It's officially a Frame Off

Post date: Apr 20, 2013 9:58:12 PM

It's been a busy few weeks. At this moment, the body is off the frame. No frame damage that I can see, and it measures straight. Phew!

Shaun and I pulled off all the paint on the body and etched it with Eastwood's After Blast. That was a hilarious amount of work. No new damage was discovered, although the left quarter was in worse shape than I thought. Looks like that one will need an entire skin, and the right quarter will need a significant patch. No damage on the sail panels, rockers are solid, good stuff!

It's shiny!

In other news, I picked up lower a-arms on fire sale from ProComp - only $150!

These are exact copies of the Hotchkis arms and normally sell for ~$550, while the Hotchkis are ~$850. Everything on my set looks fine. One crossbar may not have been in the jig quite right, but the weld looks pretty good. The balljoints are expected to be bad, but I'm planning on the Howe tall ones anyway. The hilarious part was this:

The one on the left came with the arms, and that's a good one! They look like they were machined with a pocket knife! They were incredibly loose in the arms, and were either very loose on the bolt sleeve or had shavings that hung up on the sleeves. On the right is the Hotchkis replacement. Just $100 for a rebuild kit. That's a little silly for 8 pieces of plastic, but at least they are the right parts.

The poor excuse for a bump stop will be replaced - that thing is just a solid block of plastic! These arms are also compatible with coilovers and have an extra-deep spring pocket. As delivered it should be a near-stock ride height, and that's with a 1/4" spacer under the spring seat.

Assuming they don't break, I should be in good shape!