Post by
DeXteR »
https://forums.nicoclub.com/dexter-u32945.html
Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:50 pm
Random "car on jackstands picture":
So, firt things first, I pulled all four coilovers, dissassembled them and cleaned them up. I also pulled my RUCAs since I wanted to get them Koted before I installed them, I figured this was a good time to get them done since I had some down time. Here's what my suspension looked like after I pulled it:Notice the bottom right dampener is all wet looking? That's they hydraulic fluid that used to be inside the dampener.
I spent a lot of hours cleaning up the dampeners. Why? I don't know, they're all ready fithly again. Endura Tech sent me a replacement dampener pretty quickly and I got all the other parts switched up pretty quickly. Here's a picture showing how clean they were: The top one was just cleaned, the bottom one was the dampener that was replaced. I had to use my old spring, perches, and collar.
Jim got my RUCAs done pretty quickly too and they turned out pretty well. I cleaned and greased my hime joints (sp?) before putting everything back together.
So I got the coilovers put back in and adjusted.Front:Rear:
Then I got my sway bar hardware and pulled my Koted swaybars off the shelf and dusted them off. Here's an overall comparison between the old sway bars and the new ones:Here you can see the big differences between the old bushings and endlinks and the new ones:
The installation of all the suspension stuff was pretty straightforward. It took me a while to get everything adjusted to where I wanted it. I tried to get zero camber front and rear. Once I got it pretty square, I dropped her down (which was HARD - I'll explain later) and had Michelle take it for a spin. She said it was still squirly in the rear so I pulled the VLSD and tossed the open diff in. Took it for a spin and it was still squirly. In fact, it was worse than the first time I took the car out.
I finally figured it out! Rear toe-out is bad. After some close inspection, I noticed that when I push the camber back out, it pushed the toe out also. So I had to order some adjustable toe control bars and had them sent straight to Jim. In the mean time, it's back to the JDM tyte negative camber.
So my diff was fine... or not. I drained it to change the fluid. When I pulled the drain plug, there was a LOT of metal stuck to the magnet.After cleaning the metal glob, this is what was left:
Yeah, weld chunks. In a viscous LSD... I can't figure out how or why. So I'm going to try to find another VLSD or maybe try shimming it like I posted in the Tech Section.
Anyways, I'll update again when I get the new toe control arms in. I have to take some pictures of my under-body plate, my "new" boot, and my 4-point harnesses that I still havent posted pictures of. Also, I haven't had a chance to push the vert with the new sway bars, but my wife said she likes them. We've got an S-curve near our house. She said, "Last year, I could take them at about 60mph easy, but it felt scary. Now I can take them at 60mph and it's not scary anymore." It's not because she got used to it. I'm looking forward to testing it out a bit.