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So, after the skid pad outing in March (where I put a big hole in one of the Kumho Victoracer track tires) I realized I should probably get a set of street tires. I was especially concerned about driving the 800+ miles to Pomona and back on these tires. So, after a LOT of thinking about what I should do I decided to keep costs down and buy steel wheels for the street. They’re heavier but, for the street I don’t think it matters. So, I ordered some black Cragar D-Window wheels from Summit racing. I ordered 17×9 with 5″ back space for the rear and 17×8 with 4 1/2″ back space for the front. For some bizarre reason the 17x8s were back ordered. Initially it was just a couple of weeks but when the date they were supposed to be available came around the expected arrival date would jump forward another few weeks. I finally realized I wasn’t going to get them in time for the Pomono drive. So a week before the show I was scrambling for plan B. After a lot of measuring I realized I could fit the 17x9x on the front too. So I bought another two of the 17x9s and cancelled the order for the 17×8. However, the 17x9s didn’t show up in time for the show either. So, I drove the whole trip on the Kumhos. Anyway, when I got back I finally got the tires (nitto 555, 275/40 17 and 255/40 17) mounted. I also got black lug nuts. And I used 1/4″ yellow pinstripe tape to cover up the thin red/blue stripe the Cragars come with. I’m really happy with this new setup.

And in other news I finally broke down and brought the car to a body shop to get the doors properly hung. Cost a bit of money but man was it worth it. I’ve got new hinges that work and hold the door open AND the body lines, while not perfect, are a thousand times better than they’ve ever been!

well, I mentioned in a previous post that I had a surprise for the nose and here it is.  It’s a custom aluminum grille I had cut on a water jet.  I also had a cool AMX badge cut as well.  Currently the grille is just spray painted black but ultimately I would like to powder coat it.  This grille eliminates the circular openings for the turn signals.  The stock turn signal lenses are domed and wouldn’t fit behind this grille.  the solution was to go to my local plastics place and get some amber colored clear plastic.  I think cut correctly sized circles out of it and drilled the screw holes and voila, flat lenses.  However, I was concerned that the flat lenses put the plastic to close to the normal filament bulbs so I swapped them for some LED bulbs.  Now, this turn signal setup is actually just temporary as my ultimate goal is to have an LED strip on each side of the grille sitting in between the two middle  slats.   I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

I’ve decided to do a bit of cosmetic work on the nose.   When the car was painted yellow years ago, EVERYTHING was painted yellow.  That includes everything on the front side of the radiator support.  I’ve since learned that even if you want your engine compartment to be body color you should paint the forward side of the rad support and headlight buckets, etc. black.  If you paint them body color then you’ll see that color through the grille.  It just looks better to have all that blacked out.  So I’m blacking out the nose (including the horns which were painted yellow also).  While I have everything apart I’ve decided to finally paint and install the fiberglass bumper I bought.  I haven’t painted it yet but I test fit it to see how it looked.  I’d like to try to get it tighter to the fender “pocket” (see pic).  The final piece of this nose job is a surprise.  I’ll post pics once it’s done.

My grill had LOTS of broken bits on it.  I finally got around to trying to repair the various broken plasitc tabs. To make the repairs I used, some sheet metal, rivets and liquid plastic repair.  Here are some pics: