You said it bro... When I first got it the paint was so grimy and felt so rough, and there were bird poops everywhere, and there were a lot of uneven parts...

Thanks man!

Well, like I said, this is my first time lowering my own car. So I don't know any better, but I asked raine to test drive it last Sunday so I can get a more fair review, 'cause he got Tein with EDFC on his, and he said it was at the boundary of being stiff and comfortable ride... There were times when he'd cringe going over rough part of the roads but he said it rides great when the road wasn't so bad... But me being a previous SUV/truck guy, I kinda liked it. It's not really stiff for me, but dips and bumps on the road going over 45mph would make it rebound a little bit hard at my ride height.

You have no idea. The pic with the wheels tucking, was half the height of the coils when we first put it in and off the jackstands. I can say that it was ridiculously low.

Thanks man! All positive comments are greatly appreciated as I invested a lot of time and money getting everything right...

 

Way da hustle King!

 

At exact max coils did you get?

 

Thanks Alpha! I love your interior build too! I'm so in love with all black interior... Keep us posted...

There's only one kind for SC's.. JZZ31,JZA80 MAX Competition Coilovers 18/12 kg

http://www.gtfactory.jp/cms/page.php?9

 

Excellence @ its finest

 

LOL! Thank you sir! But my SC is still far from perfection...

Paint has different shades, a lot of rock chips on the front bumper and hood, dings here and there, some serious scratches everywhere, and some more minor mechanical tuning needed... I plan on getting the whole body repainted when I get kitted. I'm not really into aero body kits as I don't drift or race, nor do I plan on boosting, probably in 10 years if you ask me. I wanna get a body kit as close to the '97+ as possible, so I might go the AC/Shine Auto Project way in the future. Just to gain a tad bit of lower than the '97+. I have some more repairs coming up in the next couple of weeks that I'll surely document this time around, so stay tuned.

 

Lookin good Phil. 8J5 for life.

 

Thanks my 8J5 brother. Need to update what's going on with your SC bro.

 

Very nicely done man. Keep up the good work!

 

Neat pic, love the color.

 

Thank you so much man! Positive feedback from veterans are greatly appreciated!

Funny you'd notice this pic... I followed your DIY on opening them up and cleaning them, not to mention all the other DIY's you made that applied to my car problems... Thanks for the feedback!

 

daniel, your sc just gets better and better. good stuff.

 

Nice writeup, pics, car looksgreat. Front shots of the car are impressive, looks mean!

 

LOVE IT!

I would do mod like your headlight but i'm too chicken cut the electric wire lol

 

Thanks Kev! Installing those coils wouldn't have been possible without you and Ray's help...

Thanks bro! Appreciate it!

Like any other builds, nothing ever goes as planned. More likely, there's always something that's gonna set you back most of the time, and on my experience it's usually that last piece of bolt or nut...LOL I was only able to gather a few pics of those "things" that almost made me give up on this, or brought a major set back to the whole thing... I just wanna post these few more pics to remind everyone that nothing ever comes easy... But, you always gotta keep on going for something you love.

Guess what happened here?

I wasn't able to get this on camera, 'cause everything happened so fast and since this is my only car, I had to get it back on the road as quickly as possible. And until this day I'm still wondering how in the hell did the lower control arm separated from the hub without any sign of damage on the balljoint nor the threads where the nut is supposed to hold on to...

Some people might have seen this already from a different thread. But after a couple of days of driving on my newly installed coilovers, I kept on hearing a loud clunk in the front driver side evrytime I'd go over bumps... I drove my SC for a couple more days with this weird clunking sound, until I had time to check it out, and the only sign I can see that there was something wrong was this;

See how the left side's damper adjustment's pointing around 1 o-clock? And the right side pointing straight up to 12 o'clock.


Soon as we removed the wheel off the car, this sight surprised all of us to what have happened and what was causing that loud clunk...


The damper was completely damaged by the lock ring and had to be replaced entirely. But one thing that made a lot of difference and caused this problem was that, PBM's changed their dampers to an inch shorter damper, since a lot of people always wanna get that "lowest of the low" set up, and since there was no way to see where the end of the damper was we had no idea that there were only a few threads holding on to it.


They had to swap out all the dampers on my set so I can have more height option to it, plus even with the longer damper they usually provide you can still slam the car dead on the ground. PBM's never charged me for anything, and good thing nothing bad happened during the time I was still using the car. Now, before ordering from PBM's make sure to ask for the longer dampers for your SC just to make sure they're sending you the correct one.

I'm telling you all this to inform you and not in any way to ruin PBM's reputation as I have nothing but great experience with them. I believe they were just not aware of how low the shorter dampers go, because people always ask for that ridiculous low.

Another thing that I strongly recommend is changing your steering rack bushings as long as your SC is above 100,xxx miles.

Need I say more? You don't need to feel anything different to do this, this is a must.

And lastly, a before...


And after...


Pics of detailing my Midnight Indigo Pearl paint job.

Thank you all for the positive feedback, will update as I go...