rotors calipers bearing covers wheels and lugs

No witty titles here, basic wrap-up from the suspension installation.

I threaded ALL the lug nuts onto the rear studs all the way down to the hub flange. Not sure why. After installing the columns this was now the first step to enable wheel install. 

Remove the lug nuts, slip the rotor over the new wheel studs, separate the brake pads a bit by hand so that the caliper slips around the rotor, and bolt the caliper onto it's mount.

Repeat for the passenger side and install wheels!

It may not be very evident in the picture above, but it was taken with the car still in the air. The droop with the current suspension setup is next to none, and it is super short thanks to the sectioned shock casings and short shocks. There isn't even a sway bar mounted yet. I'm interested to see how she rides with short, stiff springs in the rear, not to mention the front. The shocks are adjustable but may be along for the ride so to speak.

I have had the front bearing cover caps in a zip-lock bag laying on my kitchen counter since October. You can order them from any zed supply store, but they're press fit on and after attempting for a few minutes to put them on with the front wheels installed, I concluded that it wasn't my day and I didn't want to make it worse by translating that onto my wheels.

Remove the front wheels and center the bearing cap as best you can so that it fits inside the outer bearing hub race. If one side starts to feed in and the other hasn't, it won't go. You want to start all sides equally, so the cap sits flat relative to the bearing, and then tap it in with a rubber mallet. 

As usual, x2.

Reinstall front wheels and lug nuts. The center caps that came with the wheels are not going to fit over these hubs or bearing caps due to both being proud of the center cap face on the wheel. For future notice, even if your hub does clear your wheel's center caps, don't install it's cap as a wheel bearing cap. The wheel center caps snap onto the wheel id, they don't seal anything anywhere, let alone the bearing on the hub with an interference fit.

I also have a set of black z wheel center caps that came with z logo stickers that I have yet to apply on the caps which are a cup design instead of a flat cap. These center cup caps may or may not fit the wheels, but it doesn't matter as I like the way it sits now.

more studs

For the need of a 1o mm spacer  in the front, the studs for that pair of wheels needed to be longer and I didn't want to deal with trying to find appropriately sized studs (knurl, dia, pitch, length) without upgrading strength as well. From my research, it looks like Nissan sold the same studs, conveniently 1o mm longer, on certain years of their Quest mini van's. Needless-to-say, I ordered the ARP extended ones. They're long.

The only issue with this is that they only come in 1.5o pitch, whereas the OEM pitch was, just like every other bolt on the car, 1.25. There was also a back order on these studs, and they only come in packs of 5. I now have spares if anyone needs any. I ordered 2 packs and changed the front out late last year. I was able to use the spacers at this point, moving the front tire off the spring so I could at the very least push the car around the garage. After the global shortage, I recently ordered another 2 packs so that the rear stud pitch would match the front and I could use my new pretty lug nuts on all 4 wheels.

This may be able to be done on the car, but since I already had both suspension columns off the car for other reasons, it's a good time to do it now. And I'm sure it's 1ooo times easier this way.

Flip the column over, studs up, and hammer them out of the flange, outward.

There are a few ways of installing the new ones, but without disassembling the suspension column or using a press in a weird way, see my recent spindle pin removal post, this way works. You will have to man-up a bit as the knurl doesn't want to pull into the interference fit between it and the hub flange, but get an M12 1.5o nut and simply begin tightening from the inside. The stud will pull into the flange and seat. You can check the distance of the stud head on the inside to the back side of the flange while installing to know how much further you have to go, but don't worry about over tightening, you'll know when it bottoms out!

I put 2 studs in at first in order to align the thin flange underneath. It would be a horrible day to pull one of the studs through, seat it, and have to hammer it out because the flange bolt holes weren't lined up with the other holes.

Some of the pretty coating was lost where the nut pulls on the lower threads during installation. No harm done.

The new studs are even longer than the OEM stud with it sitting on the outside flange face. Imagine if the knurl section near the stud head were inside the flange as it is on the new stud, and you can see the actual additional length.

Obviously you have to install the pretty new lug nuts immediately after the stud install.

And only halfway there. 

Remove the other suspension column, which may already be removed, and do it all again. I tried installing the new studs with the RCLA still attached, but it wasn't to be. Not to say it was easy with a vice that wasn't bolted to anything, but it was easier than with the control arm flailing around.

Removal of the brake caliper and rotor are also required. The caliper bracket can stay on, although you have to rotate the hub flange in order to install the new studs, and even for the old ones to drop out for that matter. Due to my spindle pin adventure on the other side, the other column had already been disassembled to this point before starting the stud install.

Finally, bring the suspension columns inside and place them on the kitchen counter in preparation for cleaning and new RCLA anti-seize and installation.

Even though they will never be bottomed out this far with a wheel mounted, it was fun to thread them all the way down. Just testing the limits.