September 11, 2008

Parting Out With Oleg - Day 1

Sad news to hear, that Oleg will be selling his RX-8 soon, and is now parting it out. Luckily, I got to get my hands on his Whiteline sway bars that he had been using for awhile to use for my car. Now, we started late (stupidly) and ended up working till about 3am this morning.

Installation? Forever. A pain in the rear. Do it with MORE then one or two people if possible. What did it entail really? We jacked up the front of both cars first. Then we took of the wheels and set them aside. After that, we unbolted the end link from the control arm, and the bushing that holds the sway bar on. From there, it took us an hour to snake out both of our sway bars from the front. Now be VERY careful when doing this, because the radiator hose is in the way and you really don't want to slice that open (At least we believe it's the radiator hose. Could be the AC hose. Either way it's big and black and you see it on the passenger side). After we took the sway bars out, we had to grease up the urethane bushings on the Whiteline sway bar and let it settle for a bit before putting it into my car.

After that long and annoying process, we settled the bars in and bolted everything back up. Just so you know, you may have to use a hex or some tool to prevent the endlink from rotating when putting the bolt back on, so you know it is properly in place. Put on the wheels, torqued them, then down with the front and up with the rear. We could even keep the wheels on for the rear as the rear sway is easy compaired to the front. The front, you need to snake it through the steering rack area, where as the rear you simply unbolt the bushings and endlinks, then pull down. After greasing up the bushings for the rear bar as well, we put them all together and away for our first test drive we went.

Stiff, and great was all I could think...Until I took my first real turn. Granted, the turn in felt excellent at first, but then suddenly the whole car felt as though it was floating in the air. It felt as though I just drifted the whole turn with no grip or anything. No response from the car, no feeling, nothing. I thought it was just me, so I ignored it, but as I drove into work this morning on various side windy roads... I couldn't just be me. It was after I let my good friend Sergey drive the car (M3 track driver) that I decided something needs to be done about the setting, and quick. He even said he was scared as he couldn't feel the road, feel the car, anything. That's all I can really give for a review at the moment until I try out the new settings. Stay tuned for the next post of day two.

All the pictures can be seen here.

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