March 18, 2006 - Part 3 of Tackling the Rear Suspension

During the week we picked up two new quad shocks.  They aren't anything special, they're just stock replacements from NAPA.  Removing the old quad shocks was easy and the installation of the new shocks followed suit.  In a matter of minutes we had both quad shocks installed.  The trickiest part was putting the blue rubber boot over the rod.  Here's the driver side installed.

A few weeks back we ran into a problem with the passenger side brake.  The brake pad bracket was seized and we had to get a new one.  Well we finally got it and were able to install the rest of the passenger side brakes without a problem. 

These few things went fairly quickly and we were left scratching our heads because we didn't really know what to do next.  We started looking around and finally settled on the oil pan.  It needed to be tapped so the turbo oil drain lines could be connected.  We decided a while back that we weren't going to tap the pan.  To be honest, the instructions for tapping the pan seemed a little questionable.  I know a lot of people have done tapped the pan by punching a hole in it and then tapping the metal that was left, but we thought welding some bungs on the pan would be a better alternative.  However, in order to do that we'd have to remove the oil pan.  The most troublesome part of the process was this sensor:

It felt incredibly fragile so I was carefully trying to loosen it.  Finally I gave up being carefully and gave it the ol' heave ho and it came right off.  I should have done that in the first place.  While we were laying under the car we noticed that the steering rack was in the way.  Yet another part that we installed would have to be removed and then re-installed.  At least we were getting good at redoing our work.  After the sensor and steering rack were out of the way we removed the twelve or so bolts holding the pan to the block.  The pan slid down and out of the way without a problem.  Here's a picture of the inside of the stock oil pan.

While the pan was off I thought it would be neat to snap some pictures of the stock bottom end.  From the front looking towards the back:

We picked up the stock pan and started discussing where the drains would go.  While we were doing that we decided that it would make a lot more sense to figure out where the bungs would go if the pan were on the car.  So we shimmied under again and put a few bolts back in to hold the pan up, again redoing work we'd already done.  Here's where we thought the bungs should go, these placements would give us enough room to get the bolts in and out and allow room for the electrical cables.

When we were happy with the placement we marked the right spots:

And removed the pan again.  I was happy we finally had the pan off and was anxious to get the bungs welded in so we could install the drain lines.