2022 New Year, Same Me
Just like that, 2021, the year has ended. 2021 was supposed to be a year of hope for many, a year of returning to normalcy or at least somewhat. For many, I'm sure I'm included, we forced everything into going back to normal as much as we can. Regardless if that worked or not, you can definitely see people doing their best to not wallow in the loss of a year in 2020 but rather embrace what it means to be normal. However, with the surge in cases, regardless of if the numbers are believed to be real or not, we start to see people panicking and the return of public fear. It's the fear that people have that drives this notion that we need to close off ourselves from the public and that others should too. Regardless, the year is starting off positively neutral personally but maybe not so great for others.
So far, the 997 is waiting on a few small parts that were overlooked on my end. Hopefully I'll have it ready for Feb track day. The Supra has been great but I've been driving it sparsely. The cool weather is giving me the opportunity to really enjoy and daily drive the R32 whenever I get the chance.
Since the last update, the R32 has had a few things done to help the driving dynamics and quality of the car. To start, the original lights that came with the car had some aftermarket HID which led to a spaghetti of wiring running everywhere. The N1 lights that came separately matched the vehicle better IMO so I switched over to those with halogen bulbs to keep a somewhat era correct look to them.
Second thing that I did was the steering hub. I was somewhat annoyed how long the turn signal stalk was from the steering wheel so I ordered the correct Works Bell Short Hub PN# 616S for the R32. Unfortunately, the QR hub needed to be a different pattern to work with the short hub so onto the parts shelf it goes. I'll come back to this when it annoys me again.
Last but not least, I finally received the JRZ coilovers which means a majority of other suspension parts were put on. I was pleasantly surprised to find a set of HKS Hipermax Pro were on the car prior. It's rare to see shocks with a schrader valve unless they're higher end so that was a nice feature to see. While installing the coils, I threw in 350z inner tie rods, SPL outer tie rods, SPL Tension Arms, SPL Traction Arms, SPL rear camber arms and Cusco -5mm Upper Arms. I had Nismo rear LCA that should be swapped out but I'll leave that for another time when I have to rear wheel bearing since the axle needs to be taken out of the hub to do the arm properly. I also didn't install the SPL Toe Arms since unlike the R33, the HICAS lines needs to be removed and the power steering pump needs to be modified. I'll have Ken do that work since I'm switching to MR2 electric power steering pump.
Once the suspension was on, it gave me the opportunity to finally mount the CE28 onto the car. Unfortunately, I forgot the Yokohama Apex ran narrow for it's size so the 275/35/18 Yokohama Apex had to be switched out. I really didn't want to go back to 295/30/18 Toyo R888R but unfortunately I had to. I wanted a set of tires that had a square shaped sidewall which eliminated a good selection of other tires. Next, I needed a set of tires that were somewhat cheap and had a large tread section to reduce the stretch. I had originally settled on a set of 275/35/18 Falken RT660 but they were back ordered for 2 months. This pretty much left me with 295 Toyo R888R once again. Although I'm happy with how they look now, I'll definitely be moving to 275 Falken RT660 on my next order.
As of now, I'm going to enjoy driving the car a bit more before I have the turbo kit installed, power steering pump put in, HICAS deleted, wheel bearings changed, AC recharged and brakes done. I've been contemplating ABS delete but I'll definitely be making new hardlines if I were to do it.
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