Firehawk's N2 racecar project

[firehawk]

Yay, summer is here and this project is gaining some speed again. The front third of the body is just about stripped clean of all body sealant and black goo and I can start welding the seams and a few rust holes. The rest of the body isn't going to be as easy since I only have the bottom of the car some 60cm off the floor. Pretty crampy.

All the rubber bushings are now gone - taken care of by a butane torch. I'll need to clean up the suspension arms, crossmember and rear axle housing with a wirebrush and then spray them with some anti-chip coating and a semigloss black on top. The Prothane bushing kit is already waiting to be installed.

I'm also going all-out on rebuilding the diff and rear axle. I ordered a full set of replacement clutch and spline plates, springs and washers from Toyota, all the diff and wheel bearings from a local Koyo distributor and a 4.7 ring and pinion kit from SYM. The service manual section for diff disassembly/reassembly looks a bit scary, though.

Once the rear axle is re-assembled, I'll need to start looking into shortening the front struts for a pair of SW20 shocks. Most of the coilover sleeves I see on eBay and such seem to be aluminium, which I can't weld onto the strut body. Anyone know of a good quality coilover kit with steel sleeves?