March 4, 2006 - Clutch Removal, Intake
Install, and Part 1 of Tackling the Rear Suspension (3)
The suspension arrived from Maximum Motorsports in a big brown box a few weeks
earlier. It included a front coil-over kit with 300 lb/in
springs, Bilstein HD shocks at all four corners and H&R race springs
in the rear. I chose to keep the rear a stock non-coil-over
setup for two reasons: (1) cost and (2) I don't think I'd ever see
the benefits of a full coil-over setup. This isn't a track car
and I've heard that coil-over setups can be noisy and not
street-friendly. Basically the cost didn't justify the
benefit. I only bought the coil-overs for the front because
the twin turbo kit needs the clearance, otherwise it would have been
a stock type setup with Ford B or C springs and the Bilsteins.
Before we could install the new stuff we had to take the old stuff
off. I thought it would take a few zips of the impact wrench
and we'd be on our way with the install. I shouldn't have been
surprised when we ran into a few setbacks, but I was anyway.
The tires came off easily and I set them aside. The brakes
were tough to deal with, there wasn't much room so we couldn't use a ratchet.
We had to rely on a sledge and a box-end wrench - which worked.
The caliper is removed in two pieces, the piston and housing
followed by the brake pad bracket (for lack of a better term). Normally this
removal is a cinch, but again we're dealing with a 10 year old car
that hadn't received much TLC so bolts were rusted and tighter than
they should be. A couple of whacks with the sledge broke the
bolts loose and the brakes were removed. It didn't really go
that quickly, a lot of our time was spent trying to get tools on the
bolts, once we found the right tools and positions though, it was
pretty easy. The best part about the brake removal was that
Uncle Joe stopped by. Here he is doing something he hardly
ever does when he stops by... gettin' dirty.
Here's a picture of the brake pad bracket. The ends pointing
towards the camera are supposed to slide into the bracket but one of
them was seized.
This was one of the setbacks I was referring too earlier and it
would keep us from putting the rear passenger brake back on.
The brake was out of the way but we had a few more things to remove.
I worked on removing the sway bar while Dad and Uncle Joe opened the
trunk and worked on the top of the shock. The first thing they
noticed when they opened the trunk was an electrical connector that
looked like it was for a trailer hitch (that seemed to make sense
because when we were removing the cat back we noticed an extra bolt
just hanging out, I guess it was left over from the trailer hitch).
It took them a few minutes to remove all of the dress-up stuff in
the trunk, but once they had the carpet and sides out, the shock
towers were easily reached. Removing the sway bar was easy and
I was done in a matter of minutes.
Our plan was to take the bolt out of the rear of the control arm and
lower it. Once it was lowered, the spring would pop out and I
could remove the shock. Of course things don't always go as
planned. The nut came off easily enough but the bolt refused to
come out. We tried screwing it out with the impact wrench but
that didn't work. We tried raising and lowering the control
arm too, but that didn't help either. Finally we settled on a
punch and a hammer and just hammered it out. We jacked the
control arm up just about as far as it would go and slammed the
punch with the hammer. After a few good whacks the bolt came
flying out. I grabbed the jack and gave it a gentle twist and
the control arm started down slowly. It lowered until the
spring was fully extended and we used a pry bar to nudge the spring
out. In preparation to install the new suspension we looked at
the rear control arm bolt and found that it was corroded and the
threads looked well worn so Dad drove up to Napa and looked for a
new one. While he was out of the garage I started on the
bottom shock bolts. A few zips of the impact wrench later and
the shock was sitting in the trash pile.
I've installed shocks before and it's usually straight forward,
thankfully this install was no different. Bilstein does a good
job of supplying the right bushing stack up, other companies give
several washers, spacers, and bushings with the shock and you have
to choose the right one. Bilstein only included one stack up
so there was no question about how it went together. They also
include a dust cover with the shock, it comes pre-installed and
can't be removed which I liked. The only slight difficulty I
had was getting the shock into the bracket on the axle tube.
The bushing was just a little wider than the bracket, but it went in
with a little help from my new friend, the hammer (we've been using
it a lot lately). I was able to tighten the bottom of the
shock without a problem, and I put the nut on the top but I only
turned a few revolutions so that it had good thread engagement.
I didn't tighten it all the way because I always wait until the car
is on the ground to tighten up the top of the shock. It's
better to do it when the suspension is loaded. Here's a picture of the
shock installed.
As I was finishing that up, Dad came back with the bolt, he said it
wasn't exactly the same but thought it might fit. We tried to
slide it through the control arm bushing but unfortunately it
wouldn't fit. By that time NAPA was closed and there was
nowhere else to go so we had to call it a night. I was happy
with how the day went though, we'd made some good progress and could
probably find the right bolt in the morning. Here's a picture
I snapped just before we left, it shows the difference in height
between the stock spring (left) and the H&R race spring.
