Tires and Wheels

I picked up the tires and wheels today. I decided to go with an MB Five-X wheel from Discount Tire. The tires are Falken Sincera 205/65R-15 on the back and 185/65R-15 on the front. It's not a super performance tire, but it should give a good quiet ride and the price was great.

Rear Suspension

While removing the spring plate retaining cap, one of the bolts broke. I should have fixed this before I painted the pan, but I forgot until I was in the process of applying the Rust Bullet.

I started by cutting off the portion of the stud that was sticking out. Then I drilled a small pilot hole all the way through the center of the broken off bolt. Next I reamed out the hole to the correct size for the tap. Finally I tapped it out and test fit the cap. Everything works perfectly.

Rear Suspension

After letting the undercoating on the trailing arms dry for nearly 2 weeks, I packed and installed the new rear wheel bearings. You can see the new bracket that will be used to hold the caliper once the rotor has been installed. I would defiantly do this assembly on the bench again, it was much easier than with the arm on the car.

Brakes

I got to spend quite a bit of time in the shop today. I started by painting and installing the emergency brake handle and cables. The cables of course are not adjusted as there are no rear brakes yet. But I hope to get that done in the next week or so. Because the e-brake handle gets abused, I used a self etching primer and an epoxy paint to help avoid chipping.

Once I was finished with the e-brake handle, I moved on to preparing the rear disk brakes. I don't like the look of rusty brake parts so I wanted to paint everything before installation. I used a semi-flat black on the rotor and caliper bracket. When it came to the calipers, I decided I wanted a little more pop so I used a red brake parts paint.

The other thing I did was get the rear trailing arms torn apart so I can take them down to Hook's Automotive and get them cleaned and blasted before painting them. Hook has also ordered the wheel bearings, seals and all the bushings for the rear end. They should be in on Wednesday, then I can get the rear-end put back together.