Beretta.net

you never considered black'n out your wheels? murdered out son! haha

I like a blackout as much (or more) than the next guy...but I like those many-spoke wheels in silver or white. Silver works well with the black. Although black wheels would showcase the big brakes quite nicely.

These things are schweet, I'm liking the design. Aside from some new mounts, which I can get at the parts store, the rear end stuff is ready to go on after I get the springs painted up.

I've always loved your black car Kurt. Good stuff!

Will they reduce droop at all?

Nah, travel is nearly identical to a Beretta shock. The top stud even fits into some brands of shock mounts that I've looked at...

Ordered a new ACDelco alternator, not reman, though I can't complain about the store brand reman unit on the car. It has lasted as long as the original one did. I'll do the big-3 upgrade at the same time, surprised I haven't done it already...

Also looking at other belt driven accessories, and I don't mean the water pump that's waiting to go on the car too.

If you need help building and or engineering a really long snout for that belt driven accessory let me know, but depending on what you ended up with IIRC you are also lacking AC so you have a spot to put that lovely little thing.

High performance smog pump?

The goal is to mount this new style smog pump where the ac was. I'm shopping around a lot and have a couple of smog chargers in mind.

That's a ways off though, I want to get a welder first. Front coilover project is on slight hold for the time being too.

Only if I didn't want to keep my ac... It would make things so much easier...

I'm so glad were all on the same page to save the environment

Yay or nay?

Looks better then the actual carbon fiber i had a pillar wrapped in, How much did the 3m stuff set you back for that?

Like $27 for 4 feet. Cheap enough to justify getting some to play with.

Definitely a little thicker and trickier on complex curves than regular vinyl.

About time for some updates. Got a few things done over the weekend, including a junkyard trip to my former favorite yard. They haven't had much for my car in ages, but they did have a Subaru Legacy with a 5 speed that still had the shift knob in it. I didn't realize, but they use a weighted knob, with some nice leather and it has the shift pattern on top. I cut off part of the knob at the bottom and then bored out the knob on my drill press. Got it worked out to a pretty snug fit, it feels really nice running through the gears and actually makes the assembly feel very solid and direct with the weight. Here's a photo:



I also got to work on installing the custom rear springs and Bilsteins. I did a little comparing once I got the old shocks off the car. The KYBs were still super stiff and rebound well for being on for 7 years, so they'll be going onto the white car. The Bilsteins are way beefier, I took a couple shots of the difference.





My initial thoughts were that the car would sat around the same height in back, give or take an inch. Turns out, I was a bit off. The springs barely compressed with weight on the car, and as a result I gained back roughly 1.4" in rear wheel gap. But, the car handles like a beast! The rear end is just stuck to the road, and it doesn't transfer weight off of the front end like it used to.

I can live with the wheel gap, Form < Functionality.

Old ride height:


New gap:


What it looked like last night in the shop: