Hey all,

I just wanted to say thanks for the advice and opinions here. It really helped me get everything together for the workI did on the car this weekend. Here's what I did:

Tranny swap - Best asI can tell the input shaft bearing was making a lot of noise. I found a used tranny with 96K miles on it for $250. No more noise!
Didn't replace the clutch, it is only about 4 months old.
Both drive shafts replaced with new (not reman) lifetime warranty shafts from O'Reilly

All new front suspension:
New upper control arms and ball joints
New lower ball joints (had to cut one of my press sleeves to make it fit)
New lower control arms (no machine shop would even try to press out my old bushings and press in the new poly ones I have)
New wheel bearings (found a machine shop that pressed both sides for $40 total!)
New stabilizer bar mount bushings (E.S. poly)
New stabilzer bar end links (E.S. poly)
New inner tie rod ends (bellows boots were good so I re-used them)
New outer tie rod ends
New strut dampers (shocks - rented a spring compressor)
New strut rod bushings (E.S. poly)
New rotors
New brake pads

Did a "string" alignment on it for now, will get a 4 wheel alignment when I get done reworking the rear suspension.

It took pretty much my entire weekend but was well worth it!

 

I will have to replace my halfshafts soon, and don't want to get remaned ones.

Do you like the quality of the new ones from O'Reillys? They are only $10 more than a reman half shaft, but I wondered about the quality.

 

Yep, I was real happy with them. They feel very solid and I really liked the boots and boot clamps on them. They are more like a performance poly boot than a plain old rubber boot. The machined parts that you can see seem to be high quality. Only time will tell but I think these are good shafts, better than reman.

 

Wow, that is a horrible amount of suspension work you did. Tearing down a 15 year old front suspension must have been a PITA... Great to see other mechanically inclined people saving a tremendous amount of money on labor!

 

Actually it wasn't bad at all. No rounded off heads or busted bolts. No major loss of skin or meat. And only used the liquid wrench on 2 bolts. I expected it to bemuch worse.