Buttoning up front end

Finally, found some time to get working on this project again. If feels good to have things put back together. It's been far too long that car has been in the shop. With it just a tad more than 1/2 way done I see light at the end of the tunnel.

To be clear on this. The project is NOT difficult nor is it that time consuming. I've simply had some problems setting side the time to do it, with family, work, board meetings, club meetings, needing to eat and do laundry (house cleaning etc.). It's just been a time conflict issue. If you plan to do this sort of work. Fear not, it's EASY! A little time consuming but a long single day set aside to just knock it out and you are done. Only people with weird work hours other self-imposed restructions will find it and extended project.

Onto the pics and a little bit about what all those new shiney parts are:

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All the parts back together
New Bilstein struts, H&R 965 Turbo springs, Axxis Ultima brake pads and new Zimmerman rotors. At the suggestion of others I painted the new rotor hats in high-temp (1200F) silver paint. They look fine now but will soon begin to show rust. The rotors on my old race Miata did the same thing. Nature of the beast when the ocean water is 1/2 a block from your house. It should keep it looking clean and sharp!



Assembled with my fabricated droplink.
Here is the driver's side of the car, viewing assembly from the front. You can see the sweet new pads, big vented rotors, new stainless front brake lines. What is sort of unusual and I'm not even sure I'll keep them in service for long, are heim joints and grade-7 thread-all that are serving as the sway bar droplinks. You can see it crossing just in front of the strut from the steering knuckle to the bar. It's an interesting method of doing this, dropping the link off of the steering knucle instead of the lower control arm. The way the front suspension the car is engineered is like nothing I've seen before. I've worked on number of cars with strut front-ends but the way the assembly works (camber and caster changes) through it's travel is facinating. This is the last time those parts will look that pretty.



Buttoned up and on the ground.
And finally, wheels re-installed and placed on the ground. I think you can see why I painted the rotor hats. They are quite promenent with the factory wheels (due to the great degree of front-end offset compared to most wheels - meaning they are further outboard than most). Again.. soon they will never look this pretty again.