SPS

With just one week to go before we had to leave to drive our ION Project to Las Vegas for the 2003 SEMA show, our little ION had no seats, no steering wheel, and no body panels!

As is often the case with projects like this, it took much longer to receive certain parts than we had originally anticipated. So the bulk of the project was crammed into a matter of days. Needless to say, this made us a bit nervous. But it all worked out in the end!

The most visibly noticeable changes of all took place during stage four. And the biggest of these is arguably the front end conversion.

The day that we took delivery of our ION sedan, we sat in the Saturn of Kings Automall showroom, staring at the quad coupes as we signed paperwork. And looking at the aggressive front end of the coupes, we thought, ‘why can’t our sedan look like that?’ Thus began the quest to graft the coupe’s front end onto our humble sedan.This conversion was not completely an idiot-proof bolt-on process. But overall, it was pretty easy. The most significant (and obvious) parts required are the hood, fenders, bumper cover, and headlamps. However, we also needed the corner lamps (which are integral to the headlamps on the sedan but are separate units on the coupes,) fender mounting brackets (metal L brackets for the upper rear of the fenders,) foam bumper cover support, and several plastic support and attachment pieces for the fenders and bumper cover. Once we finally collected all of the necessary parts and pieces, then we had to trim some plastic from each fender at two places: near the A pillar at the top edge and at the rear of the wheel well at the bottom edge. And we were left with a gap in the roof rail appliqué at the base of the A pillar. We temporarily bridged this gap for the SEMA show, but the long-term solution will be a sheet metal fabrication.

The other most noticeable change to our ION during this stage was an extensive ‘Momo-ization’ process that included installing Momo RS2 GT front seats, a Momo Net steering wheel, Momo Superturismo pedals, and Momo X1 17x7 wheel mounted under Toyo Proxes T1S tires.

While John and Randy (of RPM) installed the body pieces, Dick Miller of RPM Industries was busy fabricating mounting brackets for the Momo RS2 GT seats and the Momo Net steering wheel. Unfortunately, ION-specific mounting hardware for the seats and steering wheel was (is) not available, so we hired RPM to work their magic. Since they build complete street rods, they made short work of the seats and steering wheel hardware. In fact, Dick simply modified the existing stock seat sliders to accept the Momo seats. And he sacrificed the center of the stock steering wheel to make an adapter for the Momo wheel.

Prior to installing the seats, John drilled holes into the stock pedals and used self-tapping screws to attach a set of Momo Superturismo pedals.

Making the seat brackets took a bit of experimentation. At first, we mounted the Momo seats onto the stock locating tabs – but then realized that this positioned the seats much too high. So we modified the locating tabs to reduce the seat height by about 4 inches. Once this was finished, the seats bolted easily into place (it’s a one-man job.) And the Momo seats are amazingly comfortable! We drove 4000 miles round trip to Vegas without any discomfort at all!

With Dick’s custom steering wheel adapter, the rest of the installation process for the Momo Net wheel was bolt-on. We even rescued the stock cruise control buttons, drilled holes into the button frames, and then zip-tied them to the steering wheel for the long interstate highway drive to and from Las Vegas. (Of course we removed them while the car was on display.) The thick leather Momo wheel feels great. And the Net more or less matches our Momo Sphere Airmetal shift knob exactly – which gives the ION Project a very clean, cohesive, and organized appearance.

The final part of the Momo equation was the 17x7 inch X1 wheels and Toyo T1S tires. The stock ION uses a 56.5mm center bore. But our only Momo hub centering ring options were 56.0mm and 57.1mm. So once again we turned to Dick at RPM who simply milled out the center of the 56.0mm ring to match our 56.5mm hub. The Momo wheels look great and really transformed the look of our ION – especially in cooperation with the lowered Koni ride height and the new front end. And the 225/45/17 Toyo tires not only look good, but they add a ton of grip and provide a comfortable ride quality at highway speeds.

Once the front end swap and the ‘Momo-ization’ were complete, we then turned our attention to installing the Catz XLO orange fog lamps. At first, when Jeff Bendit from Catz suggested that we use orange lamps, we thought this sounded a bit strange. However, once we saw them on the car, we were sold! The ION lamps already have 2 points of orange at each side (the corner lamp and the inner turn signal.) So by installing the XLO lamps beneath the inner turn signal, we were able to ‘connect the dots’ and create a cohesive orange look that made all 3 pieces belong. Installation was very simple: We used self-tapping screws to attach 2 small aluminum plates to the underside of the stock bumper to give us a flat surface. Then we simply screwed the XLO mounting brackets into the bottom of the plates. As usual, the Catz wiring harness is very high quality and virtually idiot-proof. We used black wire loom on the entire harness to create a ‘factory-installed’ appearance. And we used an exacto knife to cut a small square into the removable center console kick panel on the driver’s side (in front of the fuse block) to locate the LED toggle switch.

We were even more sold once we turned the lamps on. They are incredibly bright and produce gobs of usable light. We joked that the high output 70-watt lamp in the orange color was a bit like turning on the sun.

We also replaced the stock headlamp bulbs with Catz Galaxy White units. We did this primarily for looks – since the pure white color of the Galaxy White bulbs looks more like HID – and adds to the modern high tech look. But the improved visibility was much appreciated also. On the highway, we could see quite well with the Galaxy White headlamp bulbs, XLO foglamps, and the original stock foglamps all working at once. This helped a lot while zipping through Arizona at 85 mph at night. And when we encountered dense fog in Texas during the return trip home.

The final bit of preparation for stage four that had to be done before leaving for SEMA was vinyl. And while SPS is not really about the bling bling of wild graphic schemes, we had to do a little something to stand apart from the crowd. And it was our responsibility to honestly represent the products and sponsors that are part of the ION project. So we turned the car over to Johnny Mac Motorsports. John and his team (including Bok Mitchell) delivered an unusual and innovative package that centered around the Koni logo. Not only was a huge ‘Koni’ name and ‘shock’ logo applied to the entire side of the vehicle, but the ‘Koni’ was printed in a shaded silver to blue on top of a diamond plate vinyl. It was then adorned with vinyl rivets that make the name appear as though it is cut from aluminum and riveted to the side of the car. At SEMA, the Koni logo got almost as much attention as the rest of the car!

Stay tuned for our next update in which we hope to cover the installation of the Fidanza flywheel, SPEC clutch, and Quaife differential.