Had other things to do in my life so I went and did them(honk Tuba).
This has been the most expensive money saving project I've yet done:
- I'm sore
- I banged my finger with a hammer
- I'm wet with sweat all the time
- It's taking much more time than I thought
- Every activity requires 2-3 times more time and effort than I figured
- I'm sore
- everything is done under the car, looking up at it's bottom, with crud of the ages falling in your eyes.
- I'm sore
- Did I mention that I'm sore? I can remember those thrilling days of yesteryear when crawling around under an old car was right up there with gaining carnal knowledge. Well, almost.
- If I had to do this again, I'd either buy the beer and share the pain with some other p-guys, or spend the $$$ and take it to my favorite p-car suspension mechanic.
I'm so old I fart dust; so enough bitc*'n. There. I feel better.
The suspension is the last system on the wee beastie not rebuilt:
- rebuilt heads
- new pistons/rings
- headers
- SWchip
- muffler
- paint
- interior
- top
- A/C
- shocks
- what did I forget?
Actually, I've only the front passenger side to complete, and then I can:
- bleed brakes.
- corner balance
- align
Scene of the crime. Note well organized workplace............
The rear passenger spring plate had the original tension set so that it was tight on the bottom rear stop bolt/spacer, so that's the way it had to go back.
This meant that reattaching the spring plate back to the trailing arm would be under some amount of pressure.
The Bently manual (420-13) instructs you to use a floor jack to manipulate the spring plate during its removal, and that the install is a reverse of removal. The problem with that is that the spring plate/floor jack combo raised the car off the jack stands befor it deflected the spring plate enough to align the spring plate and the trailing arm so that the bolts would go back in place. Also, the spring plate starts to bend outward with the application of that much force.
So, I did the following:
Place a crowbar as shown (green arrow), so that when pressure is applied by pulling the outer end of the crowbar upwards up, it draws the trailing arm/wheel assy and the spring plate together. It's useful to attach a vice-grip directly forward of the crowbar (red arrow) to prevent its sliding out of alignment when pressure is applied.
So, with that, other than bleeding the brakes, I'm done with the rear suspension.
On to the passenger front. I've gained a wealth of insight re: replacing ball joints. After reading all the advice about using a pipe wrench to get the ball joint slotted nut off the control arm assy, I immediately dismissed that as so much bunk and ordered the special slot nut wrench (~$55 + shipping).
When I began to remove said nut, it wouldn't come off! So I progressively used bigger and bigger breaker bar hoohaas to apply increasing amounts of loosening torque, including air driven impact wrenches.
Didn't budge.
So I went revisited the pipe-wrench school of thought. See below:
