Sunday, April 3, 2011

Time to Hustle

With the progress at the bodyshop, it's time to go into high gear at home. I ordered most of what I need for reassembly from Corvette Central. It's been like Christmas around here for the past month, at least for me, with UPS delivering a few times a week. I also ordered the hushpower mufflers and mandrel bends to put the new exhaust on the car. I've got a fabricator coming by the house to size up the job.

With my wife back in South Carolina at her sister's this weekend, it was a car weekend. Hit the local parts store to order a new power steering rack and pump. It will be in later this week. With that on order, I put my attention on the front end. Prior to the move I couldn't find the lowering blocks for the front spring, so I never pulled the spring when I had the control arms off. I also hadn't gotten the front shocks, so I ordered those up with the mufflers.

Saturday was mostly disassembly, and modifying the spring. I pulled the spring and took the sawzall to the thick rubber blocks on the top, then took the rest of the rubber off with a razor blade, and cleaned it up with a sanding disk on an angle grinder.


On top of the spring you can see the new angled wedge, gooped up with lithium grease. 
Installing the shocks was challenging - with little weight on the chassis, the suspension isn't settling much, so I had to get creative. 


 Here's my creativity - one of my pipe clamps between the bottom of the lift crossbeam, and the top of the radiator mount. One and a half inches of tightening, and the shocks finally fit. 


Here's the left side buttoned up except for the steering rack. Lost a half hour looking for the shock bolts. After several boxes, finally found the bolts and the sway bar end links in a box on my bench that I moved the brake calipers in. Note to self - don't move with a car in a thousand pieces.


Here's the right side in the same state. I can probably put the grease fittings in the lower control arm now - shouldn't have to set the ball joints on blocks any more now that things are reassembled. 

No comments:

Post a Comment