So with the benefit of a couple more weeks my crew of midgets was able to complete several tasks of vital importance - painting the valve covers red, installing "racing" pedals, painting the fake wood black, gutting the trunk, building a new mount for the broken horn, and installing some bling-bling wheels.
Engine before:
Engine after:
Interior before:
Interior after:
Bling before:
Bling after:
Now, onto the tech stuff. A Nubira stock weighs about 2700 lbs. Daewoos use a full size spare and a surprisingly thorough tool kit in the trunk, axing it and all the trunk trim probably dropped 50 pounds. We also pulled all the sound deadening out from under the carpet, the various carpet covers etc call it 30 pounds. The extraneous under hood bits, things like insulation and engine covers probably weighed 10 lbs. The stock wheels were really heavy, I'd guess in the neighborhood of 40 lbs for one with the tire mounted. The new blingsters are noticeably lighter. Call it 5 pounds per wheel/tire, 20 pounds total. That puts the Nubira at 2590 lbs. Gonna have to get creative if I want to keep a full interior and AC while getting it closer to 2400.
Ah yes, the wheels. It turns out that Daewoos are weird. Instead of using wheel studs they take the road less traveled and rock some amazing wheel bolts. But if you're going to make a 2700 lb car the size of an EG Civic with super heavy wheels, it's important to shave each possible milligram from the rotating mass. Daewoos engineers did this by making the wheels mounting surface very thin and coupling this with the shortest possible wheel bolts.
Alas, ASA (the makers of my bling) did not see the wisdom of using the smallest possible wheel bolts and, perhaps worrying about trivialities like wheel rigidity, made the mounting surface thick. As such mounting the new wheels got about two and a half threads into the hubs. Definitely not safe.
But I am not easily deterred and thus spent the next two days amazing local tire shops with my poetically perfect Korean ("I receive new beetle." "What?" "I need new beetle." "I don't understand." Idiot foreigner points at hubs. "Oh, ok. I'll give you a 'beetle.' ") and searching for another car that uses longer, compatible bolts. Eventually I found them in a vehicle so similar I wonder if Daewoo didn't simply steal the design from Ssangyong.
Thankfully the Ssangyong Rodius is a 5000 lb vehicle, so the bolts are probably pretty tough. Certainly they look beefier. Further, after consulting with many of the world's foremost experts, I have concluded that ugliness is not a contagion among automobiles and therefore do not need to worry about Ssangyong styling spreading onto my Nubira.
Further notes:
With the red valve cover, my motor kind of looks like a 4g63. I'm sure this means it's safe at 20 psi of boost.
Daewoos have adjustable trunk lid springs. Who knew?
I would normally dismiss pedal covers as pure rice. But damn, it's way easier to heel and toe now.
The intake tube has a corrugated exterior and a smooth inside. That's a more expensive arrangement than on my Mom's Mercedes.
I think I figured out why the handling balance is thus 1. quick, flat sports car like turn in 2. understeer on the scale of a 1993 Buick Century. Turns out the front stabilizer is 1 7/8 inch and the rear "sway stick" is smaller around than my pinky. Normally I would worry that when the time comes to install a bigger rear bar, it would rip out. But fear not, Daewoo knew that a majority of their Nubiras were headed into motorsport and thus built the sway bar mounts from reinforced anti-ballistic tank armor.
