906-127
June 4, 2004

The tedious process starts. . . detailing the remaining suspension components. These pictures show un restored suspension radius rods. You can see one rod undone and one rod done.

When I say tedious, it's hand sanding from 150-400 grit sand paper. This means, first sanding with 150 for the big gouges and then using 220, then 280, then 320, then 400 and sometimes 500. When the sanding is complete, the part is put on a scotch brite wheel and then polished. We use two grits of rouge before we get to a perfect part.

Believe it or not, when the rods are perfect we will dunk them in aluma-prep (phosphoric acid). This makes the aluminum look new as compared to California shiny (remember I'm from CA). Andy has assembled all the components which make the radius rods. They won't be final assembled until next week because we ordered all left hand thread heim joints when half of them should have been rights, DUH!!

If you checked out other updates you'll notice the 904 shocks being painted, but in this picture are the springs for 127.

Yesterday and today, Andy prepared the Bilstein shocks for paint. When we send them to Bilstein, they do a fantastic job rebuilding them, but they do nothing to restore the outside body for paint. Most often we have to do a little bodywork to prepare them for paint.

If you look at the shock closely, you can see grooves machined into the body. These grooves retain a snap ring which holds the spring perch. Some shocks have one groove, but most have more. These shocks have two grooves which is for two different lengths of springs. The longer spring that would be used would be a progressive spring, while the short spring would be a normal wire spring.

Andy has now pulled out the electrical components to make sure the parts are new or restored for the assembly. You can see the wire harness is Y n Z's and Gene makes the best harnesses for all Porsche's, race or street, better than anybody.

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