Short, but productive weekend. 14 hours straight on Saturday! All work, no play! Rolling back into Vegas Friday, I returned to the mess I had left the previous thrash. The spring too soft and the rear sitting too low from the reversed eyes on the main leaf, and a miscalculation on the ride height for the front. Solved one last week, repaired the other this week. So here's what went down. First thing was first. Get that rear spring out and get all the leaves back in there. No sweat. 20 minutes and the spring was out and back together in it's stock form. Next step... fix the kick-up on the frame to compensate for the reversed eye. To do this, first I got the frame up on jack stands and got it completely level all the way around. Then I braced the kick-up so it wouldn't flex or change when I cut the spot welds out. (sorry about the quality of this picture. Bad upload! ) braced up... Next step, cut the spot welds and mark for the cut. YIKES!!! Hacked off the amount marked (1-3/8" verticle) and carefully set things back in place with an extra hand, some levels, couple clamps, a hammer to set things, a bucket and a floor jack! YES! A bucket! HAHA! With everything square, tacked and braced again, I needed to remove the rear cross member so it can be moved BACK towards the rear of the car. Here's why... The kick up is set at 79-degrees from horizontal. Since I shortened the kick up and the top rails have to be parallel to the lower main rails, basic geometry tells us that cross member is going to move forward just a bit as it travels down the angle of kick-up. To make up for the difference the spot welds on the crossmember are cut, a filler piece is cut from some 2x4 scrap and welded in place. I made it slightly longer than the actual amount the crossmember moved because I didn't have enough adjustment in the parallef 4-bar rear suspension links. I made them just a bit more than a half inch and welded them in place. Before: After (will finish weld the bottom later when I flip the frame over): Checking to make sure everything is still square and level I tacked the crossmember back in place in it's new position... Added an extra lateral brace across the top of the kick-up at this point. Triple checking all the measurement, level and square I took the cross brace off and went back to reassembling the rear end to the car with the full spring pack. Things got fun from here... That spring is A LOT stiffer with all the leaves in there! It took three of us to wrestle the spring onto the axle and get the shackles on! I need to get that spring comressor modified so this can be done without the help of neighbors. What a job!! It all went back into place though! Lookin' good! Here's how she sits now... 1-3/8 inches made a HUGE difference and the spring is PERFECT just the way it is. Not too soft and not too stiff... just right. Maybe I'll feel differently once it's on the road though. We'll just have to wait and find out. From here it was time to look at the overall ride height, including the front. The theory for the front is to get a standard Heavy Duty main leaf from posies without the reversed eyes to replace the lowered one in there now. The spring is ALSO de-arched slightly. This should raise the front up about 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inches, I figure. To check this theory out, I put a floor jack under the front axle and raised it up until the bubbles said I was level front to back. Tires were off the floor by 1-1/2 inches. Only had the engine block and transmission in the car at this point, so I'm about 500 pounds shy of what will be up front. The car should sit just slightly raked. Maybe by a 1/2". I had pictures of ALL this, but something happened between the camera and the laptop when I was uploading. Almost all the images were cut in half or completely lost and I didn't know until the camera was cleared. They preview, but don't come up complete. Going on with the progress though... after figuring out how the car would sit, I could finally figure out how the engine was going to sit in the frame. Time to make motor mounts and a trans mount. After getting the block and trans mocked up, I fabbed a trans mounts and some mounts for the rubber biscuits. I'm going to stop here for a minute and see if I can get you those pictures somehow. Probably won't be very big, but I have an idea. This sucks without showing you what I did...
YES! The problem was between my portable hard drive and the laptop! Not between the camera and the laptop! SAVED! Let's start again... Here's the trans mount I made. Double checked the positin of the transmission and tacked it in place: Next.... stands for the engine mounts... from scratch! Some muscle and a vice got me the shape I was after Welded the biscuit mounts on and smoothed out the welds: Tacked 'em in place: These will not stay like this!!! They're not going to be stong enough like this (in my opinion). Once they're permanently set they will get a nice web of gussets all the way around to make 'em super stout! Should look cool too... I think. So, I need to make the block mounts themselves. Need to think about what I'm going to do from here. I really need to get the engine and transmission bolted together before I go any further with this. Before I can do this, I need to address the problem of my transmission adapter that mates the trans to the Wilcap adapter. The holes need to be re-indexed, drilled and countersunk from the rear. For those of you who don't remember this, here's what the problem looked like. The T-56 came with the T-5 adapter. Notice the four holes are at an angle. This puts the Wilcap adapter at an angle, which would put the transmission at an angle. Notice the dowl pin holes on the parameter!! YIKES!! The Wilcap adapter needs to be here... The right way to do this, is to index and drill the T-5 adapter plate. No big deal except that it has HUGE counter-sinks behind it. I don't have the artillary at home to do this, so I'll probably mark it, drill pilot holes and then take it to a shop or something to have the holes finished and countersunk. Should bolt right up after that with the transmission pointing straight up, just like I want it. While doing the mock up of the engine and trans, I noticed another issue with the adaptation though. Can't get to one of the holes on the Wilcap adapter to tighten down the cap screw. I'll address that when I get to it. One major thing at a time. With the engine and trans mocked up, logically it was time to sit in the car with a make-shift seat constructed of plywood and two by fours so I could make vroom vroom noises and see how things would look from the drivers seat (or pile of wood). Got a good idea of how much room I was going to have for my feet and where my hand position was going to be for the steering wheel and shifter. Couple interior shots without my rear in there and before centering and mounting the transmission... WHEW! All in a days work, I guess! I'm still sore today. UGG!
So... what's next?? The car is almost ready to move to Huntington at this point. Only thing left to do to get it here is: * Finish the majority of the welds on the frame * Mate the engine and trans anyway possible and correctly * Make engine mounts * Mount the body to the frame * Build a firewall and remove the bracing in the cowl area * Rig something up so the front wheels turn together * Load it on a trailor and get it here! List just gets shorter and shorter!
Couple more thoughts... Here's a profile shot of the engine area. Based on that ruler, I would say the tops of those six Holley 94's should be about 4 inches or so over the top of the cowl! Should have a beautiful view going down the road!! Something else I noticed after getting the rear assembled is the clearance between the u-bolts and the quick change. I probably need to find something different u-bolts, and/or trim the ends off of these. Not much room there!! Almost 3-inches of travel before hitting those. Not enough! Minor issue. What an impractical hot rod build without a couple bugs to work out! LOL! Thanks for the compliments guys! Always appreciated! Druss! I'm really itchen to weld that visor panel in! Can't wait to start the body work on this thing! So many ideas!!!!
LOL!! (bleep)it.... I looked all over the damn garage and around the house for something that would be stable enough. Best I could come up with! LOL! Was just real careful about keeping the measuring devices active while doing that! LOL! Funny what you'll do for a helping hand when nobody is around to help!
I have a question for you guys. Could use your opinion. That T-56 has mounting ears on the side. Had thoughts of using them. Not sure if they were always used or if they were just for trans accesories, but they do look substantial to handle torsional loading. Hadn't really planned on using them though. Maybe I should??? You can see them in these pictures (left side of pic, just below middle) (bottom right of picture) They're offset front to back. Drivers side is down closer to the tail while the passenger side is up closer to the front. Anyone know what these were used for??
Yeah, I FULLY believe in that rule! I also fully believe in Murphy's Law, but that's a whole 'nother topic! LOL!
Looking good. I believe those tailshaft bosses are for torque arm mounting. But the mount you made is all the factory would use to support it, including torque arm stress. So using those for a secondary mount is probably overkill. good luck
Great! Thanks! That's sorta what I was thinkin'! HOLY COW! The flyin' dutch motha' fu*%a' logged on!! Cheers Tilly!
Scootermacrad, Build is looking good! Hey did you save all the rear pieces of the body. Looks like some could be reattached to fill in the gaps.
wow, while i've been slagging at car shows in l.a., you've been very busy working in vegas. progress looks good, when do you think it'll make the trek to huntington?
I have ALL the rear lower that wasn't rotted and YES a lot of it will be grafted back in and I'm going to fab a piece that will recess and match the contour of the rear crossmember. Below the crossmember is going to be a WHOLE 'nother ball game! The panels will have to be removable and may have louvers if it doesn't get too busy back there. The original lower "tail" will also be in place and reshaped in with the rest of the body. You can see the lower tail piece in this photo at the very rear right above the bumper brackets : It's going to take a lot to make that piece match, but I think it will help the lower rear and bring some nice lines to that section. Tred man... thanks for helping me get the start on this thing! You know your work is appreciated to the max! I'm hoping for it to be here by the end of the month. Not going to stress myself on it though. Once it gets here it's pretty much stagnent until I get a bigger garage to work out of. The tires will be just squeeking past the piles of crap in my garage already. Welding and grinding in there will be almost impossible... hmmm... unless I role it out into the drive! HMMMM... (light bulb)
Scooter, Don't use the side tabs on the tranny, the way you have it now is perfect. You want to mount the engine in three points just like you have. It's like trying to get a four legged chair to set square on the ground, you need the floor absolutely flat and all of the legs have to be exactly the same length, with three legs all of them are on the the floor, no problem. Love your front motor mounts! Rex
Thanks Rex! That's EXACTLY the theory I had in mind! The 4-legged chair thing. Just thought I would enquire at least. Not familiar with how these transmission were mounted originally in the car. I believe the Tremec case itself was from a Firebird or Camaro. The motor mounts were fun to make! Can't wait to get them gusseted up! I have a great mental picture of how it will look! That's something I can do when I get it out here also.
Very cool, Scooter! I wish I could make that much progress on my projects. Can't wait to see that thing! Hank
Every cool hot rod needs cool exhaust! You know who I'll be callin'!!! Wouldn't use anyone else for my exhaust components! If you guys aren't familiar with Hank and Hanksville Hot Rods, you NEED to check him out! Great work! Great shop! Great guy! I took a vacation to Denver a while back and dropped in to visit. Some good info here about him and his shop: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=148815&highlight=denver
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