VR gets some love for E38!

Before and after...



Well it took some doing, in fact it took about 10 months, things take a bit longer when you're skint don't they.

So the cack OZs have finally gone to the basement to be replaced by the 17" BBS Monzas (mk5 gti) and the worn koni suspension kit made way for some sweet FK Konigsport coilovers. Nice.

We basically loaded my boot up with all the gear: shocks, adaptors (the BBS are 5x112 pcd as opposed to my 5x100 hubs), brakes and rims. As with anything to do with cars, nothing really went to plan. Removing shocks was surprisingly straightforward, but when we came to fit the brakes....it turned out the so-called 288mm discs I bought were actually 280mm, which aint any use really, so that had to be scrapped. Secondly, fitting adaptors was a cinch but when we came to fit the rims it turned out that the wheel bolts I'd been driving around on where wrong. The bolts were slightly too long and the seat was too deep. None of this mattered on the old rims as they seemed to hold ok but with decent genuine oem rims the bolts need to be right. Let the games begin. First stop, GSF. Really helpful, showed us a standard bolt which seemed to fit the bill but they only had 10. Crap. Next stop, VW main stealers...parts department was shut. Next stop, bit of a ghetto stop at a local National tyres Garage who happened to have a bunch lying around which I managed to buy up, so we decided to leg it to GSF for the rest...who had just shut. So we had 8 bolts, new coilovers the geometry all set up, all the tools to do the job but not enough bolts. So up steps my pal Gilly who we remembered had all the bolts we needed seeing as his vento was in pieces in his garage covered in paint that we decided to add, Chip Foose style. problem with this was that he was in London so fate had dealt us a shitty card and we had to wait until the next day. Which was a breeze. All the hard stuff like freeing up track rods, adjusting camber...etc had already been so all we neded to do was see just how low we could make the bitch sit. We managed to get her nicely raked out, arse up, nose down looking pretty cool and my personal mechanic and close personal friend Chris even threw in a wash for me. What a nice guy.

Anyway, long and short is the ride looks sweet now ready for Edition38, although I'm gonna see if I can sort out a few more things before the end of the week like a new front splitter, rear lights and maybe some textured sill trims. Oh, and despite our efforts, the arches and tyres are getting awesomely fouled up thanks to some rrrrrrrrub.

None of this would have been possible if it wasn't for Chris. Everybody needs a Chris and if you click 'everybody loves Chris' you can view a pic strip (not of him stripping) to see just how much of the work he did....pretty much all of it to be fair. Big props to ma boy for this one...more to come when I get the arches rolled.