Sunday, November 15, 2009 - 07:38 am, by: Raj Somarouthu(Edinlexusv8)
Hello Folks, I have been very busy working on a few bits on my soarer. The car has been on the ramp for the last 7 days and following are the details of all the work I have been doing.
1) Replace front lower control arm bushes 2) Replace front upper control arm bushes 3) Replace steering rack bushes 4) Scrub off all the rust on the control arms and apply black hammerite to make the parts last long 5) Replace diff centre with an LSD from a 1997 supra TT RZ 6) Replace the corroded steel brake pipes with copper nickel pipes
Car looks pretty good from outside! Let us check and see whether it is the same underneath!
To make you understand the amount of effort that has gone into this week I am posting the pics of the various parts before the start of work last week. Almost all the screw and bolts undeneath the car are ceased.
Looking at the state of these control arms I could not go ahead ignore the state of these and just replace the bushes. I had to use a hammer, chisel and a grinding tool to remove all the rust on the surface of these arms.
After a few hours of grafting and scrubbing, the arms looks like this, not bad ... but once i put the smooth black hammarite then these should look good as new :dance:
Will post more pics of these arms as the work goes on. These bushes are very good and would improve the handling of the car.
What do you guys think? Am I doing things in the right way? More pics coming your way in the next couple of days!
Ian Johnston Goo Roo South Australia UZZ30 GT 4.0, UZZ31, BMW R1150R
Sunday, November 15, 2009 - 08:37 pm, by: Brett Cutts(Boof390)
gotta love salt on the roads. I pulled apart a 1927 chev that had been parked under a gum tree in a paddock in the 1960's and it didn't have corrosion that bad on the suspension & chassis.
Monday, November 16, 2009 - 12:46 am, by: Raj Somarouthu(Edinlexusv8)
Guys you got to hear what my mechanic told me! He told me that the state of these control arms is just unusual and I dont need to bother as he has seen even worst ones. But I am not happy so I removed all of these scrubbed off all the rust with the tool in the pic and with a wire brush and painted them. Now the arms look pretty good infact. Will post some pics soon!
Monday, November 16, 2009 - 05:24 am, by: Ali Saeed(Ali)
thats good to hear. i wonder if anyone knows if there is much of a difference in actual braking between ls400 4pots and supra 4pots. as far as i know ls400 rotors are 10mm smaller..
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 09:00 am, by: Raj Somarouthu(Edinlexusv8)
Some final pics of the front control arms restoration folks!
The arms and the hub are back in place now. I have also done the steering rack bushes at the same time. Anti roll bar bushes are next and I suppose that is it for the front! Will be working on the rears in a couple of weeks. If you have seen the front ones I have to say you havent seen anything yet! The rear ones are even worse!!!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 02:35 pm, by: Jeff Bedsor(Jeff_bedsor)
Personally I would have sandblasted them and had a proper look at how much of the base metal was left or binned them and got a second hand set from a non road salting country. You can't afford to muck round with steering and suspension parts, if they let go there are serious consequences.
Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 01:41 am, by: Raj Somarouthu(Edinlexusv8)
The metal arms underneath all the rust seems to be fine and strong. It is just surface rust. Did take the arms for sand blasting but as the arms have ball joints they could not put them in their blasting machine. So had to stick with the surface griding tool, chisel and hammer!
Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 08:31 am, by: Jeff Bedsor(Jeff_bedsor)
Did you take the shock absorber bracket off and clean under it? I would replace the bolts as well, if you didn't take them of it will still have the salt/rust in there eating away at the metal.
Friday, November 20, 2009 - 07:51 am, by: Raj Somarouthu(Edinlexusv8)
Did not do anything with the shocks now as I will be doing shocks separately. I am thinking of upgrading to TEIN coilovers with Universal Air Suspension.