here are some pictures if anyone is interested. sorry for the bad quality, these were taken with a disposable camera.
some of you guys will know why. anyway, none of these pictures were photoshopped or anything. i just cropped
and corrected the contrast a little, that's it. check it out...

layed out:






locked up:




in front of a random house in newport beach:




in front of some boats:




rear shot:

 

woohoo! Nice pics man. :) Looking good.
Ryan

 

haha, our xB's look so tiny, especially in that shot with the boats

very nice, very clean,

sometimes i think i should've gotten a white one, some bronze rims would've be killer

 

Love the pic with the pimp'in Aviators. Where's the tilted "money" shot? Hahaha I still can't believe you took that.

 

haha. ok, you twisted my arm. here it is. sorry it didn't turn out that great:

 

Ahhh yeah....pimpin to the fullest!!! Hahahaha!!!

 

Sweet!... Envy of all xB.... still droolin' here.

 

Hey Eric,

Where did you get the XM radio antenna. Is that from the dealer?

 

Eric, let me know when you really want to get it low. Check out the work we did on my Dad's Merc.

laying plate



feeler gauge



tucking hubcap

 

that looks good eric. 18's will let you get lower and more travel to get lower.

 

wow, that's awesome. i bet that was a fun project!

but it's easy to get that mercury that low, since you have so much fender clearance. in fact, i think i could get the front at least 2-3 inches lower from the looks of that last picture. anyway, putting 19s on my little car makes it almost impossible to get the body to touch the ground. i could weld the rear doors shut, cut apart the fenderwells and basically weld an enclosure around the tire, but then the back of my car would not be functional, and it would take forever. the front would be even harder, since there is an engine to deal with. trust me, if i could have gone any lower, i would.

and in fact, i will get the car to touch the ground someday. but for now i think it looks pretty cool with the 19s. try doing what i did and you'll see that it's not as easy as it looks.

my xm antenna is a terk unit, and is available everywhere. all xm antennas are ugly, and i almost went with the little bump one, but i thought the black dome on the white roof would look terrible. so i put that ugly plastic thing on the side. i guess it's not too bad once you get used to it, although some people have given me a hard time about it. whatever, i have so many radio stations now, it's awesome. you guys have to get XM. totally worth it.

 

the front was easy. The back was a different story. We had to cut out the entire floor from the back of the front seat to the trunk lid. We installed a 4-link and had to put a huge notch in the frame. It turned out sweet though.

 

yeah, looks awesome. good job.

 

Holy lowly Batman.

Damn that's some goodstuff. Yeah I think 18's would you get you lower then now Eric. But the 19's will always look better. Damn fenders.

 

Looks like you need some more offset on them wheels...hahahaha j/k.

 

the offset is stock. But it does tuck like a motorhome. :lol:

 

Rand: you got any more pics of that merc? I'm really digging what you've posted so far... who did the pinstriping on it??

Eric: the hub mounting brackets on the rear suspension arm are pretty simple pieces... just a flat piece with 4 mounting holes and a big center bore in it. So you might want to explore some possibilities to push the rear wheels a back a little (in effect, lengthening your wheelbase) to give you that added clearance when you sliggity slam. The whole rear beam is actually simple enough that you guys might want to fabricate a whole new beam... and that way you can build custom mounts to run a different rear air bag (actually, do you have any probs with running the double convoluted bags in the rear?).

 

more pics here
http://home.earthlink.net/~compak/
a friend of my dad's striped it. I also used to do striping.

 

van: double convoluted bags are working just fine. perfect replacements for the stock coils. i just had to make a custom lower plate and cup for the top of the bag to hold it firmly in place for safely. i have looked into modifying the rear axle to give more clearance, but it would only give me 1/2-1" at most with the wheels i have. it's not just hitting in the front. it's hitting on top as well. it's kind of a big problem if i want to go any lower, and not something i want to modify my nicely designed rear suspension for, since i am using this thing as a daily driver.

 

and it can be a little scary cutting up a brand new car. :D