Who the hell stances out a Dodge Omni?

[Ferenza]

Somebody has finally done.
I love Omnis
MOAR story please

[dart165]

Love how thorough this build thread is, it really conveys the hardships of being an Omni owner.

It's funny. This is the first time I've organized everything and put the story together....makes me realize how much I've been through with this car... (and how much money I've spent, though it's an eaier pill to swallow when you stop count when you start losing, which in this case was crazy early)

[speakerboy]

Love this story. Anyone who has had a love affair with a broke ass car can relate. I look forward to the next installment!

[dart165]

Ok, so the Omni was down for the count for a minute.

In the mean time, a few other projects came and went. I have a few other cars, so anytime one needs attention, I have to play the game of seeing if that money can go further on one of the other cars.
Plus if I can buy something and part it out, or flip it, then I can afford all the output that the hobby demands...(at least thats how I justify buying more shit that I dont need) You all know how it goes.

I bought this unmodified '85 GLH Turbo (sight-unseen) as a possible winter beater... turned out to be a lot nicer than I thought and once I detailed it, I couldn't put it through MI winters. So i sold it and did pretty well:


Then I bought this '87 Shelby Lancer numbered car (again, sight-unseen) as a potential flip. This turned out to be an unholy wad of shit. I sold it a month later, and luckily broke even. Thank god it had enough rarity to justify someone wanting to restore it because it was ROUGH.


Then I found this 89 Shelby Z (it had no wheels so i threw the MSWs on it to roll it around):


I was actually looking to buy the window regulator for a friends car, and came home with the whole damn thing. I was able to part it out and sell off everything before scrapping it so that was cool, but the real win here was the transmission: the Shelby-Z Daytonas came with a cable shifted A-555 Getrag trans, which was much beefier and had a lot less slop than my rod shifted 525.

Time to get the black Omni back on the road!

[keeton]

Awesome. This thing makes some serious power!

...and that sketch made me want an Omni.

[dart165]

Chapter 4: The quest for flushness begins.

Back in 04, a buddy of mine had a Golf with widened steelies. The car had just the look I wanted. After I bought the GLH, I scoured the planet (or the internet anyway) for NOS VR6 Corrado steel wheels. They needed to be VR6 since my car has a 5x100 bolt pattern. These were a pain to find, since not all Corrados were VR6’s and of those, most came with aluminum wheels. Oddly enough, I found a dealership out here that had a set of four still in the boxes and I managed to pick ‘em up. I sat on em for years waiting to find someone to widen em. Meanwhile I started trying to figure out how to whack the 4” or so outta the ride height to get it to where I thought it should be. There really aren’t off-the-shelf parts for Omnis since no one really goes this direction with em, so it took some Frankenstein-ing of parts to get it down where I wanted it.

I found out that first gen Dodge Neon front struts are 2” shorter than l-bodies and other than a different top hat, bolt right in. On the bottom end, I used bigger Dodge Daytona knuckles that I had scored from the red 89 parts car. For springs I used MK1 Rabbit Ground Control coils/sleeves. I must have mocked up the setup 15 times to get it right. Here it is, on mockup #12 or so. Not quite there yet... but on the right track.








Puppy is unimpressed.

[CrackerTeg]

I don't know why but I keep getting drawn into this thread. I think the storytelling and suspense between "chapters" is doing it for me.

[B Rod]

I don't know why but I keep getting drawn into this thread. I think the storytelling and suspense between "chapters" is doing it for me.

I'm right there with you. This thread is awesome.

[dart165]

Chapter 5: “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Once the suspension height was established it was time to bite the bullet and widen the wheels. I gave them to a place locally that specializes in widening aluminum wheels, so I figured steelies would be no problem. I wanted a slight stagger: 1” wider on the front with a +15 offset, and 1.5” wider for the rears with a 0 offset. I gave them photo reference of cars that had a similar set up, and even a drawing of what I wanted em to look like. Fool proof, right?

Two weeks later I get a call and the dude tells me they mistakenly widened them backwards! (as in, they widened the back spacing of the wheels instead of the lip.... which makes zero sense.)

I'll save you the drama of it...Long story short, they ended up having to re-hoop the wheels to get it right. They ate the cost of the job since the whole ordeal took like 2 months so at least that was cool.




Mocking it up!

[Chetkryl]

believe it or not, i saw one of these on craigslist awhile back that was pretty low. i saved the pics i gotta get them off my other laptop ill post them soon
__________

[CrackerTeg]

believe it or not, i saw one of these on craigslist awhile back that was pretty low. i saved the pics i gotta get them off my other laptop ill post them soon
__________

GTFO shit head.

[SheaMoose]

I can't stop checking in on this.
I just like it so much.
Good stories.

[dart165]

Thanks for all the positive comments guys!

... More to come.

[mrg7243]

I do like this.

[Thom]

This is so damn cool. Keep going