Rear Suspension Refurbishment

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jimoreno
Posts: 1477
Joined: Aug 30, 2007 9:31 PM
Location: Land O Lakes, FL

Rear Suspension Refurbishment

Post by jimoreno »

Guys:

My car is not a show car or a restoration but far from it. Anyway, since I had to work on the rear end of the car due to a couple of issues (bad subframe bushings, noisy differential, bad half axle) I decided to do a decent job so I won't have to touch it in the next 35 years. I reused the fuel tank, the in-tank fuel pump, the rear shocks and springs (and rear shock mounts as they were in great shape). Everything else besides the subframe, swing arms and stubs is new (even ABS sensors). Exhaust is a factory Boysen that I had installed about 7 years ago with a cleanup and high heat exhaust paint. I still need to find some decent chrome tips that fir as the Ansa replacement don't fit over the exhaust pipes. The differential is from a 2001 Z3 so I need to get a mating connector to splice to the factory wires with a new E28 rear cover. I cleaned what I could (it stills has that factory beige undercoating everywhere) and did paint with POR-15 a couple of spots that had rust near the transmission cross member mount. I'm please with the results and I'm dying to have a nice long drive in it which I will do once I replace the cross threaded brake hard line on the driver's side and refill the AC system.
Here are a couple of pics from original rusted bucket of parts to the completed assembly. The sub-frame and swing arms, rear springs and sway bar were powder coated (plus the small brackets that were cadmium plated), fuel tank was POR-15 painted with 2 coats and then 2K chassis black paint over that. everything else is new with the exception of the in-tank pump (even fuel level sender is new as it wasn't showing more that 3/4 of tank). The shocks are the M-Tech BMW by Bilstein but I had to paint them so I went with the closest color to Bilstein Yellow which according to Porsche boards is John Deere Yellow. All of the bushings are Powerflex urethane bushings.
It went from this (sorry for the blurry picture):
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To this (sorry for the finger in that picture but I had the phone almost on the floor and wasn't seeing the screen):
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muleskinner
Posts: 1339
Joined: Sep 08, 2007 11:17 AM
Location: John Graham ATL

Re: Rear Suspension Refurbishment

Post by muleskinner »

Nice work. Might not be a show car or restoration, but everybody loves a clean underside (no pun intended).
Preacher's 5
Posts: 217
Joined: Aug 20, 2007 11:50 PM
Location: Decatur, GA
Contact:

Re: Rear Suspension Refurbishment

Post by Preacher's 5 »

Great job. Keep it going.
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