Corvette Big Brake

Installed the C5 (13") front brake upgrade on Kira and oh-boy is it an improvement!
To give you an idea of how big of an improvement is simple. I was running ZR1 wheels with 285 kuhmo excsta's, (no clue how to spell it) treadwear is 180 so basically a sticky tire. With this wheel setup the stock brakes couldn't lock up the fronts at all. Now with about 60% peddle effort they lock up.

Now if your saying wow 60% peddle effort to-lock is bad, then Congratulations your not an idiot! I knew it wasn't good but I figured like an F1 pro I'll manage it fine. Sooooooo, three weeks later I flat spotted the fack* out of them in one quick stop on the highway. Blah blah blah this post is to long so the rest in bullets
-put rear tires on the front. 295's
-did a burnout with the fronts on the back. improved the condition of the tires a bit
-bought a new brake bias spring that applies more pressure to the rear
-will install over winter and report
-vette is put away for winter. = Winter projects begin and cooler updates

Winter Time!

Well I parked Megan (silvia) in its corner for the winter yesterday and today it officially snowed! 

---Winter is Here!

I'm super excited for winter because some of you may know I'm a nerd at heart and I take great joy in designing and building then I do after the fact.

The plan for gangsta wheels is still a go. Figure the sizes I'm going for are 18x10 fronts and 18x12 rears. Not sure on the offset but "low." So over the winter fender flares need to be mounted. I've been getting quotes and they have been pretty ridiculous so I'll do it myself. As of now the search is on for silvia fenders to use as a mock and hon my skills.

Similar look below but with gnarly wheels and more low. I'm going for a more gangster look as Kira (corvette) has taken over as the functional performance vehicle. 

I'll save the Kira build for another post and an update is due as well

Greddy Turbo Timer

Picked up a Greddy turbo timer from Mark who's truly generous and probably one of the coolest dudes on earth. 
I was super excited to get home once it was in my possession. First thing I wanted to do was take it apart because the one I'm building is very simple and I wanted to compare.

Well I was impressed to an extent. Quality of work was put into making the board very compact with SMT components and a multilayer board. 

Definitely would be considered a quality product and a testament to Greddys claim to true products made with R&D if it wasn't for the one fet showing signs of significant overheating. On the ribbon cable you can see some browning and the plastic casing on the inside shows signs of slight melting (not shown in picture). I'll make some sort fix and update. So beware if your buying one with significant past use.

Corvette Updates

Vette has an exhaust system now and so its officially on the road. Installed ZR1 wheels on all 4 corners with 285 in the front and 295 in the rear. When these tires are finished I'm probably going to run 295's in the front because they should fit based on how well the 285's fit and then source some 11inch rear ZR1 wheels to put 315's in the back.

With the bigger wheels and tires the braking system feels under-rated and so time to go BIG!.... well bigger

-Z06 front calipers
-Hawk HP+ pads
-13" Stop Tech slotted rotors

Still haven't lowered the vette as its a timely procedure and need to get the Silvia up and running before I do.

Larger wheels fill up the gap well

For some reason the Silvia isn't starting. It cranked over, sounded like it fired once and now just cranks.
I'm glad something is finding some good out of this.

Awesome BMW video... Must watch!!!

Oh and updates on everything soon

Scraped my first 240, Cal's Bmw, Silvia Chilling

Well I am officially down to owning 3 cars as I have just scraped my very first 240 :(

I still love how it looked lowered, pignose front bumper and black rocker guard, it could have been bad ass with some wheels and more low.

The day i got it home

Cal's BMW is coming along, going to help him today finish the brakes and hopefully exhaust

Silvia still being DD

Winter Plans Already?!

I always plan my projects well in advance and right now I can't wait to get started on this one.

I’m happy with how the Silvia looks presently but I feel it’s far short of my dream. So planned for winter is fender flares (not over fenders) which I have kicking around already that will be painted black to go with the cars theme. To fill the fenders I’m thinking something such as Work VS-KF’s in burning black, hopefully financed by a massive parts sale that I plan on doing in the coming weeks. Besides wheels and body work I only expect to be purchasing 5lug hubs, and rear Z32 brakes.

<3 Wheels

Bald Tires and Massive Fender Gap...

The Silvia has been taking a well deserved beating while being DD for the past 2 1/2 months and I can definitely say I'm proud of how reliable its been the entire time.

However I should check the tires more often :p

So now for the time being I'm running my R compounds that i normally use for drag

Corvette is running, sounds wicked at idle with open headers, but its just unbearable when driving so I need to find an exhaust shop pronto.
The vette needs a few more things before I'm happy with it, such as fixing this fender gap. Seriously how did such an acclaimed sports car have such a ridiculous gap.

Car Aerodynamics Simplfied

Found a very simplified and informative write up on vehicle aerodynamics that would benefit a lot of the average joe's so take a few minuets to better inform yourself.


Aerodynamics Simplfied

Mehh, New Starter is In... thats all folks

My new starter came in yesterday which is way lighter and smaller, allowing clearance of the exhaust header and shaving a few pounds (20lbs vs 10lbs) off the car at the same time.

Oh, and a more current pic of the E30

BMW E30

Teaser Pics

CCW Fail

Saw this browsing some corvette threads.

Couldn't handle the 335mm slick on this 18x13" wheel

First Stretch and Poke Meet of 2011

Wasn't at this one but next one hopefully.. Enjoy

Stretch N Poke 2011 from Matt Berenz on Vimeo.

Updates

 Well after headaches with the passenger side header install I opted to purchase a mini-starter. Simply waiting on the mini-starter and AIR delete bracket to arrive now, and sadly neither company gave me the option to expedite the shipping even after clarifying shipping price is not an issue and one company couldn't even get back to me on approx arrival date. Based on my experience I do not recommend www.tpis.com for Canadian buyers however they may get a second chance and Ultimate Corvette Parts didn't fair better especially for being based in Ontario Canada.

In my spare time I've been helping my buddy Calvin with his E30 project. Lets just say this thing will be insane!!!! Key words to describe it: Slammed/Stretched/Turbo M30/Work's/Art

Picked up some tires for the vette, and for Cal's beast courtesy Samson at GB Tires

And the silvia is chilling

Weather is getting better and so is the Corvette

Finally got the oil pan off the other day and after removing the oil pump, a 5lb hammer did the trick and knocked the POS dipstick tube out. I ordered a Felpro gasket which looks amazing by a quality and engineering view point but hopefully it fits as good as it looks.

Underside with the oil pan removed

Oil Pan. Little bit of sludge but nothing to worry about.

Up-skirt shot

Looking better, but I still hate GM

Well I've been slowly working away on the corvette spending about an hour a night. My biggest problem right now is that the oil dipstick is stuck inside the block and requires removal for the passenger side header install. I have no choice but to drop the oil pan and hammer it out but I'm not going to start that till the new gasket comes in which I'm ordering tonight along with a new dipstick but that may require a stop at the stealership.

Today I installed the O2 sensor with shortened harness and routed the new Taylor 8mm spark plug wires on the driver side. I'm not a fan of the wire lengths and apparently they are supposed to be custom tailored to my engine. Next time I'll probably go with over the top header wires and hopefully they just copy OEM lengths.

 Updated pic

Bings Meet

Lots of People, cool cars, great people, crappy weather but all and all a good time. Thanks Bing

hopefully you can see the pics without reg

Bings Meet

More

Awesome Pics (thanks Tim S.)
wilwmak's Flicker: Bings Meet



Video (my car is first in vid)

YouTube video of the cars parked

Busy Busy Busy no time to Post

But hey look ZR1 wheels finally on the back. Yippe!

2 Cars at Once?

Well tonight I finally finished the front sway bar on the vette so I'll do the write up Good Friday while I'm recovering from the previous party night in Toronto. Also managed to pop the hood on Megan (silvia/240), checked the turbo elbow for cracks, and just refreshed my memory on things to do. 

May 1st is the big annual "Bing's Meet" where the true 240 and Nissan owners congregate. Last year I won the award for People's Choice and I don't plan on a repeat, once is good enough. Its time for the car to build more character then style if you know what I mean. I do plan to fix Megan up prior to the meet with the basic TLC and probably redo the cracked front lip, and maybe I can find a shop to cut and weld my fenders and mount the flares. I don't have the tools to do the flares on my own so I'll bite the bullet and hope they do it right but still need to find a shop in short notice

Corvettes Suck, Extended Studs Install Process(venting on my progress)

 Boring post, reader beware...... I'm posting simply so people don't think I've abandoned blogging.

So...... I started this weekend with the thought of possibly getting the vette on the road. Yeah that's not happening now. I planned to do the simple things first such as front sway bar install and new extended studs in the rear.

I started with the extended studs because I wanted to mount my fat ass wheels with sapcers and see how pretty she looks. The moment I took off the brake disc I realized this may be bad. I've never ever taken a look longer then 2 seconds at drum brakes or my rears on the vette before today.
The problem is the corvette has a drum ebrake that sits behind the hub preventing me from knocking out studs or installing new ones. Well there was enough space in places so buy rotating the hub I had enough back space that i felt comfortable hammering away at the stud. Holy crap!!!! the studs were in there good. Someone must have torqued the wheels to some ridiculous amount at some point. I managed to knock out one with a sledge hammer but that was no easy task and I really didn't want to do it again as everything is taking the impact and the car was shaking pretty good even with the frame on stands. Shitty part is that there wasn't enough space for the stud to slip out from between the drum and hub.
OK, time to remove the hub. Run to Crappy tire, grab a 36mm socket, remove big f'n nut and it comes right off. Not the case as GM puts 3 massive torx bolts behind the hub holding everything together. I go on the net to find out that i have to remove the entire half shaft just to make space to undo the bolts. FML, this sucks, I take a nap.
I start taking apart the rusted half shaft telling my self how much this sucks, I want to meet the genius that decided to put the bolts on the back and possibly kill him, and so on..... Then i stop half way and determine that i will remove the three bolts without removing the shaft which happened. With the help of different extensions in combination with more different extensions all different for each bolt and in-between all the suspension arms, I was finally able to remove the hub. Pic of hub off and the drum brake remaining.

But now its time to get those pesky studs out. After trying the sledge hammer with a socket to no avail I decided to stop monkeying around and use a vice. I still couldn't pop them but the "just a little more" mentality was saying "just a little bit more torque should do it". A 15mm socket, a short extension and placed on the end of the vices' handle should suffice. 20deg of rotation later and this is what happens.....

 ... I'll stop there but still have all these items to install

Slow Progress

Well nothing exciting to post. I planned on completing the corvette come thursday/friday but I've run into an issue with the air pump so I have to replace the pump with a pulley. They sell setups for $200 which is ridiculous when it probably costs no more then $40. I'll post up what I do by weeks end.

What also sucks is the front sway bar install. I'm going to do a write up when i finish because the 4 line instructions that came with it are useless. I should seriously post them up because all the say is "remove sway bar from chassis. remove endlinks from chassis. install in reverse order using supplied parts." I'm not impressed with VB&P but the sway bar should perform to expectation making all things good and bad equal.

Some status pics

Something about a car on jack stands is hot! (fyi I'm crazy)

All the A.I.R parts removed. Tin snips helped alot but bolt cutters would have been better. Probably 20-30lbs of junk.

Engine bay during removal

I know... BORING!!!!!
hopefully parts come in and things move faster

-Jaz

Project Kira Underway

Spent the majority of my time in the garage this weekend but things were rough going. So, here is a quick post with only a portion of what was done over the weekend.

Vette Brakes and Performance Rear Sway Bar Install:
Quick comparison shot below shows that the rear sway bar (26mm) is noticeably bigger then the stock. The largest oem rear bar found on C4s is 24mm mind you there is a 25mm in existence but good luck finding that as I believe it wasn't a typical factory offering. Depending on the options when purchased the car can have a bar as small as19mm.

Install is straight forward and the only difficult part was installing the mid mount bushings as they are thick plastic which required work with a heat gun to soften them up, allowing them to separate enough to fit around the bar.
I painted the the mounts with some anti-rust paint to add some "bling" factor and hopefully deter rust for some time. I also found some new hardware as the kit did not include any (-1 for VB&P sway bars).
Pic below of the sway bar mounted.

-Jaz

Corvette Goodies

Last night I went for a little 8 hour road trip to Brockville where I met a cool dude who sold me his C4 Corvette ZR1 wheels that came off his GMC typhoon.
Fact of the night: Apparently only 3500 typhoons still remain on the roads today.


Quick teaser pic to give you a size reference

630mm combined of rubber... =)

-Jaz

It's Old, Ugly and goes like Stink

No its not grandpa after eating a bowl of chili, its my Corvette project code named "Kira". Its like my bastard child that finds every possible way to destroy its self, yet magically blessed with the athleticism of George St. Pierre, and regrettably trapped behind the skin of Micheal Moore.

I'll explain why I hate the damn thing, most of which I discovered in my first drive home or shortly after.

1. Dash lights randomly dim
2. Radio randomly turns off
3. Headlight motor decided to continually close even after closing (kinda like pushing a door open in the wrong direction)
4. Alarm system drains the battery after a day
5. Exhaust hanger decide it needed a break (literally)
6. Belt tensioner couldn't handle the tension
7. Left e-brake drum failed
8. Passenger window decided to hide in the door and never come back up
9. Was born from the rotten, toxic and over used vag of GM

Now I explain why some day I may call it my own.

1. Encompasses the red neck maker known as the chevy SB 350 
2. Fenders that can fit 285's up front and 315's in the back without modification
3. Extremely low cod (coefficient of drag)
4. Flat underside/belly
5. Overall height lower then my slammed Silvia and I haven't lowered it yet. OMG!
6. Enormous potential which I will go into further detail during the project

I decided first to rip out the interior and fix a few problems while giving Kira a minor interior tan. So here are a few pre-tan pics.

The camera doesn't show this well but a yellow stain under the passenger seat. Someone soil themselves in fear during a ride?

Soon as I get to some reasonable internet service I'll have some current post-tan pics uploaded


-Jaz

Intro!

Well, since this is my first post I'll start by saying "hello and welcome," please click my adds located on the bottom of the page before you leave, actually don't click them because I instructed you too. I read somewhere in the agreement that Google will end my life so click the adds for the right reasons ;)

Now down to bizzness, because I know you came to this blog to see "Hot Girls, Epic Fails, and Awesome Videos" and this is when you agree with me and click that link. If you clicked the link before realizing that what I said doesn't make any sense then you're an idiot and if you didn't then DON'T, unless you're looking for some sort of chubby killer. Now I'm not saying there wont be "hot girls, epic fails and awesome videos" but you came here either because of me, cars, and/or auto electronics.

I leave you with a pic of my Silvia (aka Megan) from last summer and a pic of how it sits now including the Corvette (aka Kira). Oh, and come back soon as i get this blog rolling.

-Jaz