Wider than it is Long: A build thread.

[aLaFleur]

Gonna need to see a pic of this.

Not to thread jack, but...

[Miroteknik]

this is cool ass

[E30cruiser]

mother of god....






this...this is amazing.

[Strawhat]

Ashton, it's all good- Vic is a hero for fitting those on an FRS some how.

Well the car has largely been the same for a pretty long time, some cosmetic changes here and there, but this week I have started to undertake another little project.

There's tons of pictures in here where you can see how the rear of the car sits, and if you followed the build from the beginning, you may remember me saying it took quite a bit of coaxing to get it to sit even as low as it did sit in the first place.

Well, I decided I finally needed to make it lower, so that's just what I've started trying to do.
Being low on air with a Subaru isn't that tough. Back when I had 215/35 tires and my Eurolines, this same kit I have now would flex out fully aired out. BUT, add ridiculously wide wheels that go past the factory designed fenders, and add 265/35 balloon ass tires, and it becomes incredibly tough to be low.

Went to get some supplies and...
let the cutting begin!



Project 9 by richeyryan, on Flickr

Project 8 by richeyryan, on Flickr

Here is a picture of the old rear fitment for reference, goal is really to gain maybe 1.5 or 2" total. Remember, I have already cut a lot of the above out^, now it's just all gone. haha



Mocking up with the wheel. The door jamb cut out is about 2" thick, so luckily I believe we're going to be able to weld the top half of the door jamb back into it's stock location, or only a little higher, meaning the door is also going to remain uncut- which is gonna be a big time saver.





^^^That was all day one, today we came back and started to but a little more. Lots of jack it up, take the wheel off, cut one little piece, put it back down, find something else it's touching, repeat.
The problem isn't just the front jamb, the rear where it meets the bumper is also a big issue, as well as parts under the fender. I'm gonna try to photograph them tomorrow.



In this picture above you can kinda see the rear of the fender is starting to crack under the vinyl, due to the stress of the tire on it aired out, and the shape it has. Bummer, but also something I totally expected to run into, being a novice at body work and all that. It's amazing it's lasted this long. Going to continue with the fender clearancing, then go back and repair and improve whatever gets cracked/messed up in the process.



This is the last round of cutting, this is where it's most likely going to stay.
Tucking rim is I suppose possible, BUT, the front struts are maxed out at this point, which is a huge fucking bumper, meaning the front isn't going any lower until I get new struts. I lowered them as much as I could. They sit about 2-3mmish from the fender line right now, and the rear sits maybe 2mm from the rim, if that. About as close as it is gonna get. But it looks like a huge improvement to me, even if it's such a small amount for so much work- well worth it!

[mikey G]

Mother of god

[GTOguy]

No, no it is not.

😔😔😔😵😵😵💔💔💔 much sadness is occurring.

And awesome work on the rear end I thought it looked great at sowo but the changes have made it even more gorgeous!

[Dremetos]

I feel like every single ignorant uninformed-automotive-wise person thinks this is RETARDED.
And that's why I love it.

[Dave_The_BMXER]

Wooow.

[AMGwheelwhore]

Delete the rear doors. Would be clean!

[Strawhat]

I feel like every single ignorant uninformed-automotive-wise person thinks this is RETARDED.
And that's why I love it.

Ha yeah, I feel like a lot of people dislike it, but that's okay. If it's cool, if it's lame, if it's shitty or if it's awesome- I built it, for me, and I like it!

Delete the rear doors. Would be clean!

You know when I was first making them, I cut the door line out, and thought about keeping it and thought without the door handle it would look weird. But I saw some rando photoshop the other day of one with no rear, and it looked pretty cool.

Anyway, another day of cutting, making sure everything was as low as I wanted it- and it looked basically the same as before.





Here's a picture up under the fender. It's gotten a little surface rusty- whoops! Gonna clean up and paint everything under here with galvanized paint for a more lasting finish.





Finally it was all cut out and ready to go and we started welding!!
After a lot of welding, making sure we kept everything up high, we got it pretty much on the run.
I also got some seam sealer to hit some of the holes and missed places- to keep it from being leaky.





And then we started back on the door jambs. These aren't done on the underside, but we cut out the back, and welded in the top half for a point of reference. Now we just need to strengthen behind it, box off the open part on the fender above the tire- and paint it all!




ANDDDD
Here's afterwards!





Put a sideskirt on it when I got home to see how close I was. Looks a million times better to me.




ALSO, I took the 30mm spacer off, because I was testing it, and it was like at -10* of camber, and honestly I realized I would rather have less in the rear, and give it more of a drift feel. So now the camber is much less. Maybe -4* if that, and the fitment to me looks great.

ALSO ALSO- I say we, and us = Myself, my buddy Dylan who did all the welding, and his friend Enock who helped us out today!

[Keith602]

So much awesome happening here

[aeion]

Looks way better with minimal camber in back. Great work man.

[Counteract]

Even better!!!

What vinyl did you use to wrap dude? It looks so good on chrome meisters, I may copy you with the colour scheme if you don't mind!

[aLaFleur]

Just get some color on those jams and I have no complaints left! Since my opinion matters and all ha

[244Brick]

^^ that. It's so funny how many people love the car now. In the beginning it was SOOOOOOO many ****** and people saying how stupid the shape of the flares were. I'm glad to see it came out SICK