"There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them"

Today seemed like a good day to get the torsion bars installed in the subframe - so I took everything apart expecting to put it back together.

I noticed something when I pulled it all apart - sand.  While I don't specifically remember cleaning out the cavity when the subframe came back - it is normally something I'd do right away so I never really thought about it - until today.

This is less than 20% of what came out of the cavity after a vigorous cleaning session with a dryer vent brush and the air compressor.

I am confident that it's clean inside but I didn't get much further than this place because I ran out of time - the majority of which was spent driving to Home Depot, standing in line to get in (thanks, COVID-19) and driving home.

The spring plates are beginning to rust through the original coating - both in the places I modified and places I did not. The plan for them is to strip off the zinc coating and paint them.

I pulled the brand new torsion bars out of their box for the second time and discovered the ends were surface rusted - I cleaned the rust off and coated them in grease.  I bought them nearly two years ago expecting to have them installed and the car functional in a couple of weeks.  The power of good intention and all that...

I went to the Sway A Way website to see if I could get another set of the spring plates using the part numbers stamped into the set I have - the website brings up a completely different part so I sent an email to their customer service contact to find out if alternatives are available.  I should have just kept the IRS stock for simplicity's sake but that's not what a car hobby masochist does.

In other news, I contacted CSP and asked about the step on the ID of the brake caliper brackets - they told me that their R&D department explained that the step is intentional for what amounts to an 'interference' fit and that as long as the cover is installed with even force all the way around, it should be fine.  This means that I'll have to have everything completely dialed in before fully installing them because they'll be a real bitch to remove.  What's odd is that I did not have this issue with the swing axle rear end - the bracket just went on and worked fine.

At some point, I will reach that place where I can do more than work on this for a couple of hours and accomplish very little - there's just too much going on right now to expect more than one or two steps at a time.