Date: around 12-21-22
Made a little progress today ahead of the blizzard that is going to hit tomorrow morning. Vic bead blasted the rotors to get the surface rust off and shot then with a coat of paint. I cleaned up the calipers and bolted everything together.
Some of you may notice that the caliper is on the back side of the rotors. These are brakes from a 98-2002 F-body and normally the caliper is on the front side of the rotor. The reason for the swap is that we messed up when we pressed the bearings on the axles. I accidentally installed the caliper brackets on the wrong sides. Instead of battling with pulling the bearings off and possibly damaging something, we decided to move the calipers to the rear. I swapped the calipers side to side so that the bleeder is at the top.
We put the car down on the ground in the front to check clearance with the suspension. The up-pipe is no pictured, but is about 1-1.5" away from the bushings. The Ridetech control arms use deleon bushings and I plan to wrap the up-pipe and also put a woven sock over it. I don't expect any issues.
I got these nifty clamps from Australia, made by a company called SS Customs.
https://sscustoms.com.au
They have been super helpful holding the pipes together for mock-up and tack welding.
Andrew