Congrats on the purchase! If you get a chance, join us at one of the Tail of the Dragon events (North Carolina/Tennessee) which occur each spring and fall. Meet other great Crossfire owners and experience exactly the types of roads your car was meant to drive on.

 

I always got invited to the Miata events that took place at the Tail of the Dragon but I never went, largely due to how the Miata was setup (in short: it was too low to drive aggressively.......lol). I may consider going in this car but that's quite a hike for me as i'm located in Northern VA.

Yeah he does. That's where my car is currently. They're a multi-service shop and the owners are super chill. They did my tint and my paint correction.

 

I drive from Colorado so Northern Virginia is hop, skip, and a jump to the Dragon. I hope you can make it sometime.

 

Holy moly! How many miles/hours is that if you don't mind me asking? The longest I have ever driven for a car event is 7 hours one way when I took the Miata down to Charlotte NC twice in one summer for Import Alliance & East Coast Fitment Festival. 7 hours in a car THAT low proved to be super sketchy though......lol. My rear subframe brace was less than an inch off the ground, it had -3.6F/-5.4R degrees of camber and a 205/40 tire on a 16x9 wheel.......lol. Surprisingly I never had any issues with that car breaking anything and never popped a bead on any of the tires. I am contemplating going to SoWo this year in Helena GA which would make that the longest trek i've ever made for a car event but i'm still on the fence.

 

It's about 1400 miles from Denver. I can do it in two days if I push it. I have family along the way and I usually take three days coming and going.

 

Wow, so 2,800 miles round trip? I hope they gave you some kind of plaque for longest distance traveled. Then again, this past year at H20i in Ocean City MD I hung out with guys who drove from Texas, Canada, Florida......and even met a few guys who had their cars shipped out from California just to be able to cruise the strip at Ocean City all weekend. H20i is easily my favorite weekend of the year. I've been big into obnoxiously low cars for years now as evidenced by my Miata is H20i is basically the biggest gathering of slammed cars and Instagram e-fame scene ****** in the world. People fly in from other countrys to chill, mingle and cruise.....it's nuts! I've gone the last few years in the Miata and i'm excited to bring a decently slammed/fitted Crossfire there this year. Bare in mind that i'm 27......so I haven't quite gotten around to the "grand touring" stage of my life. I've gotten my "drive like a ******" days over with but i'm still well within my "my car is never low enough" and "my music is never loud enough" phase.....lol.

 

#preach

do we do hashtags here? haha just kidding.

I'm 28 and share most of your sentiments.. we may be in the minority here but everyone on this site is pretty accepting

 

Shoot, I even use hashtags in my texts! lol

And yeah, I turn 28 this year. Age actually played a big part in me wanting to sell the Miata and get a Crossfire. I just felt like I was getting too old to be driving a slammed Miata. But driving a slammed Crossfire SRT-6 seemed more "socially acceptable". I'm in middle management at a Fortune 50 company so the Miata was always the oddball car in the parking lot back when I worked from the office (I work from home full time now).

On a side note, my KW variant 2 coilovers came in today (I practically wanted to kiss the FedEx guy haha), my Megan M-RS muffler is set to arrive this weekend and I made an appointment for next Wednesday to get my headliner, a-pillars & c-pillars wrapped in black microsuede. Also ordering my new wheels this Friday so I guess you could say things are coming along nicely. I suppose this is the only perk to having a cat as my closest companion and being forever alone.....I get to spend way more money on my car

 

Cool bud. Gonna love those photos. Good luck w everything

 

I'm interested to see the KW on the lowest setting vs the Ground Control setup

 

I considered the Ground Controls, but ultimately I just didn't want just a sleeve style coilover nor did I want to try and match them with a set of aftermarket shocks/struts. I much preferred the idea of a complete setup vs. trying to piece one together. The KW's are essentially a sleeve style coilover but they come paired with shocks/struts that are properly valved to be run on the lowest setting the coilovers offer. Plus I wanted adjustable dampening, not just ride height adjustability, as a little extra stiffness goes a long way when you're low (prevents "bacon fenders"). My Miata was tucking the lip protectors on the tires and I still managed to keep my fenders flawless thanks to having properly setup suspension. My final setup before selling the car was custom valved BC Type-BR Extreme Low's with 12k front/10k rear springs.

In all reality neither the Ground Controls nor the KW's will go as low as i'd like for them to, but I got an amazing deal on the KW's (I paid $450 under retail) through a connection I have, so I couldn't pass them up. I may end up ordering shorter springs through Swift or something later down the road.

 

Alright boys and girls, it's finally time for some pictures!

Now as many of you may know (or at least those of you who have been following this thread thus far) my car has been away getting cleaned up. I dropped it off at Blockstar in Springfield VA so their detailer Jake could work his magic. He performed one stage paint correction on it which took care of the majority of swirl marks, light scratches & oxidation. He also tended to the paint chips using the Dr. Colorchip system. He and I were very pleased with the outcome although I may return later this year to have him do three stage paint correction. He had actually reccomended starting with the one stage just so that he could determine the true condition of the car's paint/clearcoat and then go from there. While my car was at Blockstar I also had them tint my windows (35% all around).

Right is pre-paint correction, left is post-paint correction.

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Next up, my friends and I tackled my coilover installation yesterday afternoon. Everything went surprisngly smooth thanks to having the right tools on hand and a few case of beer. A couple of friends came over to help out so all in all it was a fun experience. I'm very happy with how the car is sitting now and the coilovers have actually settled a little bit more since I snapped these pictures. The coilovers are set as low as they can go (2" drop) and I have the dampening currently set at 9 (They're 19 way adjustable so 9 pretty much falls in the middle). I drove out to my best friend's house last night which is about 50 minutes away and he lives on some twisty/hilly backroads and the car drove amazingly. Ride quality wasn't really impacted either.



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Lastly, as we were wrapping up the coilover installation the mail man dropped by and gave me my new tags. I also went ahead and mounted my super emo euro plate up front and added a few stickers to my back window. #SOTRENDY is an automotive/fashion/media website that a few of my friends run (www.sotrendymedia.com) and Blockstar, as mentioned above, is the shop that did my paint correction/tint. (www.blockstarcars.com)

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Oh and I also got new OEM Chrysler badges to replace the faded ones on the car as well as a new side louver to replace the weathered/scratched up one that was on the passenger side. I installed the new side louver but I haven't gotten around to doing the badges yet.

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My new wheels & Megan Racing M-RS muffler are scheduled to come in this week so stay tuned and thanks for looking!

 

Looking sharp!

 

wonderful stuff! I think I'll get the paint correction done this summer since your detailer is just a few minutes away. Do they ever do Groupon or AngiesList style deals? What does stage one cost for SRT6 Crossfire owners...naturally they'd charge less for getting to work on such amazingly beautiful cars eh? :-)

 

Thanks Tom!

They're a relatively newer shop (although all of the guys who work there have prior experience in the automotive industry) so I don't think they do any Groupon type of things at this point. My detail was discounted because I also got my windows tinted and they kind of gave me somewhat of a "package deal". The stage one cost me $350 and the tint $100 so $450 altogether. They may charge slightly more than $350 for just the paint correction.....I would speculate about $400. Also, the shop speciailizes in Mercedes (the two shop owners both have multiple Benz's) which is kind of what influenced me to go there in the first place.

 

wow, looking good I definitely do like that setup, just enough tuck without dragging ***. I also need some paint correction and scratch/dent repair very badly, glad to see that all hope is not lost.

If you're looking to go a little different with the badges, I got a custom grayscale version of the same Chrysler badge style from eBay I can point you towards

 

Thanks man. In all reality I wish it was a little bit lower but I knew going in that these coilovers (or any suspension setups available for our cars for that matter) aren't realized designed to "slam" our cars. This drop, even with my coilovers being on the lowest possible setting, is still a relatively conservative drop in my eyes. My tires do rub the inside of the wheel well a smidge under full lock (basically anytime I back out/angle out of my drive way) but it's nothing major. But once my new wheels come in the setup will be alot more flush/aggressive looking. Wheels should be in this week and then I have to take some measurements to determine what size spacers i'll need to have them sit the way I want them to. The previous owner already added 15mm spacers on the rear though so I may be able to get away with re-using them with the new wheel setup but we'll see.

And yeah, the paint correction definitely did wonders. As mentioned, I mainly bought this car because the mileage was right (42k) and it was the color I wanted + was for sale locally which was great from a logistical standpoint. But the exterior was definitely on the rougher side. Not terrible, but not nearly as clean as I would have liked for it to have been. Having the dings pulled and having the paint correction performed cleaned things up a great deal though.

As for the badges, thanks but I still prefer the OEM Chrysler badges. These things were very hard to come by and were by no means cheap. I paid about $80 for the pair......yikes! But it's the little details that count in my book.

 

Nom nom nom.....

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More goodies arrived yesterday. I actually had these wheels planned prior to even buying my Crossfire. Still need to order some flush mount valve stems and spacers to achieve the fitment I want though so it'll be a few weeks before I mount these.

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definitely a different look, cant wait to see them on the car