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My entire suspension has been replaced with adjustable arms, and all of the bushings have been changed to either solid aluminum or spherical bearings. This makes the car very rigid, but all comfort is completely gone. It is very good for the race track, but definitely not so good for a daily driven street car. The only factory rubber bushings that were unchanged on my suspension were the 4 large rear subframe bushings.

This job is a little bit of a hassle to do. I've had the parts in my garage for almost 1 year and have not wanted to do the work, but this weekend I finally decided to start it. The problem is you must completely remove the rear subframe, all of the suspension, rear pumpkin, axles, brakes, etc, so that you can press out the factory bushings and press in the new solid aluminum bushings. Not difficult work, but very time consuming.

I first removed the entire rear subframe with all parts still installed. I then removed all of the parts from the subframe and pressed out the factory bushings.




Here is a the new solid bushing compared to the original rubber bushing.


Once all the old bushings were out, I carefully pressed in the new solid bushings. This is a little awkward since the subframe is so large and oddly shaped.

All bushings pressed in!


Rear bushing


Front bushing


Tomorrow I will reinstall all the parts back onto the car!

Today I worked on removing unused wiring. I decided to move the fuse panel that is located by the driver's feet to the center of the car. It is very difficult to access and is in the way since I have a roll cage, so moving it to the center will help. It looks like a big mess, I still must untangle all of the wires. The good news is that the car starts and runs with no problems!

Today I finally concentrated on cleaning up the wiring. I removed all of the wiring for the heater/ac and radio so far, but since I must follow every wire back to it's source and depin them from the harness, it is a very slow job! I am about halfway finished, and the good news is the car still starts without any new problems or codes.

Another thing you might notice from the picture is that my instrument cluster had to be moved closer to the driver. Once I welded in the front dash bar, the mounting points for the cluster were blocked. I had to modify the mounting bracket and move the cluster about 2 inches closer to the driver. I also removed the cluster outer cover. I may be replacing the cluster with a RacePak digital combination gauge very soon.

I also completed the rear wing chassis mount and trunk lid modification. I removed the trunk lid hinges, latch and also cut out all of the trunk lid inner structure. It is now just a shell. I then welded plates to the trunk floor on the frame and made a structure from tube to mount the rear wing to. This will allow full the down force created by the rear wing to press the rear of the car down, and not lose any force through the body panels. The wing was previously mounted to the trunk lid, which is not very effective.



The trunk lid no longer uses the hinges or latch, and now comes completely off and is secured with 4 Aerocatch hood pins. I will be adding a welded in rear strut tower bar that is tied into my rollcage. Once that is completed, I will also add bracing from the rear wing mount to the rear strut tower bar, which should make everything much more solid and unified.

The 6MT is installed and fully functional, but I had to make a larger hole for the shifter since the 6MT is a little longer. The hole was a very rough (as you can see in my title image), so I cleaned up the cuts to make them straight and smoothed all the edges (I forgot to take a picture of the cleaned up hole). I then made a cardboard template for a base plate so I could install the rubber shifter cover from the 6MT. I transferred the cardboard template to a piece of steel, cut it out, bent and welded it. It now installed on the transmission tunnel with 4 bolts, allows easy access to the top of the transmission, and will keep out most of the air/water from under the car.

Today I finished all rear suspension work. I too a picture to show the 4 different bushings that were replaced on each rear knuckle. Bushings 1-3 are not very difficult, but bushing 4 is in a very awkward location and it is difficult to position it in the press. I had to weld a small fixture to hold the knuckle in the press. I'm glad that job is finished!