I guess I'll copy my post from the legacy forums over to here. This was done over the course of a bout a week.
To update this thread on my woes and time consuming part installations.
Cliffs: I shoulda paid someone to do what I tackled myself.
I took last week off to generally unwind after spending way too much time at work and catch up on personal life and car/home projects. First things were to get tires installed on my new Volk CE28n's. Bridgestone S-04 Pole Positions in 225/50/18 to try to match the stock diameter. You gotta love wagons. This process was very nice. Order tires, show up at installer, leave with things ready to go. Paid $501 for tires, $60 install, with a bridgestone $70 rebate. Under 500 installed isn't too shabby.
Moving on that week, a donor set of LGT struts were taken apart, prepped for konis, and then rebuilt with konis. Big thanks to the original epic/koni walkthrough thread located here:
http://legacygt.com/forums/showthre...t-epic-engineering-spring-install-145744.html
My konis were purchased from emnotek. The boxes were missing the rubber boot, so I used some black RTV material to create a quick seal. I used a pipe cutter and a few minutes with a file, so the cut was clean and smooth.
The process of building up wasn't that smooth, mainly because the spring compressors I was using didn't play nice with the limited number of coils on the factory front springs and it was hard to compress it enough to get the spring rest and top hat on.
After some browsing, I ended up deciding on 0.75" spacers in front, a 1.5" spacers in back. This would have cost me ~$150 from paranoid fabrications, so I decided to do it myself. I decided on a 0.75" thick King Starboard HDPE found here:
http://www.tapplastics.com/product/plastics/cut_to_size_plastic/king_starboard/526
A 12"x24" piece cost me about $50. It probably took me a total of 5-6 hours to make 2 for the front and 4 for the back (double stacked for 1.5" worth). I basically did it with a jig saw, so the cuts weren't that pretty, but it worked.
I ended up ordering grade 10.9 flanged bolts from Amazon. The fronts were M8x1.25-50mm. The rears were M10x1.25-70mm. I ended up grinding up a corner of each of the rear bolts so they wouldn't bind up on the spring rest as much since they were much taller than the stock bolt heads.
Class 10.9 Steel Cap Screw, Zinc Plated Finish, Flange Hex Head, External Hex Drive, Meets JIS B1190, Flanged, Non-Serrated, Right Hand Threads, Metric: Cap Screws And Hex Bolts: Amazon.com: Industrial & Scientific
Here is everything in the trunk of my car before I headed to a friend's shop with a lift for install. A bunch of whiteline bushings, too.
I had some time, so I guess its time to add some DEI titanium wrap to my new (used) cobb downpipe. I started running out of wrap at the end, so I decided to leave the cat unwrapped. Instead of using steel ties, I used safety wire.
Friday 5/8 was install day. He had a spare set of control arms, so we tackled replacing the stock bushings with my assortment of whiteline bushings. The day mostly went smoothly until we got to the last pair of bushings. The front control arm - lower inner front bushing. The control arm didn't fit into the press very well, so we went with the dual socket method. One larger socket to brace against the control arm around the bushing with a smaller one on the other side that would "push" the bushing out and into the inside of the larger bushing. One control arm decided to cooperate, but the other didn't. It bent the first bolt, and then subsequent bolts that I had to go to the hardware store for.
So, we decided to rig up some kind of brackets to hold the control arm in the press. First, we had a few 2x4's as a base for the socket but all that happened was that the socket imprinted into the wood and eventually started cracking the wood. So, we decided to throw a piece of metal on the wood to keep it from bending. The bushing held its own until the shop press started "pressing" the steel into the wood. You can make out the imprint below.
After that, we decided to bust out the acetylene torch. As the bushing gods were against us, it wouldn't start. So, a trip to harbor freight for a mini butane torch, some sandwiches for dinner, and half an hour of butane burning later, we were finally able to press the bushing out. This one didn't melt out as we were expecting, dried materials just smoked and intermittently flamed up. About 8 hours after we started, we decided to call it a night.
Saturday 5/9, we were going to install the new arms, shocks, and exhaust system.
The rears went easy enough. Look, it is in!
Here it is with spacers next to the stock ones.
The front didn't go as smoothly. At one point, the axle disconnected from the joint in the hub and we couldn't get it to go in. So, we decided to remove the hub. Except... The only socket we had in that size broke.
So, we had to disconnect the hub from the control arm, pop the axle out at the transmission and try to fit it back into the knuckle. About 15 minutes later, we succeeded. Time to put everything back together. The other side was slightly more cooperative. About 4 hours behind schedule and late for a party, the car was brought down and we called it. The front seemed too low, and the front driver side seemed even lower (about a fingers worth) than the front passenger side. Well, I decided to wait a few days to let things settle before I posted height pictures or run my new wheels/tires.