A full Saturday: Rear end removal

We had great weather today, and put in around 7 hours on the WRX teardown. Breakfast was an omelette with faux-sausage, lots of sharp cheddar, and lattes.

Started out with some cleanup following mid-week brake work on the Miata between auto-x events (one pesky brake keeps hanging up). Once that was out of the way, Tamra caught up on photos of parts for sale, I texted with a few potential parts buyers, then started freeing and labeling the harness, starting at the rear of the car.

One potential buyer came by, looked at parts, ran off to the bank to pick up cash, and was never seen again. The joys of craigslist. The other two were no-shows, but claim they intend to come later. We'll see. We just want the space in the basement for all of the "keep" parts!

I then wrestled with the AC blower & ducting assembly in the passenger footwell. It was a bit difficult to get out around the dash bar, but it came out. Nice little squirrel cage fan design, too! Next was the coolant, made a bit of a mess despite the nicely designed drain fitting on the radiator. It is designed to pour out a little spout when you unscrew the valve, but actually it leaks all around the valve, then runs down the subframe. Oh well, it's empty-ish.

Tamra had been keen to get the rear differential, driveshaft section, axles, hubs, etc out. We tried to separate the flex brake line from the hard line as instructed by Factory Five, but the fitting was pretty stuck. We just removed it at the calipers, not sure if we'll wind up doing braided stainless lines anyway. I pumped the pedal while Tamra caught the fluid in a jar. Next was the ABS sensor line, then the E-brake cables. Got all of those hanging freely, then had a look at what to remove to get the assembly to drop out. Not sure if we took the most direct path, but it allowed us to drop the thing pretty completely, with a minimum of fasteners that we couldn't use the impact gun on.

Things were going unexpectedly smoothly, zip zip zip, set the floor jack to support the assembly, undo the last couple, and it settled down and came right out of the car. Awesome!

We dragged it out the back of the car for a photo op.

She looks proud!

Then, it was time for further disassembly. The bolts holding the bracing on came off without too much trouble. They took some effort, but a ~600 ft-lb impact gun does help with that.

THIS ONE, however. Ugh. One long bolt that holds the two lower control arms in place, mated to the hub. It's exposed on the inner face, which gets blasted with all sorts of road grime, and also collects water. It was pretty well seized on, on the drivers side. We got it off with the help of PB blaster, impact gun, dead blow hammer, and air hammer.

It's out!

The passenger side, on the other hand.. It's still in. It's soaked in penetrating oil, and it is persistent. It's not budging. We'll try again tomorrow after auto-x.