You can go a little lighter on it though
Happy to make you proud! and I had a feeling I was putting too much on. That was the first bolt, I'm pretty sure I applied less after that but good call out, I feel like I've used half of the little can so far so makes sense I'm using too much. At least it wont seize up and plus it could potentially make my life easier later on.
Perhaps something like this might be easier to work with the diff
That's pretty nifty! I didn't know they made such a specialized jack, that makes sense. I actually did go to harbor Freight today and I upgraded to the 2 ton red low profile floor jack. It lifts just shy of 20" and so far has made it so much easier to get this car on jack stands. I imagine lowering the diff will be much better than with what I had. I took that trolley jack back to Home Depot.
Do you know what machines your friend has access to ? If he has access to a press, it would make sense to put new bearings into the used parts you're fitting as a huge time saver for later on
Solid point! I know he at a minimum has access to a lathe, I'll have to ask him cause if he does have access to a press that would be awesome and I certainly would go for new bearings if we could work something out.
SG is the 2003-2008 platform Forester.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
So where I'm at now is still gathering the confidence and resources phase to fully commit to getting this finished in 1 day. I'm going through every nut and bolt I'm going to have to touch and getting familiar with it by getting it loose and retightening all lubed up. Quite a few of these require heat and lots of love so I'm trying to iron out any hiccups ahead of time before I actually do the job so no surprises.
There are a few things I'm still trying to figure out:
Using used struts in a pinch just to get this all back together with something that isn't the worn out rusty struts I currently have on the car
...or waiting til later to put better new struts/shocks after every thing else is put back together. Seems that ideally I would do the struts while I am doing the replacement of all these other rear suspension parts. But if I order brand new struts that could delay this repair and I need this done ASAP.
I don't feel comfortable leaving this car on jack stands in my apartment's parking lot, I feel like they'll give me ish about it and I just don't like leaving my car on stands over night out in the open. So I gotta bust this out in a day and in order to do that I must be well prepared.
When I do actually replace the struts how do I remove this brake line from the strut? This clip doesn't make sense to me, I've tried cleaning it up spraying penetrate on it.
And I do have a few more questions...
Does the axle nut have to be replaced? and is there a trick to removing the indent locking the 32 mm axle nut in place?
Does the Rear diff have to be drained before I lower it? do I have to pop the axles out of the diff to pull this off?
On the rear diff how do you spin it fully to be able to access each 12mm bolt/nut? I couldn't seem to spin it any further, I was using a small pry-bar to hold it still while I loosened the first nut but I cant currently access the remaining 3 cause I don't know how to spin it.
Here's the name of the various parts on the rear end
Thanks for that! I never can find the right areas on that site for the parts I'm after, I gotta get better!
But one last thing, I'm assuming the area I was asking about before is the trailing arm and the trailing arm bushing based on that diagram. So is there a trick to getting these in and out? I have managed to at least loosen these bolts so should make the job easier but they do seem quite in there, I can imagine them being a real booger.
Once I'm ready to go, I'm thinking I'll be cutting both control arms and the trailing arm on each side of the car to pull it all out.
I'm getting closer and still gathering my game plan.
Thanks for your help!