Building a Track Car – The rear suspension comes together at last!

In an earlier post we took the rear suspension apart, although not without some trouble.  The axles were just about frozen into the splines of the rear hubs.  With a great deal of effort we were finally able to extricate the axles and then rebuild the spindle hubs complete with new bearings.  The old bushings were pressed out and new Energy polyurethane bushings were installed.  New bolts were acquired from Mazda and it was time to rebuild the rear suspension.

We not only picked up new large bolts to attach the lower control arm to the spindle, we replaced the alignment bolts ( the ones with the excentrics) with the new style that captures the cam with two small slots rather than a large flat area.  That change in design resulted in far more thread to grab the lock nut with.

First we bolted on the upper control arms and then followed with the lower control arms.  Then we slipped in the new axles.  Well, slipped in sounds nice, but actually we had to really give each one a good shove to get it to seat in the differential.  After a few good shoves they clicked into place.  Next was the spindle casting itself complete with the new hubs and bearings.  Don’t they look nice?

Then the outer splines of the axles were slipped into the new hub and the large bolt was inserted to tie it all together.  Antisieze was coated on the inside splines to make any future removal less dramatic than before.

This will not be the shock/spring setup that we will end up with.  Flyin’ Miata has informed us that their V-Maxx coil-overs won’t be shipping until March.  We will try to bear the wait.

Next we will work on the rear half of the Big Brake upgrade.  Stay tuned!