Ahhhh… Heat!! It was a lovely afternoon working in the shop wearing a T-shirt in a balmy 20 degrees Celsius. With full 220 volt service to the shop and a heater that gets things nice and warm very quickly it’s much more pleasant to get things done. There’s still some shop insulating to do but for now it’s nice and toasty warm 🙂
After getting the heat situation sorted, I moved on to finishing up the rear suspension install. The holes on the rear axle for the bottom mounts of the new shock hardware were too small so they needed to be holed out.
Once the bottom mounts for the shocks were torqued down on the axle it was time to connect the top bolts. Jacking up the rear axle to move the shocks into position was quite easy. I can say that the very early foresight of considering access to shock mounts definitely paid off. By providing the access panel over top of the rear axle and removable caps over top of the shock mounts meant that I could tighten everything down simply by sitting in the trunk.
Without these access areas getting a socket onto the top shock nuts from under the car is a nasty task. Plus you would also need someone to hold a wrench on the other side of the bolt. But with these open access areas it was easy as 1-2-3.
The last remaining task was to finish up the top spring mounts for the air springs. The threaded rod provided with the air suspension kit were a bit short because of the added steel that I put on top of the spring perches. After cutting a couple new threaded rods to the desired length I was able to snug them down with the provided caps, washers and lock nut.
These don’t need to be torqued down with a lot of force since their goal is to simply not let the spring drop out when the bag is totally deflated. You can also see in the top right of the above picture that the shock top’s are covered by the access plates that are simply screwed back into place to seal everything up.
Now that my shop wiring is done I’ll be able to concentrate a full afternoon today on pulling apart and re-assembling the rear drum brakes. It should be lots of fun with a bazillion springs and adjusters… NOT 😦
Building The BatBerry 