11/3/11 Snow in October, Sunburn in November

This weekend the guys and I spent some quality time in the shop. AY started the rebuild of his engine, aided by a VERY indepth video. 

Saturday night, as I was going to a Halloween party, we got a very strange October snow storm. Because it was so early, most of the trees still had leaves on them, and many trees and branches broke.

As I said before, the chassis reinforcement and interior work is on hold until I can get the new frame rails, so I've moved on to the suspension. The plan is as follows:

• clean up all the original Datsun steel parts
• either powdercoat or paint them with POR-15
• replace all rubber with polyurethane
• shorten the struts to give me more suspension travel when the car is lowered
• install new struts cartridges and springs
• then put on some huge brakes and call it a day. 

I started pulling my old front suspension completely apart the other day.

Note the cheap coilover kit I bought a few years back. The silver spring perches are about the only thing I will be reusing, as the springs are too stiff and too short. Adjustable strut cartridges will be installed as well.

I was going to use my old struts, but the only work I ever our sourced on my car in it's previous life, the replacement of the strut cartridges, was botched. They replaced them alright, but they stripped the nuts that hold them in completely, meaning I can't remove them...at all...ever. 

I did beat the crap out of them trying though. Because I knew I was now going to need to use the struts from the new car, I dropped the suspension out of it for disassembly.

Next I started removing the bushings from old lower front control arms. These are pressed in, and are a very  tight fit. This, combined with decades of water grit and rust, make them pretty much impossible to remove. To get them out, I first twisted out the inner metal sleeve, then used my milling machine to very precisely cut the outer sleeve without cutting the control arm. After that, the sleeve just taps out easily. It's nice having the right tools for a job. 

More sheet steel showed up at the shop, so I got the hint that one of our benefactors wanted more boxes made. Last night I welded up as many as I could. After a solid 2 hours of welding I had 7 boxes and a mild case of welder's flash.

Showering this morning, I discovered that I had one more product from last night; a sunburn. Check out the tan line from my welding gloves. Sunburn in November, awesome. 

-W.W. SBSS