Rear suspension is off!

http://www.tegger.com/hondafaq/misc/no-rear-suspension.jpg

I'm off to the machine shop tomorrow to get the bushings pressed out.

This has easily been the most frightening job I've ever attempted, mostly
due to the amount of disassembly required. Ain't nothin' left of that back
end.

 

beat them out with a hammer, we don't press them at the shop. I've
done them on the car.
Chip

 

well, you're committed now! seriously, it's a very worthwhile job. you
going to post pics of the old bushings?

 

Even the shop had some trouble due to the rust. I would have been stuck had
I tried that method.

Also, four bolts took a big air wrench to get loose, and one never did come
out and needed to be ground off. Unfortunately, the shop also managed to
knock off the nut (on the trailing arm) for the bolt on the outer end of
the lower control arm. Now I have to get a new Grade-10 bolt and nut to fit
that area. I've temporarily got a 10x70mm Grade-8 bolt and Nyloc nut from
Home Depot in there just so I can button everything back up.

And one of the bolts for the upper arm on the one side feels like it wants
to cross-thread, and of course the stores are now closed and I don't have
the correct size tap to chase the threads with.

 

It's all back in now, with a couple of headaches (see my reply to chip).

Just have to put the brakes back together and do the roll-around bit before
I set the alignment back to what I measured before I started, and tighten
everythibg back up.

I notice almost all the bolts have those little blue Nylon inserts in them.
Now I'm wondering if I should get all new bolts or just use Loctite.

The Red Loctite says it needs 450F of heat to be able to remove them once
they've set, which makes me kinda leery of using it.

And yes, I saved the old bushings. They look pretty gross. Both the big
ones were almost severed on the top rubber leg.

 

i've not bothered & i can't say i've had any problems. if you're going
to use loctite, /don't/ use high strength - the fact that the nylon
inserts are so small indicates there's not much loosening going on.
blue should do you.

 

try not to chase if you can avoid it. if you jack the arm up into
position and use the right bolt, the one with the rounded end, you
should be able to get it in ok. the jacking bit is the key. one time,
i even dropped the two big pivot bolts back off to make it easier to get
a difficult top arm in. once located & loosely bolted, getting the
pivot bolts back was fairly straight forward. do the one with the
elongated slot first.

 

forgot to say, you'll still probably need an alignment. no matter how
hard you try to keep everything "just so", it never is, and the
alignment for these rears needs to be really dead-on to be good.

 

That's not the problem. I have a clear view into the hole (left side, rear
slotted hole) and it's a totally clear path into the hole. I can get it to
take the first two threads or so, but then it binds, like it does when it
seats. Or cross-threads.

The other bolt is fully home.

Just settled the suspension. Ride height is back where it should be. I'm
off to tighten and align.

 

Sorta wondering about that.

The way I'm measuring it, I'm getting 9 1/16" on the left and 8 31/32" on
the right (doesn't matter now how I'm getting that). The left tire has
excess wear on the outer tread.

I'll set both to as close to 8 31/32" as I can, then get a proper
alignment.

 

By the way, I tried a bolt from the other side and the same thing happened,
so I'm sure there's a burr in there somewhere.

 

Weird...

No matter where I lever the trailing arm before tightening the compensator
arm, the toe does not change. It's exactly the same as what I measured
before I took everything apart.

That position is what they return to naturally when I drive onto the
newspaper. (I put a thin section of newspaper under the tires so they could
pivot more easily.)

 

it does change. if you watch the tech in the alignment shop, the gauges
show it changing as they make their adjustments. but they're real
small, and as you'll find out driving to & from the alignment shop, they
make an interesting difference.

 

I'll bet.

A guy I used to work with lowered his Chev S10. He said the entire way to
the alignment shop the tires squealed like a banshee. Gotta phone the
alignment people Monday.

It's going to be interesting trying to find a metric tap. NOBODY has those
last time I checked except the specialty industrial suppply places. I
notice all the bolts are 10x1.25mm. What's the closest Imperial tap size to
that?

 

D'oh!

I just realized my mistake!!!!!

I'm taking the measurements at the BACK of the tire. The reason was that I
couldn't find a good datum point at the front!!

Damn!

Now there's NO WAY I'm going to get the alignment even /close/ myself.

 

mcmaster.com has M10 x 1.25