Day 56 - finishing off the big night

I managed to press the bush out no problem and with no damage I was able to reverse it and press it back in.  It was only when I got home I realised the lads who’d said it fitted no problem also had the same problem but thrown it together and it wasn’t sitting right.  Bugger! The thought occurred that because I had accidently put the bushes on backwards and if I had just swapped them over everything would have been fine. Doh!  So it was off to work again and press out the other bush and turn it around.  It took less than ten minutes to do it I’ve had that much practice. On the way back I popped into my parents to drill out the old sheared or split pins on the rod ends of the steering rack on a bench drill.

Back in the garage I put the front suspension assemblies together, fitted the wheels and went on to the steering rack which took 3 attempts to get the pipes and steering shaft through the hole in the sub-frame.  But after much sweating and cussing I managed to fit it all through and nipped up the pipe fittings.

I then went on to the prop shaft.  I’d checked with Graham.  Earlier models of Impreza had spacers between the centre mount and the underside of the car tunnel.  My donor didn’t have any but the bolts provided were 60 mm with a shoulder so I will have to borrow a 10mm die to extend the thread or find some replacements. I greased the gearbox end of the prop shaft fitted it to the gearbox and fixed the tail end. I marked out the centres for the centre mount after centralising the prop shaft measuring the point where the prop enters the diff nose mount. I drilled pilot holes to see where the holes came out on the top side of the monocoque tunnel.  The passenger side came out fine, I’ll get a nut and washer on there no problem, but the driver’s side is close to the tunnel wall and may require a bit of fettling.

I’d had enough for the day but couldn’t resist lowering the car from the axle stands and get it standing on its own wheels. Yay! It now looks more like a car and less of an oversized bath tub. And I called it a night.