Suspension Upgrade - Extraction And Clean Up
Now that the car is running quite well, I need to make the car safe to drive. And to be more fun. The brakes need complete overhauling as does the suspension front and rear. New bushings everywhere, and typical part replacement, and upgraded shocks, springs, and larger sway bars are the plan.
The rear teardown. I decided to do the rear end first. Seems a bit easier than the front and I didn't want to take on too much at one time. I haven't done this much work on a car since high school in 1970...
I purchased a Haynes manual, and I have a photocopy of an original service manual. The manuals make the extraction sound pretty easy. I just had to figure out what parts they were talking about. But common sense prevailed and over 2 partial days, maybe 3, I had the complete sub frame out. It was covered in about 1/2" of grease and grime but using a power washer and lots of degreaser and gasoline, I was able to get it pretty clean.
I decided too to try and get the underside as clean as possible to see what I have there and make any repairs that I need to. The car is VERY solid and besides the seam sealer failing in the wheel well on the passenger side, the underneath seems near perfect.
I do have a question about what is there though. The wheel wells definitely have undercoating covered with paint. The underside seems to only have some brown gunk remnants here and there but mostly just painted smooth metal. See last photo below. I would like to keep the underside Sahara as it was. What is the best protection to apply? Paintable rubberized undercoating? And then maybe a single stage paint?
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