Time to improve the suspension.

[mattswabb]

I really would suggest that you go ahead with the aspire swap. You'll have a really nice suspension and with the aspire brakes you'll be able to dive into the corners faster and then brake harder. It will be a total package.

Do the swap!

[oxbrain]

edit:

$21.50 for the rear beam without the hubs or brake lines. $1.50 per foot for brake lines.

I'm going to go check out my aspire stuff and make sure I want to do this.

The money I'll save on tie-rod ends almost makes up for the cost of the rear beam and lines. The biggest question now is, is the stuff I have in good enough shape to use.

[mattswabb]

Man I feel sorry for you. My last aspire swap I got a week ago was free, normally I pay scrap weight for the stuff. I now have 1 complete set and 1 in pieces. The guy at the yard said he would start saving them for me. The last few sets I got I pulled them myself and got everything. I always make sure I get the tie rods, rubber lines and park brake cable.

[oxbrain]

The junkyards here are sharks. They would rather scrap a car with lots of nice parts of it, than let you take some stuff off for cheaper. Pull a part has decent prices, but still not as good as other states or even eastern WA. They also don't keep any inventory except model and year, so finding a specific part can be difficult.

I'm going out there tommorow with my roommate to get a drivers side axle. I'll grab the aspire rear beam and brake lines too. I'll use the rear hubs I already have. Worst case, I have to rebuild the brakes and bearings, shouldn't cost much more.

Good thing I haven't bought wheels or tires yet.

[oxbrain]

Got a rear beam, e-brake cable, and two extra rear hubs off an aspire. $57

Is it worth buying new tie rod ends, or should I just pull some from a junkyard? Do the escort ones come off any 91-96 escort, or just the GT's?

How about junkyard axles? The cv on my drivers side axle is blown, junkyard wan't $11, cheapest new I could find is $66. I did see a couple axles that looked like they were in decent shape, I couldn't remove them because the brakes had been drained. I can rig something up though.

I'm going to rebuild the brakes, but use the old pads and rotors/drums. I'll do some hard stops with the old pads to clean everything off, then replace them.

edit: Damn, It looks like I'm going to be waiting until next thursday for new brake hoses. I am getting really tempted to just pull some junkyard ones.

[Safety Guy]

Go to rockauto.com to get some info on parts compatability. I think I used '93 Escort tie rod ends. They should be the same from '91 to '96. Maybe other years?? Rockauto showed that all Escort tie rod ends of those years were the same part, including GT. Double check for yourself, though. I would prefer new tie rod ends because I always have trouble getting old ones off the rods and sometimes even the knuckles.

You can get new Raybestos PG Plus Aspire MTX rotors for about 12 bucks each at Rockauto. I did.

Karl

[oxbrain]

The only problem with rock auto is shipping. I can get rotors at NAPA for the same with no shipping and no waiting.

Tie rod ends I can have by tommorow, they are available. I'm going to grab the junkyard ones because they are $2.50 each, and I'm running low on budget. :lol:

I'm also going to get junkyard brake hoses, because I saw a car there with <100,000 miles and the hoses on it looked fine. I'll replace them in a month or two with newer ones.

I also can't remember if my front rotors came off a manual or auto aspire. I checked with a caliper and they are either brand spanking new MTX rotors, or very worn auto rotors.

[Safety Guy]

Ox they should have some minimum thickness specs on them somewhere. Probably the inside of the "hub" part. Could be in mm or inches. I think 16mm is minimum on MTX and 20mm is minimum on ATX rotors.

Karl

[oxbrain]

My shit-tastic calipers say they are 18mm, which IIRC is the max size for the manual rotors. I'm going to order one of each and some new pads and see which rotor fits.

[oxbrain]

So the strut boots I bought at shucks are too big and bind inside the springs. Hooray for more delays. :cry:

[oxbrain]

So I looked around and the boots everyone sells are too damn big. I found some at NAPA that fit inside the coils, but using the spring compressors would tear them to hell. So I just reused the stock boots. They look like crap, but are solid, so it should be fine.

One of the new strut mounts I bought was made poorly. It is made out of two sheets, and the keyed hole is drilled in both prior to them being welded together. One hole was out of alignment with the other. I filed them bigger, but then the strut spun in the hole, so I had to fasion a "key" out of a screw head to wedge it all together. It's captive, so I just have to remember to not lose it when I pull everything apart. It took my father and I about 4 hours to get the front struts/springs assembled and on the car because of that damn strut mount.

I should be able to get the front end assembled tommorow. Friday we will drain the brakes, plug the rears, and start on the rear beam. I expect it to go faster because there are less new parts.

[Safety Guy]

Who made that defective front strut mount?

Good luck on the rest of your swap. "You'll be glad you did."

Karl

[oxbrain]

The mount is from FMS. I got two, one was messed up. If I had been more carefull with my filing it probably would have been fine.

[oxbrain]

So I got the frontend almost done lastnight. I went to put in the passenger side control arm and noticed it had a lock washer on it. I looked through my "before" pictures and I can't tell if it is supposed to be there or not. Any chance someone could check if the lockwasher is supposed to be on there? This is for the bolt attaching the control arm to the chassis.

I am going to be starting on the rear tonight. Hopefully it will go quicker, as there are less pieces to deal with.

I am still searching for wheels. The original plan was to get bmw e30 bottle caps. 14x6 with a 35mm offset. The cheapest ones I can find are $140 for a set. Since others have used miata alloys I did a quick search for those and found a set for $50. The only problem is that they are 5.5" wide, not 6". Has anyone had a problem with miata wheels?

edit: Just ordered my tires. $330 after shipping from edgeracing.com for the proxes. They won't get here until next week, so I have until next sunday to get wheels. This means only a week to wear in my tires before the next autox.

[mattswabb]

My BPT car has 14x5.5" miata wheels and 195/45/14's. No problems mounting them.

Same place I ordered my tires from. Best deal I could find.

I would put a lock washer on the control arm bolt. Not sure if they originally came with them but I'd feel safer with one. I doubt the bolt will ever turn since the control arm is always under some sort of load.