Damnation: The Cynos Project

So, this day started as any other, I woke up, had breakfast, had a cup of Mauritian vanilla tea and waited for it to take effect. I consequently then pooped and then went for my bi-daily 1.7km swim.

After which. I did nothing. Well, for a bit, then I bought an HKS FCon-V Pro v3.2. Oh, right, as you do. So, wallet emptied, I decided to then progress a bit further with the POS. Off to my friendly garage and off again after having collected my newly assembled hubs, whereby I was met with yet another delightful setback - the short driveshaft I toiled over for many moons, has turned out to be the incorrect driveshaft yet again. Joy! To add to that, being the vacant minded asshat I can sometimes be, I got grease all over my favourite jacket as I was too absent to remove it from the boot when bringing the hubs back. Bah.

Commencing work and spurred by the fact that the part numbers for the Cynos and Glanza hubs differed, I instigated a quick comparison. Oh dear:



It seems like the steering arm is slightly different on the Glanza hub, appearing to be slightly longer and more inboard. However, this would serve to provide more leverage onto the steering arm, thus in theory imbuing a quicker steering ratio. Could this be a fortunate oversight? Based on these wildly speculative theories, I am looking forward to finding out. Whilst I'm comparing, he's an illustration of the difference in the driveshaft spline diameters between the two cars, the crux of many a heartache:



The Cynos hub on the left obviously demonstrating a far larger opening for the CV Joint shaft. These will be kept as a spare, regardless, as I am a parts hoarder and only feel satisfied surrounded by greasy bits of metal....*shivvers* ^_^. Anyway, cleaned myself up now. Straight to work with the hubs, which is quite basic anyway; applied copper grease on the tie-rod end and ball joint shafts, slipped the hub onto the ball-joint, tightened the bolt, slipped in the tie-rod end, tightened its bolt, then fit the hub loosely into the strut assembly. However, the annoyance came with one of the most mundane things ever. EVRAR. Lining up the brake caliper bracket with the associated boss holes on the hub. BAH! Such a proliferation of needless faffing was required, but it got done. Not without the passenger-side caliper attempting to kill me by falling on me unannounced. How very dare it. Whilst there, I also replaced the old caliper bolts as I rounded a few of the old ones in my infancy - around a day or two ago. And here's a picture to prove it:



And now with the APP Braided line finally attached:



L'autre flanc aussi:



So a lovely, semi-restored hub assembly, and now with the brake assembly fully installed:



MOAR PICS.



No moar. For now. After getting the hub assembly installed, the car was ready to be lowered. Ah, well, almost, it needed some means of rolling stock. Enter, the Sparcoluls of destiny:




I do very like, despite the crappy ET7894.5 offset, they don't sit too badly, a 20mm spacer should sort the wheel out very nicely. Confirmed as well when the car touched the ground. Whilst there, I also found myself rather amused by a previous observation of Harveys' and how seemingly the track-rod end positions on the steering arms were at completely different levels - a rather long-winded approach to saying "the tracking is out". And so it proved, with a Bird's eye view of the wheels looking roughly like this ---> \\ || and that's not even much of an exaggeration! Obviously the longer steering arms on the hubs would serve to exacerbate the steering angle (promising). Anyway, no time to dilly dally. Well, actually, plenty of time to dilly dally, I have no real commitments. ANYWAY, dilly dallying done, off to work on the badunkadunk. So, after being - quite a recurring theme seemingly - of the gentler sex and getting a bit apprehensive about lifting the rear of the car without being able to have the car in reverse, before rightly being reminded that rear wheel drive cars are lifted in the same manner, I proceeded to lifting the rear of the car. So, chock blocks in place, Longchamps infront of the chock blocks (not taking any chances), the rear of the car is up and in the air.

First challenge, get the muffler back up on the hanger, and all premonitions of the most annoying struggle in the world, compounded by the surreal effort required to remove the muffler FROM the hanger in the first place, were soon all quashed as I caught sight, of my lovely can of Plusgas. Bit of a spray, bit of a push, done. That's it. DONE! Woot.



That was easy, so, bolted in the Panhard rod, and progressed onto the rear brake line install. Ah....AHH. Things were going FAR too easy for me. Ofcourse, Damnation rears its ugly head yet again. You cheeky devil...you cheeky, annoying prick. So. Firstly, I was initially confused and disorientated and befuddled, as I looked at the array of 3 million hoses per side for the brakes, and the one braided line. A dormant brain cell then reawakened and brought me to the conclusion, and a remembering of yore, that said line replaced several of these plethora of lines. And all these lines naturally are located with unions. Great. I love union bolts, absolutely heart them ^_^. Festering rusty fiends. So, liberal spraying of Plusgas, and commence, with the main caliper bolt, and nearby union bolts coming undone quite easily, until reaching the final one. Yes, ALWAYS one. Why can't you conform to my requests like your brethren you wretched bane of my existence. And when I force it to conform, it just surrenders and becomes round. KKTHANKX. POS. Bah to you, etc. Cursing.



So, off to the next side. BASICALLY a repeat effort. Other than this time I do the wise thing (again?!! TF is happening to me) and decide not to destroy the union bolt. After much fidgeting I managed to at least get the brake hoses onto the calipers, and leave it at that. After glaring at the union bolts I then tidied up and went for noms.



So, Episode 2 will occur shortly, where I shall endeavour to find the right tools for the union bolts - apparently open-ended spanners are for tools - get the exhaust installed, and at least I can start the engine and not have it sounding like an automated fart. From thereon, it'll be a case of diagnostickingneegnednens all the leaks and electrical issues, and then final assembly really! Closing in, a nanometer at a time, and a precursor of things to come:



^_^

Oh and:



I dropped the jack on the Fender >_<

Also, this is a bug on my desk:



^-^