I never liked the look of the front so I was thinking about ways of changing it to look more appealing to me. First obvious thing was to paint, replace or remove front chromed trim around the grille. But that alone didn't do enough for me.  I realised that I do not like how the front lights blend in with the grille so I decided to paint the small area on the sides of the grille, right next to the headlight. I think that alone made a huge difference.

 

 

I have several low budget ideas more to hopefully further improve the look of the front. Plus some other modifications.

Looks great. What else have you in mind? Maybe retrofit the fog lights in the lower grill. 

Thanks!

I don't intend to add fog lights to the lower grille.

 

Here is what I had in mind:

 

I'm going to be 3D printing couple of pieces, little bit of gluing and painting. Keep it low cost.

Have not had time to work on body but I did lower my car. 

 

Before:

After:

 

Now parts used are mishmash. I have Eibach lowering springs in the front with VW Polo 6N upper strut mounts. They are roughly 10-15mm lower than stock ones. Front Eibach spring only lower around 30mm. 

 

Stock on left:

 

But also comes with an issue. Cup that mounts on the very top of the sturt has to be much shallower. Even the shallow ones I got are not enough. Whoops!

 

 

Stock parts were actually not that much better. 

 

Anyway, in the rear I have H&R lowering springs because they lower the car around 40mm compared to only 30mm on Eibach. If I have any issues then I might install H&R in the front aswell. 

 

Now you may wonder why I even bothered doing something stupid like this. Uhm....  Yeah. 

 

Lets hope everything stays together. 

If anyone ever wonders why H&R lowering springs feel harsh compared to Eibach...

That's what the the spring looks like when you have the car sitting on the ground. Essentially 1/3rd of the H&R rear spring is fully compressed. Did they even test these springs on a car? Unless this is designed like this on purpose.

 

 

 

Besides this I had issues with rear end hitting bump stop every time I went over a bigger bump.

 

Left side is 114mm long ( 6Q0 512 131 C ) none stock bump stop, In the middle is stock length 144mm long bump stop and on the right side is another 114mm long ( 1J0 512 131 C ) none stock bump stop. I decided to replace stock one with the one on the right side because it is overall better fit.

At first it may not seem like a big difference in length but when I measured stock bump stop, I realised that it has been severely compressed over a month of usage. It now measures 124mm while originally it was 144mm. It has lost 20mm from rear end bottoming out too much.

 

This is how it looked 10 months ago before installing lowering springs:

 

How it looked right after:

 

And how it looks like now:

 

Rear end is way lower now and even looks weird, as if rear axle has shifted forwards. I can say that it has not.

Copeys Rapid looked like that when it was very low.

 

Look back in Rapid Projects for a Blue saloon.