Finally, I'm putting parts back on the car!!! The past year has seemingly been nothing but welding, grinding, and sanding, feels awesome to finally be doing some bolting (even if all it is, is test fitting). Of course, nothing on this car is without setbacks.
Setback #1: Remember how I've mentioned this car has been hit in the front? Well, that reared it's ugly head at about 6:00 last night trying to install the new K,
You can see where the frame buckled/kinked right in front of the stock K and bunched up the metal. The frame was pulled (maybe not enough?) at the time and there's been no "weirdness" with the way the car drives, so I'm guessing this is where the metal was just stretched out and the shop doing the work just didn't care. Also note the bit of weld there (not mine).
Here's the drivers side, not kinked as bad but more weld (ignore the driplet of body filler that fell through the strut tower)
After a couple test taps with the bfh, I thought for sure I was going to have cut some out of the kink and weld it back together, but a bit more oomph with the hammer gave me this:
As an added benefit, all this garbage fell out of the hole between the k-member bolt holes on the pass side, apparently one little rock plugged it up
Now this morning, after 2 cans of cheap spray bombs, then a trip to wally world for two more, the inner fenders are all one color and no bare surface-rusting spots.
K and
control arms are in (not all the way tight yet, needs grease and it's all coming back apart anyway):
Then after a tearing apart the spindles, going and getting yet another new hub for the passenger side, then another store trip for some degreaser and a container (which I thought I had), then somewhere between 1-2 hours of scrubbing and soaking, and then another store trip for some gloss black engine enamel (again, thought I had more than I actually did), here's the spindles ready to go on.
I'll get the rest of
suspension together tomorrow after cutting grass.
Next question: I have both a 99+ pbr setup AND the 04 cobra setup. The cobra setup worked WAAAAAY better, but when I moved the rotors just got thrown in the back of the truck and stayed there for about a week (half of which was raining). Of course, those rotors now look like they sank with the titanic. I want to use that setup if I can (I think a 25" tall skinny instead of the 26" I got would clear just fine, the non-racing wheels were never a problem), but don't know if I fell like bolting all that rust to this car even if its just for mockup.....