly standard, just slightly lower and slightly dirtier -



It does a little of this -



It has an engine -



The spec is basically Stage 1, with lots of other fun bits done.


So the car works pretty well now, the next stage is to get some new wheels and new paint sorted

Also I have to thank Scott (Scott.B), Cam (reno911) and Duncan (Dunkz) for being my main helpers getting stuff done on the car

[stu_]

In October I did a lot of rust removal, undersealing and polybushing -





Then fitted some seats for the next track day. R32 GTR seat -



This just needed one of the rails extending to mount into the car -



Cobra bucket seat on my very own home brewed rail



Some Stack gauges and Momo wheel -



I've also been fixing this rather battered S14 kouki bumper -

[stu_]

Okay, now for some shiney stuff!

Back in May I picked up a set of O.Z. Futura wheels. They're 18x8.5 and 18x10 et45, which aren't really great sbody sizes, but I have a plan for that



First job, take them apart. The bolts require two 10 point sockets to remove them, which are quite hard to get hold of at a decent price.



I wrote a script to help me - Offset Calculator

A quick test fit -



Then I started stripping off all the layers of paint that's on them -



Still a a fair bit left to do, the amount of paint of the wheels practically changes the shape of them



Some inspiration -

[Chavbo]

Shit son Didn't know you had the OZ rims, that's gonna be hot

[weiner_patrol]

About time you got a build up going lol nice one stu

[Cambo]

Its finally here haha. Wheels will be EPIC.

[stu_]

Cheers lads.

I'm not sure what colour to paint the wheels yet (or get Dunkz to paint the wheels rather ). I'm thinking of putting them back to the stock silver colour, as it looks 100x better than the black they were before. Any better suggestions?

[stu_]

Up to November now. I spent many weekends getting the car ready for Crail. However the week before the track day the front wheel decided to finally eat through the ignition wire in the wheel arch loom.

Cam came to the rescue and we bodged the loom back together, then spent the next few evenings relocating the whole lot into the engine bay.

A couple of days later we all headed down to Duncan's the night before the track day... and that's where it stayed for the next 6 weeks With no spark or injector pulse.



We couldn't find anything obviously wrong with the wiring, so I had to wait until the Christmas holidays before we could take a proper look at it.


After new year, I printed out a few circuit diagrams from the manual...



and then started ripping the car apart -



And FINALLY I found something that wasn't working!

Quick bodge to test -





IT STARTS!

The small 7.5A amp circuit marked as "MAIN, MAFS, CMPS, IGN/SG, NATS" in the manual had snapped inside its insulation, where the wheel had been previously rubbing on it. The wire must of been strong enough to last a couple of days after we relocated the loom, then finally gave up.

[Cambo]

And what fun we had sitting in the cold, rainy dark till 12 each night cutting and soldering 150 odd connections haha.

[Aj82]

Was wondering when we were goin to see a project thread on this mate.
I say keep the oz's silver, think it will work best against the red.
Glad to hear you sourced the starting issue out.


Cheers Aj

[Dunkz]

red?

[Aj82]

Paintwork dude.
Black can look nice but always think it makes the wheel look much smaller when it has a polished rim.

Cheers Aj

[Chavbo]

BMW Rubinschwarz

[Jonny Mac]

glad you got it sorted! looked like a ballache stu!!!

[Dunkz]

Paintwork dude.

Cheers Aj

what makes you think its gonna be against a red car?

BMW Rubinschwarz

Thats been done. We've got a list of other colours to get through.

[Chavbo]

I meant the wheels btw

[samcash88]

Really like the way this is going, watching this with interest

[joey200sx]

wheels are awesome. glad i was only there for one day taking out the dash,
bet there will be a few annoying squeaks now!lol
Just need some 555's and a chip upgrade!!!!

[stu_]

A little update -







In these pictures I have the 2" lips on the front (20mm spacers to clear the coilover) and the rear lips are spaced out to the equivalent of 3.75".

According to the offset calculator that takes them from -

F: 18x8.5" et45
R: 18x10" et45


to

F: 18x9.5" et12
R: 18x11.75" et23

[weiner_patrol]

Manly offset win looking good...just need tyres as well eh? hehe