Well after seeing
@nirvash getting some progress done on his M5, I thought I'd update this thread. Its a fairly large update.
After staring at the Class II wing sitting in the garage for a week after picking it up from paint, I finally got the balls to drill into the boot. I cringed hard, NGL.
Fitted:
I then managed to score some S50B32 headers, busy having these ceramic coated then will fit in the new year.
As you could see in the thumbnail of the Youtube video, car looks a bit different now. I fitted the Imolas along with the clear corners and semi rears, and dialed in the height. I really need to make some time to take proper photos of it now.
Alignment V1 time. I gave them my specs and they were more than willing to accommodate not using the specs on the computer.
Race car baby 😂
Front:
-2.2 degrees of camber
1 degree of toe out
Rear:
-1.5 degrees of camber
0.5 degree of toe in.
Feedback: Alignment felt great. Loads of grip with great turn-in response paired with the purple tag rack. I did feel it lacked a little mid-corner grip though, and it could self-steer a bit more. I have a solution for this later.
Added the 12mm spacers to both the front and rear, much happier with the fitment now!
And then a bit of a scary moment. Drove the car to the shops one afternoon. On the way back, luckily close to my house, the steering went completely wonky and I just heard clunking. Car just wanted to pull to the left. My heart sank. Felt like the car was going to fall apart.
Limped it home, and put it on the jack that evening to find this:
The lollipop offset bushing had been completely pushed out. Now when I had them installed, they were installed with the lip of the bushing on the back side, and I questioned this with the bushing guys. They said it was fine, it can be installed either way. I was skeptical but I left it.
WRONG. The lip needs to be on the front side. I contacted the bushing guys immediately and they apologized profusely, and said the lip should've been on the front indeed. The person I spoke to was apparently not clued up and gave me the wrong info.
They replaced the bushing for free, and again apologized profusely. Luckily it didn't happen while I was pushing the car, could've been a bad accident. I reinstalled both bushings the correct way, happy days.
Then off to test again, the mountains are open again!
Car hangs nicely with the GT4, I'm impressed. R8 bullies me on the straights and corner exits big time.
But I think I pushed the car quite hard. On our last run up the mountain, the belts/pulleys started to make a lot of noise. The culprit:
Last replaced in 2012, so it was more than due. The idler pulley was also quite noisy and all the pulleys were just spinning once free. So I did the toxic car guy man maths thing and replaced both the main and aircon belt, all the pulleys and both tensioners.
Didn't take any photos of the process, besides the wrong tensioner I ordered (of course there are two different ones, and I ordered the wrong one) 🙃 so I was naturally very irritated and didn't document anything. Car runs nicely again with no squeaky belts and pulleys. Also FYI, you CAN do the belts, pulleys and tensioners without removing the fan. Just takes a bit of maneuvering, 45mins for me to be exact. Not fun.
I also had some adjustable rear lower control arms come in. Naturally I want to be able to adjust everything and really dial the alignment in, the rear wasn't completely perfect side to side (-0.3 degree difference side to side which irritated me). The new arms are much beefier in comparison, stock arms are paper thin.
Fitting these is a terrible job too, I had to unbolt and raise the diff to get the inner control arm bolts out as it makes contact with the diff. No other way about it. Didn't document this either, I got very dirty and grumpy 😂 but got them fitted:
Remember I said I had a fix for the self-steer? Here we go:
I rotated the top mount 120 degrees to add as much of a camber/caster combo as possible. I could get more, but the strut tower reinforcements get in the way of me being able to push it inwards any more. But it worked. I gained another 1.5 degrees of caster, and the car self-steers beautifully now. I may get some sold, adjustable lollipop bushings and some lower profile strut tower reinforcements to add even more caster.
I then also added 2.5mm thick washers between the strut and the knuckle, along with some 30mm long 12.9 grade bolts, to add another degree of camber. The result:
Alignment V3:
Front:
-3.0 degrees of camber
0.5 degree of toe out (less this time because of the added camber)
Rear:
-2 degrees of camber (equal on both sides now)
0.5 degree of toe in.
Feedback: car feels NOTICEABLY more grippy, especially mid corner. Rear feels more solid now too, those control arms did their job. But I will go test it again this weekend in the mountains to get a real feel for it.
I also got rid of the horrible 20% tint, and had a more mild 50% tint fitted. As well as fitted the ambers back, but the clears will go back on this weekend. But after seeing the 50% tint fitted, I regret not doing clear tint. Still looks too dark to me. Oh well, I'll probably change it again next year.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk 😂
