2specs

Hello folks, I haven't posted in quite sometime but I haven't gone away, in fact I've gone over the deep end and decided to do a full suspension rebuild and new turbo brakes upgrade. I contemplated doing it all myself and decided I'd give it a go anyway with a little help from Steve Weiner at Rennsport. First let me list off some of the work and upgrades I decided to go with as per Steve's recommendations.

Elephant racing rubber bushings everywhere (our roads are crap)
Turbo tie rods
22/28 mm Sanders hollow torsion bars
Ball Joints
Elephant racing bump steer kit
Bilstein RSR Struts w/ 19mm raised spindles and shocks, custom tuned by Steve Weiner
Stainless steel brake lines
Front and rear wheel bearings
Turbo Brake kit w/ rotors, calipers, pads, lines, fluid, and 23mm master cylinder
Trailing arm Bushings
All existing hardware cleaned and painted if required.
Undercarriage cleaned and painted
Wheel's repainted to a low lustre black with polished edges

It has been quite rewarding to do this work and have learned quite a bit about my car. If you're hesitant about doing this I would say just go for it and get dirty. Everything is in stages so stay organized and focused and you'll be extremely happy. This is my first ever car project and have never really worked on cars to this magnitude so that gives you an idea of my experience with this stuff. Countless e-mails and questions to Steve with prompt replies kept me committed and after the job is done right you always smile.

The underside was filthy after 30 years of use so i decided i wasn't going to install new parts on a dirty car so really much of my time was spent in researching the work required, cleaning and painting. Conservatively speaking I must have cleaned about 40 pounds of dirt and gunk to get to a repainting stage. My biggest satisfaction was not finding any rust whatsoever other than the odd scrape underneath so it was only a matter of cleaning, prepping and then painting. I own a paint store so I matched the Guards red in a gloss rapid dry Industrial Enamel and then Flattened it to a semi-gloss finish. the match came out perfect. I am applying it with a brush and because of the texture from the factory you cannot see any brushmarks whatsoever.

I am trying to post pics but it keeps booting me out. I'll try again after I post this write up.

2specs

Booted me out again. I'll try at home later.

Just so you all know I'm blaming Ed for all this. After i put my 3.3 turbo motor in he commented that the suspension and brakes need to be looked at so Ed... thanks a lot!!

theiceman

Sounds like things are going well...

so to refresh our memory you dropped in a turbo out of a turbo car with intercooler and all ? so now you are making the rest of the car match ?

2specs

Yes, a complete drop in but not necessarily to match. It needed to be done regardless of the motor, I had bad bushings on my a-arms causing a squeak when the torsion bars rubbed against the a-arms and I opted to go with the turbo brakes instead of rebuilding the factory ones.

theiceman

yeah i would have thought turbo brakes were the first thing you thought of bolting on simply for safety sake .. i dont think the factory ones on yur car were designed for that horsepower. They were designed to bring down a 180HP car.

2specs

Very true, better handling and breaking all around.

2specs

Ready to go.

2specs

I started with the front end so I wouldn't have too many parts laying around. The PO had spray painted the calipers red without taking them off so there was overspray pretty much everywhere.

2specs

Sorry about the blurr. I got a few pics like that but you can see how dirty and neglected the underside was.

2specs

Stripped front end and it was friggin ugly. What you're looking at is fairly clean compared to the inside fender.

2specs

Getting better