Great update. It's cool to see you learning TIG in real time, as I collect the parts I need to get mine going. Hopefully I have as much success as you. The control arms look great. You mentioned spraying them with textured black, and I assume you mean rattle can. I spray painted my control arms after I reinforced the sway bar tabs, and within a few months, it looked like they'd been media blasted and were already rusting. Next time, I'll powder coat them.
Normally I totally agree......Ill see how this all works out and when I have some time powdercoat. The arms I just removed look brand new after 2 years. The powdercoater I used in Eugene was hands down the best I have ever run across.
Finally had a little time this week to get some work done. It seems like I spent the entire week on those dumb control arms.....oh yeah that and work.
New arms painted, new STS Machining delrin bushings and sleeves installed, Delrin rear bushings and welded cups put back in. I noticed that the fasteners on these rear cups had come loose so I installed a thick grade 8 washer, lock tite and torqued them down.
For a stock setup its damn good looking
Straightforward install surprisingly enough they went right on. I have messed with the front suspension so many times that I know exactly what I need to swap these out....if you recall I had lots of issues when I first put the car together with the front end.
So with the new arms on, we had a couple issues, fenders needed more work to clear the tires with an extra .75" of width. Drivers fender got rolled a bunch passenger a little bit.
Then onto figuring how to make it steer. I adjusted the outer tie rods and they probably would have been ok as far as thread engagement but I just wasnt comfortable with the minimum thread engagement I was getting. Checked with some folks and they said 2002 focus outers work...the ones I got were no longer.
So I started digging. Turns out that the 740 inner tie rods are 30mm longer than the stock 240 inner tie rods, this was gonna be close and they use the same outer. I had bought some new inner and outer tie rods for the 940 and they happen to be the same rack.....surely this wouldnt work.
Sure as ****, these bolted right in, 30mm longer, same boot and everything worked. Stoked. I have full engagement of the tie rod and an OEM product on there with the right taper.
I buttoned that all up, adjusted the coilovers, sway bar ends and got the car at ride height and set the camber at 3.9......best I could get before was 2.5 so I am heading in the right direction.
Got the slam panel on, adjusted the hood latch, grille back on and buttoned up all of my loose ends on the frontend work including drilling and tapping the UHMW air dam so its fastened to both the lower air dam and the skid plate. Should have no problem staying on at 150+
Its hard to see it, but before there was nothing to stop the air from going under the car, now all the air going through the speed holes and the air dam opening should get directed into the coolers and radiator.
Very much needed garage cleaning session with the old turd out enjoying some daylight.
Its rowdy, doesnt sound like a truck anymore as my buddy Asher says about all my ls swapped cars =)
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Very base tune on it, drove around my neighborhood it dies once and throttle needs some sensitivity adjustment but its a whole new animal thats for sure.