Ed's Daily Fun 2SS

[Eddymel1998]

Took Mr Eagle's advice and just bought new poly toe rods and trailing arms, did try to find poly rod ends but had trouble finding the exact dimensions, biggest issue was the inner diameter for the bolt, all the other stuff was easy, at the end of the day for a set of rod ends that I wasnt sure would fit came out a little over $200 so at that point I'd rather pay a bit more and know everything will fit and maybe try to make up the difference by selling old ones or something like that. I went with UMI not gonna lie, mostly because of price, pretty sure I ended up close to $200 cheaper with both compared to BMR, plus I've been seeing their name pop up more often with older cars and apparently they're made in the US (if that still matters). Otherwise looked them over, welds look alright, finish seems good, I think it should all be fine.

[The_bald_eagle_machine]

Originally Posted by Eddymel1998

Took Mr Eagle's advice and just bought new poly toe rods and trailing arms, did try to find poly rod ends but had trouble finding the exact dimensions, biggest issue was the inner diameter for the bolt, all the other stuff was easy, at the end of the day for a set of rod ends that I wasnt sure would fit came out a little over $200 so at that point I'd rather pay a bit more and know everything will fit and maybe try to make up the difference by selling old ones or something like that. I went with UMI not gonna lie, mostly because of price, pretty sure I ended up close to $200 cheaper with both compared to BMR, plus I've been seeing their name pop up more often with older cars and apparently they're made in the US (if that still matters). Otherwise looked them over, welds look alright, finish seems good, I think it should all be fine.

Umi is a great company. UMI is based out of PA and they actually built their own private road coarse to torture test their products. BMR is based out of FL and i believe they test their stuff in Sebring and the local drag strips. I had a mixture of there parts on my 87 Trans am and nothing but good things to say about both of them. BMR had a slightly broader platform for the 5th gen, so I just went with them instead.

[The_bald_eagle_machine]

I actually like that the UMI units have the little tabs for the abs sensors. I had to ziptie mine to the BMR camber arms.

[Eddymel1998]

Yeah that was the first thing I noticed as well, on my current unit I kinda get it since the whole casing rotates but still had to open up the instructions to make sure I wasnt accidentally missing something, definitely appreciate the return of the tabs.

[Eddymel1998]

Got around to installing some stuff that's been sitting around for nearly half a year, a light up bowtie I found on eBay and the towhook. Towhook was pretty straightforward I did mess up because I wanted to keep the mount as far back as possible so I didn't have to cut the bumper plastic thing over the bar, but when I did that piece was angled slightly down and hook would not fit in between the grill lines, so had to drill a second set of holes, thankfully it's not visible, lightweight one with tow hook from bald eagle would've probably been a better option but my splitter rods are mounted to the bar and it kinda sucks re routing them.

Next was the light up emblem and on Friday I thought I would take it apart and add some extra coating to whatever PCB they used, but turns out it's just one giant bowtie shaped singular LED, never seen anything like this it's pretty neat.

Removing the old emblem was a total pain in the nuts, the tabs were on there too tight and I didn't want to cut them, when it finally let go I slipped and scraped a substantial amount of skin from my thumb, put me out for rest of the day, came back next day by covering the area up with some bandaids and wearing gloves, still hurt like hell. The wire it came with a had a small connector, length of wire was too short but after splicing some more wire in, I placed the connecter right next to the one for the daylight running lights on bumper, so it's easy to remove in future, then used existing wire covers and tons of electrical tape to keep it neat. I tapped it into the halo wires on the headlights, not big fan of the spade connection splices I used but bowtie light wires were too thin gauge to use any other splicing thing I had, I coated everything in liquid electrical tape just to be sure

At the end of the day it looks great, color temp on the bowtie LEDs is slightly different to halo ones but you can't tell on pictures anyways.

[Eddymel1998]

Had a little bit of time to kill so fixed up the licence plate lights, I got the part number right for the housings I guess, good thing I bought two because second one crumbled apart as soon as I removed the bulb

The lights are the most Chinese thing, it's just a piece of PCB with an LED and guessing some resistors so it doesn't blow up, but I got whole bag of them for basically nothing and I don't care too much of my licence plate is not super visible at all times.

Still need to do something about the burn mark, proper way would be to patch it and match up the paint but anything I can come up with short of taking it to a shop is going to look bad, what I'm thinking is drilling it out and buying some of those licence plate hole plugs, then paint them with some of the SIM paint I have and at best, on first glance it will look like some kind of sensor or something.

[The_bald_eagle_machine]

Really sucks that the old bulb fell out and burnt your bumper like that. It's one of those things that would drive me absolutely crazy. I got lightly rear ended on the highway on a hit and run and my bumper has a bumper of scuffs and paint chips that drive me crazy everytime that i look at them. I think when i finally do the Zl1 front bumper conversion I will paint the front and rear bumper at the same time to try and revitalize those parts.

[SlowLS1]

The glow tie looks awesome! I actually like the throwback you did with the headlights. I never noticed it before...

[Eddymel1998]

Did something I've never done before and decided to volunteer as a road Marshal at the Olympus rally, was a really cool experience, just got to sit by the side of the road for two days and watch cool cars pass by, the Camaro definitely steed out against all the Toyotas, Subarus, and jeeps the other volunteers had. Way in and out was just by following the course, so on way out got to pick up the speed a bit and skid the Camaro through a few corners on the gravel.

The downside is that the car was absolutely filthy afterwards, covered in dust and mud and underneath that a lot of new paint chips, mainly on the front bumper and read quarters, but nothing end of the world like, I already know once I can get another primary car she's probably gonna get a repaint on handful of panels.