Day 4
Work Time: 4 hours
Completed: Dropped subframe / finished Video 4
I'm glad I didn't drive the donor any more than I did, as it is obvious this car wasn't all that safe. First on the list was dropping the subframe. After heavily soaking the steering knuckle in penetrant last night, I started today with my 13mm socket and a pry bar. I had my son turn the wheel to locate the bolt and all I found was a hole where the bolt should be. I'm not sure how I missed that when spraying it last night, but there was no bolt to remove. I figured no big deal, there was plenty of rust holding it all together.
Next up were the subframe bolts. After a few free spins on the passenger rear bolt, my son checked the socket because he thought he was using one that was too big. He placed the socket on the bolt by hand and confirmed it was the right size, but the bolt was not even hand tight on the subframe. The front subframe bolt was a little tighter but required no effort to remove. The driver-side rear was at least snugged but removed easily with a simple turn of the socket wrench. We weren't even using the cordless impact at this point. The driver-side front was a bit tighter and actually required a little effort to break loose, but was clearly the anchor on this self-adjust subframe that matched the self-adjust coil-over/knuckle connection mentioned in my previous post. Definitely should not have been running 3rd gear pulls in this before tear down.
Same as before, none of the issues we encountered were the normal ones I was expecting, just another adventure through mismatched bolt head sizes on the same part (i.e. sway bar was 18mm on one side and 19mm on the other). This mismatched phenomenon was a theme on the entire front end.
We remembered to disconnect the downpipe after we disconnected the motor mounts and started lowering the engine/trans. Exhaust is a ZZP variety and fairly new so the bolts weren't rusted but 1 of the 3 snapped while trying to remove them. Other than that, the only other issues were having to use a strap since there were no hoist connections to be found, and realizing the number of wires/hoses to disconnect on a forced induction model is far greater than what was demonstrated on the NA model in Video 4. I have quite a few labels with question marks on them, but they are labeled and photographed for reference later.
Getting the subframe out seemed like an accomplishment - not in mechanical aptitude but surviving the test drives before teardown:
Happy to have the motor out while my son was home to help:
Fozda was in town and even gave my son a ride during a short break prior to dropping the motor: