It officially no longer rolling. The rear suspension has been cut out. Goals with the rear are to move the roll center down and make it more adjustable. Add a sway bar. Add an adjustable trailing arm front mount. I went with a full setup spec'd out per Sutton since it included everything needed. Ran into a few issues but have been able to work thru it.
First steps, cut out the old parts and clean up the frame rails... This included a lot of grinding and make a big mess... Pretty much sucked. I also got some metal in my eye. Advise for others, don't use cheap safety glasses.
Next I tacked the Axle side pan hard mount on the axle per spec
Next was to install the X-member between the frame rails. Here we ran into the first issue. The trunk floor has a slope and interferes with the spec'd 2" tube. Lots of potential solutions were discussed. I decided to move to a 1 3/4 tub and to notch the ends so it hangs slightly below the rails. Main 2 reasons I wanted to do this was was 1 - I wouldn't have to cut the trunk floor. 2 - having the tube hang lower gave me more area to weld the x- member
Next I wanted to ensure the coil overs fit without issue. I wanted to change from a static upper mount to a dog bone adjuster so I wanted to get an idea how hard this would be. Here I ran into another issue. Per spec the pass side coil over hits the pan hard mount on the axle. After discussing with Sutton we decided the best fix was moving the mount in 1/2" on both side of the car. Changing the Panhard length from 31-30"
After this I started to mock up the sway bar mounts. It took some time to get it 100% straight but I finally got it. By moving the pan hard mounts in the sway bar is extremely tight to fit but it did work. I don't have pics but the mounts on the axle were also tacked out. Main thing I checked were the angles in both the most extreme front and rear mounting holes on the arms. I measured the both to 27 degrees. its a lot of angle but at least they are equal.
Last 2 things were to add the support for the pan hard downbar mount and to cut the pan hard itself 1" to fit in the revised position. Overall this was pretty straight forward but it took a lot of time to get the support gusset mitered for the perfect fit
In the next week or 2 I'll be focusing on the new trailing arm mount and then will focus on the new upper coil over mounts. The latter of the 2 looks like its going to be a real challenge... Hopefully I'm more nervous than I need to be.