Wheels & Gil Racing Spacers......
Well at long last, time for some new shoes. I've run the mismatched Hydras with a set of RWC's chrome steel lugs to give the car a better look, but a couple of the tires were crap and the vibes were not fun on the Interstate. When I bought this shell, I had drilled the Showroom thread for 7/9's and liked the look of the BBS "Propus" wheels, which are 17x7.5....big enough to handle all the rubber I wanted for a DD.
Well a couple months of scouring fleaBay and CL, I pieced together a decent enough set:
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Not perfect, original with nicks and bruises, but good enough for a "20 footer"
They of course had the nicks and chips from their years. I decided to do a touch-up using bottled auto parts store paint.....so I carried a rim into the local Advance Auto and eyeballed the silver paints until I found the closest thing:
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Got the wheels up to room temp, and after a good washing, applied the touchup paint, 2 coats, to the worst of the scrapes:
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Now with the scars hidden, I had the Nitto NEO-GEN rubber installed, P225/45/R17. Balanced up nicely, the worst wheel had 35gm of weight, and the best 14gm (that's pretty damn good folks).
When I bought the wheels, I knew that spacers were required. From drilling TB threads, it seemed that Gil Racing made a quality set of 25/32 mm; the wheel mounting studs are 1/2-20 TPI, like the old 2 series. I know this, because I had to return the first set of M12 Gorilla lugs
and replace them with 1/2-20. Shoulda read the Gil Racing specs......
So here are the spacers as purchased from a nice Bricker up in Nova Scotia:
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I know that when new, the faces of the spacers are dead nuts parallel...CNC lathes will do that. However, having been run for some years in Nova Scotia, there were likely rusty wheel rotor hats which these were mounted against. The rusty steel being harder than aluminum, the mounting faces were scarred up. I know from experience (old age) that if you mount your wheel on a non perpendicular surface, you will have "wobble" and runout in the lateral axis for the tire/wheel assembly. I want the DD to roll as smooth as a baby's buttocks, so corrective measures are needed. I've always used this trick to restore metal surfaces.....a precision piece of flat steel (ground flat stock) and wet sand paper. In this case, I chose 400 grit wet-r-dry paper, as I thought that would be enough for the aluminum.
These pics show the flattening process, and corrections:
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It probably required 10 minutes per Gil spacer, but you can see the highspots which were created by previous rusty contact, have been sanded smooth back to the original surface from the CNC lathe.....or close enough to minimize the runout:
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AOK, with all the spacers restored flat again, it was time to mount the new shoes. While the rear spacers were easy to install and torque to 70 lb.ft. , the fronts were a bit more tricky. I finally begged the better half to sit in the car and "MASH on the brakes" as we say down South.....then the front spacers torqued up fine:
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At long last, let's get a PROPUS installed and check it out:
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Looking good! But wait a minute, that baby looks pretty tight to the rear fenderlip.....
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WHAT???? Who decided that 32mm worked "just fine" in these cars? Oh well, Gil Racing is out of biz, so I guess it is time to hammer out some fender lips. Just when you think you've finished something, another opportunity reveals itself....