Front suspension rebuild part 2

Quick update tonight, actually I'm a couple days late, this update is for last weekend.

I got the original suspension removed from the car and I started test fitting the 88 subframe member, over the last couple days I've drilled out all the spot welds on the 84-87 rear brackets that need to be removed and cut the space frame to clear the 88 subframe, tonight I bolted in the frame to design the new rear mounts and the patch required to fill the section that was cut out of the space frame. I also started by test fitting the lower control arms and tomorrow I will bolt in the steering knuckle, take some measurements of the suspension height and design the coilover brackets......hopefully I can get it drawn and lasered tomorrow so I can do some welding this weekend, although I don't know when I will get to that since I am going to be picking up a 88 for parts on Saturday and working on a friends stereo on Sunday. Hoping to get the whole new front suspension setup completed by the end of February. Now for a couple snap shots, I'll have a few more on the weekend.

Front suspension rebuild part 1

So after I got the wheels on I decided to do a 88 style front frame and suspension, there was a couple reasons, main one was that I didn't 100% like the way the one I built turned out. What I built should work, but there was a couple nagging issues/design imperfections that I didn't want to live with, so a local member had a 88 front frame laying around that I grabbed and now I am going to rebuild everything in the front end.

Over the last week I measured up the stock 88 lower control arm, did a design in autocad and built it today. I am very pleased in how it came out, took about 2.5 hours to build and weld this unit up, there is only one small thing that I want to add to beef up the spring mount area, although its probably strong enough right now. The best part is, I put the stock LCA on the scale, tipped it at 9.8lbs with the ball joint and rubber bushings installed, my LCA comes in at 4.6lbs without the ball joint and bushings, even loaded it looks like mine is going to be 50% weight of the stock unit.

Lastly I got the final gauge pod tack welded together for the center HVAC location, 8 gauges in the center console but I still need to find room for one more, need room for the interceptor.