Random Snap – 014

Still sorting out the ride height, But heres a decent picture with all the wheels mounted.

Stance Complete

Today was a busy day! I managed to get enough time at work to call around the local tyre shops, Hoping to score some cheap tyres. Thankfully I did.

So after work, I rushed home and grabbed the pair of superlites, I then fitted up. I also lowered the rear a tad too.

I did try the 7mm spacers at the rear, but there wasn’t enough thread to safely tighten the lugs.

Final offsets are -1 front and +4 rear.

I’ll see how the current height goes before I get a wheel alignment.

Full Steam Ahead

The Driving Sports twilight drift event was awesome! I had an absolute blast. Great atmosphere, low waiting times, and lots of sliding is what It’s all about. Adan and I squeezed in at least 10 runs on the night, And it had us begging for more. I was the lone MX-5 at the event, and the only car rocking top down all night. I’ll be at next months event for sure, hopefully I’ll be a little more prepared next time too.

So anyway, the night managed to mangle my rear tyres pretty badly. I thought about it briefly and figured I’d get some second-hand tyres for the Superlites. I managed to get a pair of Fire Stone’s for under $100 … Score!

As soon as I got home, It was time to mount them to the car. I’m pretty happy with the result, The blue goes well with the car colour, and the tyre profile is just a tad bigger then the 195/50’s. It was just what I was after. Saying that though, It needs to go a tad lower.

That’s not all I did today, I ended up fitting the bomex bumper too. Fitment is … ok, The passenger side’s fitment is pretty spot on. The driver’s side isn’t so good. Still, it’s good enough for me, Hell the factory bumper didn’t even line up properly.

Oh yeah, Yesterday the sideskirts rocked up at work. These weren’t so bad fitment wise, but needed to be trimmed down in a few places.

All fitted up using nothing more than a bunch of cable ties, And race tape. I want to see if I have any problems with the way I have fitted it before I paint the kit.

I’ll be looking for another pair of second-hand tyres for the Superlites, sort out the height and get a wheel alignment. Paint the kit and do some more skids.

Stick Around!

Wheel Painting – Part III

Today I decided to mask the centres. First up I needed to carefully remove the tape covering the lips of the wheels.

The white centre and platinum silver lip looks awesome.

I’m glad I took my sweet ass time masking the lip to paint the centres of the wheels, as the finish is mostly even all round (thankfully).

So onto masking the centres, This took me quite a while, roughly an hour on each. It was a little harder than masking the lips.

Hopefully if the weather holds out, I’ll be able to paint the lips tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Wheel Painting – Part II

Saturday afternoon, I wandered off into the garage to get cracking on the wheels. I start tapping up the lips and I marked the primer with my bracelet. I had a look and I tried again with my finger nail … from that moment I decided to strip the current primer and start again.

I didn’t use a wire brush and a coarse sand paper to begin with, So out came my wire brush and I got stuck into it. I spend a few hours on Saturday night, and half the Sunday getting these prepped right.

Whilst scrubbing the wheels, I decided to see what the colours would look like, I very roughly sprayed a lick of paint on one of the Superlites to get an idea.

The blue is a bit too light for my liking, I’ll be adding a black undercoat to darken it.

Anyway, I come along to stripping and sanding that shitty coated wheel, And boy was it a pain to get off. I think I could have gotten away with the current preparation, but better to be safe then sorry!

In total I spent roughly 1 hour on each wheel, scrubbing them with the wire brush and then giving them a sand with some 220 grit wet and dry sand paper.

Right, so all the wheels were ready for paint, So out came the sponge and bucket to give them a good clean.

Next step was to mask the lips of the wheels up before primer is applied, I needed to be very careful to have an even finish on all the wheels. Luckily there is a little indent on the wheels that I could follow with the masking tape. I spent roughly 20 minutes on each wheel.

The centers were now ready for paint! Out came the primer and I gave the wheels 4 light coats with it.

30 minutes after the final coat of primer was applied, the Flat white came out, and I started spraying. I did 3 light coats, and 2 medium coats of flat white. I wanted to ensure that all the primer was covered. After that, the Dupi-Colour clear coat was applied, 2 coats of it to be exact. This helps strengthen the paint from stone chips, UV etc.

The final result!

These wheels were a little difficult to paint due to the amount of spokes and curves, But I am extremely happy with the result. Hopefully I’ll be finishing the lips off this weekend, weather permitting of course. Keep an eye out for part III.

Wheel Painting

Last night, Adan came over to grab some parts and we had the usual car talk. Anyway he made a good point about the Superlights, He said “You should just paint them instead of powder coating them, The money you save could go to tyres”, and it made sense. So today I was off to my local Repco to grab some supplies.

I have had nothing but great results with VHT, so I chose to use their products on the wheels. So after the trip to Repco, I got straight into it, getting the wheels out of their boxes and giving them a clean before sanding.

Here is the first wheel scuffed and ready to be primed. I used 400 grit sandpaper and scuffed the cast finish that the Superlite GTR’s have. I could/should have used a wire brush to scuff the wheels better, but the method I have used with various parts (including wheels) have worked quite well in the past.

Here they are, all primed up with a can of VHT grey Prime Coat. Either tomorrow or Sunday I will be painting the centre section flat white and clearing it, followed by painting the lip a blue similar to my cam cover. As I thought, the colour I have purchased is too light.