Sep 05
Tanabe has announced the addition of the 2012-2013 Mazda 3 5-door (SKYACTIV) application to the NF210 coil spring line. The NF210 series springs are engineered to meet or exceed OEM ride quality while providing a subtle reduction in ride height for an aggressive look. For this application, the ride height is lowered 1.25” in the front and 1.0” in the rear. Here are some detailed photos of the springs, the springs installed on a car, and the resulting ride height.
Sep 04
Some great pictures of Underground Graphics Subaru BRZ with Custom Color SSR Professor SP1 at Hot Import Night Houston Texas. More coverage of this Subaru BRZ are more to come.
Special Thanks to;
Photos: Proper Garage / Jeremiah Draughn
Underground Graphics for representing SSR Wheels
Sep 03
This past weekend Wrong Fitment Crew put together a meet held in Oceanside, California. Since it was a long weekend due to the Labor Day holiday, I was able to make time to make it out. If you aren’t familiar with WFC (Wrong Fitment Crew), then I’ll keep it simple by saying they’re a family of friends who share a similar passion in fitment and having fun. If you’ve never been to a WFC meet, it might be something for you to experience if cars and fitment are your sort of thing. At least once a year, fitment crews from around Southern, California unite to enjoy a day of bonding amongst friends. In a way it’s somewhat of a family reunion as some members actually make the trip out from other states.
Besides the fact that the heat was scorching, the meet was overall chill. Since most crews arrived in the early hours of the morning and the heat was extremely hot as stated before, not everyone stuck around til the end. I’m sure they also had to get back home, as it was the holiday weekend and the not everyone is from the Oceanside area. Either way, the vibe was laid back, the people are friendly, and in case you felt like showing your moves, there there was a DJ playing some jams. Check out the coverage below!
Sep 02
SARD is one of Japan’s historic race teams. Beginning as a works team for Toyota, they used their racing history and engineering skill to develop their own vast line of performance parts. SARD is most well known for their fuel delivery products, which are said to be the best in Japan! Check out SARD items here: http://www.more-japan.com/SARD-c-317/
Aug 30
Nagisa Auto offers some pretty cool chassis parts for the AE86. Two of which are the Shakitto PLate (Shock Tower Brace) and their 3-point tower bar. Both can be used together to really reduce the flex in one of the weakpoints in the Chassis. Check out some of the pictures below. For more Nagisa Auto Chassis Reinforcement parts, check here.
Aug 29
The weight of a wheel is very important to the performance of your car for more reasons than you may think.
Firstly the weight of the wheels on your car are considered unsprung mass, to put it simply – unsprung mass is the weight of the parts on your car that are directly connected to and includes the wheels, rather than being supported by the suspension. In terms of handling, it is generally accepted that one pound of unsprung weight is equivalent to three pounds of chassis weight. Taking this equation into account, here is an example – simply replacing the original wheels on a base model Nissan 350Z (23.3 pounds each up front and 24.1 pounds each for the rears*) with SSR Type Cs of the same size will yield weight saving of 7.7 pounds per front wheel and 7.9 pounds per rear wheel for a total weight savings of 31.2 pounds. Because wheels are unsprung mass, this loss of weight will translate to a car that handles as if it were ~90 pounds lighter without changing anything else, as for braking and acceleration properties – you will feel an even more prominent improvement, which leads us to yet another benefit of lighter wheels – reducing rotational mass.
Rotational mass is another factor that should definitely be considered when choosing wheels for your car. A heavier wheel requires more energy to move (spin) and more energy to stop, of course the diameter of the wheel plays a large part in this equation as the effects of rotational mass grow exponentially with the diameter. The position of the weight within the wheel also plays a large part when calculating rotational mass – the weight further out towards the tire will have a much larger effect than the weight at the hub area, which is why different disk types have a minimal effect on the rotational mass despite a HP disk usually being a few tenths of a pound heavier than an SL disk. For the sake of simplicity we will again apply the effects of replacing a base model 350Z’s wheels with a set of SSR Type Cs in the same size. It is widely accepted that although there are many variables and results will vary from car to car, the general rule of thumb is that every pound shed from the wheels of a car is worth up to 10 pounds removed from the chassis in the acceleration and braking department. That means that in this example, the 350Z can accelerate and stop as if it were up to 312 pounds lighter! You will also see improvements in fuel economy as well as the obvious and most common reason for buying aftermarket wheels – the aesthetic improvement, however now you can say with confidence that your SSR Wheels are much more than just a pretty face!
*OEM 350Z wheel information from http://www.350z-tech.com/
With that said, here are the weights per size of the SSR Professor MS1, MS1R, SP1 and SP1R: (click to enlarge image)
Aug 28
Tanabe coil springs are manufactures in Shiga, Japan. All Tanabe coil springs are cold wound and utilizing the strongest materials to manufacture each and every coil springs. To learn the full manufacturing process of Tanabe Springs from start to finish click here.
Aug 27
Recently, Import Tuner Magazine featured the top 5 Toyota’s from Nisei Showoff. Considering this is event is usually heavy in late model builds, it’s good to see this car get its shine. This year Carl Zamuco’s Lexus IS250 went from clean to sexy. With the added Aimgain aero, he took the IS250’s simplistic design and gave it an aggressive new look. In order to complete the overhaul, Carl also got his SSR Professors SP1’s redone. Overall, his new look has people talking and it must be good as Carl Zamuco and his IS250 recently won best a show a couple of weekends ago at Nisei Showoff. We would like to congratulate Carl Zamuco on claiming yet another prize.
Carl is running SSR Professor SP1’s Front: 19×10 and Rear: 19×11
Featured Article & Photo Credit: ImportTuner.com
SSR Professor SP1: SSR-Wheels.com
Aug 26
Available for iPhone devices is the FREE SSR Wheels App!
With this app you can preview the current line up of SSR wheels and even place them on a picture of your car to see how good they look! Now instead of imagining the wheels on your car now you can see it with your own eyes.
Aug 23
Check out some of these cars that players have designed in the Forza Motorsport video game series! Some of them are very accurate representations of the real thing! It’s pretty amazing to see what you can do with video games these days! What are some cars that you’ve designed?
Continue reading
