club.liberty.asn.au

Figured i'd post this up over here aswell as the usual hangout.

I had a good two years in the B4 RSK, but i was starting to get a bit sick of the age and difficulty in getting any more power out of them without going single turbo.
So i bit the bullet and picked up a tidy 2006 BP5 GT spec B with 120k km, on the clock.
Spent quite a while searching for a nice one with full leather and manual, suprisingly rare! But finally got there in the end.

Progress so far:

Interior:
AVS S5 alarm
Defi BF boost gauge
JDM tbSTI black headliner w/ alcantara wrapped A, B and C pillars

Audio:
JDM double din fascia kit
Alpine IVE-W554ABT double din headunit
Polk MM series Front components & rear coaxials w/ JBL GTO1004 amp
Rockford Fosgate Punch P1 12" sub w/ Rockford Fosgate Prime 1200d amp

Exterior:
LED 20w park lights
LED 50w fogs
Work Emotion CR Kiwami 18x8.5 +47
Bridgestone Potenza RE003 235/40/18
Whiteline KCA399 offset rear upper control arm bushes for camber adjustment
JDM tbSTI gold Brembo's with rear backing plates so no adapters needed.


Stage 1 e-tune by Cryotune
From a few of the last revision pulls it seems to be sitting around 155kw/285nm

And here she is...











First day i had it i had an AVS S5 alarm put in (insurance company request)
And next on the list was a Defi boost guage. Went this route as in the future i'll probably get a couple of other gauges. And being a JDM car you gotta have some homeland goodness.

Install was a bit of a mission but managed to get it setup how i wanted. When i get more gauges they'll go in the top cubby and the controller will have to go somewhere else.







Love the look of the lights. Having matching parkers really cleans the front end up.





The girls all hanging out together...

Audio sounds a million times better than the mcintosh system ever did and not having to use a fm tuner for the phone anymore was reason enough to upgrade.









Interior refresh using a mix of tbSTI interior pieces and self wrapped Alcantara pillars





Once the wheels, brembo's and swaybars are in the plan is to save up and get a turboback exhaust, some silicone intake pipes, anything else needed and wind it up to 18-19psi and see what it can make since the VF45's bearings apparently aren't as temperamental as the journal bearing VF38's at that level.

*subscribed* looking good

Got the wheels all fitted up now, just needs an alignment to try get the front end to tuck in a bit more
Work CR Kiwami 18x8.5 +47 w/ Bridgestone Potenza 235/40/18
Got a set of Whiteline KCA399 bushes to give it some much needed rear end camber adjustment

I like them, great choice. Plan to lower it or keep stock height?

shav wrote:I like them, great choice. Plan to lower it or keep stock height?

Yea, want to get rid of some of the fender gap without going for something too aggressive. Think a set of STI pinks will fit what I'm after perfectly

Also thinking the KCA399 camber bushes were a bad choice. They're a pain to install and even more of a pain to adjust. Not sure whether it'll hold its alignment all that well too, the aluminium arm is pretty damn soft so the serrated end of the bushes steel centre may just chew that up and spin itself out of alignment. Alignment guys couldn't adjust them with the wheels on either.
If I could go back I'd definitely fork out the extra cash for the KTA124 adjustable lower arms.

So finally got around to doing the Brembo swap over the last few days, figured I'd take a few days off work to do this, and being the final week of The Rock 1000 it couldn't have been a better time for it.

Got a set that came from a JDM tbSTI Legacy which had Brembo compatible backing plates for the rear with 190mm handbrake shoes and STI braided brake lines.
Not much of a size difference for rotor diameter or thickness but the calipers are a fair chunk lighter than the Spec B 2 pot sliders.

The front dust shields are actually identical to the Spec B ones despite the rotors being 10mm larger, sadly I didn't discover this until I'd spent a few hours trying to get the original ones off.





Other than that the fronts were a breeze. The rears were a bit more work since the backing plates needed to be replaced.
This involved removing the hubs which took some convincing with a piece of wood and a big hammer to get off the axles. Then getting the handbrake cable out of the old setup and into the new one was a bit fiddly but not too bad.



The next challenge was attaching the calipers, due to the differing bolt spacing of the Brembo's the holes in the trailing arms intended for tightening the caliper bolts no longer line up. The top one could still be accessed but the bottom one had virtually no clearance to get a socket head onto the bolt and the bent over lip made using a closed end spanner problematic too. The only way I could work out was to take a grinder to a closed end spanner which ended up working a treat. Obviously couldn't torque the bolt but I really couldn't see any other way around this.





Still haven't got the handbrake quite right yet, seems to be doing some weird things in certain situations. Does some clicking and pinging and doesn't always seem to grip.
With both pad adjusters wound right in I had to go digging further to try find a way of loosening it some more. Ended up coming across another adjuster on the handbrake lever itself which I've had a play with and will keep tweaking until I get it right.



And the finished product of course. Happy with the choice to keep the calipers gold, really needed something that stood out a bit since the old calipers and black rims used to get a bit lost in the lack of colour. Haven't had a chance to give them a real hammering yet but seem to bite a bit sooner in the pedal travel than the Spec B ones used to do.

Great write up mate, expect a pm from me when I eventually get around to putting mine on.

I think the gold goes really well with the blue

Yea the golds really growing on me.
Don't think the process is anywhere near as involved when the adaptors are used rather than replacing the whole back setup. Need to hurry up and get your green beauties put on, man

andy_mac wrote:Yea the golds really growing on me.
Don't think the process is anywhere near as involved when the adaptors are used rather than replacing the whole back setup. Need to hurry up and get your green beauties put on, man

I'm doing the whole back setup change too. I can't wait to get them on but I think I'm going to have to wait until end of year exams are over to get it done :/

Nice work.

Not much of an update. Still haven't got to the bottom of the handbrake gremlins. Haven't had a decent bit of spare time to investigate the issue, but had a spare few mins this arvo so decided I needed to trial fit the ****ty little JDM space saver to make sure she actually fits over the Brembo calipers incase I ever need it.

As expected, the rear fits alright but the fronts didn't even come close to fitting over.
Everyone always says its safer to have the space saver on the rear so i guess it fitting over the rear is all I really need. I get the safety side of it but won't it cook the viscous rear diff super fast if caught out somewhere on the open road.

Front barely even gets as far as touching the hub.

Use an online rim and tyre calculator to work out if the rolling diameters are the same for your wheels and spare.
Afaik there are brembo compatible space savers out there, hopefully the diameter is similar to your rims n tyres.
Where did you source the alcantara from?
Did you wrap the headliner too?

They're not the same but the new wheels have a slightly smaller diameter so it is closer to the space saver diameter.
Space saver: 635mm 807.4 rev/mile
Spec b: 651mm 787.7 rev/mile
New setup: 645mm 794.4 rev/mile
So only 13 revolutions more over a mile. Not really sure what kind of percentage difference is enough to cause problems but that much seems almost negligable.

Ended up getting it from JPM Coachworks over in the states. Quite expensive but I couldn't find anyone in NZ that could get hold of it any cheaper.
Didn't do the headliner. Had the JDM tbSTI headliner which ended up matching almost perfectly colour wise, obviously just a very different texture. May do it one day but pretty happy with the look for now.
Just having some problems with the alcantara pulling up on two of the more complicated curves on the C pillars that have a mildly concave shape. Pulling tight doesn't help so the adhesive is the only thing keeping the shape as it should be. Need to research whether there is a better adhesive to use and give that section another crack

Cheers, neoprene contact adhesive might work (available from hardware stores in cans), plus applying some steam whilst stretching and glueing...

Yeah I have one of those charcoal preFL headliners, no sunroof aperture or contours, so I'm somewhat hesitant to fit it.