A little about me and how I got my dsm. Many years ago during high school I wanted a dsm. My mother would not allow me to buy a 1G locally because it looked terrible as the clear coat was peeling on it. As a result I bought a 2g. It was a 1997 in red with beige interior. I loved that thing. It had no first gear but that did not stop me. I ended up fixing it and I enjoyed it for 2 years until it crankwalked on me. When it walked I ended swapping it with 6 bolt. I never finished it. Sold it and bought brand new Evo 9. Well almost brand new, it had 3k miles on it. Then I ended buying a DD, 2003 VW Passat. Drove that for while Evo was waiting to be driven. As time went on I still found myself looking for a DSM. I saw one come up near me and it looked good but as soon as I wanted to contact the seller it was gone. So more time goes by. I think about a year. During that time I ended selling the VW and I bought a house. Started to remodel and then I checked craiglist and there it was, the same one from a year ago. I knew that it was my time to shine. It was meant to be. Few days later I was the owner of 1G Dsm. As I had a house on my hands I could not really spend all my attention on the car so I tried my best. I redid all the brakes, rotors, pads, hoses, master cylinder, booster, parking brake cables. Fixed some suspension issues, replace all tires and aligned it. Repair all vacuum leaks, boost leaks and install the cat. Went to the inspection station and fail the test. Went over the basics and realized that I need to redo base timing and base idle as the cas was clocked all the way forward. Went for another inspection and passed with flying colors. At this time everything was functional even A/C. Drove it for about 3 years. Over that time install some gauges and ecmlink with evo injectors. Try to learn how to tune. Than life happens and my DSM was parked in the back of the yard. I got married. One thing that I always wanted to do is Brembo brake swap and I research for a long time but I could not find anything. So, I figured that the car is parked and I have my Evo as DD then I could possible do the brake swap. It was at this time I realized that my DSM will never be the same again.

It was during a winter storm, I was cleaning my driveway and I started to think about 3000gt vr4 rear trailing arms. I knew that they were wider and I also knew that their parking brake system was different but that was about it. I called up few junk yards and I bought 1991 3000gt vr4 rear suspension. When it arrived it looked really bad. I thought to myself what in the world I have got myself into but I figured that at least I could test fit but how could I test fit them if I dont have the calipers. I did not really knew if the bolt spacing was correct but I figured that I have an Evo so I could potentially use the calipers as core. So I bought all 4 calipers from 2003 Evo 8. When the calipers arrived I test fit them and they bolted up. I realized that the oe rotors from 91 vr4 totally did not fit with brembo rear calipers. So I did some reading and online parts comparisons and all sorts of measuring and I bought some rotors from 99 vr4. The fit was almost perfect. The caliper did not sit in the middle of the rotor but to me it was a simple fix so I went to test fitting stage.

Unfortunately, I had to reset my phone so I lost my first test fitting pictures but it was nothing special. I unbolted original suspension and bolted the whole suspension from vr4. What I saw as a result really was nothing good. I realized that the wheel was sticking out of the car about 2 inches. Now it would not be too bad but the rotor and the caliper was literally outside of the car. It just looked funny. Now I had hope that I could make it work. I unbolted 3 bolt cups and swapped them to the vr4 rear and drove it to work. I checked the alignment and it was in spec but the wheel was poking out. I figured that I could cut the arms to fit as I had the whole suspension to my disposal. So I went to town. I cut the trailing arm first and reinstall it on the car. Went for alignment. As you can see the wheel went forward a lot. By doing this I tucked the trailing arm in, now I just had to fix the camber as the camber was like 4 degrees negative. I also cut the axle shorter so that I could mount it with cut trailing arm.

I than cut the upper and lower arms and went for alignment and it was better but not good enough. So I decided to buy rear toe arms for chevy impala and cut the adjustment part out and weld it into the vr4 upper and lower arms and did toe eliminator mod to make sure if I ever need more adjustment I would have. I also took the piece that was cut out of the trailing arm and made it a bit shorter and weld it into middle of the arm to move the wheel back to the center. Went for alignment again. Now I adjusted it to perfect spec.

Now that I have all my measurements done I had to make it permanent. I found a machine shop who was willing to weld it up for me. I stripped everything and had it sand blasted. After it was blasted I dropped it off to the machine shop for welding. After I picked it up, I had powder coated.

When I got everything back I pressed in the ball joints that were for vr4 into my moded dsm arms. The ball joint stem is bigger on vr4 and the body is only slightly bigger so it went right in. I also install poly bushings. Since the mounting of the rear sway bar has been alter I had to mod it too. I bend it a bit and painted it. The next issues was the axles and what diff to use. I had 4 bolt rear diff so I order evo 3 diff and swapped it over. I also got evo 3 rear axle cups and 4 bolt dsm flanges. I replace all bearings and seals in the trailing arm and painted everything. Once everything was fitted I had run into the axle problem. I went to the axle rebuild place and had them machine 2 left front axle bars for 2g turbo dsm a bit shorter. I opened a lot of axles to measure the splines and length of the bars and 2g axle were the best fit. The part where the snap ring goes on the axle bar was machined off and the try pod was tack weld in place. The fit was perfect.

Now that suspension, diff, axle issue was resolved I moved to the fun part, the parking brake. From the test fitting I knew that I could no use the regular cables for vr4 as some were like oe and had fixed mounting. Because the cables are longer than needed for dsm I had to find aftermarket once that had non fixed mounting. I also bought evo rear parking brake shoes and spring kit and levers as these parts were the same as vr4. The issue that I had was I could not find the backing plates. I called everywhere and the answer was the same across the board. I decided to mod evo plates to fit as by looking at pictures they were very similar. I also bought all the bolts for the rear suspension with 3sx brembo hose kit. Moded and welded suspension and powder coat it.

Front brakes I used the brackets to mount the calipers. I also used 3g master with stock booster and the pedal feels good. I did not take the pictures of the front as I thought that it was not needed.

Just to finalize the brembo conversion. Rear shocks and springs are from vr4. I had to cut the some coils to somewhat level the car out as the rear was much higher than before. Unfortunately the mounting stud on the trailing arm for the shock is much large so I am forced to use vr4 suspension in the rear. Also this conversion took me 2 years to finish. For the suspension I will be going with evo coil overs with super-car engineering adapters for the rear and custom upper hats for the front. It is possible that I will do different spindles in the front so that I can clock the calipers down a bit but that is still a pipe dream. Will update this build thread as time will go on.

Impressive amount of work with all the trial and error, turned out awesome tho it looks like!
Nice job

ThunderChild said:

Impressive amount of work with all the trial and error, turned out awesome tho it looks like!
Nice job

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Thanks. I appreciated.

Due to corona virus pandemic I got laid of. Fortunatly I had coilovers to install so I did just that. I installed fortune auto evo coils with custom upper hats and supercars engeniring rear lower mounts. Coilovers have swift 7k springs all the way around. Also upper hats in the front have caster adjustment instead of camber. So far I only have outside picture. When I will set the height, I will take some more.

Brembo updated RestoMod

Covid-19 update.

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