Rear end Rebuild

[B-Man]

alright I've finally got an update..
I'm picking up the subframe from the powder coater tomorrow

Here is what I'm dealing with on the trailing arms.





I ran out of sand for the sandblaster.. will have to pick more up tomorrow. Will also have pictures of my sub frame then

Aww, shit. Did that only show after media blasting?

[Rakuny]

Aww, shit. Did that only show after media blasting?

no it was apparent before, just didn't show it to that extent.. it was becoming apparent when I did AWS delete and stuff at Matt's last year before NG. When I dropped it again I took a good look and decided I HAD to do something about it.. I take that back, the side where the strut attachment point is anchored and just bulges out slightly wasn't visible until after blasting.

[B-Man]

Repair or pony up for new ones?

[Rakuny]

I'm gonna repair them. can kind of see the welder in the background of the second pic :P

[Rakuny]

picked up my sub frame from the powdercoater today!!

[Street_Chally73]

Very nice! I really need to do this myself soon, too.

[Rakuny]

Steadily making progress.

I got the rest of the bushings in the sub frame.



The car is not in my garage so I loaded up and headed over to it. The rest of it is in boxes in my front seat.







Also, I got my Delrin bushings for the drive shaft carrier bearings.


Just need to finish the trailing arms. I got flat stock today and blasting media the other day... should be able to do them tomorrow or Sunday.

[J. Fast]

You'd be surprised about how much slop is in the subframe. Changing all those out for poly and delrin is a HUGE improvement. Where did you get the delrin? What is the rod diameter and the wall thickness on the pins?

My tip on the pour in place in the future. Weld a rod to a subframe bushing cap so it stays centered. Clamp it in place to the subframe and use silicon caulk to fill the transition from cap to subframe. Strike the joint with your finger to get a nice corner and wait for it to dry. Remove the clamp when the silicon dries, viola the silicone is strong enough to hold when you pour and you can cut it out from the bottom after you pour in your poly.

If you want to sandwich you can do the same to the opposite side and drill two holes opposite of the pin. One side to fill and the other for overflow. Once it's full, cap both holes. Make sure to put form release on the bushing caps or they'll be there for awhile.

MMM, I see Bilsteins in there. Just contact them direct with a front to rear bias, resting height, and corner weight. They will take of everything else for you. Spring rates, valving... everything. They were really helpful with my stuff.

I'm suprised it only has a few hundred reads. This is the kind of thing you need to change so you make a car more rigid. When the subframe and chassi has a ton of slop in it you break drivetrain parts and the car handles like shit. It really exacerbates where the weak points are.

Excellent thread!

[Rakuny]

Delrin bushings are here
Mitsubishi 3000GT Drive Shaft Carrier Bearing Support Bushings
the bag will say EVO/DSM but the fit is perfect.

Which pins? I re-used the stock pins for the smaller sub-frame bushings I made
The pins for the diff bushings are .313" thick with an OD of .875"

I will definitely be calling Bilstein when I'm done with everything else and I can set the car down to take weights/measurements.
I'm waiting on a couple parts from Mitsu before I can bolt the rear end up and get started on the front.

Edit: My guess on the 2 1/4" rod only being like 1/32 or 1/16 of an inch off was wrong.. when I got my subframe back and measured it it was actually an 1/8th" that needed to be taken down. Just FYI for anyone wanting to do this themselves.

[HLxDrummer]

I have a question for you regarding powdercoating. How many coats did you do for these parts? Also, how do you hang them when you spray/bake them?

I want to do the same thing with my rear end this spring when I do my suspension, but after doing my calipers in powdercoat I was thinking about just painting the parts back there. First of all I'll have to build a bigger oven to accomodate those parts but the bigger thing is bare spots from where I hang parts. I did my calipers and I have a few bare spots (hidden by bolts) from hanging them and it took me forever to do them in a little oven (blast them, bake them, clean them, spray them, bake them, spray again, bake, clean threads, etc).

Basically, do you have any tips for powdercoating the rear end parts? lol