Good morning, Team!!
Despite all the dischord in our world right now, I managed to have a pretty good weekend. Let's jump right in.
You can't make an Easter basket without breaking a few eggs...or eating some candy. Something like that. IDK. I'm not really into holidays. *I do like candy*
So I had to pull the front shock assemblies off the car. Hooray for pulling off freshly bled calipers!
Then, I stripped down the shock assemblies.
Inserts out. These are definitely not new. If this is what 40 year old Bilsteins look like, IDK how a person could buy anything else. :shrug:
A little time-warp action, and you can see where this is all going. Am I doing this right? Hard to say. I'm out here full-time winging it.
Here is some evidence of just how steep the learning curve is when milling/grinding out the OE rosette weld is.
To press these hogs up the shock housing requires something that will fit over the housing, fit nicely on the spindle collar, and be strong enough to withstand 100M metric tonnes of force. (not really. maybe 90M metric tonnes. Sorry. I got a little caught up in the moment.) I turned some stainless exhaust pipe into some artistic shapes and went exploring in my house for things to try. Turns out the part of my engine stand that grips the engine and rotates in the stand part of the stand is exactly all the things I needed. Stand. So I stripped off the little arms and slipped it over the shock housing. It worked perfect. At this point, I felt like a proper hillbilly. But it's not crazy if it works. Amirite?
With both spindles sufficiently lifted, I installed fresh rosette welds (plugging those horrific holes in the collars) and then added another ~3/4" of weld on the lower edge of the collar to shock housing. Secured like Ft Knox.
At this point, it had become clear I had no idea wtf I was up to. Some supervision was required.
Under the watchful eye of Kelly, I removed the brake hose brackets and the other brackets that do fork-all on my car. The shock housings were smoothed and cleaned, the brake hose brackets were relocated 40mm north of their previous locations, the offensive hole in the the first shock was patched, and I shot those suckers with some paint. I don't happen to stock Bilstein green, but I do generally have black. Once the black was [mostly] dry, I slipped on the Elephant short shock wipers and this happened.
Even the least keen-eyed among you will have by now noticed that there's a wee bit of jewelry in that last photo. Those are the Rebel adjustable bump-steer kit from a previous post. I'm not a race car scientist. (This should be painfully obvious to anyone who's read any of my posts, met me, or probably even heard of me.) But I'm decent at arithmetic and passable with logic. So I set the bump steer kit at 40mm of correction. I know that raising the spindles 40mm doesn't mean you set the bump kit at 40mm, but I also decently lowered it beyond what the spindle-raising adventure netted me, so I figured it was a place to start. Seriously. You've got to just try stuff and see what happens when you don't have the resources to hire an actual professional.
And if you think this whole thing hasn't been disturbing enough, just wait. There's more.
I left in the rack spacers. *triggering intensifies*
Lo and behold, a dark picture that without context would mean very little to most of the populous. But as we're here, safely amongst enthusiasts, we see that I'm illustrating the clearance between balljoint and wheel barrel. This is after raising the spindles 40mm. I did heed the advice of one JPNovak and 'measured' clearance before taking the car apart with a 40mm tall socket and there was room aplenty.
This picture is taken through the wheel from the outside.
Around this time in my story, you'd think this saga was over. And I forgive you for that.
I set the car on the ground, readjusted the ride height, sat on the bumper, rolled it back and forth, bounced it, etc to settle it and took a peek at the toe.
Gads! I had ~2" of total toe-in. What the fork is this ship? I could feel a little panic in the back of my neckbones, so I leaned on my tenuous relationship with Google.
Turns out, that when a turbo tie rod conversion kit is purchased, it comes with these big honking washers that are to be installed betwixt the new tie rod and the existing steering rack. These act as rack-stops
afaik. Either that, or ballast to keep the front end planted on the Mulsanne Straight. Either way, they are the washers mentioned in the Rebel bump steer kit instructions that are to be removed. Car back up stands, fuel pump skid plate of doom dropped, rack boots fought, tie rods untied, washers out. Installation is reverse of removal, and this junk is on my bench instead of under my car.
More in the next post as I can only post 10 pics per post.