There was an unexpected flurry of activity this weekend. Somewhat surprisingly there has been an advancement of the budget and I am now able to order some more parts. Key purchases in this order will be the outer rocker for the drivers side, quarter skin for the passenger side, new outer tie rods, and the necessary adapters and hardware to let me fit the C5 wheels.
Why the urgency? A quick call to the importing company (STS imports) tells me that the next container is due to be packed in the next 2 weeks, so I need to get everything ordered and shipped to them sharpish, or it will be months before I see any of it. The problem now is that I've not worried about finallising the details of what I needed as I thought I had loads of time in which to do it.
So, first was confirming the size if the wheel adapters. General wisdom seems to be a 2" spacer at the front, and 2.5" at the rear, but measure first to make sure. Being as I have no suspension fitted, measuring clearances exactly isn't going to be possible, so I'll have to make do with comparing the wheels.
Side by side, you can see that the new tyre is slightly shorter than the old ones, which may or may not help with clearance.
Next I check the backspacing, using the edge of the tyre as the reference rather than the wheel rim. I did this because the old tyre had much more sidewall bulge, and doing it this way measures to the outermost contact point.
Based on this, it looks like the new wheel/tire combo is 2 1/8" offset. I figure the 2.5" spacer at the rear will be fine, but I am now concerned by the front. Will 2" be enough? With it being just 1/8", I may be able to get away with a thin spacer if needed.
With the thickness of the adapters sorted(?), next task was to work out what studs I'd need. The rear drum is still on stock studs, and I've been advised to up the thickness of them to cope with the added stress of the adapter. I'm going to go with 12mm, to match the studs that will come in the adapters. I've figured that the stud needs to be at least as long as the adapter, plus the thickness of the rotor. So, off with the rear wheel and drum, and measure the thickness of the axle flange.
As I write this, I have realised that I should have also measured the thickness of the brake drum. However, having subsequently looked for the parts, it's not overly relevant, as I will have to get 3.25" studs, and will be cutting them down to fit.
Being thicker studs, I also needed to see if I could find any that would fit the existing holes, or if I would have to drill the holes larger to fit the studs. The stock studs are about 0.472", but the new ones will be 0.505", so I'll need to get a 0.5" drill bit sometime.
That's the rear sorted, but I also need to check the fronts. I will be fitting a new Baer front kit, and had no idea what studs it had fitted as standard. Now I know they're in one of thses boxes, and my money is on it being the one at the bottom:
Yep, I was right. Bottom box, but I did get them out reasonably quickly, although not without casualty:
I'm hoping this will be repairable, otherwise I've got to re-do all the holes in a fresh dash bezel.
Anyway, back to the task in hand, the front studs.
It was clear early on that the existing stud would be too short, but I also needed to extract one to be able to measure the hole diameter. I could assume that it would be a stock size, but I didn't want to get it wrong as I don't fancy having to drill these holes out.
Knowing that these studs can be in pretty tight, I went straight for the ball joint press. Even then, I still had to stand and use my full body weight (and I'm not a lightweight) to get any movement.
Eventually it popped out, and I was able to confirm the full length and knurl thickness and confirm that I could use the same set of studs as will be used at the rear.
I then spent a bit of time rooting around in the garage, hoping to find a few things that I could sell quickly to raise a bit more cash. I was planning to go for some del-lum bushes, but a recent ebay find has put that on hold. I won't go into it now, as it's still in auction and I don't want to jinx it, but fingers are tightly crossed.