Bonk's S30 front end

[wrcbonk]

I know you guys like photos so I wanted to add the pics of my front end rebuild to Hybrid and in the process try out BRAAP's photo hosting routine (Wow, Braap, very easy). I bought my '71 240z about two years ago and early on realized the front end was not performing well when pushed. Under hard braking the front end shook and dove right to left. After doing much research on HybridZ I decided to go for it and rip everything off and replace worn parts and add some performance. My buddy, who is a professional mechanic, offered to put the car on his lift at work and try to diagnose my issues. He put a pry bar on the front control arms and was able to wiggle them back and forth without much effort. He felt new poly bushings would help. He also noticed that all my strut inserts were blown/leaking. I wasn't super happy with the stopping power of the stock set up. I live in California and traffic is either going full blast or at a standstill. I was tired of having to maintain a 1/8th mile braking distance to the car in front of me. I decided to do the toyota 4x4 calipers with vented rotors. I found most of the steering and suspension parts throug MSA and their pricing was pretty competative. I got most things there. As you will see my only complaint is that the bumpsteer spacers they sell for 15" rims did not work for my Weds autobahn 15s. Got the brake kit from Modern. Lets see some pics.

 

Those pho fairlady mirrors had to go

 

Ball joints rubbing, had to go with thinner spacers

[Blown77Z]

Good choice to upgrade the old worn out stuff I recently finished my "upgrades" too, front control arm bushings were my last pieces...

 

I would replace the steering rack bushings, tension rod bushings and steering coupler if you haven't already.

 

Also, I was looking at the bolts you used for the steering knuckle to strut assembly, those are hardened bolts correct? And not some cheap stuff from Lowes?

[piston]

nice. my front is going back on tomorrow. got my urethane master bushing kit in. all painted nice and black using red bushings. kinda wanted black but i guess it shows everyone i was under there. lol. i thought about leaving it plain like yours with no color but i was affraid of rust although it looks like its coated with some kind of metal protector anyways. im only leaving the calipers and ball joints plain.

[piston]

by the way, thanks for the pics, i wasn't sure which way the big bushing on the control arm was faced, rear or forward? now i know!

[Empire]

Looks good. Kind of wish I painted my gunmetal instead of aluminum.

[piston]

i have a question. i did mines this weekend and my torsion rods seems to be slightly off angle. it fits but the 2 holes where it mounts onto the control arms were slightly off. had to force the sucker. if i remember, they both looks identical left and right. same goes to control arms also right? or are they actually different? then i notice my ball joints would not sit flush on the control arms either with the 3/4 strut spacer. is there a certain way to install it? ball joint on control arm first, then torsion rod, then strut? cars not running yet so i would be glad to hear any tricks to it.

[ZR8ED]

These old cars respond very well to new parts!

 

Looks good!

[wrcbonk]

Piston,

 

Your question summarized the source of many F bombs in my garage. By adding the poly bushing to the front side of the compression strut, stiffening up the control arm, and adding the bump steer spacer, mating the compression strut with the control arm becomes much harder than the removal of the stock configuration was.

 

First, I bolted together the strut assembly together completely before I tried installing it on the car (i.e. I installed the strut/spring/isolator top portion of the strut assembly and bolted the spacer, steering knuckle, and ball joint on the bottom). Once I had that together as one piece I bolted it up to strut tower. Next I slipped the knuckle over the outter tie rod end and threaded on the castle nut. Now comes the hard part, getting the ball joint on to the control arm, may need a second man at this point.

 

As far as the compression strut goes, first thread the nut on the back side of the compression strut just enough so that all the threads are engaged. Now comes the dangerous part that someone will probably say "You shouldn't do that". Take your shop jack and very SLOWLY and very CAREFULLY jack up the strut assembly so that the control arm and compression strut can be as level to each other as possible. You are jacking off the bottom of the ball joint so mack sure you have the blind screw in the greese port and not the zerk fitting. Watch to make sure that you do not jack the car off the jack stands supporting the body. Even with doing this I has to grab a needle and punch to work the compression strut in line with the holes on the control arm.

 

Try the punch and minimal threading on the compression strut before resorting to the jack. Remember once everything is together, you must add more tension to the big backside nut on the compression strut. One of the compression strut nuts on my car worked its way off after a few months of driving. When I reinstalled the nut I used Red locktite. That big backside nut sees a lot of movement.

 

Bill

[junglist]

Looks good, did you powdercoat those parts or just rattle can them? They look nice, hopefully they stay that way and road debris doesn't tear all that fresh paint off too quick.

[wrcbonk]

Junglist,

 

I only had the springs powder coated. The rest were rattle can and are holding up pretty well. When I do the rear end I plan to have more or all the parts powder coated. After talking to the powder coat guys, for only a few dollars more I could have had more parts powder coated black like the springs.

 

Bill