*pls note: if you are reading this thinking "why did this idiot do this without doing any research"....shitty friends who didn't know what they were talking about and I was dumb enough to listen*
anyways, couple days ago I got a whole rear end off some guy's S13. He was nice enough and delivered it over however upon further inspecting, this subframe should be off to the wreckers; rusted like crazy and some of the bolt holes are stretched out! Kinda bummed but nothing much I can do. My question is "what is the difference between the non-hicas and hicas subframes?" So I started doing some research looking through old posts on zilvia (as well as other S13 forums) but it seems like all the threads end without a solution being posted. From what I can gather is: the spindles/uprights are different between the two, and that the hicas has a steering rack in the back (duh).
Good news is, the uprights from the rusted subframe seem to be usable without any damage I can see. However, I cannot find anywhere that clearly states the differences between the two subframes. AFAIK, the toe arm in the back of the subframe on the hicas version is a tie rod right? The blue arm in the picture below.
http://i39.tinypic.com/o9qwix.jpg
for those TL;DR my question is: Can I just keep my existing hicas subframe, remove the steering components, put in the non-hicas uprights and the toe arm? My hicas subframe on my car is very minty; at the very least it is much better than the one that I bought. Thanks in advance.