Ghost XI

 First test. Tire change took only 9.23 seconds. No additional gas needed to complete the race. I’m off to set new lap records.

Maladar and Richie Rich mounted tires on my rims. Thank You very much! Pictures are from Maladar’s archive. Please ignore the expensive cars. 😉

 

Yeah, I had this great idea to get new black bolts to my rims instead the chromed ones. Maladar said that I need to tell the story.

Ok, I asked from the SSR/Tanabe USA about the bolts some time ago, and I didn’t get any reply. I thought “how hard could it be?” and took one bolt off. I measured the bolt carefully and I found out it was a M6 x 25mm, pretty easy to replace, eh?

After some googling, I found a local company specialized in various screws. I made an order of 160 screws and got ’em in no time. Then, one day at the garage, I started to change the bolts. Mr. 3ngin3man (he likes trains) had a vacation and nothing to do, so he offered to help me. At the second bolt, he said that there is nothing on the other side, and to my horror, I noticed that half of the bolts we’re fakes. We checked one fake bolt, which measured M6 x 6mm.

Well, time to order some more. After a very long time, I got my M6 x 6mm’s. There were only 41 of them (I needed at least 80) and they had the wrong coating on them. Great! I called the company and asked about the bolts and they told me that M6 x 6mm is really rare and they recommended M6 x 8mm instead. I wasn’t sure at the moment if that size would fit, so one more day to wait (until I got new measures). I measured the length of the threads and ordered those M6 x 8mm bolts.

 

We’re just messing around 🙂

Somewhat bad picture showing the original grounding points. I think the car could use some more grounding points to distribute currents evenly. The new battery is mounted with battery mounting kit and tied with nylon straps to give more support. 1. Chassis grounding point. In this picture, I’m still missing the metal clip which secures the huge connector just below the grounding point. 2. Engine/gearbox grounding point. One of the bolts securing the thermostat housing works as a grounding point. Green arrow pointing towards front end.

I got my new tires! 4x Kumho Ecsta V700 (V70A) in 205/45R16

New battery and new grounding cables installed. Battery is not in its final location, this is just for testing the cables. There will be some additional crafting, because the original battery cover will not fit. The original battery cover holds two of the four points where the intercooler should mount. Battery cover corner is on the right side of this picture. It is originally painted with some kind of plastic paint, but underneath it is pressed sheet metal. And rusted beyond recongnition.

We cleaned both chassis grounding point and the one on the gearbox. Both were really oxidized, so we had to use thread tool to get rid of that gunk.

I bet no-one has ever cleaned these. This one is the chassis grounding point bolt.

Maladar fixed me a AW11 sticker! Cool! (Handlaid, three layer vinyl sticker) 🙂