Well, I'm happy to say after 6 weeks of work my 89, it is back on the road. With a 150,000 miles the steering and ride was getting sloppy and I decided to replace all of the bushings, sleeves, ball joints, tie rods, etc with one of the complete suspension rebuild kits. I went with the front and rear poly urathane kits from Corvette Central. Everything was a perfect fit and the only special measuring needed was for the front sway bar and had to be ordered seperate. As I planned the project, I decided it would be a great time to do a brake job and replace the exhaust system.
There's numerous articles available that helps walk you through the suspension re-build.... but I ended up with my own version of removing the old rubber bushings. I did a few using the instructions, and realized it would go so much easier if the pressure was relieved before trying to push out the rubber. As I did the rest of the bushings, I used a drill with a small bit and drilled out a bunch of holes in the rubber (avoiding the walls of course). Then it was a simple matter of using a puller with a bolt and a washer to finish removal. A short soak in xylene finished off any crumbs that were still stuck.
For what ever reason, the passenger side gave me the most trouble from start to finish. By trouble, I mean breaking nuts and bolts apart, control arms, x-frame, snapped a bolt going to the manifold. Even freeing the right tie rod from the knuckle was a PITA
Nothing too special about the brake job other than switching over to braided stainless steel brake lines which I highly recommend. My brakes have never been quite as good as I thought they should be and now the car stops on a dime. I also switched to the self bleeders which I'm not convinced are worth the money. As expected, spent a lot of time bleeding out all the air and couldn't get it to where it should be until I did it as a 2 man operation.
As for the exhaust, it was all original and you wouldn't believe how much rust fell out of the mufflers, it was hilarious. I initially went cat-less and man that was too loud! Skipping over the anti-pollution kinda bugged me too, so I installed a new main cat, but stayed with the front Y pipe having no pre-cats. The mufflers are your basic Quiet Flows and it sounds good (not great, but good). Idle has a nice rumble and at constant speed it's fairly quite with a nice tone. On acceleration at lower speeds it gets louder but doesn't have the quality sound I was expecting... again good but not great
Final step was a trip to a local body shop that I trust for the alignment. They do heavy collision work and have a great reputation and newer equipment. I was like a little kid on Christmas when I picked her up and was not disappointed. She's drives sooooo nice and handles bumps so much better. A lot of friends and family warned me the ride would be too rough with the urathane bushings which had me a little worried. I'm happy to report they were wrong. The ride is nice and tight and responds to bumps very well especially at highway speeds just the way a Corvette lover would want it to be.
This ended up being a little tougher job than I anticipated for an average DIY guy, but well worth it. Now it's time to put the top down and enjoy the rest of summer!
Tear down was slow going.... next step remove the upper control arm (95 degree day and the cinder block was holding a fan)
Finally re-assembling and did lots and lots of cleaning too
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redvette89
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hafferf
Now it's time to set back and bask in the warm glow of well deserved accomplishment...
