[Magical Trevor]

Well we made more progress over the weekend. We have been so caught up in getting the interior and engine bay prepped that we just didn't want to deal with the rear of the car until we felt that we could actually take a break and call those steps "finished". In fact we've been neglecting the rear of the car for almost the entire build. We were afraid of what we might find back there when we it came time to pull it apart.

We Finally got around to giving the back of the car some attention. Pulling the wheels off we instantly knew the inevitable had already came and gone. Every bushing back there was completely worn out. The whiteline RUCA's that I thought could be salvaged??? Destroyed.... there was around a 1/4" of play in the spherical bearing.. it probably made the most god awful noise going down the road. The rust and the salt from the winter(s) wreaked havoc on the rear suspension. It all has to be replaced.. all of it, so we're on the hunt for MORE.. SPL parts.

Surprisingly enough, we had no broken bolts or stripped/rounded nuts. We also pulled the hatch and the rear bumper/support off. Getting ready to prep the rest of the body for paint. We also pulled the subframe and tore it down to get sand blasted.











We got some more engine goodies in last week, so we yanked the old knock off ebay brand turbo manifold. While we had the T28 off the manifold, we took the time to inspect it, clean it up a bit and make sure it was still in fair/working condition.

These will be the "before" pictures, because the ceramic coating on this manifold is old and dirty. So this will be stripped and re-coated.







Yucky, dirty oil residue... this will be cleaned.



Minty fresh from a scrub scrub in the parts washer... I REALLY wish I had before picture of this housing... it was COATED in power steering fluid that had been baked on. It only took about 5 mins to get this clean.



Lots and lots of parts sandblasted and repainted. We put the blaster and the parts washer through the ringer this weekend. Just about everything that wasn't going to powder coat, was washed, blasted and painted. Everything from bolts and washers to the pedals and turbo inlet and outlet pipes.

Before:





After:





I didn't get time to get all the pedals before and after... but you get the idea.








Finally we put he car on "dollies" so the car could be moved around as needed to work with shop space as we're getting cramped.



... and a random garage shot for good measure.