Progress today:
The press idea didn't work on the upper bushings since they had to be pushed from the inside out. So we went to more sophisticated tools
Bushing, you are now my bitch
It'll buff out
I'm ashamed of how much these few bolts cost from Honda
Lowers in place with excessive amounts of anti-seize
Upper bushings in and all lubed up swank style
and the uppers in place
JuniorPigeon eager for a test drive. I haven't told him yet that I'm done with co-drivers for a while....
Somehow I slightly boogered up the castle nuts and the threads on the lower ball joints. No one in this town had castle nuts or dies to fit these so I had to order them online. That's gonna push the front end assembly until next week.
The "buddy" would be me... and i still feel terribad for what happened. It was bad enough that it happened and i was just coming off of an L5 herniation surgery... i was just fine with a stiff neck the next day.
Unlike spool, i had video as well of the accident and i watched it 5 minutes after and along with my fellow grid mates all concluded that no matter the nut behind the wheel the same outcome would have happened given the same situation. Once the car broke lose i was in it to the finish. And had i been about 5 feet longer i would have missed the impact zone entirely so that was another meh moment.
Regardless we were all ok, the wall was being torn down so i got the first crack at tearing it down. Terrible situation but glad to be a part of getting it a new front end because before it had some scars :-p plus his ebay lip and disposable paint job on his lip got professionally redone! Always a silver lining in things. :)
Rock on, accidents happen, move on and come back stronger and better.
Progress!
I had the day off so I got to work on the next big task on the car, the seatbelts. The belt reel is mounted, errrr.....buried underneath the roll hoops. This means you have to remove damn near the entire back half of the interior because all of the interior panels overlap each other. Start at the shifter and work your way back.
Time to tackle this bish
Found 55 cents under the seat. TIME TO HIT THE CASINO
If you own an S2000, and you haven't done this, YOU ARE MISSING OUT. Rear speakers are the E36 M3.
No pics of each panel coming out, because I'm lazy and it's boring. GUTTED INTERIOR = RACE CAR
3 hours later
All is looking good
The SRS light is on. berkeley.
Ran out of time to work on it, so I'll have to investigate the SRS light later. The good news is that my dies came in today so I can can finish the front suspension.
Did you plug the seats back up?
nicksta43 wrote: Did you plug the seats back up?
yup. I just found out that there is a procedure to clearing the SRS light after disconnecting anything. I'll try that in the morning and see what happens.
Wow
much progress
such work
so driving
Had a few of these
and got to work and assembled the front. Torquing the control arms:
Getting closer!
Front is done, so I moved on to the rear drivers side. This wasn't damaged in the wreck, but Winning Formula (awesome race shop in Louisville) couldn't get this corner to align correctly. We suspected that the lower control arm and/or knuckle was bent so I decided to replace those while I was at it. No pics because it all came apart easy and it was a quick ordeal. This pic doesn't really show it, but the arm was bent ever so slightly.
An hour later.....BEWM
Took it for its first drive around the neighborhood. All is good! just needs an alignment now and a thorough cleaning from all the dust from the body shop.
Break it yet?
SOON
Finally got around to doing this:
Red is good, right?
And drooled over this while I was waiting
Well in this case.... the red is good. So good. Because i got you, Babe.
Dun dun DUN DUN DUN DUN
OOWWWWW!!!
Red IS good. The car feels fantastic now with the new bushings and a good alignment. Before it only had 4 degrees of caster on the front left due to a seized caster adjuster, and only -.9 rear left camber due to a bent lower control arm. I can't wait to see how it feels at the autocross.
Good to see you got it back up and ready for the track.
Nice. I just sent you an e-mail about the car. When you get a chance, please reply.
Winning Formula for the win!
You need to come up for our Cars & Coffee next year 
In reply to David S. Wallens:
replied
Junkyard_Dog wrote: Winning Formula for the win! You need to come up for our Cars & Coffee next year
Aaron @ WF is the man! He's the only guy I trust with this car. Great attention to detail and he can help tweak a car to the handling that you prefer. Plus you get the to drool/fap to all the cool cars there and next door at Unique 
I will certainly bring it to C&C next year now that it has a good paint job on it lol
That said, good to see it come back to life. I wonder what kind of course has a wall even remotely in play. Also why I never used to let people dual drive my car. I'd feel much better about wrecking it myself rather than in the hands of someone else.
Sweet looking car! Glad it all came back together and this time better than before. This isn't helping the fact that I want an s2000. Or a 911.
In reply to gamby:
lol that's great.
Here's a vid from another event at the same venue. It's the parking lot of an old baseball stadium, the yellow wall on the left is what he hit.
http://youtu.be/eM8QSDZXfaQ (sorry for the mobile link, cellphone won't do the normal site)
I was drinking the other night and decided to watch the video of the crash now that I have the car back and in good order. A big cringe happened the first time I watched it. Thank goodness beer was on hand to console myself with
Anyhow, on to more work with the car.
I got the SRS light to go off. Apparently you have to be super fast with the jumper wire and in the right sequence. I couldn't get it with a paper clip, so I used an old toggle switch and some wire attached to the test plug. Worked like a champ and no more trouble lights!
So the lights on the car had some serious heat cracks. not visible from 20 feet, but it was driving me nuts.
I still had the original passenger headlight lens (and sourced anothergood lens in Lexington), so I got to work polishing them so I could swap them out.
1000 grit wet sand
2000 grit
3000 grit
half polished
done
Then a customer at work told me that he could do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yuULP3bpXM
And that he would do mine for FREE. So I gave him my lenses, even after putting a couple hours into cleaning them up myself. Hoping to have them back by the end of the week.
Next was pulling the front bumper to access the headlights and fix a couple minor things.
There are nuts on the back side of the bumper to hold the license plate (or painted plugs in my case) and teh drivers side ones fell off.
A little JB Weld and they're back in place
Another minor annoyance was that the A/C dryer sits behind the grill and sticks out like a sore thumb. I forgot to take a before pic, but I used some cardboard to guard everything, cleaned it up, and shot it with some satin black paint.
That should blend in much better.
Now I'm just waiting to get the lenses back from that guy to put is all back together.
BACK FROM TEH DEADLY
Ok, more like I forgot to update the thread.....
New(er) lenses cleaned up and installed
A friend sanded the lenses and painted them with a 2 part urethane clear coat. Turned out awesome.
And the real fun was yesterday. First day back on the track!!!!!!!!!!
Video of my fastest run ---- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNuScwBgQNY
Aaaaaand video of lots of sideways driving ---- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F1dsp7QoI4
Apparently trying to get 3 seasons out of one set of RS-3s is too much to ask of them. The tires still have some tread left, but they're hard as a rock. Still had a great time and the car was flawless the entire day. It felt so good to be back behind the wheel of my car again
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