After completing the front end swap to both cars I moved to the rear of the Silver car to pull off the stock coilover.

Then I moved to the Santorin car and removed the KW V3 from the passenger’s side.

During the process of removing these coilover I began to debate the possibility of removing the entire subframe, so that the rear axles and differential along with the control arms and bushings could be swapped out.  The condition of the parts on the Santorin car being corrosion free made doing this swap appealing, but the potential challenges of dealing with the brake lines was a negative.  I’m still debating how to proceed.

At the front of the Santorin car I decided I’d pull the steering rack since it was readily accessible.

A replacement part arrived this week.  One of the car’s SSR Comp wheels had been damaged and I wanted to return to a full set.  I’d had a tough time finding anyone selling a single wheel, but I happened upon someone who had a set of three SSR Comps that they were having a tough time finding a buyer for.  I decided that having a lightweight spare wouldn’t be such a bad thing, and I’d have one additional wheel as an additional spare in case something happened to one in the future.  Here I’m test fitting the wheel to ensure it has the right size adapter ring.

As I commenced removal of my fourth corner I figured I had a pretty good system going and should be able to get through this final front end corner on the Silver car in decent time.  I even had confidence about dealing with a possibly troublesome tie-rod end.  I hadn’t bargained on encountering son of tie rod end from hell.  I ran into the same stubborn parts (numbered 1 in the picture) as the first tie-rod end from hell and went for round two with the hacksaw.  After sawing the one end off I proceeded to try and twist the other end (numbered 2 in the picture) out of the inner tie rod and the part would not budge.  Of course this is happening up inside the wheel well behind the upright where there is little room to get a decent size wrench on the parts.  After spending an inordinate amount of time trying different ways to get the tie-rod end to budge I finally was able to get two wrenches in close proximity whereby I could squeeze the two together, and I had the tie-rod end pinned to the upper part of the upright to keep it stationary.  The effort was rewarded by what I thought might have been movement, though I feared the wrench had possibly just slipped and not loosened the parts.  I reset the wrenches and went at it again and sure enough there was some movement, but the part was still fighting.  Almost the entire way out I had to have both wrenches on the parts to get them to move.  Wow, what a pita.  After 10 years of living close to one another those parts did not want to separate.

I had found the ABS sensor on the first stock corner to be stuck in place really well, so this time I decided to bypass removing it altogether and simply unclip the electrical line for this part on the Santorin car and bring the whole thing over along with the rest of the Santorin upright and attached parts.  This method worked quite a bit better.  I also was getting a good routine for capping off the brake line and not dripping brake fluid all over the place.  The retaining washer on the alignment pin for the suspension mounting bracket was still a bugger to get off, but at least I was expecting it this time.

Taking the coilover, control arms, tie-rod end,rotor and caliper off the Santorin car was a bit of a chore because it was the first time I had pulled all of these parts off as a unit.  Doing the same for the Silver car should have been faster, but it wasn’t.  While the Santorin car had spent the duration of its existence in mild climates and garaged, along with having all of those parts replaced at some point in time, the parts on the Silver car had apparently not been touched for ten years.

The biggest headache turned out to be the tie-rod end.  The bolt that clamps the steering knuckle to the tie-rod end did not want to move.  Because there is a notch in the tie-rod end to help it stay in place simply loosening the bolt was inadequate.  On top of that, the TRE cannot be removed from the steering rack until it is removed from the steering knuckle.  If these parts didn’t come apart then the whole thing wasn’t coming off.  So I pulled out the hacksaw and got to work cutting the TRE.

After a while I cut through and was able to proceed on.  The stock components were all unhooked and set to the side.  To my surprise, the stock parts were noticeably heavier than the StopTech Big Brake Kit caliper and rotors.  Quite a bit so, the jumble of parts was a load to move around.

Next I set about getting the aftermarket parts onto the Silver car.  With a little finagling they all went into place and I loosely bolted everything in place.

I now need to tighten things down on the Silver car and get about putting the stock components onto the Santorin car so that it can eventually be rolled out of the garage and on to a salvage yard.