Quote:
Originally Posted by BAN SUVS
If you'd bought an '05 in the first place, you could be on 285/30R18 R compounds for ~$2100, or 275/35R18 RT-615s for under $2000... with forged wheels. Next year 18" tires will be cheaper because so many people are going to them.
18s are the new 17s.
Also, the hub conversion is well under $1000... plus there are a million off the shelf wheel sets in 18x8.5 or wider.
Bottom line Dean, your car will be beatable until you go to 18s. Same with all of us really.
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Dean pretty much covered this, but the hub conversion is significantly more than $1000.
A grand gets you the new front knuckles/hubs, and rear bearings/hubs, and ABS tone wheel spacers to make the '04 front axles compatible with the '05 front knuckles.
So then you have to get the rear hubs pressed into the knuckles, and have the tone wheel spacer installed.
Then it's on to finding brake rotors. I tried to have mine drilled with the new bolt pattern: the rears were no-go... for some reason putting the right pattern on there isn't enough to make 'em fit... I dunno if C&C screwed up the pattern or what, but it looked right, measured right, and still wouldn't seat. The fronts were a little better after I brought them back twice to be over-bored, either way the only real way to get the right brake rotors is to buy them... so that's like $1200 for a pair of front StopTech rotors w/ top hats, and $300 something for rear GrN gravel rotors (which are cheaper than the STi Brembo rotors that most people doing this conversion have).
Then there's the worst part: getting the suspension to bolt to the front knuckles. Frankly, the right way to do it, is to just sell your existing struts and buy some new '05 STi coilovers. Since I had just purchased a set of '04 STi Tein SuperRace's (which are retarded expensive) there's no way I was gonna take the $1000 hit to sell 'em as used (with one track weekend on 'em) and buy an '05 set when all I needed was a pair of the '05 bottom brackets. But I ended up having to argue with Tein USA for like a week getting them to agree to sell the brackets to me with zero warranty, etc, etc, etc, for $500 freaking bucks.
And if you're like most people, once the hub conversion is done you're off shopping for new wheels, which pretty much always cost more than you'll get selling your old wheels.
I think I spend more like $3000 or $4000 on my "$1000 hub conversion". But I was able to toss some 255 Sport Cups shod 17x9 wheels on the car finally, and picked up like 5 seconds/lap at RFR over guys that were normally about the same speed as me. So, it was beneficial to the car... but I'm pretty sure it's not worth all the money and time unless you've got a car like mine that's already so modded that it has no resale value to begin with.