so I finally straightened out with iforged, got my replacement chrome lips...
took the wheels down & finished massaging the aluminum to really nicely finished, iforged doesn't do such a great job there, think maybe that's why they don't even offer them in gloss black at all, it would really make the inner cut areas look like crap in gloss black the way they finish them, they just leave all the machine marks & stuff & don't really spend much time hand finishing the aluminum before they coat them..., just the fact that they powdercoat over unprepped unsanded chrome shows the quality of there finish standards... now, with everything really smoothed they really look like a set of HRE's or asanti's or other really high end wheels, def more quality look than as delivered... just a peek, there not done complete yet... I did the centers & the inner barrels gloss black to be easy to clean brake dust & stuff... I hate when the inner wheel looks all cruddy with brake dust embeded in the rough unfinished inner surfaces, then the brake dust rusts & the inner wheel just loks a nice shade of shit brown... painted gloss black should make cleaning them much easier...
ok, now, with the iforged wheels contacting the infiniti calipers, got me to thinking about the rotora's again, so I test fit my rotora 6 piston fronts again & they clear the wheels much better than the infiniti brakes..... sooooo, back to square one again
now I'm back to missmatching brakes if I just do the front rotoras & leave the infiniti rears... so now I say screw it, I'm going to do what I should have done long ago, just order a matching rotora rear BBK, along with new rotors & pads for the front... yeah, so I order them, in red to match the fronts... yeah right, should only be that simple.... turns out rotora has changed the way they assemble & finish there calipers :frown:
rotoras used to paint there calipers before assembly, then all the hardware & the brake line connecting the 2 halves remained natural finish... then they stencil painted the rotora logo... NOW they decided to take the easier way out like most other brake manufacturers & assemble them completely befor paint, then they also decided to use a decal for the logo instead of painted & then they clear over the decal... to top it off the red they use now is more like a brembo red where it used to be more of a blood red, so not only do they look completely different cause of the decal & the hardware painted, but the color doesn't even match at all... to top it of they got tons of dust in the clearcoat that they use over the decal so in short the brand new rotora calipers look like crap next to the original rotoras... I think my 12 year old son coulda painted these calipers better than rotora did, they even missed a bunch or spots with paint even...
I really didn't want to go through having to refinish the calipers but at this point no choice, I sure as hell ain't going to go through all this just to STILL wind up with mismatched brakes :err:....
since I'm forced to redo them at this point anyway, I really didn't want the red anyway, so I decided to do them a burnt orange to match the interior. I chose a paint that when not directly in sunlight look a bit darker & very much like the brick interior, but pearly enough that when the sun does hit them they light up a kinda hotter orange... still not 100% sure of the logo color I will use, kicking back & forth between black & white...
originally I was going to do them black with silver text, but I was afraid they'd look too small in black with the 22" wheels & then I'd be looking to go 15" 8 piston... really trying to avoid that at this point
as far as rotora customer sevice, another bunch of winners there... after a fairly large order of complete rr BBK AND front rotors & pads, which ain't cheap to begin with... I call them up about them not matching there own product at all I asked of them was if they could just send me 4 decals so I can refinish them to match each other... would have been nice if they at least did that, but the answer I got was yes, we can sell you the decals, at $12.50 each... so they want $50 for just the 4 decals... wow, bunch of real winners there... told them to stick it & I'll do them in paint, which is a nicer look anyway...
man, you'd think if you get to the point of ordering custom wheels made specifically for you that it should be as simple as just taking them out of the box & installing them when you get them, yeah, didn't quite work that way for me :ever: is it me that just makes it difficult? I don't think so... I don't know who would have used those wheels as delivered with black centers & lips but then raw aluminum inner barrels & rubbing on the calipers... sucks. thank god that at least if I can't get what I really want, at least I have the facilities to make it what I want it to be... but all these fuck ups have cut into my project time big time & taking away from my headlight time ... but at least there just about done & hopefully will be on the FX by saturday for the FX meet on sunday...