Rebuilding the front suspension

(04/19/03) As I said in the previous page, I spent a LOT of time cleaning, scrubbing, stripping and prepping for paint.

Most of the gunk is off the crossmember and steering gear...

...and the right side is fairly clean.

After a few more cleaning sessions it got a coat of SEM self-etching primer on all the metal parts.

I did the frame rails the same way...

...and followed that with gloss black Rustoleum, just like the rest of the frame.

It's starting to look better.

The insides of the wheelwells got a coat of Safety red, just like the rear end.

While the cleaning and painting was going on, the control arms were being hot tanked and having Global West Dur-Alum bushings and Moog balljoints pressed in. Then I painted them with silver POR-15.

I painted the steering gear with Rustoleum "hammered metal" silver paint (with a little black added.) It looks a lot better than it did before. After I took this picture, I spent a couple of hours with a rag and lacquer thinner cleaning up the overspray. The was a big job in itself.

Here are the control arms back in place, waiting for spring.

And spring finally arrived. A set of Eibach 1 inch drop springs. I got them from Barnett Performance in Atlanta.

This is a comparison of the new vs old springs. The new one is on the left.

Same with the rears. The new ones don't look any shorter and they seem to have more coils. We'll see how they end up sitting.

(04/23/03) Remember the rear end cover that had the Summit logo cast into it? Rick Draganowski (of Rustpuppy fame) was kind enough to mill the logo off and leave a nice shiny milled surface.

So I installed it! Looks pretty good.

Then I slid the whole rear end under the car on a tranny jack and prepared to connect it to the Global West lower control arms and the boxed uppers.

And finally I bolted things together and installed the KYB shocks.

Here's the whole rear end under the car.

Last but not least, I got an Art Carr finned aluminum tranny pan from a friend, painted it up, installed a TH700R4 filter so that the new pan would fit. Then after I took this pic, I bolted it on.

Along with the pan came an Art Carr Super Servo, so that went in, too.

Next Page: Finishing the suspension.

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