I'm falling behind on the updates. There's been a few upgrades since the last post. Full suspension, subs and amp, and even the body work. This post will cover the suspension upgrade.
I'll start with the rear suspension, which included swapping the 8.8 rear. It only has 74k miles on it, so the bolts were not seized. With the car on the lift and supported in the front by jack stands / jack tray, and the rear supported by the bridge jack, I removed all the wheels, calipers and rotors. Next was the lower control arms. These had to be lowered easily using some scissor jacks supported on the lift. That allowed for removing the springs and isolators. Then the shocks, quad shocks, upper control arms, and the brake lines, and ABS sensors. I realized when removing the rear calipers that the boots were ripped and the calipers were actually different colors. This will get addressed in a separate post.
I was able to swap the caliper mounting plates to the new rear, which only required pulling the axles out of each rear to install them.
Some info on the 'new' rear: Straightened, welded and powder coated. Strange 31 spline axles, Torsen differential with 3.55 gears, ARP studs on the carrier caps, GT500 finned differential cover and lubelocker gasket, ARP 3 inch wheel studs, new pinion flange, new timken bearings and seals. The 8.8 housing bushings were removed and replaced with spherical ARP bushings.
Luckily I had a bunch of help putting the rear back in the car. It was installed along with Tokico D spec shocks, Eibach Pro-Kit springs, energy suspension isolators, UPR Double adjustable upper control arms with the urethane bushing on the chassis side, and maximum motorsport weight jacker lower control arms with spherical on the 8.8 housing side and urethane on the chassis side. I'm simplifying here - this install took a few hours!
On to the front suspension. I removed the front sway bar end links and sway bar bushings and removed the sway bar. Then supported the lower control arm with scissor jacks and removed the strut from the spindle, then pulled the strut from the car. I lowered the lower control arm down and eventually removed the sprint and isolators. Then had to pull the tie rods from the spindle. I removed the nut, used a puller to put pressure on the top of the tie rod, then whacked the spindle with a hammer and it popped right out. I did the same for the ball joints. It was at this point that I needed new ball joints on both sides. next I removed the control arm to chassis bolts and pulled the control arms. Repeat process for the other side.
I removed the caster camber plates too, as these were getting upgraded as well. We took measurements to try and get close when re-installing.
The Maximum Motorsports caster camber plate installation requires drilling of a 4th hole. The instructions make it easy! The front lower control arms were ordered from LMR and are OEM stock replacements. When the engine swap is done, the front suspension will get racecraft k member and control arms. So these were temporary. Tokico D Spec struts were installed up front, along with the Eibach Pro Kit springs and energy suspension isolators. The installation was pretty straight forward, and having the car on the four post lift with it raised up in the air helped a LOT.
Finally adjusted the shocks and struts to the starting point recommended by Tokico. I found this to be a little stiff, but I'm still getting used to how the car handles with the new suspension. It feels great, handles well, and since I had some help adjusting pinion angle and centering the rear under the car, it hooks from a dig. I'm really happy with the way it turned out!
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