Busy weekend which half I forgot to take pics of.
Getting the car ready to set on the ground to turn around to begin the rear end work was my main priority which meant the front suspension needed to be at least to mockup point to set ride height and work on tire fitment.
26x8.5 MT on the 15x7 +40 rotas. These wheels are a bit narrow but are a good starting point given the price point.
Whats not pictured to make this all come together is the typical elantra lower control arms, expo knuckles and dsm hubs. Aaron was nice enough to let me use his press last weekend to get all new bearings, seals and extended studs installed.
Two members on this board shared spring rates with me, neither are all that close to each other and both seem to work well enough. Being that both aren't that similar I decided to start from scratch and scale the car with a set of known spring rates and go from there. I picked up a set of double collar ebay coilovers. The sleeves were about .050 too small to fit the gr2 that came on the front of the colt when I bought it so I found an old pos engine hone and chucked everything in my drill press.
Since the ebay setup is an unknown I set out to figure the spring rates. I've heard of this method before but had never done it myself, with some youtube help it was a pretty quick deal. I've heard many people say the ebay stuff is about 600lb spring rates and these came out to 568, close enough for me to start with even though they are WAY too stiff.
Clearance cut and they are ready to go in the car for test fit before repainting.
This happened by accident but I think its a slight monetary setback with a huge step forward in strength. There isn't a ton of great info out there as to what it takes to make this work but since the subframe was accidentally made for a 3kgt rear diff instead of a 4 bolt diff it just had to be figured out in a quick manner. Jake Montgomery reached out to me stating that all that was needed was a stock 3kgt bar upgrade with 1g dsm dimensions and the 3kgt cups, there was some info out there stating the stub shafts in the trailing arms would need to be changed to 3kgt but he stated they were the same. It makes sense being the bearings are able to be cross referenced as the same but its nice to have confirmation from someone running the setup. I am still waiting on the cups to arrive but it shouldn't be long before the awd swap begins to take shape. The auto cars need the 6spd 94-99 rear diffs and the 5spd cars run the early 5 spd diffs.
This thing is stout, it appears has a little more backlash than what I think is within spec so I will be tearing it down for a refresh.
I still have a ton of parts on order and I have what I feel will be a unique rear shock mounting solution that I look forward to sharing.