s13 5-stud conversion, part 2. Rears fitted, finally.

So, part 2 of my 5-stud conversion got started bright & early on Saturday morning. Got the rears done at last – took some effort, but managed to get it done.

Firstly got the new s14 5-stud hubs with bearings attached on the floor and had a look at how this was going to be done. As per loads of reading and advise, loosened the 4 bolts at the back which were pretty tight, and had them poking out the hub by about 5mm or so.

Followed by some hammer time, it begin to move. Hammered in an alternate motion as to push the bearings out nice and smoothly. Couple mins later, done. Really easy

Next up was to tackle my old hubs. Got the car safely in the air, hub nut off, disc off, caliper off, all arms off. Pretty easy stuff. Then 2 bolts holding on the rear LCA, followed by anti-roll bar link & finally the handbrake linkage. Removed the whole thing, then went hammertime on those 4 bolts just as before.

Again, couple mins later all done! Re-torqued the bolts, re-assembled and it was looking good! Pretty happy with the fitment out-right really, needs some work for proper flushness, but I'll get it aligned before I goto town on flush fitment.

Had some fish & chips with some mates, then set to work on the other side. And then soon into the job. SIGHHH…

Someone's gone and put the furthest front rear-LCA bolt in the wrong way round. Must have had the subframe removed at some point in the past and someone's put the arm on with subframe off car. Couldn't get the bolt out without removing the subframe, or cutting the bolt…

Instead of doing either, I went to work on doing it insitu. Bit more awkward, but managed to remove the ARB completely, lever the driveshaft out the way and cable tie it up! Then hammertime on the bolts as before. Thank god, finally it budged, and it all come out. Didn't get any pics of this, really couldn't be bothered by this point! But yeh, back on & all good!!

Wheel on the otherside, lowered it back down and drove it around the driveway! Didn't get any pics of the otherside, but here's some pics with skirts on, from my iPhone!

Quite stoked in general really. Looking better than I thought it would, and its not even that good fitment yet, nor is it even that low.

Going about 3/4 inch lower I think, and maybe 1/2 lower up front and that'll be just right. Still give me more ride height than before which will help out loads up at Santa Pod!

Got some other bits I need to fix up before I can properly drive it again. But should be all good for my next drift day up at Mallory Park on the 31st.

s13 5-stud conversion, part 1. The fronts & a loom tuck.

Well, after much deliberation and thought I finally indeed did go for 17s and bought a set of brand new Enkei RPF1's from America. They arrived and looked sexual

After much more brain power, finally decided on tyre specs and got tyres fitted to the front's. 215/45 on a 9j, so fair bit of sidewall to hopefully maintain good front-end grip!

Painted up the front knuckles and s14 LCA's ready to be fitted, and WD40'ed everything a few days before all ready to go for the big 5-stud swap over!

And so it began. Didn't really get many photos of half-way through pictures, but its fairly simple stuff really. Calliper & disc off, Unbolt LCA, Unbolt tension rod, unbolt & split tie-rod balljoint, unbolt coilover. Then re-fit in reverse order with s14 stuff, and that's pretty much it.

The only small thing I knew about which was weird was that the s14 knuckles have larger bolts holding the coilover on (the lower 2 bolts), s14 knuckles use 14mm OD bolts, and s13 use 12mm OD. You can resolve this in 2 ways, one way is to drill-out the coilover bracket to accept a 14mm bolt and use the s14 bolts, or use some kind of sleeve inserted into the knuckle to bring the OD diameter down to 12mm. I did this method, simply by cutting down a piece of tube, cutting a slit in it, and carefully pressing into the knuckle

On top of all this work, I also re-routed the wheel arch loom a fair bit and managed to tuck it up quite a bit higher in the arch. This caused some problems when re-fitting the fender itself since the loom was in the way, but some messing about resolved this, albeit the wings are slightly more flared out because of this, but doesn't look too bad.

Apart from needing a little more low and needing some spacers for better flushness, I'm pretty stoked with it. Makes the car look much more aggressive and up to date, a fresh look for 2011