EG Hatch High Compression Build

If you use a 3 - 5 pound steel mallet, a lot of those suspension parts are cake.
3 tricks I use on the ones that give me trouble are -
Heat
Brake fluid (it penetrates way better than WD-40)..
The freezer (for anything I'm putting in).

If you use a little heat, you can bang something like a ball joint out in about 10 seconds.
Put the new ball joint in the freezer for about 30 - 60 minutes before you put it in. Throw a little grease on the sides and it will go in so well, you will think it's too loose. Once it warms back up, it will expand to the proper size.

Heat and brake fluid together work excellent to penetrate stuff. A little heat , add brake fluid and repeat. I just throw some cardboard down to catch the excess. This also works for stuck adjustable coilovers. But I like to keep the heat down to a minimum on them. Even ones that I throught would never let go eventually do. Flash heat, brake fluid, repeat.

I had my passenger, lower ball joint snap on my Del Sol recently with my kid in it. It literally snapped in half. That sucked. Ripped the passenger axle out and did all kinds of damage. Luckily, I have garage full of 88-00 parts galore and two donor Sols out back. I got the whole repair done in an afternoon...including removing the parts from other cars.

Well not the best of updates. My paint & body guy ended up being a piece of shit who made promises but never actually finished the car. Finally was able to track him down after he went MIA for a couple months and get the car and the majority of my parts back in my possession. I am still trying to get all of my missing glass and I think I am missing the front windshield trim. I also need to replace one of the new ebay rear tail lights since they are broken due to his shitty care.

This is how I got the car back.





Luckily one of my friends has a welder and knows how to weld body panels. We were able to get these all lined up and tacked in but we ran out of gas for the welder. Plan is to fill in the gaps and the trim holes sometime this month when he gets some free time. On the plus side, it was cool to spend time with him since we rarely get to hang out.

I spent the weekend working on the nasty old sound deadener. I used up over 20 lbs of dry ice and broke a harbor freight needle gun trying to get this stuff off. Plan to hit it up with goo gone and sand everything down to get ready for paint.



My plan is to get a road race style cage and do a half gut on the interior. Then rattle can paint match and 2K clear.

Spent a productive day cleaning out and disassembling the car some more. I was able to get the rest of the gunk out and pull the carpet and seatbelts. The carpet got vacuumed, powerwashed, then cleaned. Even though this carpet is in pretty good shape, I will probably dye it again.

The carpet turned out well after the good cleaning. I decided to use the Duplicolor Flat Black Vynil and Fabric spray paint on it which really came out well. I used up an entire can for almost 2 full coats. Would have liked to do another pass but I ran out. I brushed the carpet in between coats to try to get different angles of the carpet.

Messed around with my oven last night and cerakoted a couple parts. I ended up doing this front sway bar but quite didn't like the finish since it was more of mat color. I ended up spraying some gloss black over it. It should still be pretty durable since the base is baked on. I also did high temp Piston coat on my 12:1 Arias forged pistons which came out great.

My friend stopped by and welded up the rest of the panels and we filled in the trim holes and some drill holes in the interior. All that is left is for me to grind the welds down. I have been dealing with hand pain after the vaccine and I hope its not early arthritis. As it seems now, I don't think I will be able to do the body work myself. The car has an appointment with a fabricator in early July to get a half cage put in. After that I will be looking at getting the car painted again. Still need to order up some missing seals and have to find the glass.

The welder knocked out the cage in record pace. I quite didn't like the open space under the harness bar so I had him add on some more bracing. I think the over all looks way better and should be safer. I wish I could afford the full 10 point cage but going to stick to the half. The welder built it in a way that we could add on to the full 10 point in the future. I was really surprised that he ended tiging most of the cage. The cage is made out of 1 5/8 .083 Chromoly which should cover me for most all racing classes as long as the car stays under 2600 pounds. I feel kind of bad that I will be painting over his welds. Right now I am leaning on the Roth Paint Rattle Bomb Blue or their Nightshade as a nod to my lowrider childhood dreams.

Not much progress this week. Still trying to find a painter pretty much. Don't want to really pay shop prices as I am not really looking for that level of a paint job. I got some flap disks and was able to grind down all of the welds. This was way easier than just using a grinding stone type wheel.

Big progress on hatch. Got it back from paint and it came out great. Still need to do some wetsanding to get some orange peel in certain spots but it looks great. Tackled the brakes and suspension over the weekend with a friend. Hit a couple of snags. I was missing the front brake hardlines. I was able to source the passenger but not driver. Hit the junkyard up hard but my wrench kept stripping the nuts. Just couldn't get any off on the 3 cars that where at the junker. Will probably have to try again to source one locally. The rear toe arms were fused to the nuts which was a pain. Had to pick up a saw saw to cut out the bolts. Also had to cut holes to put the retaining nut back in place. Not sure if I will get this covered up after install or if will just throw undercoating in the new exposed area. I guess this is a common problem though. We had some difficulties getting the lower control arm bolt to line up on the Honed Development kit. Hoping to have all of the brakes done in the next couple of weeks. Once that is done, I need to tackle the harnesses and the cluster conversion. I did pick up a built Whoopdeedoo LSD transmisison on the forum. Still waiting on the engine builder. I hope to have her up and running by Spring.