it's been done now in my sig but I couldn't do it before because we only got one line anwyay, andrew and I had an awesome day. first he made a camera mount. he can tell you all about that :laugh: then we worked on the truck topper while we were waiting for UPS (keep in mind I took a half day to wait for UPS which didn't come until after I would have been home anyway - they had been coming around 2pm the past month or so). We installed new gas shocks and locks on the topper. The gas mounts are about the most poorly engineered thing I've ever seen. Even fresh shocks can barely hold it open due to the angles that were chosen for the mounts. Also, the right gas shock does not stay in it's mount - it pops off when we close the topper :eek3: finally the allwheelsdriven coilovers arrived it's based on a 40mm bilstein. 250lb/in h&r front springs, 200lb/in h&r rears. group n tophats the rears went on nicely but the fronts not so much. first of all the powdercoating had to be sanded down because it wouldn't squeeze over the knuckle. Then we found the gussets were about 1/8 - 1/4" too long and interfered with the top and bottom of the knuckle. oh yea, then we went to buy fittings for the gas sampling port and they didn't fit.
we will be racing nemadji trail using our custom suspension made of square bar stock (notched end with holes attach to knuckle, threaded plate at top attaches to tophat). we figure it will ride better than ksports and offer plenty of tire clearance. dampers and springs are for ******s
Remind me to recommend my chiropractor to you. She does great work. You and Dave should do before and after photos at each stage so we can see how far your spines compress. I bet you both leave 6 inches shorter
By rebuild you mean correcting loose manufacturer tolerances, right? That's real cheap if you use a grinding wheel Yeah, I have the feeling we will be going through a lot of struts this season. Carl, did you ask for free front housings? Would be nice to have spares of these rather than the fixed perch ones.
it looks like the bottom nut for the strut is also going to rub on the CV boot. i am surprised that the design is so wrong. that is a real bummer.
strut is tilted downward because it wouldn't fully go onto the knuckle. there will be plenty of clearance when the thing is properly installed (later tonight)
Did you see this yesterday carl? Definitely a plus for you, with the Nemadji events. http://www.rally-america.com/RuleBulletin/Rule_Bulletin_2009_004.pdf
yea I was aware of that before it was an official bulletin we may have indirectly helped push that along this year the fronts weren't test fit on their mock-up knuckle before shipping
The dampers should be the same as what I have. My front have been solid for three years. The rears haven't which is most likely due to me running them near the top of their height adjustment range, which kills them. Anyways, with a new shaft and shipping, it was $88 to rebuild the damper at Bilstein USA.
we got them on tonight and they ride well on the street. we won't talk about the issues we had tonight though (for example, losing the steering wheel)
yeah, that was by far one of the funniest phone calls I've recived recently.."Dave, do you know where the steering wheel is?" :laugh:
i am sure that if you just held your hands in the air in about the right position and made the proper tire screeching sounds at just the right times you can get by with no wheel just fine.
I would suggest that you might want to pick up a spare one. If you lost one now, you know while the car is sitting in the driveway, what are the chances of it being misplaced during the confusion of a pit stop. Or maybe pick up a spare vice grip or something.:laugh: I have seen that done for window cranks, so it could work for the steering wheel. Russ
repairs have begun (if you hadn't seen, we crashed it at gravity park - there was lots of this stuff going on) the car ended up lopsided (this pic looks slightly worse than it really is as the pic itself is slanted) we started by cutting of the bent front half of the subframe, removing the bumper beam, headlights and radiator to get an idea of where the largest bends were we then cut off the lower half of the frame horns, the lower radiator suppor and part of the headlight mount after a lot of hammering, bending and so on you can see the headlights are about even but the fronts of the frame rails are still off by about 1". this is slightly deceptive because the passenger's side is bent down and the driver's side is bent up (meaning they are each only about .5" off from proper alignment). for our purposes right now this is close enough. we are doing a quick and dirty fix for Nemadji Trail 2 - once we complete that rally we have over a month of downtime to do a more complete repair. for now the stock bumper beam has been modified enough to be re-mounted, we have another stock subframe and we will make a temporary radiator/skidplate mount that will bolt to the front of the frame. the permanent solution will involve more cutting, and creating a tubular front end (as well as gussetting and boxing sections of the stock frame rails)
once we cut off the really bent stuff we started to make some headway. we tried tugging on it and making some jacking plates and chains yesterday but there was just too much twisted metal that was in the way to get anything accomplished
^ you know youc an get a discounted rate on frame rack work at S3 Auto. Shouldnt take much on the frame rack to pull that frame rail back to where it should be. Check out the vendor section for contact info. It will save you a bunch of time and anger by having someone with the proper equipment do it.
That might not actually be a bad idea now, just to get the frame horns back in place. Would make doing the tube stuff a little easier, and we only have one thing we need fixed.
yea we'll contact them just to see what it would cost to pull it straight after nemadji 2. if it's reasonable we'll do it so we have a straight base for building our tubular front end otherwise it's definitely straight enough for a rally car as is
Yeah, I can see it being tough. Work hardened sheetmetal is a pain to bend back. It's interesting watching someone use a rack to straighten a car. They have to bend it significantly past straight for it to stay straight. If you can get a good deal on it, go for it when you have time.
nice work guys!! sorry I can't be around to help out... I think there's a couple spots on the hood/front fenders that will be available.....they'd be perfect for a couple S3 decals!
dan welding supports onto our "new" subframe courtesy of dave we added reinforcements to all the spots that bent last time partially boxed ends of subframe L channel added to front of subframe headlight mount reattached it's starting to line back up
