Well its been some time since I last posted any progress but lots of things kept getting in the way.Ive been playing with my wheel fitment and bought longer rear studs and longer stud conversion for the front hubs. I worked out that I would need 10mm spacers for the rear to clear the large hub nut.
The front hubs were going to be a bit of a problem because the alloys were ET35 8J and without spacers they interfered with the front control arm and the standard grease caps were never going to fit without having the center bores machined to 66.6mm.
Much head scratching later and I developed my own grease caps, they seem to work quite nicely and the nearside has the speedo cable drive in place and the alloys fit on the front with no clearance issues, this saved me from getting the wheels machined and I could use the centre caps that the wheels came with.
The wheels are close to the front control arm but there is between 6-7mm of clearance. If they ever touch the control arm then something else has already failed. My mk4 golf has less clearance on the front so I'm not going to worry about it.
As it stands now the wheels have 10mm spacers all round making them ET25, a little bit out of factory spec but hopefully not enough to notice.
I also completely rebuilt the front and rear brakes including brake pipes and unions and lacquered the drums and calipers in Hemi Orange (seemed like a good idea at the time)
I bought new back-plates and stainless front back/splash-plates from the brickwerks. Amazingly I snapped off two bolts on each control arm holding the splash-plates on so I had to drill and tap new ones on which took so much time.
The bleed nipple in one caliper was seized and snapped off and after trying all the easy-outs I had to end up drilling and tapping a new bleed nipple which took a lot of time and was really annoying, I gave up at one point and almost ordered a new caliper for £100, but I went back to it the next day and got it sorted and fitted stainless steel bleed nipples hoping they wont ever seize again.
New upper ball joints and track control arms were fitted and I changed everything that was starting to look crusty.
I fitted new 60mm lowering springs and shocks, although the front shock length is the same as the old ones I'm worried they will bottom out even after cutting 3 ribs off the bump stops.
I think I will have to get shorter front shocks. Ordered some KYB GR2's for now although a friend of mine has these on his hightop T-25 and says there harsh its gotta be better than no suspension travel at all.
Got some part-worn tyres for the alloys fitted.
205 55 16 Goodyear Eagle NCT on the front
215 55 16 Bridgestone Turanza on the rear.
The rears work out the same ratio as stock and the fronts are a little undersized but only 1%
I'm chuffed with the stance, the rear will drop a bit when I get the engine and gearbox back in I reckon.
