It will be necessary to remove the belly pan to remove the upper control arm and front swaybar. The upper control arm uses a giant 10” long bolt that will be obstructed by the pan on its way out. Removing the belly pan is a matter of removing the ten M6 bolts that hold it to the core support. There are four on each side, all of which can be seen here, and two more at the rear.Our tie rods were in good shape: no slop and the grease boots were still good. If yours are bad the outer tie rods are shared with the Geo Metro and Suzuki Swift. I am pretty sure the entire steering system is from the Swift/Metro (including the inner tie rods) but have not been able to cross reference all of the part numbers to confirm.If you are only installing coilovers (and you should really replace your bushings too if you actually care about handling) you will need to remove the upper control arm to get the strut out. To do so, completely remove the retaining bolt before trying to break the ball joint loose. This bolt must be fully removed as it captures the upper arm balljoint and only loosening it will damage the bolt (ask me how I know). It should be noted that OEM upper control arms are no longer available so if your balljoint is toast you’re SOL (the balljoint is welded to the arm and therefore non-serviceable). There are a few aftermarket companies that make adjustable upper arms, but they can be hard to source in the US. Luckily ours were still good.Obligatory “everything in the Cappuccino is tiny” photo. Check out how tiny the front brake rotors are compared to the wheels of a Traxxas 3.3 Revo, a 1/10 scale R/C truck.Check out how worn and deformed our swaybar bushings were. They were definitely in need of replacement!
2 comments
Any way to use an eccentric bolt in the front of the front LCA to get some camber adjustment? Miatas, RX-8, etc do that and it works “OK”
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