1999 Miata restoration

Drivers side is completely apart!  Letting it sit with the Liquid Wrench having gravity assist did it.  Once it moved a little, I went back and forth until it just spun.  Then I used some sand paper to clean the spinning shaft, and it came right out.

But the lower control arm is shot- as I feared.  The damage from spinning the captive nut means I can't really repair it, and I had to cut the hole a little larger to fit a tool in.  Oh, well, I do know I can buy a refurbished one.  

Now I put the passenger side up, vibrated it a lot with penetrating fluid, so now I'll let it sit overnight to get in there.

And I put the front up in the air, removed the tires and sprayed everything down so that I can get it apart when we get back from vacation.

BTW, Keith- I hope you are at the shop in a month- got some stuff I want to talk about and order- mostly shocks and bushings.  The springs are in great shape (which I didn't expect), and if you have refurbished stuff, I can get it all in one stop.

In reply to alfadriver :

what if you cut it enough to weld in a proper nut, then welded a patch over the hole? IDK if that's even doable, but as a retired guy maybe that's an approach you'd like to take. 

We don't have refurbished stuff, just a few new replacement items. I'm usually not available on the phone, better to get me via email.

I don't see a problem with cutting an access hole, welding in a new captive nut and putting a patch on.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'll see if I can do that.  But I also need to find the nut... it came out and rolled away, LOL.  

I'll shoot a note when I get back.

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

Not a bad idea.  The arm is way stout for strength, and the rust is just heavy surface rust- and realistically, I can just weld back in the part I cut out for tool access.  Or just leave it and flange the cuve- it's a pretty unloaded part of the arm anyway and I just opened up the original hole.

The captive part is just a mess now.

It's been a short while, as we took a 3 week trip last month. 
 

PSA, or fun fact, as I'm not sure how many people are aware based on posts:  working on rusty cars sucks. Really sucks. 
 

Finally managed to get the rear lower control arms apart- took some cutting and abuse to get the shock out of the other side, too. 
And then to take a break, i got a cheap bushing tool, and pushed out the upper arm bushings. Took some time to get a good set up, but once done, it was reasonably easy. 
 

Today, the drivers front suspension got about 1/2 way done, but I'll end up cutting out the ball joints and the steering joints. While tight enough, the boots are torn. The odd part is that I can't see how the front plastic body piece comes out- so it's kind of flapping around. Alas, it has to come out, as once the suspension is out, rust repair....  picture later. 

Let me know if you want me to try and source some rust free control arms from California 

In reply to amg_rx7 (Forum Supporter) :

So far, they appear to be structurally sound.  Just have to replace all of the fasteners.  

But, very much thanks for the offer.  I am still considering replacing some of the arms.

alfadriver said:

Some welding. Most of it went well, some had some hidden dirt. And the panel fit wasn't great, so that made it more fun. But it's 95% in. 

So are you using a series of tack welds to prevent burning holes in the metal?  Is that the preferred way to do sheet metal repairs.  I've heard it discussed here, but these photos are very good to show the technique.  I think even I might be able to pull that off with patience.  I'm asking in a Miata related sense and future dreaming / planning. 

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

That seam was plug welded- as it had metal behind it to weld to. And the original part was spot welded there, as far as I can tell. 
 

I did stitch weld most of the rest, and where I had issues was where the original body was really thin, which was mostly around the door opening. Given that's where the stamping stretched the metal the most, it makes sense now, but I wish I thought of that when I cut the panel out. 

Been a while since an update- a pretty common thing for this project.  Some frustration with the work, some travel, some "just reasons".  

But today, I spent some time on the car- managed to remove the front suspension from the car!  I knew it would be tough, as the rust has made nasty battles getting things apart.  But I managed to do it.  Even got the steering rod ends out.  All I need to do now is upper and lower ball joint removal- probably will just replace them.  

The next choice is if I restore or replace all of the fasteners.  One I need to change for sure, due to damage.  But the rest?  Maybe I try to get some of the rust remover chemicals and see what happens.

I was toying with not changing the bushings due to lazyness, but now that it's all apart, I'll change them.  I got 4 of them out, it's massively hard.

Simple Green and the HF ball joint service tool for the bushings, Evaporust for the fasteners. I do find it useful to have a short length of thick wall 2" exhaust pipe handy  for most of the bushings. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Instead of having a 2" pipe, I have a large enough socket to use...  

What's funny is that it took me a long time to figure out how easy they are to extract.  I had thought that the bushings were just like my Alfa's, where there's an outer metal sleave, so you have to push the sleave out instead of the rubber- or it just tears.  So I spent a lot of time trying to find the right size.....  

Anyway, once I saw how simple it was, it's just a matter of getting a large enough tube to hold the arm....

In reply to alfadriver :

I had good luck removing the bushings by using a short piece of steel pipe, some threaded rod and a bunch of washers and nuts. Get the pipe, rod, and nuts set up and snug them, add heat to the tube the bushing is in, as you get a whiff of smoke remove heat and tighten the nut (impact gun helps here) to push the bushing into the pipe along the threaded rod. The heat helps break the bond. 

Hard to believe that it's been almost a year for this. But a simple question- I need stock bushings- best place to get them?

Stock? Mazda Team Support. They're not cheap, though. The IL Motorsports ones are a good budget option with a higher durometer.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Thanks. Interesting that you can get urethane bushings for even less money. Any insight to why the OEM is so much?

Urethane has always been less expensive. I suspect they're considerably cheaper to produce as you can pop them out of a low temp mold in your home garage. Bonded rubber, maybe not so much :) I wouldn't recommend urethane for a street car, though.

I think the OEM ones are just like any OEM parts for a low volume car that's been out of production for nearly 20 years. There's just a lot of overhead on production runs, distribution and the like. You're possibly more familiar with that sort of thing than anyone. Mazda classes them as a C-class Slow Moving part. At least the aftermarket only sells them in full kits (or at least, functional groupings) and has a lot less overhead for distribution as they're only sold through a handful of sources. FYI - they're $16-38 each (dealer cost) and there are 22 of them.

In reply to alfadriver :

I put the IL Motorsport bushings in a '99 NB I had a few years ago. They were stiffer, but not unacceptably so. They went in really easily with a mixture of dish soap and water.

I have poly bushings in my MSM.  I have to agree with Keith and not recommend those for street use.  They definitely sharpen up the handling along with every bump in the road.  It may be time for me to consider the IL Motorsports bushings as a replacement.  As it stands now, the MSM doesn't get driven very much because I work from home and the wife doesn't want to ride in it.