Figured I'd share the things I've done to my car so far, plus get some opinions for the guru's and average joe's out there. Car info then pics
2002 5sp AR - Currently has 140k, bought it almost two years ago with 119k.
Right off the bat I wanted to 1. Upgrade suspension (I personally can't stand that fluffy/luxury feel when I'm in my go-car) and 2. Pay that sucker off (yes, I got it at a stealership).
Before that though, I did most of the fluid changes and such. Oil, Oil filter, Tranny, Diff, Radiator fluid, brake fluid, and clutch fluid. Didn't do power steering. Everything looked great except the Tranny fluid, it was very gray, cloudy, and runny. On the pro side though, very minimal shavings.
Back to suspension.. Ended up going with Stance GR+ simply due to many positive reviews and the good price from THMotorsports. Plus, I liked that they came with 12k/10k springrates, so didn't have to worry about that.
Now I'll shut up and give you some pics
W/ Stance. Wanted to break 'em in before I went too low.
W/ Stance. Wanted to break 'em in before I went too low.
Had to get a few bottles of water for work.. made me a bit lower than I really was haha
Bad pic, but finally came up on a deal for some Work VSXX's.
Front - 18x8+25 came wrapped w/ 215/40 Yokohama Eco's. Had decent tread left, so I left them on.
Rear - 18x9+25. Tires were dead, so I wrapped 'em in Milestars 225/40 (540 Thread count!) These were the cheapest at discount tire for $100 each.
Test fitting rears
Front on the ground, pre roll/pull.
Rear again, on the ground this time. Look at that toe
I tried driving around before rolling and pulling on these.. NOT a good idea! Ended up flipping the tab on my front left fender. Oh well though, I learned.
The roll and pull at 9k racing in La Puente. FYI - I would not recommend them.. They were very nice and all, but the guy pulled my fronts out wayyy further than I asked him too. And I asked him like 4 times...
You can see here. Spacers maybe..
Just some cool pics. Oh hey sXe10 SoCal guys
I went cheap for the upper strut bars. Figured that based on reviews, the uppers don't make nearly the impact as sways do, so I'll go cheapo on those and spend money on sways w/ figs end links. besides.. $90 to throw a piece of metal for both upper front and back is a good deal imo.
That cut out on the right is for the fuse box by the battery
Don't mind the dirty engine please! Oh and I picked a Joe Z from a member on here for cheap as well.
Playing w/ Grills
The black one is a cheapo from amazon.com for $30
Ended up with the chrome 3 bar, Might end up painting the Chrome black. We'll see.
APEXi N1 Exhaust - Catback
Sounds great behind the car, but can barely hear it from inside the cab. There's of course pros to this, I may cut out the resonator in the future depending on long it takes me to get on with the real plans..
Timing belt, water pump, thermostat, + gaskets. Unfortunately I was a bit nervous to the cam seals so I didn't do that. Wish I did -_-
Wheephole leakage in water pump
My Method (3 foot cheater bar) - worked no prob.
Was pretty sure I had a leaky reservoir in my fan shroud, so replaced this.
With this
Clutchmasters FX100 clutch kit - just put this in the other night!
OEM flywheel
Also did the figs CDD in the swap and installed an aluminum radiator, supposedly made by the same shop as mishimoto just non branded. Mainly did the rad upgrade as I still have/had leaks of coolant (only when at high altitude..), so wanted to eliminate the possibilities of bad seals in the oem radiator.
I'll add pics of other things I have later on. Plans are to turbo at moderate boost levels at 6-8 lbs w/ stock internals. Run that relialbly for a while then upgrade internals w/ gte parts, arp studs, resurfacing, port and polishing, etc. Still need to determine which ems to go into, or more specifically, who tunes what in socal haha.
Always open for input, questions, and suggestions! Thanks for looking
I'll have to talk to him an see what's up, his headlights turned out real good. I think that'd be a pretty good look on that grill, thanks for the fyi.
I was devastated though when getting to my spark plugs. Hadn't taken off the throttle body or upper intake until this point. Tons of valve cover gasket leakage, and a little bit of seepage into the spark plug wells. Needless to say, two valve cover gaskets are on their way.
Aluminum radiator I picked up for cheap - supposedly from same mfg as Mishimoto. Was having coolant leaks when going up into the mountains, hoping I'm done with coolant issues now -_-
Installed this during the clutch swap - Between that and the single mass flywheel, finally feels like a real clutch!
The nastyness of wet/dry/dirt build up between my valve covers
Gross!!
Looks like normal wear and tear to me, but that's only through a quick google. Most of my spark plugs looked like this. The ones that didn't look like this was because oil got on them from removing them where oil was pooled up on top of them :/
That gap seems huge! Didn't have the measuring tool handy :/
More pics of my dirty @$$ tb and intake parts
I think part of why it's all sooooo dirty is I left the top part of my stock intake box off, and my guess would be that the drop in filter didn't have a good enough seal and was able to sneak in some nasty stuff. I'm sure there are other reasons why it's that dirty, so if you do know please chime in!
I do have NGK Iridiums that I was going to install, but after seeing how nasty it is in there I decided to hold off until I can install the new valve cover gasket. Don't want new plugs taking oil baths on their first day!
Testing out some interesting prototype camber adding front LCA spacers here. This is max height on Stance GR+ coilovers with an 18x8 +25 wheel wrapped in 215/40's. Turns out they also lower your height by 1.75 - 2 inches. Lesson learned here - these Do Not work with Stance! I believe there's a member somewhere on here that has done these with BC and worked fine.
Had to switch to a stock wheel so I could turn. We finished installing them at about 3:30am soo didn't really feel like taking them off haha
annnd saw this gorgeous thang drivin' around
Immediate plans are to get those valve cover gaskets then clean the crap out of my tb, intake, valve covers, and do my best to clean out the spark plug wells. Then I'll throw in the NGK's and call it a day for now. I have a huge pile of parts that I'll be taking plenty of pics soon, and then the real fun is about to begin!
MY2J, haha thanks! What all do you have to do? I like working on my car and all.. but the roughest one was probably doing the dang water pump and timing belt. It was my first time on this car, so I took my sweet time to observe and learn as much as I could. To do it again would be much easier, but I still would not want to do it ahah. Reading other people's DIY's was my motivation as well
Newest pics = Post 1882*
Going to try to revive as much of this as I can. Pictures won't be exact, and I may not put ALL of the pictures back, but I'll do what I can over time.
*** All of these are hotlinked. Click on them and they will take you to the specific post.
Obviously I couldn't...
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