More frame assembly

Finally - there's progress on the rear suspension! After getting the old bearings' races off of the axles and procuring a suitable collection of press dies (cheap old/used sockets and some plumbing tubes), I was able to press the new bearings on and assemble the hub carriers. Then I could start assembling the rear suspension.

The threads for the upper link's fulcrum bolt were bad - probably as a result of powdercoating, epoxy remains, or both... so I had to re-tap/chase the threads. This is another ramdom bolt that is not metric! It's a 1/2" 20-pitch thread.

Old trailing arm bolt (top) vs new trailing arm bolt (bottom). As you can see, the original is bent and this is both common for originals and very dangerous! If this bolt breaks, the rear suspension will basically collapse and probably tear off of the car... and as you can imagine, that would be catastrophic at anything above parking lot speeds. That means it's an area begging for an upgrade! The original fastener is a mild steel 10.9-rated zinc-plated bolt. The replacement is called a "Toby TAB" in the DeLorean community (named after the guy who makes them, a former structural engineer at Boeing) and is made from Inconel: an extremely strong corrosion-proof expensive super-alloy used in the aerospace industry for, in the designer's words, "places where a failure is unacceptable" (like attaching engines and wings to a plane). They're about seven times as expensive as the standard upgrade (which is better than the original bolt), but if they can hold jet engines on a plane, they can hold the rear suspension together on a DeLorean.

Woohoo! Ready for the shock and spring.