A fubar'd wheelbearing forced me to accelerate my plans (it's not like my car is capable of accelerating anything other than repairs) and take care of all the front end brakes while they were apart. Apologies for the crap phone pictures.
A trip to the U pull it found me this
And not too much later, my wheelbarrow looked like this.
I also pinched a standard handbrake button and spring, as my dorifto AE82-rear-seat-knob-come-drift-button was making my car just that bit too 15 year old for my liking.
Also, if you ever get struts from U-pull-it, be sure to take the rotors off. They charge $30/ea for used rotors. Unfortunately i didn't have the mind to bring the cordless rattlegun, and paid $60 for something i didn't at all want and nobody in their right mind would use. 2nd hand brake parts don't exactly tickle my fancy.
So i ripped the old shit out, put new Monroe shocks in the RA60 struts so they had something that worked in them. Fitted new DBA RA65 rotors to hubs with new races and bearings courtesy of slide86. Put the XT130 strut tops on the RA60 struts. Put nice ferodo pads in the calipers. Bolt together, leave to bake for 2 hours at 180 degress, then you get this:
(I told you the pics were crap)
Alas, it was not to be so simple. The time came to install the steering arms. Now unfortunately the strut bolt spacing on the RA60 and XT130 are NOT the same. This would have made my life ALOT easier if it were. Installed one steering arm and found the strut to be fouling a little bit on the swaybar at straight ahead. Poop. This is because the hole in the steering arm for the balljoint is offset ~5mm to the outside of the arm. This also reduces track by ~5mm / side. Poop.
Switched the steering arms left to right, bolted up. Good clearance to swaybar. MASSIVE toe out -
That's with the steering wheel straight ahead, mind you
Good thing the XT130 has massive amounts of adjustment. This also pushed the tie rod end angle way beyond what it should be, which was a major bummer. Screwed it all back together again, put wheels oonnnnn.....ohwait. flipped steering arms were fouling the rims. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU ensued.
Realizing i would have to drive the car out of here one way or another, I re-reversed the steering arms, bolted it up. Wheel aligned it back to normal. While i was on the ground, i then realized that the struts were only fouling on the swaybar when the suspension was at full droop and the steering was straight ahead. Epic win.
So i have win brakes, shocks that work and very dirty hair. A hard day of work for a 'bolt in' brake upgrade. Yeah, right.
Oh also, during the process of all of this, a man who stores a truck in AJPS grounds, decided it'd be a good idea to do this:
No, he's jumpstarting the truck using the suzuki.
Believe it or not... it worked.
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