Day 9

The night begins with reassembly of the driver's side suspension:















Cleaning up bolts:



The new and old design of the camber adjustment bolts. At some point after 1990 they changed the bolt to have thicker cams and two grooves instead of one. I have all 8 on order to replace when the car gets back from paint.











Removing the tie rod boot (the new ones for both sides arrive Friday 2/23):





All assembled and ready to go:



Up goes the subframe:













Stock shock assemblies are fastened to the shock towers (they are placeholding for the Teins during paint to prevent overspray from covering up the JDM green):



In place:





Tightening the subframe attachment points:

 

Your dads a pro... Working in the garage in a dress shirt and loafer's...

Gangsta.

 

Now to reattach the steering assembly so the body shop can move the car around:



























You can't really tell from these pictures but this is where we ran into a problem. The steering rack was relocated forward to accommodate the engine and in the process some of the parts don't line up anymore. The steering column on the Miata has two universal joints which means that any change in angle or length will be magnified by 2 when things need to get bolted back together.

What's happening is that the steering column shaft is rubbing on the firewall hole and the second U-joint that is right before the pinion is very close to rubbing on the subframe. In the next update we'll figure out how to make this work.

 

u could use a hine(or however u spell it) joint...... to help u out with the steering problem..... hope this helps give u alternate ideas to fixing the problem... and oh yeah the car looks sick.....

 

We looked at the heim joint idea but have decided on more of a spacer type solution. We found that if the rack comes up, all of our problems go away.

 

Nobody likes a saggy rack anyway

 

 

Good progress!

You may already be planning to do this, but when you go to do the final assembly of the suspension, be sure to pre-load the suspension before tightening up the A-arm attachment bolts. That way, the bushings do not interfere as much with suspension action and they are less likely to be overloaded and torn.

 

Correcto, since we're sending the car to paint with the stock coilovers everything was left mildly tight and not really torqued at the final ride height. Once she comes back and the Teins go in we'll tighten all of the bolts with the car on the ground to ensure these EXTREMELY hard poly bushings don't bind and add "spring rate".

 

hi girl in the picture ...will u marry me???