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We’ve mentioned Fabel once before in passing, so let’s dig a little deeper and see what’s been happening with his build.
Now, we’re not going to go into intense detail about what’s being done, as I’m sure he’s looking forward to surprising some folks at H2Oi in the next couple weeks, but we’ve got enough here for a good blog post. Obviously, if you didn’t notice from earlier pictures, this car is low. Like, dangerously low, scrape-on-a-crosswind low. But since low is a lifestyle, you need to fully embrace it. And that’s what Fabel is doing, since we added some new tophats and spun the coils out to produce the maximum amount of low that proper wheel fitment will allow. This is roughly where it stands currently. Not much light shining between the frame and the ground; that’s how you know you’re doing it right.
Since the car will be hugging the ground quite literally, we took several steps to ensure that this mini Mazda won’t rip its exhaust off on the freeway. The first step was tucking the exhaust; it hung pretty low coming in, which presents an obvious issue. So we went about shortening the exhaust hangers and making sure nothing was lower than the lowest point on the car. Now it’s all nicely hidden away.
Next came extra insurance against pavement imperfections — skidplates. As anybody with a low car can attest, a strong plate covering your oil pan or other expensive-to-replace items can mean the difference between owning a low car and owning a low car with a newly-assigned salvage title. Fabel had this in mind when he decided to go with two skid plates under the front of the car — the first is just for the oil pan and is about half an inch thick, the second is thinner but covers much more area.
More welding followed the skid plate work. Well, it actually didn’t, but for the sake of this blog’s timeline, let’s pretend it did. There was a bit of midpipe that needed fabricating, so we set about making the flanges and welding in the pipe. It turned out just as one would expect a small section of midpipe to turn out — excellent.
There’s just a few things left now before owner and owned are reunited blissfully. In the meantime, though, we’re still hammering away at things on our end. Get excited; even though the temps are dropping, the month of September is looking awfully hot.
Now, we’re not going to go into intense detail about what’s being done, as I’m sure he’s looking forward to surprising some folks at H2Oi in the next couple weeks, but we’ve got enough here for a good blog post. Obviously, if you didn’t notice from earlier pictures, this car is low. Like, dangerously low, scrape-on-a-crosswind low. But since low is a lifestyle, you need to fully embrace it. And that’s what Fabel is doing, since we added some new tophats and spun the coils out to produce the maximum amount of low that proper wheel fitment will allow. This is roughly where it stands currently. Not much light shining between the frame and the ground; that’s how you know you’re doing it right.
Since the car will be hugging the ground quite literally, we took several steps to ensure that this mini Mazda won’t rip its exhaust off on the freeway. The first step was tucking the exhaust; it hung pretty low coming in, which presents an obvious issue. So we went about shortening the exhaust hangers and making sure nothing was lower than the lowest point on the car. Now it’s all nicely hidden away.
Next came extra insurance against pavement imperfections — skidplates. As anybody with a low car can attest, a strong plate covering your oil pan or other expensive-to-replace items can mean the difference between owning a low car and owning a low car with a newly-assigned salvage title. Fabel had this in mind when he decided to go with two skid plates under the front of the car — the first is just for the oil pan and is about half an inch thick, the second is thinner but covers much more area.
More welding followed the skid plate work. Well, it actually didn’t, but for the sake of this blog’s timeline, let’s pretend it did. There was a bit of midpipe that needed fabricating, so we set about making the flanges and welding in the pipe. It turned out just as one would expect a small section of midpipe to turn out — excellent.
There’s just a few things left now before owner and owned are reunited blissfully. In the meantime, though, we’re still hammering away at things on our end. Get excited; even though the temps are dropping, the month of September is looking awfully hot.
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