excellent read mate, good project thread
excellent read mate, good project thread
Rite, got a few bit on order to boost this back to life.
Haven’t driven the car for nearly 2 months now, not very often since i got the map. Weather has been crap and the roads are even worse, fooking potholes are unreal where I live, boy called timmy o tool stuck in the bottom of one of em.
I put her back up on stands last weekend to sort the front suspension out; basically I have been getting really bad bump steer and lack of feel in the front. I pinned this down to four reasons.
1) ARB, as seen previously I have this spaced down about 20 - 25mm, I think this is putting unwanted stress and preload on the bottom wishbone, often it would even bottom out on the front TC arm.
2) Steering track rod ends are not level, with the car being lowered significantly, and with the heavy block in the front. Inducing bump steer.
3) The last time I raised the coilovers, I didn’t have time to undo the bottom of the strut, I merely raised the spring seat, thus increasing spring pre-load. This was giving a very harsh ride and exaggerating things further.
4) Poor alignment, (i.e. never been set up), also was getting a fair bit of slop in the bottom wishbone.
To cure these raised issues I will be doing the following:
1) Grind off all of the spacers involved with the ARB, make up new brackets to mount ARB in its original position using the front X member bracing bolt and the engine X member mounting bolt. To clear the sump this will be sculpted (Read bashed in with a hammer).
2) I have ordered some adjustable (anti-bump steer) track rod ends from apex-performance, hopefully to dial out the horrible angle there sitting at.
3) Set pre-load on springs to minimum, 5mm recommended to eliminate this, and set coilovers fairly soft.
4) 4 wheel laser alignment with new driftworks race / adjustable bottom arms.
5) Also putting some new oil in there, as I will drain the sump.
Hopefully this will sort my problems out, HOPEFULLY - following a full setup.
Get that sorted for now then onto the rear during Easter. Going for solid setup with welded diff.
Pics to follow, once I find my camera.
All the best
Ian
Okies,
Front suspension is sorted, turned out I had massive preload on the drivers side spring only. Dont ask me how this happened, I have no idea. Anyway sorted that out and mounted everything back up.
Went spot on untill I went to fine adjust the height of the car which was the last thing to do. The bottom locking collar stripped its threds, thus why it is missing in the pic, Offside.
Sump formed well, only took a little curvature however I did also dent the bottom of the sump with the jack when I lowered it down,. All sealed well tho, no leaks and it shouldnt affect the capacity.
Oh yeah, I also increased my hardstanding area a tad, little bit of DIY flag laying.
Pics:
DIY
Sump Modification
Nearside
Offisde
Going to whip the rear subframe off tommorow in preperation for some solid bushes comming. Also taking the diff into work and gettin it welded up, so pics of sheared subframe bolts to follow knowing my luck. I'm crossing my fingers already.
Where it stands tonight.
looking good ian . shitter about the coilover
Cheers m8,
Right, first I took the exhaust off.
Calipers tied up,
Cooler disconnected,
Electrics disconnected,
Prop Off,
Breather pipe off,
Coilovers off,
Then wire brushed the 4 nuts holding the subframe up, lots of WD40, lots of heat and as easy as you like:
Studs look like new.
Then I removed the diff.
And gave it a clean ready to weld.
Going to try and weld the viscous LSD, hope it goes to plan.
Welding the the areas shown in red:
Comments Welcome
Ian
Last edited by Ian200sx; 21-03-2010 at 20:17.
What brake calipers are those? Looks like you need bigger disks.
Keep up the good work bud
Willwood 4 pots, 345mm brembo disks. Big enough.
First pics of the progress so far.
Heated the core up with oxy-acet first to get even heat distribution.
Then welded up the main areas:
Was using a very high powered welder so was a bit wary of putting too much heat into it. I have left it for now as it started to become very tight in turning, hopefully because of the gears expanding, I hope.
Ian
Spun up okay this morning, bit of grease on the gears helped.
These are in the post.
Yes they are quite big, but I was referring to the way the pads are off the edge.Originally Posted by Ian200sx
is it ok to have the pads overlapping the disk like that?
Hmm, see what you mean, never noticed that tbh. Its as if the calipers could do with being moved inwards a couple mm looking at the pic. Will have a look when I come to put the coilover locking collar on. Its a DB-Power willwood kit, never noticed ay problems.
Managed to get it done this weekend.
Removed the old subframe bushes.
1) Drill with a hole saw the centre steel locating tube.
2) Chisel out the rubber bush.
3) Hack saw thro the steel lining.
4) Chisel out the lining.
To replace - the alloy bushes were hammered into place (Sledge Hammer)
There is literaly no tolerance in them.
Painted the subframe with 1No. coat of red hammerite with a final coat of black. Basically what I had lying around at the time.
Diff was painted silver, 1.4ltr of oil put in before the rear casing went on. This was sealed with instant gasket. All Built back up and put on the car. It was a right job getting the frame lined up with the chassis mounts, they were tight as fook. Jacked the weight of the car onto them and hit them in with a hammer bit by bit, eventually got it on and tightened up.
First impressions on the diff was its loud, whines a fair bit and vibrates at anything over a ton.
Drifts much better tho, loads of grip and much more predictable. Cornering is hilarious at the min however, alignment isnt set up and with the diff its all over the place.
Some pics:
Rear disks look gash!
Hopefully were getting a drift venue up North shortly too.
Been having a right nightmare with the suspension alingment on this, basically nobody had a clue how to set it up properly, after having a couple major fails on the 4 wheel lazer alignment, where they refuse to take things to bits I decided to have a go myself.
Main problem was the stress inflicted on the track rod ends, as seen in this picture:
With the wheels straight they were both out of horizontal and at their limit within the joint. This gave me mahooosive bump steer (car was basically undrivable).
To overcome this I increased the camber and also increased the track of the front wheels along with spacing the adjustable track rod end down another 5mm or so. This got me into this position: (Note the anti roll bar drop link is now stressed out of verticle)
This appeared to be much better, however had obviously knocked the castor and toe out. I spent a day and a half fettling, increasing the length of the tension rods to place the wheel in the centre of the arch and setting the wheels for toe. I did this using a string line, positioned parrallel to the hubs and measured front and back of the wheel. At the same time I set the bump stops on the driftworks bottom arms to set my lock (not amazing but not to bad for 9" wheels!). I also spaced the anti roll bar out to accomodate the extra track.
The car is now running 100% better with theses settings, I used an angle measing device from work to get the camber.
Front Toe - As close to zero as I could get
Front Castor - Not far from standard.
Front Camber - 3.5 - 4 degree, to help relieve the stress on the track rod ends.
Car also lookes pretty mean with 4 degree of camber on the fronts, subsquently looks alot lower too as I relieved some of the preload on the coilovers. Drives alot straighter than the 4 wheel lazer alignment could get it!
More to come.
Ian
Getting a bit sick of the welded diff on the road now me thinks,, it's tempting me to do illegal things. Hopefully should have a new s14a diff to go in whicih should improve my motorway fuel consumption and top end, aswell as being a LSD that actually works.
Cleaned the car today, so took a couple nice pics:
Also took this pic which I thought was pretty cool:
emmmmm emmmm i have a diff here !!
ian can you get back to me about the coils mate
Should have new superspark coils in tommorow, in prep of them going in I delt with one of the issues I was having within them. With the engine running very hot in the bores, the coil packs were being cooked. To help this I drilled some vent holes in the cover, could have gone with removing it completely, but I think it looks smart and completes the engine. Cleaned the mutha fooker whilst I was at it, got no fingers left but wire wool, white spirit and an hour later and:
Also you can see the backet which I subsquently made to stop the intercooler piping hitting the viscious fan. Taken a year to deal with little issues but the car seems to be comming together now.
Last edited by Ian200sx; 09-04-2010 at 18:13.
It looks fantastic mate, I really like black standard bodied S13's.
Good work!
Little update just for the record really.
Found these behind my door cards:
So bought these of Ricey and fitted them:
Also keep changing every other day from the welded diff to a S14a LSD (Also bought from Ricey), just for everyday use / bit of fun use.
Also Fitted this neat little handbrake button, great for drifting:
Had some Sparco pedals lying around for years, decided to fit these. Original pedals needed a bit of fettling to get the on, feel great tho and havnt come loose yet.
Went to a drift day with the Scotland sxoc lot, had great fun and only minor damage;
Managed to park into some tractor tyres, this just rubbed off:
And went over some tyres, this didn't rub off:
Bought a set of cheap MOMO alloys to burn off, which I did:
2.40sec's, my 3 second of fame!
Anyone got a nearside black S13 wing?
cable ties to hold speakers in is class , i still have the record tho
was a awsome day dude
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