Finally made more billet rear knuckles.

Spent some time making these a little smoother/nicer than the first pair.

One pair with tapped holes in the side for wheel scraper/caliper bracket and no wheel bearing holes for slammo.  He is planning on using a different bolt on wheel bearing, I'll machine that when the time comes.

B fit and tacked up a set of lateral links for the billet knuckle swap.  I turned up some of the pieces for that and a couple of wheel bearing spacers. 

Sometime in the next month or so we plan on swapping out his rear diff and doing the billet rear knuckle conversion on his Forester.

Are you putting an R180 in the Forester?

6 hours ago, slammo said:

Are you putting an R180 in the Forester?

Not anytime soon.  If it was the same ratio we probably would but I think the 6MT low range swap is going to wait a while.

We just tacked up all the links, we'll mock it up and see how the lengths work out.  The R160 is a bit narrower than the R180 but those big front axles have quite a bit of plunge travel and not a lot of it is used in the rear.  

 

B and I did a test assembly of the billet knuckle, big front axle, and fabricated links on the left rear of his Forester.  I did get this pair case hardened which will hopefully keep the bore for the long bolt from wearing out as quickly.  That did tighten up the holes a bit so I'm ordering a 14mm ball hone to open those up.  Mostly went together fine, will have to clearance a few minor things we had on mine that we'd forgotten about.  Brakes etc seemed to fit well.

Axle length worked out.  Inboard CV was close to fully compressed at full extension of the suspension but there was still some play.  The left rear corner is normally the one that takes a shorter axle so we should be good on the other side.

Biggest issue we hadn't anticipated was tire clearance to the rear bumper.  This is mainly because we'd made the trailing links longer than stock.  Usually easier to hammer/cut the body behind the tire rather than in front.  But in this case it would also rub on the bumper.  Which could be modified fairly easily.  But since there's at least 1.5" clearance in front of the tire to the body throughout the travel, we're going to shorten his trailing arms an inch.

One of the reasons we're doing this pictured below.  Big front CV axle we use on left, stock rear axle on right.  The boots were starting to leak so I repacked the CV joints and replaced the boots.  Hopefully won't be on this car too much longer.  We put the old suspension back on for now.  Plan is to fully weld and paint all the links etc.  Then sometime in April swap the rear diff and do the rear knuckle conversion.

Are your "big front CV axles" 25 spline? Otherwise known as 95AC joints? 

mmmmm......billet

14 hours ago, brumbyrunner said:

Are your "big front CV axles" 25 spline? Otherwise known as 95AC joints? 

We've been using the 187N front female CV axles for years now.  They're a direct replacement for the front wheel drive Legacy.  Same splines as the other female front axles (27 tooth outboard / 25 tooth female inboard I think) but slightly larger CV joints, shafts, and more plunge travel.  It also has a spline stub adapter on it to fit the R160 in that picture.

Sounds like 95AC CV axles are an EA thing, in that case no.

That sounds like them, just a difference of terminology and jargon. They were the goto in Australia until supply dried up. I used them for racing and they never broke, just wore them all out. Shame NTN stopped making them.

Have some pictures to include with this post but site isn't taking them at the moment, will probably add later.

Wife and I went on vacation for 11 days through AR, OK, and TX. Didn't really plan on doing any off roading but it'd kinda hard to avoid in AR. Met up with slammo for a day in his RAV4 prime. On our way to the beach in TX looking for the camping area he got stuck in soft sand. With the folding recovery ramps and a couple straps I was able to pull him out.

Before swapping in a lower temp thermostat, engine seemed to plateau at about 215F CTS / 200F upper radiator temp while driving. If left to idle for a while it would slowly climb up (small fans kick in at 215F) until the large fans kicked in (220F), then they seemed to run indefinitely.

Yesterday B came over and test assembled as much as he could of the billet knuckle conversion. Got his pair heat treated and painted. Bore for the long bolt/stud being tight was the biggest issue. I got a couple different ball hones but neither of them seems to remove material very quickly. Calipers with new pads seem to just barely fit his worn front rotors. He already swapped new ones on the front. We also had all of the lateral links painted, he got those anti seized and assembled.

My main plans were to figure out the wiring issue on the Impreza and swap in a lower temp thermostat and bleed the coolant. On our recent vacation the delayed accessory power stopped working. Was still getting some voltage from its main battery feed but not enough to actually power anything. At the time I just hotwired it to the stock cig lighter. Turns out it had blown a fuse in the underhood fuse box, not sure if I checked those during my initial diagnosis. Cleaned up the wiring a bit put it back to how we had it and seems to be working now.

While I was draining the coolant I had the bright idea to replumb the Ford heater cores we'd added under the hood. It seemed that with both of them in series on the heater core circuit the second one wasn't doing much, the first one seemed to cool it almost to ambient temp, and that circuit is a pretty small portion of the coolant flow. So I decided to plumb one of them into the circuit that goes through the oil cooler, figuring that would also cool the oil better. When I started I didn't realize those fittings are about 1/2”, not 5/8” like the heater hoses and cores we'd added. So I made up a couple of barbed adapters on the lathe. It was a bit of a pain to get the hoses routed but I think it turned out fairly well. Then I drilled a 3/16” hole in the top of the 78C (172F) thermostat and swapped that in. I'd had a stock 82C thermostat in it. Got a bleeder funnel recently too so we used that, no idea how much better that works than the normal method of just filling it up and driving. This all seemed like an improvement. When idling it would still eventually get up to 215F but once the small fans kicked in it would cool back down to 210F (where the fans shut off) and then slowly go back up. The only issue we noticed was the heater core circuit wasn't getting hot or even warm. I pulled various hoses off in that circuit with the engine running and just a trickle of coolant would come out at idle. I pulled both hoses off at the engine and backflushed it with compressed air and it seemed to flow great. Heater had been working great before all this. Eventually I just decided to drive it and hope it fixed itself. Which it pretty much immediately did. Maybe just needed some revs or jostling around to bleed. Regardless, it now blows hot air when you turn the heat on and both heater cores underhood get hot. Also seems like it takes less time for the little fans to bring the temps back down. While driving the temps seem to plateau at about 200F/180F so that also seems like an improvement. Will drive it a bit like this, maybe lower the fan temp at least for the small fans.

Edited 10 hours ago10 hr by pontoontodd