Project 240

[hbpignosePA]

i remember doin all of that a while back... nice work ")

[S13AL]

Labor intensive work like this is always rewarding.

[S13_love]

i remember doin all of that a while back... nice work ")

Thanks! How did it go for you when you did all of that?

Labor intensive work like this is always rewarding.

Ok, I hoped I would make some more progress tonight, but that didn't really happen...

This bolt and nut here is stuck, frozen, etc. The impact gun couldn't even make it budge. PB Blaster, breaker bar, sledgehammer, you name it...none of that worked.



The nut was nearly rounded off...



So, when I take the subframe and RLCAs to a shop to get the bushings replaced...I'll have the them take that stuck upper control arm off...by any means necessary.

As for taking the differential off, everything went well I guess. One of that nuts I took off decided to take the stud with it.



Then I was gonna go ahead and remove these axles/half-shafts/or whatever they're called.



Then I discovered I needed (if I'm not mistaken) a 36 mm socket........which I don't have.



So, I'll have to do a little bit of shopping tomorrow apparently. *sigh*

[S13AL]

It is a 36mm socket. I had to run(literally) to the store to buy one when I did my 5 lug. Would have been nice to know before I got it up on jack-stands.

[Razi]

Ouch, removing those with them out of the car might be bit of a challenge.

[S13_love]

It is a 36mm socket. I had to run(literally) to the store to buy one when I did my 5 lug. Would have been nice to know before I got it up on jack-stands.

Buying that socket was the first thing I did this morning lol.

Ouch, removing those with them out of the car might be bit of a challenge.

Are you talking about the axle nuts I assume? It was actually really simple (impact gun does wonders! )...I would imagine if I used a ratchet instead, that would've been a different story.

Ok, let's see...

I got the subframe all torn down (except for that freakin control arm! ) and cleaned up. (this pic was taken before I cleaned it)



Next, I cleaned up the rear wheel wells. I used this stuff called Purple Power and I thought it did an ok job. After dousing the wheel wells, I used a brush and scrubbed away.



This was just some of the mess...there was a lot of crap that was up in both of them.



Not bad...



Then I went ahead and worked a little bit on the diff. All I did really was drain it (all over the floor accidently ), made an attempt to clean it, and took off the cover. The cover will have to be sandblasted since the dirt and grime on it is being stubborn and won't come off. (I also discovered there was no gasket in between the diff and its cover )

A look inside.



I think I'll try to finish scrubbing as much of the underbody as I can and start working on the interior tomorrow.

[240TKE128]

Looking Good,

I have been meaning to ask i saw the site you got your sub frame part from. Mine are not just rusted a the crumble in hand, i went to look for the parts but they say the are no longer available. You know if they stopped making these parts?

[Werbs]

looks good!

[S13_love]

Another little update...

A couple of weeks ago, I removed the rest of the exhaust so it would be out of the way when I go ahead and start cutting out the bad metal.



It was a pain in the a** to remove because two of the nuts were frozen on there...took me almost an hour and a half just to remove those...one of which managed to take out one of the studs with it.



Oh look, another rust spot...this time, in the front passenger wheel well.



Then, I went ahead and tried to clean up the floor here...





It actually looks a lot better than that^ (I guess) after cleaning up that area some more.

Next up, the bad spots in the spare tire area were cut out.



Ugh...



Then, I took a week off to go to Formula D in Monroe...Needless to say, it was pretty awesome.

Here's just a few pics that I took.









Well, after coming back from that, I finally went ahead and cut out the section of the frame that was rotting.



Nasty...



I'll be removing more of it later on...I just wanted to look at what I was gonna have to deal with.





More updates later on this week...

[S13AL]

I love seeing s13s being restored and taken care of.

[Masta_Cheef]

Just spent an hour browsing through your thread. Nice work, it's looking really good.

I know it's been a month since you posted anything about the subframe, but did you get that RLCA nut/bolt off? If you didn't, take it off with an angle grinder. Just cut the nut off. I assume you already have/have access to a grinder judging by your rust repair work? Should only take you a minute or two, and it'll save you the hassle of having someone else do it. You can pick up a replacement from a local Ace, or hell, I might have a few sets of those that I can ship you. (I just replaced my RLCA on my coupe a while ago, had a few extras laying around.)

[S13_love]

I love seeing s13s being restored and taken care of.

Just spent an hour browsing through your thread. Nice work, it's looking really good.

I know it's been a month since you posted anything about the subframe, but did you get that RLCA nut/bolt off? If you didn't, take it off with an angle grinder. Just cut the nut off. I assume you already have/have access to a grinder judging by your rust repair work? Should only take you a minute or two, and it'll save you the hassle of having someone else do it. You can pick up a replacement from a local Ace, or hell, I might have a few sets of those that I can ship you. (I just replaced my RLCA on my coupe a while ago, had a few extras laying around.)

Thanks! Yeah, I forgot to mention about that stuck control arm (it was the RUCA btw ) deal...long story short, a week before going to FD, I brought the subframe and RLCAs to a shop to get the bushings pressed out of them...for some reason, the place I brought it to wasn't able to press them out ...but they were able to remove that stuck control arm. They didn't charge me anyway so, yeah, it's all good...

With that being said, yesterday, I got around to removing the subframe bushings. It was a PITA! My original plan was just to burn the rubber part out...but...I know for a fact my neighbors will call in a complaint (or something similar) and create a scene if I did that at my house. So, I asked my boss if I could burn them out at the shop, outside of course. But that was a no.

Instead, I just used a sawzell to cut out that center piece in the bushing (since there was open spaces within the bushings, it was rather easy). Next was removing those metal ring sleeve things that sit in between the subframe and the rubber part of the bushing...and wow, I struggled with that. I had to use an air chisel to remove them and well, I was kind of afraid since I had no prior experience using that thing. When using the air chisel on those metal rings, I was being really cautious so that I wouldn't let the damn thing slip and damage the subframe. Because I was being really careful, I made absolutely no progress in the 2+ hours I struggled with it.

So, I finally asked one of the guys I work with to remove them for me and he managed to get them all out in less than 5 minutes. Needless to say, that was kind of embarrassing for me.

Anyway, enough talk, here's a couple of pics.

The remains of those metal rings.






Now the subframe is ready for it to be prepped and painted.

[Mercury_Hg]

Moar.

[S13_love]

Moar.

A little bit more progress has been made...

I basically said f*** it and went ahead on burning out the bushings in the RLCAs at my house anyway.



Fire!




I still have to get the bushings out of the rear spindles...

Then I worked on the subframe.



The other side...


And...this is what I used, a scotch brite wheel (the brown one)



As for the paint I wasn't able to go over with that wheel, I'll just hit those spots with the sandblaster and/or sandpaper.

I did work a little bit on the frame as well. I've kind of changed my plans on that whole thing...Instead of just cutting out the bad area and cutting a new piece out to weld in, I'm actually gonna remove that entire section of the frame and plug (spot) weld the new section I have in there. I figured it will be a whole lot easier to do and less time consuming.

I did drill out the spot welds on the floor earlier tonight. I just gotta drill the ones that are up front (behind the wheel well) and then it should be all set to remove.

I do have pics of that^ progress so far, but I'll wait to post those tomorrow, or Wednesday.

[S13_love]

Ok...I guess I'll start off by showing some pics of the spot welds drilled out.







I used a 5/16 drill bit to drill those out...then used a chisel and hammer to try and break any of the welds that were in between the frame and the floor. (I had to use the cut-off wheel to get rid of a few stubborn ones)

It was going well until I had to drill out the ones that were towards the front of that section...not to mention I still have to deal with this.



As marked here, that lip is pretty much gone...



And these arrows here are showing where the metal had cracked/split from me drilling those welds out.



Sooooo....yeah....I'm gonna change up my plans just a little bit. From now on, I'm just gonna focus on getting the subframe and rear suspension all finished up and re-assembled (as well as welding in the new patch panels in the spare tire area). Then, once I'm done with that, I'll focus on the frame/floor...

[mixeds14]

i just went true ur whole tread n i got to say.. damn u done a lot of work to ur car. i like the fact that u actually took the time to take everything off the body n repair everything like it should to get a real paint job, shows u take pride in what u do and thats good.. keep up the good work n keep us updated.

[S13_love]

Ok...I'll admit I haven't made a whole lot of progress since the last update. I've been pretty busy lately with work (and getting prepared for the fall semester -_- ).


Soooo, yeah...I think I'll just throw this pic up to show where I'm at...



I actually haven't pulled it out yet...I still have to remove just one more thing and then it will be good to go.

(The motor should be out no later than Friday. )

[S13_love]

Finally got it out! It was kind of a pain in the a** at first...trying to get the transmission to clear the steering rack while at the same time making sure the motor didn't get caught on the firewall. After a little bit of struggling and cursing (and a beer or two), I managed to find that sweet spot and everything else was easy after that.

There was just enough clearance...




Annnnddd, it's out!





Ugh...somehow the top part of this thing came off...



And yeah, that's about it for now.

[S13_love]

I guess it's time for me to finally update this thread...I'll admit that not a whole lot has happened since August, unfortunately. Now that the school year is over (these past 2 semesters have been brutal), I'm finally able to start working on the car again.

However, during that time, I did manage to pick up a few new things. Some new parts, a welder, and this...





Aside from that, I've spent majority of the weekend working on the subframe and diff.





For the diff, after I had cleaned it up, I just rattled canned it (black chassis/rollbar paint (or whatever it's called))...I wasn't going to get too carried away with it, but I wanted it to look somewhat better than it did before. As for the diff cover and subframe, I prepped those out and then used Marine Clean, followed by Metal-Ready. Once those parts were dry, then I finally painted it with POR-15 (two coats).



Another angle.


(It would of been nice if there wasn't any dust floating around, but, oh well.)

That's about it for now...there will more updates later on...

[S13_love]

Ok...I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, but progress was made nonetheless.

So, I decided to take care of all the brake calipers and refinish them. For all of them, I sanded them as best I could, and used a scotch-brite wheel to clean them up.







This time around, I just went with the silver color...





Next up, these things....



Same deal as before. I used a scotch-brite wheel and then sanded the areas I missed.





With these, I painted it with the same stuff I painted the diff with. (I'll try to clean up those rubber boot things at some point)



Now that's all taken care of, the subframe is basically ready to be re-assembled. However, before I get to that, the next step in this project is take care of all the metal work that still needs to be done...as well as refinishing the underbody (spraying rubberized undercoating or using brush on herculiner or something).

Hopefully, I'll start welding on the car here in the next few days.

[SauceTosser]

Nice job man, I wish I had time to invest like that. Very impressive, good luck, I'll be watching!

[S13_love]

Nice job man, I wish I had time to invest like that. Very impressive, good luck, I'll be watching!

Thanks! Yeah, I'll admit finding the time to do all this stuff is quite the challenge (as some may (or may not) know, I didn't even touch the car from September to May ).

Ok, well...I guess I'll update where things currently are at currently.

Just painted a couple of more things :p




Now for this...I decided to sand the por-15 out of the area of where the bushings will go into, since I assumed it would have become problem if I didn't (as I found out later, it would have).


As for this B.S. I have to deal with, I went ahead and welded in some patch panels. In this pic, I finally got the panels set in place. The two smaller ones sit flush with the area around it, while the larger panel, I actually have it sitting on top on the hole (easier to weld).


The welding beads....or lack of to be honest, they definitely didn't turn the way I wanted them to, lol.


Anyway, to my surprise, after I had grinded down the welds, I found out they turned out good enough.


Next up, the SPL solid subframe bushings. As you can see, these ones are just a solid piece of aluminum. (Yes, I know I'm pointing out the obvious)


I was actually looking around on google, youtube, etc. to find any installation write-ups and I found out there are solid subframe bushings out there that are actually two seperate pieces (like the one in this video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbUpHjPwLjk

As I found out the hard way, these need to be pressed in. At first, I thought I was going to be able to get them in there myself...

The way I went about it was first, I put the bushings in the freezer (and let them sit there for a few days). Next, I thought it would have been a good idea to get a heat gun to use to heat the subframe. Then, I tried to hammer the bushing in quickly (as it would turn out, I spent about a good 10 minutes straight trying to do so)...but...I only managed to get it in about an inch.




So, after that, somebody from my work was willing to help me out and let me use their press that they had in their garage. Before doing that though, it was decided that it would be helpful to get the holes honed, in hopes that the bushings will go in with ease. (which they did)

For anyone that might be curious, this was tool that was used...


Anyway, all the bushings were pressed in without any trouble.

After getting that part done, I decided to refinish the subframe again. This time, I was going to spray that 3M rubberized undercoating on it (I was afraid that if a decent sized rock were to hit the subframe while driving, the por-15 paint wouldn't hold up and chip away or something).

All I did was scuff the subframe with a red scotchbrite pad and then sprayed on a couple of coats of that undercoating stuff.







Now that's done, I'm going try to have the subframe all re-assmblemed by this weeked...Adding to that, I'm pretty damn close to being able to paint the rear half of the underbody. I still need to cover the patch panels with primer, por-15, etc. and then clean up the rest of the underbody just a little bit more (just to remove any dirt that's still on there). Once that's all taken care of, I should be good to go on that.

[adrianfromthecastle]

looking good man! I just re-did my whole rear subframe a few months ago too, except I went with the PBM bushings instead of SPL. not sure how old your axle boots are, but I'd recommend tossing in new boots while your'e at it. i'd hate to put everything back together to only find out that 10 miles later you'd make a mess cuz one of the boots tore up.

[Razi]

Digging the silver calipers. What paint did you use?
You should buy some black silicone, I started using that cause I didn't like the way the orange looked and smelled.

[Driftnaut]

She's pretty I dig the attention to detail I've only heard of the metal eating Monster that is rust on a 240 not huge problems around here none from my buddies

[S13AL]

I can never justify cleaning or painting parts that go underneath my car. As long as they aren't rusting or damaged in some way I want to leave it alone :P Very solid progress by the way, Glad to see the single cam leaving for an SR!

[S13_love]

looking good man! I just re-did my whole rear subframe a few months ago too, except I went with the PBM bushings instead of SPL. not sure how old your axle boots are, but I'd recommend tossing in new boots while your'e at it. i'd hate to put everything back together to only find out that 10 miles later you'd make a mess cuz one of the boots tore up.

Nice! As for the axle boots, I looked those over and they're actually in decent condition. (I wouldn't be surprised if the ones I have are replacements because they definitely don't look 20+ years old)

Digging the silver calipers. What paint did you use?

I just used some Duplicolor Silver Caliper paint, lol. I really didn't know what else to use other than that.

She's pretty I dig the attention to detail I've only heard of the metal eating Monster that is rust on a 240 not huge problems around here none from my buddies

Thanks! Yeah, I was kind of surprised to see the amount of rust on this one, considering that around here, it's actually fairly dry, imo.

I can never justify cleaning or painting parts that go underneath my car.

:P

Very solid progress by the way, Glad to see the single cam leaving for an SR!

It had to be done.

Ok....so photobucket has failed me, yet again. The pics will be back up on the 4th. :/

Ok, so here's the progress made since the last update.

For the areas that were welded, I was going to go ahead and cover those spots with sprayable seam sealer (Fusor 804) on the underside, and on the top with the sprayable sound deadener/wheel housing coating (Fusor 805).

This is how it looks when it's sprayed.


And the gun needed to do that.


This should never be able to rust ever again.




Long story short, another area I had to take care of.


Before. (What I did before spraying this was scrub it down with Purple Power and clean it up as best I could (multiple times). As long as all of the loose dirt, oil, and grease is off, I think it'll be fine)


And after! The coating I used was the 3M Undercoating Protector (08881).(I'll paint the rest of the underbody at a later date)


(Camera flash made this look like it's gray, but it's actually black)


Then it was time to tighten everything down on the subframe and get it back onto the car! (I also put on the rear coilovers)




Next up (after cleaning the gas tank and putting that back on), prepping the engine bay and replacing the part of the frame/floor that had rotted. -_-

[lenso]

nice build thread. keep it up!

[S13_love]

I think it's time to update this again, lol.

Well, taking care of the rest of the metal work that needed to be done, took a lot longer than I had anticipated.

Just a couple of patch panels I had to make...




After fighting with the section of the frame that needed to be removed, I finally got it out and repaired (more like replaced) the metal behind it...


Next up was to fix up the floor that was basically gone. I ended up just welding two pieces onto there, instead of one, just to make it easier.


After the welds had been grinded down...




I thought it would be a good idea to cover the bare metal with a least some paint, just in case.


For the new piece that was going on there, I had marked where all the welds would be at and grinded those spots down (as well as drilled some holes, etc.)


Aaaannndddd, success! When putting this on, it was important to make sure that there wasn't a gap in between the frame and the floor (and wherever else the frame needed to be welded). I did ok, but, in this pic, you can see that there was a little bit of a gap. However, what I'll do is just cover that up with some seam sealer.


Yeah, about this....that little section had to be replace as well. :/


Just a pic of the spot welds....nothing special here.


Apparently, there was a little bit of a gap between those two pieces...so I just went ahead and made a couple of tack welds...and then covered it with some POR-15.


This stuff better not rust EVER AGAIN.




As for this area in the front passenger wheel well, the metal had rotted away. Welding in new metal wasn't going to be an option unfortunately, so I just covered this up and eventually buried it with sprayable seam sealer. Not much else I could have done.




As for the floor of the car, I sprayed (with the seam sealer spray gun that I posted about earlier in the thread) it with Fusor 805...which is wheel house coating and sound deadener. I only got the these sections sprayed....I'll eventually take care the rest of the floor as a later time.




Passenger side.


So, at the moment, I just got done cleaning the engine bay, front wheel wells, and the front half of the underbody.




I'll end up finishing the last of the prep work this week and plan on getting this stuff painted on Saturday...and then on Sunday, start reassembling it and getting it off of the jack stands, finally!

[S13_love]

Made some decent progress today!

Before painting it, I made sure that I applied some seam sealer to the new section of the frame, as well as a few areas in the engine bay, just in case.





(As for all the tape covering the holes, I planned on spraying the undercoat stuff first before painting the engine bay...I just didn't want any of the overspray to get inside there)






As for the engine bay, I just used trim black paint (SEM 39143) (I wasn't going to get too carried away with it).....and of course, some before and after pics.









What it looks like unmasked (mostly).


I also bought this and eventually installed it. I was under the impression that this was going to be fairly easy to do, but I thought wrong, of course. Getting those metal sleeve spacer things (or whatever the hell they're called) into the bushing was somewhat of a nightmare for me. (spent a couple of hours of hitting them in with a 3 lb. hammer )


Aside from that...hopefully, I'll get the car back on it's wheels tomorrow!