Tweet
Hello SW!
Story time
I'm a fan of stories and photos so I'll start as such. I've been a creeper for a while, but I figure its time to start contributing. Stance and I have a very odd relationship... when I dare to dream I can think of nothing better than a properly stanced car - the way the right wheels compliment the curves and cuts of a cars design does things to excite me in a very real way.
Cars that go fast with no nods given to form are also great machines- true bliss for the guy behind the wheel. However to me cars with a proper setup don't just reward the driver but every car enthusiast who glances upon them. Truly combining both is something that until very recently has been fairly rare but with so much passion pouring into our cars people are finding ways to have proper stance while still being seriously quick tools for burning vats of dinosaur blood and it tickles me, which is why I've gone from chasing timeslips to browsing stanceworks to get out my automotive demons.
So with that in mind, I'll share my past and my current automotive passions.
One of the first cars I could afford as a young man was a first generation DSM. Cheap, plentiful and great for the winters of Canadia, I was not concerned with lowness when I saved my pennies and signed over the title to a 1990 awd tsi.
Being a bit to ... ( hmmm whats a nicer word for dead broke?) skint! thats it...
Being to skint to modify much the car was content with some minor engine bolt ons and some completely unidentified wheels that I snagged as a set of hand-me-downs from the local community:
(bonus photobomb from a baby greyhound...)
As we all know, Rally is the most bad-ass form of motorsport and anyone with a DSM is just a rally-driver wannabe. I happen to live in a place with plenty of nearby logging roads and offroad trails, so the car quickly made use of its 4x4 status, and I spent many nights patching rock punctures in my intercooler (or simply scraping inches of caked-on mud off my front cross members/oilpan/control arms)
This led to some nasty front bumper scars and eventually the front of the car got some cosmetic reconstruction after a particularily disagreeable snowbank around a switchback...
The car got some budget power adders (all hand me down parts) and managed to crack the 300 hp barrier:
But eventually I simply ran out of dirt road to play with...
... also the car caught fire
Moving on I owned a second DSM that was built purely for drag racing and was not really anything special to look out, but could cut an 11 second pass at 110 mph which was a great way to kill a summer.
After that I moved on to better things. At the same time I completely fell for a cheap little Mark 2 jetta that saved my ass when the above black beast was putting me back into the poor house:
The night I got it:
This part might disappoint some but I never really did much to the jetta. It had so much personality already (right down to the permanently crooked license plate frame).
It was a tank of a car and never let me down, but it allowed me to focus on my projects without worrying about how to get to work if something went wrong.
Eventually the paint became bad enough that it was resprayed in primer and stayed that way until the day it finally moved to another home
The next project after my DSMs was an e36 that was a bit of a "barn find".
It was a 325is with an OE M3 kit spotted roadside rotting under a tarp.
After a brief conversation with the owner who had parked it due to "engine troubles and a bad noise from the wheels" it was on a trailer home for the tidy sum of 1000$.
The interior was full of stains and smells, the M50 engine was only running on 5 cylinders and terrifyingly the wheels had 4-5 inches of side to side play.
Also the right side of the car was... well:
...ewww...
But it was a 325is for less money than a new set of tires so the work began. The damaged struts (more on that below) meant a good excuse for upgrades, so while waiting for the parts to convert to m3 suspension the great spider and stain removal fest began:
The engine miss turned out better than expected, it was simply a shorting coil boot and for 40$ for a new set of 6 the engine ran perfectly!
The happy extension cord approved!
The wheel play turned out not to be wheel bearings or bushings like suspected but MASSIVELY damaged struts:
difficult to make out in this photo but there is a curve worn into them from how long they were driven on in a damaged state... yikes!
So in went M3 control arms, top hats, struts and some h&r "OE" springs. (at the time I wasn't looking to go low, due to a severe entrance ramp to my place of residence)
Not quite stance, but was a good first BMW!
Eventually I started to crave something a bit more oddball and the e36 was sold.
While waiting for the right car to pop up I picked up a winter beater S13:
I didn't know what I was looking for in my next project until it found me.
A v8 powered BMW wagon... so silly its awesome.
I found a clean e34 530 that had been imported from Germany a few years earlier, and was sitting unloved in someones underground parking because it had a dying automatic transmission. In a very small amount of time I could think of nothing else but buying this car and making a 540 6 speed wagon, so i took the plunge.
The day I got it home:
A car wash just for the photo op? Sure why not...
...and the cliche hood up angry brow shot from the day she came home:
It cleaned up nice, and sat for a while awaiting some luck to find a donor 540/6 sedan to rip the heart out of:
Then shortly after some poor soul met a concrete barrier in his 540, the car was parted and a deal was struck for the entire drivetrain
:
4L v8, 6 speed manual and rear-end complete with LSD
Also have a collection of wheels sitting around that may or may not end up on the wagon:
Part two to follow - this has taken longer than I thought!
Story time
I'm a fan of stories and photos so I'll start as such. I've been a creeper for a while, but I figure its time to start contributing. Stance and I have a very odd relationship... when I dare to dream I can think of nothing better than a properly stanced car - the way the right wheels compliment the curves and cuts of a cars design does things to excite me in a very real way.
Cars that go fast with no nods given to form are also great machines- true bliss for the guy behind the wheel. However to me cars with a proper setup don't just reward the driver but every car enthusiast who glances upon them. Truly combining both is something that until very recently has been fairly rare but with so much passion pouring into our cars people are finding ways to have proper stance while still being seriously quick tools for burning vats of dinosaur blood and it tickles me, which is why I've gone from chasing timeslips to browsing stanceworks to get out my automotive demons.
So with that in mind, I'll share my past and my current automotive passions.
One of the first cars I could afford as a young man was a first generation DSM. Cheap, plentiful and great for the winters of Canadia, I was not concerned with lowness when I saved my pennies and signed over the title to a 1990 awd tsi.
Being a bit to ... ( hmmm whats a nicer word for dead broke?) skint! thats it...
Being to skint to modify much the car was content with some minor engine bolt ons and some completely unidentified wheels that I snagged as a set of hand-me-downs from the local community:
(bonus photobomb from a baby greyhound...)
As we all know, Rally is the most bad-ass form of motorsport and anyone with a DSM is just a rally-driver wannabe. I happen to live in a place with plenty of nearby logging roads and offroad trails, so the car quickly made use of its 4x4 status, and I spent many nights patching rock punctures in my intercooler (or simply scraping inches of caked-on mud off my front cross members/oilpan/control arms)
This led to some nasty front bumper scars and eventually the front of the car got some cosmetic reconstruction after a particularily disagreeable snowbank around a switchback...
The car got some budget power adders (all hand me down parts) and managed to crack the 300 hp barrier:
But eventually I simply ran out of dirt road to play with...
... also the car caught fire
Moving on I owned a second DSM that was built purely for drag racing and was not really anything special to look out, but could cut an 11 second pass at 110 mph which was a great way to kill a summer.
After that I moved on to better things. At the same time I completely fell for a cheap little Mark 2 jetta that saved my ass when the above black beast was putting me back into the poor house:
The night I got it:
This part might disappoint some but I never really did much to the jetta. It had so much personality already (right down to the permanently crooked license plate frame).
It was a tank of a car and never let me down, but it allowed me to focus on my projects without worrying about how to get to work if something went wrong.
Eventually the paint became bad enough that it was resprayed in primer and stayed that way until the day it finally moved to another home
The next project after my DSMs was an e36 that was a bit of a "barn find".
It was a 325is with an OE M3 kit spotted roadside rotting under a tarp.
After a brief conversation with the owner who had parked it due to "engine troubles and a bad noise from the wheels" it was on a trailer home for the tidy sum of 1000$.
The interior was full of stains and smells, the M50 engine was only running on 5 cylinders and terrifyingly the wheels had 4-5 inches of side to side play.
Also the right side of the car was... well:
...ewww...
But it was a 325is for less money than a new set of tires so the work began. The damaged struts (more on that below) meant a good excuse for upgrades, so while waiting for the parts to convert to m3 suspension the great spider and stain removal fest began:
The engine miss turned out better than expected, it was simply a shorting coil boot and for 40$ for a new set of 6 the engine ran perfectly!
The happy extension cord approved!
The wheel play turned out not to be wheel bearings or bushings like suspected but MASSIVELY damaged struts:
difficult to make out in this photo but there is a curve worn into them from how long they were driven on in a damaged state... yikes!
So in went M3 control arms, top hats, struts and some h&r "OE" springs. (at the time I wasn't looking to go low, due to a severe entrance ramp to my place of residence)
Not quite stance, but was a good first BMW!
Eventually I started to crave something a bit more oddball and the e36 was sold.
While waiting for the right car to pop up I picked up a winter beater S13:
I didn't know what I was looking for in my next project until it found me.
A v8 powered BMW wagon... so silly its awesome.
I found a clean e34 530 that had been imported from Germany a few years earlier, and was sitting unloved in someones underground parking because it had a dying automatic transmission. In a very small amount of time I could think of nothing else but buying this car and making a 540 6 speed wagon, so i took the plunge.
The day I got it home:
A car wash just for the photo op? Sure why not...
...and the cliche hood up angry brow shot from the day she came home:
It cleaned up nice, and sat for a while awaiting some luck to find a donor 540/6 sedan to rip the heart out of:
Then shortly after some poor soul met a concrete barrier in his 540, the car was parted and a deal was struck for the entire drivetrain
:
4L v8, 6 speed manual and rear-end complete with LSD
Also have a collection of wheels sitting around that may or may not end up on the wagon:
Part two to follow - this has taken longer than I thought!
Comment