Build Day 12 – Rear suspension

Not being too terribly hung over for a New Year’s Day, Adam came over to help on the car for a bit. Since the engine stuff was on hold we decided to start the day attaching the dampers, radius arms, and Watts links. I’d already built out the Watts links prior, one of them backwards, so saved us a little time but then also wasted some when we realized one was right and one was wrong. Of course we didn’t realize one was wrong until it was on the car and that the other was correct until I’d taken it apart again. Remember back to when I commented about Band of Brothers being distracting…

Radius arm and watts link

 

Next up was getting the rear anti-roll bar (RARB) assembled and into place. First thing to do is get the orange bushes stretched over the corners of the bar. They are tight! Holy crap tight! After pulling on them a bit with no luck, we then moved to soaking them in hot water with some dish soap added. They seemed to be a lot more pliable after, and a few squirts of Dawn along with a screwdriver prying them from underneath got them around the corners and into place. It was as tough as I’d read about in other blogs; just take it slow and apply lots of dish soap and you’re good to go (we had no rubber lubricant).

Rear ARB

 

When installing the RARB, make sure to install them with the arms facing down. It takes a bit of maneuvering, but if you don’t you’ll end up with them blocked by the calipers. Thankfully we’d just test fitted the caliper and popped it right off.

Oops, arms blocked

 

This is what you want.

RARB on

We also used a hydraulic jack and a hockey puck to lift up the DeDion tube when we needed to align things. It seemed to work out ok to get clearance from the chassis on a couple occasions.

Next up was the A frame attachment. This went pretty smooth, except we left out the plastic washers in the back since we couldn’t find them. Of course we found them after the fact and went back and installed them properly. You have to centralize the A frame in the suspension; ours took 3 thick washers on one side, 4 on the other, similar to the diff install. It’s not too horrible to do, but like the diff, you’ll be adding and subtracting washers several times. An extra set of hands was key to getting it done simply.

Right side washers

 

Right side washers

 

With the suspension largely in place we moved to the brake discs, pads, and calipers. Right side caliper and disc

 

Adam installing the pads on the left side.

Adam installing left side pads

Once complete we were at a stopping point. I didn’t have the 41mm socket or a torque wrench capable of the 270 NM we needed to hit so just called it a day and got lunch. Before we left we put on some wheels just to see what it looked like… technically we have a roller (kinda).

Roller!

Roller from the back

Lots of good progress today. Once the engine bits I need get here I think things will move pretty quickly.

Daniel