Lately, I managed to free up some money to break down and buy the rear suspension system from MiniTec in Royston, GA (http://www.superfastminis.com). I know I sound regretful, but I had some stickershock earlier on when looking at this item. Bottom line is, you're paying for the engineering that went into making this finish product bolt right in without any issues, and at this point in time in this project for me (almost 4 years and counting now)... it's worth every penny spent.
Once I received the subframe, I was able to quickly line it up to the body (pictured below) and bolt it in place...
Upon bolting it in, I was able to see some slight modifications that were going to need to be done to the wheel wells in order to allow for proper clearance to the shock once the full assembly was in place.
As you can see from the picture below, I took a nice 4lb. hammer and "releaved" the rear half of the wall behind the shock in order for it to clear the metal once installed. Not the prettiest of treatments I know, but once this is rubber-coated later, none of this should matter.
Once the sheetmetal was modified to properly fit the shocks, I was able to bore out the shockmount hole at the top of the tower area to fit the new bracket, thus allowing me to mount the shock at both ends without interference.
Within a few minutes, I was able to dry-fit the new hubs in place, insert the new discs and spacers, and fit those beautiful 13x7 wheels in place for the first time.
At the time of the image, I had the body as if it were a dolly, rolling around on its own back wheels... a very exciting accomplishment.
Not wanting to stop there, I decided to try to line-up the body to the front subframe.
Doing this allowed me to see that I need to do a few more modifications to the metal at the front to avoid interference with the alternator. However, I did manage to take this snapshot of what the car will look like once both frames are mounted up properly... sort of a "glimpse ahead".
