My M5 engined, Touring car wheeled, air bagged suspension'd E36 Coupe

[Spirit]

Lol they do try us cars sometimes

[andy318is]

A recap to the last few weeks: RH ZW1's sold & also the 6 pot Wilwoods also sold. So now I've no brakes and no wheels! LMAO





So here they are 8x25x19 magnesium BBS centre locking touring car wheels taken from Steve Sopers spares from his E36 touring car from back in the 90's

Ever since I had a set of centre lockers before for an old project car I had a hankering for another set and I thought my 'Euro-ness' would sway my need for another set! LOL guess not! They were bought from a contact I made in Italy and since I sold my RH's I could send the money over to this guy and get them bought

They are used and need to be blasted & re-powder coated. I 99.9% sure they will be white, it'll work well with the planned colour of the bodywork of the car.





I wanted to give them a check over before I got too excited about trying to fit them to the car. So firstly I watched to check the true-ness off the wheels and also check for flat spots. I mocked up an old strut leg & hub from my old project car (which I had the centre lock adaptors made!) so I could mount the wheel proper to give it a spin





HOme made run out gauge LOL



1 of the wheels about 1mm of run out on the outer surface of the wheel. I want to check that is within tolerance but to me its not going to be a problem

After checking the wheels I thought it'd be rude not to offer 1 up to the car and see how fitment & space for the adaptor was going to pan out. I'd basically bought the wheels blind, only going on previous experience to gauge whether I thought they'd fit LOL meh, gotta take a punt ever now & then! Keeps things intersting but could of been a costly mistake! haha.

Thankfully it looks like everything will work out and I'll be able to run an adaptor I'm happy with from a strength point of view





The money shot!!!!!!!!!!

[andy318is]

AIRRIDE:
I've not really mentioned this in any great detail but here it is: It's made my a Swiss company called HPS their struts, tanks, bags are made in house and are fooking stunning!!! They piss all over what the companies in the UK have to offer I have to say! The struts are adjustable for dampening, the bags themselves are on coilover collars so you can get the dumped height absolutely perfect! I've gone for 10mm valves & lines with 2x 5 gallon tanks that you've seen in the boot buld & a single compressor.

They come with billet top mounts front & rear with camber adjustment on the front!! Billet coilover collars these things are the nuts! Yes certain big air ride players kits in the UK are ALOT cheaper but I wanted all out quality so I paid the price!!!! B)









Now the kit is sold as 'bolt in'.....its not! Haha

The rear bags needed some work to them to get them bolted up to the car, there were predrilled holes in the bottom of the rear bags but nothing for the top, the bag wouldn't fall out of the cup at the top but I didn't like the idea of it not being bolted in securely! Picky I know! LOL

First fix the bottom of the bag drill 4 holes in the rear trailing arm..





Only the other weekend I finally got around to fitting the top how I wanted! I know it might not be very clear what I've done but I've basically cut down the top spring cup, made up a kinda new top mount as pictured below then drilled into the top of the bag and threaded that so the bag screws up to the new mount holding the top of the bag secure





Drilled & tapped bag..



Top screwed in....



Bottom bolted in strut installed



The front bolted straight in and to be honest I've not set these up yet, all I know is they go loooooooooooooow!!!


The bags need raising because the front wheel is tucked TIGHT up against the arch and there's still travel! LOL I'm going to get them setup so I'm able to dump the car and not worry about hitting the arches







When I first installed the rear bags I was disappointed in how low I could get the car, the bags just didn't compress as much as I wanted! so.... to gain and extra 10mm

Bottom of the bag BEFORE



After



I cant find a damn picture of the wheel to arch before!!! GRRR!

But here's the after.... )has made quite a difference although you'll have to take my word for it! LOL



Ignore the bumper/arch lines.... still needs more work

I'm plumbing in the air lines etc... atm but think that's enough for 1 update!!! LOL

[andy318is]

As the years went by LOL I started to fall outta love with the Zw1's and fancied taking the car in a different style direction...so I bought these and imported them from the USA

Went on a little road trip today to Essex to pick these up from the import dudes...

Picked up my Impuls! they are 8's & 9's x 17, 3 piece split rims. All need to good refurb which I fully knew about. 1 does have a flat spot on the outer rim so I'll need to get that fixed, also there is a deep gouge on another which'll need filling with weld as I'm planning to polish them up so I cant use any metal filler.

I'll have to sort out some PCD adaptors to go from 5x114.3 to 5x120 but that no biggie, to fill the arches I think the 9's will end up ET-10(ish) and the 8's something similar

PICS....................



















And also I had a couple of boxes (well 4 actually) arrived from the US... just a quick picture for now

[andy318is]

So thought I'd throw a more detailed recap of the wheels, suspension and brakes together today to see where is going..

So back in the days I picked up a set of RH ZW1's in fairly conservative sizes of 8.5 & 9.5's.... I knew the widths were never going to make me happy to I widened the 8.5's to 10's and swapped them to the back.

Built up the new 10 last week let the silicone set for a good few days and today was the day! 8) the tyre fella fitted them no worries but said he WOULD NOT inflat them due to the width of them on the rim...fair do's I thought he needs to cover his arse... so I took the uninflatted tyre around to Tesco and did it myself :lol: These are the 225's that were fitted to my 9.5's (that are doing on the front) now I'm planning on a 215/35 for the 9.5's :twisted: :twisted:







After deciding that my local garage that fitted the first 225 on the 10 couldn't be trusted to try and fit the new 215's on the 9.5's there was only one option to find another company that fitted of stretch tyres

A phone call during the week just to confirm they could fit me in on saturday the plan was hatched. Seems abit crazy to drive 140 miles, 2 1/2 hours round trip just to get tyres fitted but needs must!!!

Rocked up this morning just before 11 and explained what was what... I needed the remaining 225 taking off the 9.5 and putting on the newly made up 10 and then fitting the brand new 215's on the 9.5's.

The chaps set to work pretty much straight away getting the 225 off the 10 and getting the 215's onto the 9.5's..... now with a good dose of jemmy bars and such like the new 215's were on in no time! Leaving some poor dudes Civic up on the ramps half way through having a set of coilovers fitted! PMSL!!!

Check out these man..... how the f*** are they going to seal on the rims!!! :smt103 :smt119 :lol:





The first 215 took abit of work first needed to soften the side walls, this was done by using the bead breaker part of the tyre fitting machine just to lossen them up abit, next was to grease the crap out of the side to give them every chance to pop over the inner beads and seal.

Got the first one on with abit of hassle (about an 1 1/2 hours) and still the boys weren't losing their rags or getting discouraged with the work in hand!!! That fact alone makes these fellas worth their weights in gold! (and thats alot of f*** gold! LMAO)

On to the second 215...... boy..... there not much to say, the process was repeated and the they had the tyre popping over the inner beads with the balster but the f*** would NOT seal!!!! :x Customers came and went, people turned up and had a mooch around and went.... and the tyre still wasn't sealing there was one area that just wouldn't sit right..... heads were being scratched and a final plan formulated :twisted: 8) A dollop of rubber beading compund around the problem area and the tyre was popped on for the final (fingers crossed) time, its went on and was leaking air... I can imagine the look of frustration on my face would have been clear but then I was reminded that there was over 120 psi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the tyre!! so no doubt it'd leak under any condition! As the tyres was slowly deflated to around 60psi the leaking had stopped and by the time it was down to 40 there was nothing, not a drop!

The beading compound was left to dry while the boys tucked into there chicken and I went to do some other shizzle (). When I got back the tyre was still inflated and it was looking pukka!!!

So I rolled up at 10.45 and left a 3.40!!! not once did they try and say it wasn't possible and try to give up, "I'm not getting beaten by a bloody tyre" was said plenty of time! :lol:

Had plenty of laughs, some head scratching and a bloody good day all things considered! But they were damn glad to see the back of me!!!!!

HUGE thanks to Style Dynamixs! Dont think any other garage would have had the patience these dudes had.... :smt023 :smt038

p.s: the actual pictures of the newly fitted up tyres will come tomorrow but you've seen the sort of s*** before.... today was all about the story

Roll the pictures......

[Dansinclair11]

its different, i like it

[andy318is]

Thanks for all the comments guys (both good and bad! LOL)

I'll try and get another 'catch up update' together later on today for y'all ;-)

[BigRuss]

Awe shit... I'm liking the body mods so far can't wait to see more

Say Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[roof_rack]

Very nice fab work!

whats with stanceworks forums and the plethora of lame gif's?

[KarlSpackler]

Looks promising. Your fab work is great

[87shark]

The project that never ends.

[Spirit]

good solid start so far and im subd

[MaxBell]

Wow, that is some serious work you're putting in! Front end swaps are beyond the skills of large swaths of this community, so keep it up!

[nellydragracer]

As much as I dislike the e46 front end conversion, I must admit the quality of work is pretty good and I'm really looking forward to seeing the engine conversion being completed. Keep up the good work!

[rhoderacer]

After watching your door handle video, I can't stop reading all of your posts without a HEAVY accent lol. Great work