The Doba. (Buddies Cordoba fix up)

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I know they aren't considered cool... But the Cordoba has some very similar body lines to cars that are more popular.

So when we found one for $700 in decent shape, my buddy jumped on it.

We knew when buying it that it had rotted rear spring hangers. But that just created a challenge we were geared up to tackle.

This will be a run down of our fix.

No it's not a super proper professional job. But it's a decent attempt by some half drunk mid westerners, to make a $700 car drivable lol. The longest he's owned a car yet is a few years... So if it lasts that long we're winning

 

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No photos on this phone of the side view before we started. But I'll start with when it came in the shop.

The goal was to fix the rotted spring mounts, give it a little rake, and add some load carrying capacity.

He wants to be able to haul his big azz stereo, plus a bunch of sand in the winter.

 

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Rear spring mounts as it came

 

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So first order of business was yank all that chit out and see what we had

 

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Little more on the start pics

 

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The start of the cut chit out phase... And somehow the front spring bolts were pretty clean. . One even came out by finger.

 

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Once out and cleaned up it was clear the front mounts weren't gonna make it either

 

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Leaf springs sort of seemed ok when cleaned up. But something was off

 

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Since they were 57" springs, and we wanted some more capacity anyway, in comes the popular (and cheap) Ford f150 springs.

 

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Front mounts being made out of 3/16" wall 3.5" square tube we had laying around.

And since we wanted to do it all as cheap as possible, we dug out some other scraps we had around and started mocking up an idea for the rears

 

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The new springs weren't going to work with the janky factory mounts... And the bolt was 3" farther back too. So I made up some ubolt plates from some 3/8"x 6" flat I had.

I sheared them down to 5" wide, and gave em some rigidity bends. Should hold for this application lol.

Then we replaced the rotted leaf pads on the axle too. And added an extension plate to catch the leaf spring bolt with.

 

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I didn't like the center pin not being in the center of the axle. So I got some 1/2"long x 3/8" Allen heads, and drilled/tapped the top leaf to install them. Then ground the 1/8" sticking through off.

 

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Straightening up some stuff and tacking the new rear mounts.

 

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Along the way, my buddy cleaned up and painted his rear axle while I was working. I came back to the shop to find this .

I had looked around my house for black paint and he said, "just grab what ya got", so I brought up the sparkly green from and old GFs project to be funny.

He used it

 

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New mounts test fitted for the umpteenth time.

 

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Shackle angle and length figured out. Hole drilled for the DIY4X bushing mounts. (Drilling them holes took some thinking to get right lol.)

The all welded, painted, and put together.

 

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Rear axle back in. Had to booty Fab a drop bracket for the brake line.

 

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Forgot bracket pic lol

 

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Shackle angle set for maximum swing.. this is unloaded

 

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Whole car setting unloaded, and then with my kid and his buddy at the taillights for a combined weight of 350#