ST Suspension

Sunday funday is back! This officially marks the earliest we’ve ever decided to do something to our cars and where the weather was decent enough to let us do so. The suspension has just been sitting in the garage, the Cusco arms were in my living room and the car was on jacks… It’s been so long since we’ve all got together to do some wrenching so this was the perfect time!

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see it down on the ground just yet… There are still a few more pieces to add to the puzzle. If all goes well, an exhaust will go on there soon and I’ll be picking tires up from Alex in February. By the time I get all my shit together, it’ll (hopefully be March) and it’ll be time to wake her up again…

Anyway – we started at around 11:30 and while this is no difficult job, we finished faster than expected. I think a part of all of us was hoping that it would have taken longer just so we had an excuse to be in the garage a little longer… Ah well.

There she is under my ghetto covers and on jacks for the last 3-ish months. I gotta get a car cover next year…

The new parts begging to be put in. Cusco lower control arms and ST coilovers.

It wasn’t long before we got all our stuff out and were ready to finally get working.

Punit ended up bringing in his AME’s so that we could take the faces off so he could re-finish the barrels.

Love these wheels.

It took a bit for us to get started… Mainly because it was still a little chilly…

But we paired up and each took a corner.

Punit taking off some strut bolts. The best part of working on a new car that hasn’t seen salt/snow is that everything is hella easy to take off

Once we removed the stock suspension on the front, we disassembled them, took the top hats off and assembled them onto the ST’s. Easy peasy.

These were in super quick. We pre-adjusted them to have 3 threads left on the fronts. We’ll see how that goes

JC and Gopesh on the other side… JC putting fingerprints on my fender. Clearly he has never owned a black car…

Next up were the rears. A little more work because we had to take the stock control arms off, but still pretty straight forward.

JC and Punit taking the rear lining off and oh there’s JC again, putting finger prints on my quarter panel now…

Gopesh getting down and dirty taking off all the control arm and strut bolts… My side finished.

Comparison of the Cusco arms to the stock arm. Love that Cusco blue.

A quick shot of the stock control arm off and all the stock junk still hanging there. I do plan on replacing all these pieces in the near future… I just don’t know when lol.

A comparison of the stock and ST rear pieces.

And once again, we disassembled the stock suspension and re-used the top hats for the ST’s, then mounted them on… Like so.

Punit tightening the top strut bolts.

Punit ended up picking up the camera and took some candids as well. I actually love when people pick the camera up and attempt to take some shots – whether it’s for fun or not. It’s a nice surprise when I go to edit them and it’s cool to see it from their perspective. That’s really the only time you see me on the other side…

Another angle – you’ve probably seen this shot on my Instagram. This was an awesome shot, Punit!

And there’s Gopesh wedged in the corner doing the passenger side rear…

The FRS is also plugged into a trickle charger for those that are wondering.

JC on his phone while I’m breaking my arms down there. First shot of 2015 of his antics…

A fun fact: Punit only gets down and dirty when none of us can get a bolt out or if we need some muscle lol. This was one of those times… It’s rare though.

A shot of it all in and done! Love the color combo.

Gopesh trying to find the right size key to remove the wheel hardware…

Little did we know that some of the hardware was previously “messed” with from the previous owner – so some of them were stripped. Problem number two was that we didn’t have the right size key… So no progress was made on the wheels today, unfortunately.

Punit trying to look for the right size so that we can tackle another day.

Some close up shots of it all together.

Looks great together

We left 9 threads in the rear… Again, not sure where that’s going to put me, but we’ll see!

Last shot of the front. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the allen key locking the collar in place versus the dual collar… But I guess we’ll see. I think I’ll be picking up a can of fluid film to spray on all of this before I take it out just in case. Back when I had my Civic, I sprayed my Buddy Club N+’s with fluid film when I first installed them and months later, they were super easy to remove and adjust.

Anyway, a few more parts incoming so stay tuned! We’re almost through the winter blues!

Thanks to JC, Punit, and Gopesh again for the helping hand!

Just in time for my birthday and/or Christmas! The FRS gets some new and improved legs.

Want to thank Jimmy over at VEX Performance for hooking me up with these and giving nothing but awesome service. My plan was originally to get KW V3’s and I had spoken to Jimmy about potentially getting them for a Christmas present to myself. The first thing he asked was if I really needed them – well… Yeah I needed them. They were all the rage, right? Before I go any further, I just want to say that my goal is to build this car with quality parts from top to bottom. Because I have to build the FRS fairly slowly, it forces me to have the patience to get the right parts.

But I digress… Jimmy mentioned that unless the car was seeing some serious track time, the features of the KW V3’s will most likely go to waste. Instead, he suggested the ST’s – which is actually KW’s kid brother company – same quality, half the price tag. Initially, I was hesitant because my sights were set on the V3’s for months and I didn’t want to stray from that path. I did more research and more discussing with Jimmy – the ST’s are essentially KW V1’s but with a zinc plated body vs the stainless steel body of the V1’s. I could go on but I’m not here to sell them, I’m just here to show.

One other thing I want to mention is that when the first set came in, the box was pretty damaged and there was a piece missing. It’s unfortunate because many other ST owners reported that the boxing of the suspension was shitty. Jimmy went out of his way to get another set overnight and we made sure the second set was good to go – although out of his power, I appreciate making it right.