Rear end rebuild part 1

After looking at the tubular front end build up, I started looking at the back of the car with contempt..........I mean its stock ish, the steel is nice and thin from years of rust on top of that the stock strut towers hanging out there just didn't look right. So this weekend I took the cutoff wheel to it and with the help of some 1.75" tubing its on its way to looking better.

I would have gotten more done, but my work had a crew working and as I started cutting everything off employees started wearing dust masks and complaining about the smell.........what a waste of time and instead of trying to explain why things didn't get done at the shop on the weekend I decided to hold off until they had all left for the day..........basically I got a grand total of 4 hours done.

Here's a few pics of what I did get done, hope to get a few things done next in the next week or so.

Car is dis-assembled, getting parts ready for finishing.

Still trying to keep this on track, currently the car is dis-assembled and I'm removing all the pieces to do all the stages of welding, cleaning, preping it for finishing. There are several large pieces that require a lot of welding, a lot of the alum and smaller pieces have been finished when it comes to welding, just putting them aside for cleaning/grinding and finishing. I'm going to do some more tubular work to the rear end........basically going to remove the whole strut towers and the square tubing stuff that I did a long time ago, when I'm done its going to look even more sexy than the front end came out. I had the idea a while ago but decided to not do it till I saw this picture that somebody had posted on Sixthsphere (saturn tuning board)

I've changed what/how I'm going to get the car blasted, I wanted to blast it right now, then bring it back for full welding, but I will run into problems with the car rusting as I'm welding it, requiring the car to be blasted again.....expensive and not needed step. I'm going to wire wheel the chassis where the welding needs to be completed, finish all the welding and then send it out for blasting and primer seal the car at the same time.

Here's a couple update photo's of where the car sits currently.

Big day, closer to tear down

Today was a big day of getting a lot done with the fabrication, in actuality the fabrication part is just about complete, just need to start tear down, complete all the welding, sand blast the chassis and other bare mild steel parts that have started to rust.

I got the exhaust mock up complete, only thing that I need to finish on the exhaust would be to weld the final bends and tips on, but I'll wait till I have the bumper installed so that I can get it lined up correctly.....and truthfully it's one of the last things that will be done. Also re-made the charge piping which was great cause I removed a 90 degree bend and cut out 16" of piping. I've also removed those crappy racing seats so I can use stock Fiero seats that I picked up in descent condition. The front suspension fabrication is completed with some plain heim joints for the swaybar endlinks, the actual unit that I use on it during final assembly will be a set of sealed greased units. Lastly I finished off the front end fabrication by installing a battery mount, HVAC blanking plate, meth tank and re-mounted the rad and rad fans.

I'm really pleased with how its coming, a couple things that I didn't like I've removed or rebuilt, everything seems to fit well and the car doesn't seem to have any issues with suspension movement, axles, engine and trans.

There are a couple things that I am going to look at changing with the brake setup, but its mostly with the calipers and that can be looked at when the suspension is off the car.

On to some pictures.

Trying to keep it going updates

The countdown is now on, I'm trying to get the car tack welded together and all the major fabrication done for the end of the year. Come Xmas and New years I'm going to tear down the car and send the chassis to blasting or acid dip (haven't figured out which one yet).

This past week I got more front end tubing done, figured out where I'm going to put the battery tray, also went back to the exhaust system and tore apart the turbo setup. I didn't like the location and fit of the turbo downpipe and mufflers, everything was really close to the engine, driveshaft, water pipe and motor mount, I took a second look at the system to come up with a better design. I think the final design is going to change the rotation of the turbo and will be going with a camero style muffler and factory location for the exhaust pipes. But changing the turbo setup caused a problem with the location of the methanol tank, so I'm going to re-locate it to front of the car. Lastly I drilled the and tapped the endlink mounting locations on the swaybar arms, I'll get the links installed tomorrow.

Still to do, need to mount the rad, rad fans, fabricate the battery tray, meth tank tray and HVAC blocking plate..........then the fun time of dismantling everything I've built and finish welding of everything.

Back at it

Finally got around to doing some metal work this weekend.........while I was broken down I got to thinking about the car a bit more, decided on a few things and one of those what in regards to the front end. I got tired of lifting the car to look and play with the front suspension, so I decided to cut off the upper frame members, wheel well liners, headlight supports, etc etc. With this decision I also realize that there isn't any support for the fenders, bumper, hood so I'll be building a one piece front clip using the stock pieces.

After looking at the stock sheet metal I realized that there is a significant frame support there as well, so I aimed to help the support of the chassis in a similar fashion that I did in the rear end with tubular steel. I got a few tubular pieces and the mounting plates welded in before I had to stop, enjoy the pics.