A little over a year ago, I restored the front suspension in my 85 TA. It included replacing springs, struts and all the rubber bushings, plus lots of cleaning, sandblasting, and painting of parts. Thread is here (link). I'd been gathering parts to do the rear and finally decided a few weeks ago to set the car up and get started. My plan was to follow the same process as the front: remove everything, clean and repaint all the metal parts, and replace the bushings with OEM-style rubber equivalents. I was extremely pleased with how the front turned out - while my car is just a pleasure cruiser, it felt so much more planted with the new parts and rubber bushings. I'm targeting a smoother ride, so stayed away from poly bushings. It was also time to pull the gas tank, check it for rust, and install a new fuel pump for my upcoming TPI install.

Unlike the front, pulling the rear parts was pretty straight forward. (Not having to mess with the front springs is NIIIIIIICE!!). Everything came apart easily - I LOVE that this car came from Oklahoma and has zero rust (except a few inexplainable pinholes on the passenger rear floorboard). I hit the bolts and nuts with a spritz of PB Blaster then got to work, taking lots of pictures of the brackets and order as things came out.

The one item I spent a bit of time thinking about was a way to move the rear end around once I got it out of the car. It was going to be moved in and out of the garage to the driveway for cleaning, plus suspended from my engine hoist for painting. After taking some measurements, on the back of a scrap piece of paper, I designed up a cradle to support the rear. With all the new home construction in the neighborhood, I hit the jobsites for some scrap 2x4s and through this together:

Rear end cradle. Was very proud of the hole I drilled into the top that would support the tube. It ended up being just a shade too small, so when I had it on the hoist for paint, I cut the holes into a shallow V-shape. Worked much better. I also screwed on longer 1x4 boards to make it more stable in front to back motion. The stubby pieces that were the only supports made it easy to tip forward.


Picture of it in action after removing the rear from the car. To ease transportation, I got it hoisted onto a regular furniture dolly purchased years ago from Harbor Freight.

The cradle made it easy to strip the remaining bracketry off, plus gave a stable platform to wash, clean and wirebrush everything.

 

The only other part that required a bit of work was removing the bushings from the lower control arms. For the front suspension, I had cut apart some pipe and made sleeves to keep the arms from getting crushed while pressing the bushings in and out. That seemed like a lot of work, so on the rears I first tried jamming some sockets between the walls of the LCAs. That ended up working fine.

Some strategically placed sockets on the base and inside the LCAs helped keep everything in shape while pressing out the bushings.

Won't bore the group with pics of the parts cleanup, nothing to learn there! Here is a pic right after primer. Outdoor paintbooth - good for suspension parts, but wouldn't want to use it for anything anyone would actually be able to see!


For paint, I used the same material I had on the front. Majic oil-based enamel from Tractor Supply, plus matching primer. This time, I mixed hardener in with the two top coats. These parts turned out a bit better than the fronts, I think. Wish I'd used the hardener then. Sprayed it with my cheapo HF HVLP gun. Wish I knew how to paint better, but this gun works fine for hidden parts like suspension.

Once everything was dried, pressed in the bushings and started putting parts back on the car.

Better picture of the sockets on the inside. For installation, I rented the Ball Joint tool from OReillys. It had the right-sized cup to fit on the outer, metal edge of the bushing.

 

One of the parts I have had waiting on the shelf for almost a year was a girdle from TA Performance (PN 1802) for my 9-bolt. Since the car isn't driven hard, this is vast overkill, but the price was low enough that I picked it up to add some bling. My old cover was a little dented on the bottom, but worked fine.

Oooh, shiny!

Here is everything mostly installed. Sway bar still had to go on and brakes bled.

 

Parts I used in this project:
Coils: Moog CC635 (right height after a quick drive around the neighborhood is about 3/8" higher, will keep checking to see if it settles down a bit)
Shocks: KYB Excel-G 343211
LCA Bushings: Mevotech MK6178

The swaybar endlinks had been replaced by PO with poly, so left those. The bushings that mount the bar to the rear are rubber and I was not sure on which size to purchase, so left them in for now.

Glad this project is done, pretty much wraps up the major things under the car.

I'd also like to thank the person who welded the exhaust on this car into one piece from Y-pipe to tips. Really makes it fun to remove when it is all one, huge, bulk piece!

 

Nice work! ....painted parts look nice!!!!!!! I just recently did my front suspension, and yeah, those bushings aren't fun. I cobbled together various parts around the garage as well as some sockets to make it all work. I currently have my new 8.8 rear on a crade I cobbled together using 2 jackstands, 2 dollies, and a 2x4 screwing them togther for stability!

 

great write-up and pics , looks great

i'm in the middle of doing this now to my 90 vert

almost done with the front and getting ready to pull the rear apart

 

Thanks! Once you are done with the front, rear will seem very easy.

And I just realized that this post is completely mis-titled. Should be Rear Suspension Walkthrough, not Front. What a ****.