Tuesday, February 1, 2011

From This...To This!














Was it dangerous? A little. Was it Hillbilly? Definitely. I had been thinking for some time how I was going to swap out the sub-frame without having to remove the engine it was holding up. I considered cutting a couple of holes in the ceiling on either side of a roof joist, and securing to that. I tried to calculate the body damage from bracing across the top of the fender pinch weld. In the end, strapping to a rigid conduit supported by two ladders seemed to be the best option. I was pleasantly surprised when it worked, and damaged neither myself nor the car. In fact, it worked so well, and so quickly, that I had time to get the front end reinstalled. While changing the sub-frame, I also installed the new rear engine mount, corrected the position of the front engine mounts and re-furbished and reinstalled the sub-frame mounts. With all that done, I was very anxious to see if the drive axles finally cleared. It turned out that they do, if only barely. While all of those corrections certainly helped, what made the difference was having them re-booted to a smaller size. It's great to have the car sitting on all four tires. Without being on a large rotisserie, or sitting on a wooden crib, it finally feels as small as it is. We're just about ready to take this baby down the road (around the block). I still need to fill and bleed the brake system, adjust the clutch and buy a new battery. And, for some reason, the pin that connects the shifter to the shift rod has vanished. It will either turn up, or it will get a bolt and nut. I've already made arrangements for towing her to the glass shop for the windshield installation (the gasket arrived yesterday), and then on to the muffler shop. This is getting good.