The Wannabe Racer GT350

[rocsteady]

I dig the red wheels on white cars. Should also pull the red pinstripes out a little more. Beautiful car!

Thank you very much. I think you’re right on the pinstripes. I’m anxious to see it with the red wheels. Then I’ll have to do blue calipers…work, work, work.

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[Crew4991]

Very cool OP Love your story and the car looks great. Happy for you that you are having a fun GT350 ownership journey. The stripes look awesome, definitely a neat way of customizing your ride to make it your own.

 

[rocsteady]

So if nothing else, the storage unit is starting to look like something race-related. The anodized red MRR wheels and Michelin Cup 2s waiting for Spring while the all season Toyos were delivered late today. No time to get them mounted up yet. Luckily the temps are supposed to stay in the mid 30s at the lowest for my weekly trek back to Manhattan for work. Hopefully next week can get them ready to go.

 

[scd603]

Congrats and thanks for sharing. Looking forward to seeing the red wheels on it

 

[SN8KBTE]

Looked up the factory blue stripes and nearly choked when I added up the cost. Decided to go aftermarket and then cleverly ordered the wrong color. Figured I’d put ‘em on anyway, if nothing else it would be good practice and when I got the correct blue ones, I’d be less inclined to screw them up.

Went pretty well I think despite some silly alignment mistakes

I always liked the way the ”R” model had the red pinstripe so I added that to my order from stripe source. Now it looks like a GT350

Definitely like the stripe look and the red helped me like the odd colored stripes a bit better I think

Agree, now it looks like a Shelby!!!

 

[rocsteady]

After seeing them in @Muligan ’s Mule, I looked into the Vorschlag brake cooling air deflectors. And you know you have a great friend when they buy you something for your car. They showed up this week:

I thought about painting them with some basic black truck bed liner spray I had laying around but when the can didn’t want to cooperate, I went in a different direction:

I’m probably the only one that’ll ever see ‘em, other than a mechanic here and there, so what the heck. Besides, “Apple Red” 2X works on just about anything. If the weather isn’t too bad I’ll dig out the tap and die kit and thread the holes, put em on tomorrow.

 

[rocsteady]

Had the Toyos mounted on the factory black rims. Went with 295-30 series as I got a good price. They’re a lot smaller circumference than the stock size so speedo is a little off, no big deal though just for a couple months until Spring rolls around. Does give me a little insight into what changing the gears would be like and I don’t care for it. I’ll be sticking with stock size/height from here on out for sure. Probably look to sell the Toyos as soon as I take them off. Anyway, there's always cool stuff at the shop that mounted/balanced the tires. The wannabe racer is in the background ready to go up on the lift.

 

[rocsteady]

Was just in time too as we got some freezing temps just after:

 

[rocsteady]

Loaded up the rims and tires to drop off at the shop. Don’t need them until the Spring but will take up less space in storage once the tires are mounted. I’m not sure if the Cup 2s are worn enough to assume that the first owner left them on the car for the first 5000 miles or what. Either way, they’ll be on for the wannabe racer‘s first track day with me.

 

[rocsteady]

Thought this was a little odd, the wannabe racer has a build date of 3/19 but wasn’t in service until June of 2020? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a time span even half of that on anything I’ve owned before this.

 

[rocsteady]

Had some time today and the weather cooperated a bit so got the Steeda low profile jacking rails installed. I wish everything was this easy to install. Gave me a chance to try out the jack that came with my new spare as well, make sure it works before it’s needed.

So much better when doing much of anything on the ground to have the jacking rails. Will make swapping out the wheels at the track 100 times better.

 

[rocsteady]

Also tried this GoPro mount today. If I could ever get the GoPro to sync with my phone, I could actually watch the video I took and see if it’s any good. However, technology and I are not friends and apparantly, neither are my phone and my GoPro.

 

[rocsteady]

Finally got the video to play and the camera was too low in that spot. Needs to be up a bit. I think this height will be much better:

Tried that real quick and it was too close to my head. Seemed like it would try to focus on my ear rather than out in front of the car at all. I extended the “slider” a bit on the mount and I think we have a winner. Will try it out in the daylight tomorrow.

 

[rocsteady]

Installed rear axle jam nuts from Optimum Performance today. Just a piece of mind thing if nothing else. (For my notes, torqued to 100 ft/lbs with some blue loctite).

Before:

After installing jam nut:

 

[rocsteady]

Had removed the tinted headlight vinyl as it was so dark, the headlights were barely sufficient when I actually needed them to see when driving at night. I did like the idea of having something protecting the lens on the lights though so went with a different tint after removing the dark ones. Now we both have blue eyes...

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