Back to basics:
I read in the manual that one should carefully track all spacers/bolts while disassembling the I found myself in a perpetual state of surprise/ annoyance and decided to heck with that and chucked them in the spare parts bin. The spacers were all over the place-some brackets had huge gaps between spacers, some brackets were bent in from lack of spacers, and the bolt size and lengths weren't even consistent side to side. I took photos as a reference of what things should look like and decided to start from scratch using what I could.
Stripped down Chassis:
(no my car does not have chicken pox, those are scanning dots. More on that later)
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Here's an example bracket where three things I hate are happening:
1. Ton of washers to deal with rather than a few spacers
2. The metal tab is bent in
3. Despite #2, There's still a huge gap
and then #4 which isn't visible in the picture- The bolt isn't properly sized. I'll provide a photo later in this post, but the unthreaded portion of the bolt is too short and the threads start inside the rod end which is a problem as explained below.
Notes on properly sizing bolts:
As mentioned above, many bolts were improperly sized, or sized properly on one side but not the other. There's two things you should look out for
1.
Proper thread stick out.
*You're using lock nuts. Those don't work if the bolt doesnt engage in the nylon as was the case with several of mine.
*to fix this- get a longer bolt, or if space doesnt allow- using a different locking nut system (i.e. jet nuts?)
2.
Length of the unthreaded portion of the bolt.
*Threaded portion is the weakest point of the bolt, so you really dont want the threads inside the parts most susseptible to shearing.
*To fix this- you must buy a longer bolt and cut it down to size.
Below is an example of the bolts in the front upper control arms where the rod end attaches to the chassis. I had two issues- that the threaded portion was inside the bracket/ lug and thus more likely to shear/break and that the bolt was too long and interfered with the other ones.
the fix: purchase a longer bolt with longer unthreaded portion and cut it down to length. I chose to leave 3 threads exposed as that's what i read was required in most cases.
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Above is an example and as much as I'd love to document every bolt, I haven't had the time or the memory as i did this weeks ago. Nonetheless, if you use those rules to examine your chassis, you should be able to sort them all out.
Next post I'll briefly cover spacers