Alright, time for a real update.
After driving a few weeks with H&R springs in the rear I decided to swap back to the Eibach's, primarily because of increased ride harshness but also because it was really a bit too low. This time however I removed the spring pads, which after measuring confirmed an extra .25" of lowering. This put her at and almost perfect 26" from ground to fender lip in the front and 26.25" in the rear. A little dark, but here's the profile shot of Eibach's all around with rear spring pads removed.
Then I got the idea to paint the two braces under the front bumper, red. Honestly it's a bit lame, but barely noticeable under normal conditions and in certain lighting helps tie the red accents into the front of the car, which has been noticeably missing. I opted to paint with plastidip for this rough draft so I can revert back to stock black if I don't like it. If I do like it however, I'll get them powder coated so they shine a bit more and match the calipers.
And for the update I've been waiting the last 6 months for- the Volks installed. As a reminder these are Volk TE37 Ultra M's in Blast Bronze in 19x8.5 +36 front and 19x10 +30 rear.
Ran a 15mm spacer in front to bring them out to flush and unfortunately the rear requires camber to fit under the fenders, but that camber was already there so it's kind of a moot point.
I'm still in processing mode for how I feel about them, and I may need to make some changes before I'm really happy. First of all the tires on them are 1.5" taller than stock (235/40/19 front and 265/35/19 rear). The 513M's were .6" taller than stock (245/40/18 front and 275/35/18 rear) and these are almost a full inch taller than those. Right now the thicker sidewalls really seem to stand out, but I think some tire shine will go a ways towards fixing some of that. I made this tire sizing choice for a few reasons:
- Comfort- Trying to keep the same sidewall thickness as the 18's- this was a bigger deal when I was running harsher coil overs and planned to run R888R's for tires, but now that I've settled for PS4S in the tire department (R888R's were on a 6 week backorder!) and stock shocks, these things are buttery smooth
- Wheel gap filling- A 1" taller tire will fill 0.5" of wheel gap, which has the car sitting pretty much exactly where I want it
- Gear ratio- Even with the 1.5" taller tires, the LSD and it's 3.46 ratio will result in lower than stock ratios overall
I also wanted as much concavity as I could fit, which is why I opted for the 10" width in the rear. Unfortunately Ultra M's don't come in 9" width for the front wheels and 9.5" is simply too wide to fit (my current 9" wide fronts are very close to the spring perches. Would definitely hit with a wheel that's 0.5" inward and a tire that's 0.5" taller), so I had to settle for 8.5". Looking at the Volk website, the 8.5" wheels have a concavity rating of "Face 2" and the 10" are "Face 4". I figured this wouldn't be a huge difference but it really is. The rear wheels are MUCH more concave than the front, which the below picture does a pretty good job of demonstrating
This may grow on me over time, but for the moment it's a little bothersome. Wishing I'd gone with a 9.5" tire in the rear and then could have tried to dial out some of that excessive camber.
Lastly, I'm still very iffy on the front lip and side skirt extensions. By far my favorite picture of this car is the down low 1/4 view:
But IMO the lip and extensions absolutely ruin this perspective:
It just looks too chunky and less sleek. I'll probably remove the side skirt extensions for a couple weeks to see how I like just the front lip, and then remove the front lip for a couple weeks as well, and decide how I want to run it.
So anyways, that's where we are. Now that I've laid out my grievances I'm considering trying out another set of wheels to see which I like better. I am such a glutton for punishment and bad financial decisions! Think I want to try ESR SR07's (same wheel just knockoff) with R888R's in 235/35/19 front and 265/30/19 rear to bring the overall height back down closer to stock, and opt for a 9.5" width rear rim this time and see if I can't find a way to take some of the camber out of the rear suspension. I think the key though will be finding a way to justify this to the GF, after I just spent all this money on this setup! I doubt she'd actually say anything, but I'll have a number of extra sets of wheels (including those for the e30 which are sitting in the garage) and it's certainly excessive.
In terms of next actual steps, I've finally got all the parts together to swap in the LSD diff this weekend. Ended up getting new Meyle HD diff bushings, a new driveshaft center support bushing, and a new giubo. I'm very hopeful that these will eliminate that 6th gear heavy acceleration vibration I've been getting. Plus I might as well replace them while I'm in there.
Feel free to let me know what you think about the wheels!