Author: searock

Found a set of Ronal ACT SC 15×7″ +38 wheels from northern Spain, Basque country. Bought them and got em here.

Condition was fantastic! Had to test fit them immediately.

And just seconds after this photo wanted to have wider rear wheels 🙂

Took the wheels apart. This was really hard. Previous owner had pretty much used sealant everywhere and I managed to get only the lip side off. Had to resort to friends and acquitances to actually split the parts.

What the hell?! Titanium hardware!

…and this is how they look now:

Powdercoated in gold with huge layer of protective lacquer.

Compared to the SSR’s: (Dont worry, the floor is very clean and smooth)

Still waiting for the wider rear lips, they ended up being custom made in germany. That is what you get when you have +20-year old wheels that are freakishly rare. 🙂

Original lips are 0.5″ wide, but the rears will get a 1.5″ wide. Nothing spectacular but I’m not after stance, just wanting to get a nice drivers car 🙂

The wider lip for the rear is going to widen the wheel up to 15×8″ and +26 offset and will end up with 15″ x 7″ +38 fronts and 15″ x 8″ +26 rears. To slightly correct the offset and wideness fronts will get a 10mm spacer, maybe a H&R Trak+. For tires, front will be Toyo T1R 195/50 and rear 215/45. I can also use Toyo R1R in 195/50 and 225/45 if needed.

Beldin helped me to diagnose a strange clunking noise coming from somewhere under the car. Found out that the front swaybar bushings had left for the spirit world and the swaybar itself was banging against the bottom of the car.

Beldin did found some real problems too 🙁 three out of four struts were not within usable tolerances. Beldin suggested later that there might be problems with bearings, but that was not the case. And all of this just after 20.000km

I later took one out and tried to find out if there was anything wrong just pushing the whole thing against floor.

Couldnt find out anything so I went to see a local fellow who had experience with various suspension things

Apparently there is something wrong down there. Bearings and seals need to be replaced.

I was later in contact with both Toda Europe and Toda Japan. The former, located in UK, was a total waste of time. They dont have suspension service there and the customer service I got when I sent them an email was appalling.

Toda JP on the otherhand was very helpful. I wasnt able to order the service parts and the only option seemed to send the whole bundle back to Toda to get serviced, which would have been quite expensive. After some emails back and forth, there was an agreement that I could send in just the strut cases and leave the actual shocks out of the service. (The shocks seemed to be fine).

These tires are pretty much gone. Cracked and worn.

  

Went to get the stock aw11 struts and suspension parts from the barn. On the way I called my brother and asked if he was doing anything special, just to make sure that I had a pair of hands with me if I couldnt do it for some reason.

Everything was untouched since last time and we picked up the parts.

When driving back to my brothers’ apartment, I commented that one of the cars we saw had its lights pointing in weird directions. Just when we were passing it, I noticed it was a red AW11 😀

I said to my brother that I just had to see it more clearly and we turned around at the next intersection. Found the car pretty easily and it was a red, early NA. Nothing special there, but I just had to see it again 🙂

 

At the barn with Widric

Beldins residence

Nighttime adventures

Visiting Shikker (that’s my legacy down there)

AW11 and GC8

 

Weird stuff. Should use threadlock here.

One of the bolts was gone and one was loose. I wouldnt have noticed the whole thing unless the banana-shaped thing hanging hadnt hit the engine and made a weird ticking noise.

 

I bought this set from SuperPro. Still uninstalled.