Something very improbable, nigh on impossible, happened.

Those of you who have known me the longest have likely heard my comments and complaints about my grandmother's distaste for cars sitting in the driveway. (I live at home with the rest of my family currently in the house that is owned by my grandmother.)

Due to a lot of things coalescing, this happened yesterday:

It is definitely not permanent, but I'm going to take advantage of it while it is there. I like the fact that even though it is in the garage, it is small enough to actually work around, not that I need to do much on the sides for simply swapping the engine.

In other news, my Legend is going away. A friend is going to take it off my hands, thankfully. I'll be swapping the tires between my Fit and the Legend, grabbing the head unit which might actually find its way into my CRX and making sure I don't forget anything personal in the car before it gets picked up and delivered to Oklahoma. This will take place without any money changing hands, and it will save me a good chunk of money in insurance and registration fees, so I'm happy to let it go like this. It's better than simply junking it or donating it for a tax break.

I'm sad to have to let it go. Starting it up and driving it around the block a little really makes me sad. It sounds so amazing. It's wonderful to have a car with real torque. Lol! Maybe I'll find another one in the future. Who knows. 

Project Lazarus: First "Successfully Completed Commute" in a long while.

Right. So what do I mean by that since I've been driving my CRX back and forth to work for a couple of weeks now? I simply mean that I'm not afraid of the handling. It's not doing unexpected things. It's not bonking and bashing itself to death. It responds well to input from the steering. Am I done with the front suspension? Not at all, but it is finally close to being completed. I'm thankful for that.

And that's it for now. I had a whole bunch of pics get erased when I reset my phone, so I won't really bother with multiple catch up posts. I'll just assault you with a wall of text abs you can use your imagination for a change. Heh

Looking out of my CRX's window:

This is NOT "mini."

Geez!

Quick update: I drove my CRX to work today.

Without actually feeling like it was going to essplode into a trillion pieces of magical unicorn dander.

I have more to say, but I'm so busy I have no clue when I'll be able to put up a normal post about it, but, hey, it's good to have stuff to do and the ability to do it.

One last thing: Given the power, I would totally moidahlate EVERY MOSQUITO IN EXISTENCE. I really, really hate biting insects, and mosquitos are the most annoying on top of everything.

Busted Sub, Part 14: I am currently the largest, best idiot in the automotive world.

I'll just get this over with:

Two right hand spindles.

Yeah. I'm that dumb. *sighs* The friend who sent them to me has the two left spindles. *shakes head* I'm really tired of this at this point. I have a plan and it is being executed.

Anyway, I did get a lot done over the weekend.

The subframe was bolted in:

I did put one side of the bronze flanged bushings in:

 I think that they will work very well. There was certainly much less slop in how the subframe mounted up.

I got these from a friend:

 Gotta love in the bag new Honda parts! (This is the the steering rack boot part number.)

Bolted in the new inner tie rods:

 Lower control arm, shock/spring/fork:

 One of the collars was rust frozen to the radius rod in an odd position:

 I used a flap wheel to take the collar down to the OD of the machined section of the rod, but notice the gap between the end of the machined part and the collar. Yes, there was a washer there (I beat the snot out of it trying to loosen the collar up, but only succeeded in busting the washer off), but there was still about a 1/8" gap. I am sure that couldn't have been good for suspension symmetry.

I finally got the collar off with a cold chisel and a couple of good whacks:

Then cleaned everything up as best I could with a wire wheel:

 I wanted to clean up the threads with an M12x1.25 die, but could not find it so in it went as is.

Then I got busy with the other side:

Here's another shot from underneath:

It's springtime, so take the time to notice the beauty around you:

Busted Sub, part 13.1: Steering rack is finally bolted in.

The paint dried yesterday, but I had some other stuff to take care of so I couldn't get the rack bolted in. I took care of that tonight. I am living the "What about Bob?" plan: babysteps. heh

It's together!

It fits pretty darn well. I had to loosen the bolts on the other side and wiggle everything around a bit to center the bushing(s), but I think that will do nicely. For a change.

Now for the bad news that always seems to crop up:

My new inner tie rods (that I bought a LONG time ago) don't come with new lockwashers, so now I either have to try to save the old ones from my original rack or get new ones and wait . . . Ugh. UGH!

Whatever. Progress is still progress.

Busted Sub, Part 13: Modifying the rack bracket

As I found out yesterday, the power steering rack is thicker than the manual rack, which alters the mounting points for the rack quite a bit. On with the fixin'!

I found some steel in my pile o' crap and cut it and cleaned it to fit in the end of the of the manual rack bracket:

I welded it to the bracket:

I also rosette welded the original hole and ran some passes to thicken up the overhang on the piece I added:

 Rounded the edges:

 Flattened the bottom:

I measured the hole spacing and found that the hole centers are 83mm apart. I used my calipers to transfer marks and then centerpunched the bracket:

I drilled a pilot hole and could only find my 3/8" drill bit, which was a bit too small for the bolts, so I used one of my uni-bits to open up the hole so the bolt fit through:

Then, of course, is the test fit:

 Perfect!

Ready for paint:

I hit it with VHT chassis epoxy. It is drying in the basement. We'll see how it turns out tomorrow. It was windy. I probably have a run or two, but I am not going to really care about that since it is under the car. heh.

Busted Sub, Part 11: Slow and steady makes a Beaver frustrated.

Today I seemed very, very busy. Today I also seemed to not get a whole lot actually done. Oh well. Any progress is good at this point.

I got the upper control arms built:

I got these mounting doohickies on clearance from rockauto:

 No, I don't really NEED the camber adjustability, but, they were cheap and are more solid than normal bushings, so I figured I'd give them a try.

I really love these MOOG ball joints:

  I have a set in my Legend. They are built beefy and the adjustability is just a bonus, especially for the price that I got them at.

They are also even greaseable:

 The grease fitting is removed and a small bolt plugs the hole.

I was starting to cruise right along until I ran into this:

 A bolt on the passenger side a-arm was seized to the bushing. I couldn't get it apart. I tried a bunch of different stuff, gave up, and almost accidentally found a spare in my pile of bolts. 

The new mounting doohockies where a bit too wide for the arms, so I buzzed them down with a flap wheel:

Then I slapped everything together for both sides:

So I bolted in the a-arms but was kinda wondering why there were spacers of some sort on the mounting bolts. They left a gap like this:

 I took them off and liked what I saw much better:

Next came cleaning up and "rebuilding" the steering rack. It wasn't too terrible when I started:

 At least on the outside. I think the REB (rack end bushing) needed to be replaced:

I had to press out the metal bushing from the rack mount points:

 Those suckers were a pain to get out!

And I manged to get one of them stuck in the socket I was using to back the rack:

I couldn't knock it out from the backside, as it was the same ID as the through hole of the socket:

 I had to mess with that for a while but managed to get it out.

Then I took a wire brush to the outside of the rack to clean it up:

 Still had some odd corners that are crusty:

Meh.

The REB took forever to replace. It was just not cooperating at all. After that I was running out of light. I attempted to ream out the bronze flange bushings I bought from McMaster-Carr. The bushings were soft and, well, doing it by hand just led to the reamer going through crooked:

 So . . . that's not going to happen. Oh well.

Busted Sub, Part 10: Finally some progress!

Yesterday after work my new new bearing came, so I set about getting the spindles together and I actually accomplished that!

First things first: Since I boogered up the last bearing, I decided to make a nice supporting plate for the bearing to prevent that from happening again. I took the eBay spring collar to work, traced out a circle of the right size and cut out a disc "generously" but not tooooo sloppily:

 Not terrible, but it definitely needed some trimming to fit in the recess and support the backside ofthe bearing.

After a while carefully grinding with my favorite 4.5" grinder:

 That's much better! It just barely fits through the recess for the bearing!

Here it is in place on top of the sleeve:

 Pressing complete:

BAM!

 One spindle down, one to go!

Now on to less pleasant things . . . The spindle with the boogered bearing and cocked hub. I was at a loss for a while trying to figure out how to get the hub out, at least without scratching the nicely powedercoated surfaces. Yeah, pretty parts can be a real pain at times. I am not used to handling pretty parts, so this took a while.  After ruling out beating the hub out with a hammer like I did the first time I took the hubs out, I figured out I could stand my arbor plates on end thusly:

Honda was so smart:

 That flat boss is in the same plane as the brake caliper mounting tabs! That creates a stable mounting plane, which I used to press out the hub! AWESOME!

That left me with this:

The real pain in the but came in taking off the inner race stuck to the hub. This was cocked pretty hardcore to the side. I couldn't fit the plates I had under the race and keep it safely set up on the press, so I went back to my pulley puller setup. 

 This took a long time. I cranked on the drive pin, then took a smaller hammer and tapped the race. Note I did not say I bashed it like a caveman. I tapped it. Tapping it causes a slight amount of plastic deformation, which, after a long time of applying pressure and tapping all the way around the circumference brought the race back to straight and then it pulled off pretty easily.

I think I cranked on the thing pretty hard:

 That took way too long, but, it worked without damaging anything. It was later, so I didn't want to be using my grinder with a cutoff wheel. That would have been the quickest way, I know, but, I do try to be courteous to our decent neighbors. (That's a concept lost by all the )(*#$(*#$ that have moved onto the block in the past 5-10 years.)

I got the snapring out and proceeded to press out the old bearing:

 Once I got it to the point you see above (the bearing was basically even with the opposite side of the spindle), I used a socket and hammer to pop it out.

Then I pressed in the new bearing and hub!

DONE! Finally. Now on to putting all this stuff into my CRX. Finally.