Projects 170 Slant Powered 27 T Shortened Touring, "Basurati"

The 2 bottom outer radius rods, mount straight forward to frame rails...1 upper radius rod, run it in transmission tunnel and mount it from upper part of differential to transmission crossmember. This leaves room under car to drop floor pan so the seats can be lower, so with a chopped windshield you can look through it , not over it! Don’t forget panhard bar

 

Thanks @A Boner , we are planning to sit down LOW in the body for sure.

A couple questions, do you mean run lower rods parallel to the frame straight or between that and whatever angle we can get out of it? My understanding is that the more angle we can get, the better control.

As far as the torque arm you suggest, my understanding is that I want all the articulation near in line with the U joint, which is like 10" or so back from that crossmember. I had considered running a J-shaped bar from a second xmember in this location for this purpose, tied to the upper part of the housing.

And with the Panhard bar, we have an A style spring that is under tension. My understanding is that panhard bars are unnecessary or redundant in a setup like that. Can you elaborate? How is your 27 set up (can you show me so I understand better)?

 

This is how it sits at present.

 

Quick update: another somewhat fruitless day in the shop over the weekend as far as mounting the engine. If I never have to put another Slant 6 in a hot rod again it will be too soon but at least I'll know how to do it! Most of the problem now stems from the driver side mount we have not fitting the block correctly. It is either defective or for a different block/year that has the mount holes 1/4" to 3/16" forward. The first clue came when we had to pull the dipstick tube to get it on there. The second clue was that no matter what we did, we could not have the engine both straight in the frame and lined up right on the frame mounts. The third clue was that the mount was OBVIOUSLY not sitting on the block where it was intended to.

We have the older style on there now, but without the rubber dampers on them, there isn't really anything we can do with them yet. I am quite annoyed with this.

So, in the interest of doing SOMETHING with our day, we robbed my other build of its front wheels and tires for the sake of getting a general idea of how the car would look rolling. It now sits on radials up front that are an inch or so under what we plan to run but the rears are a half inch over so it's close enough to make sure we aren't going to scrape the pavement with anything I suppose.

I also figured out that I had the steering box clocked all the way to the left once I put the drag link on and got mad that it didn't want to turn left. That was embarrassing but easy to fix.

We decided to start out trying to make the factory style 4 point suspension system work. It should, in theory, as it is designed for the V8 style QC rear end. All those parts were easy to order over the phone (they are secret menu parts not available through the SW website otherwise). The top bracket for the banjo housing is REALLY NICE and would have taken us a day or so to make ourselves, so, score there.

Here is a picture of very little substance for your viewing pleasure. we were too busy frustrating ourselves to take many. Yes we swept the leaves and trash out of there.

 

Lower, outer bars sort of like the old drag master bars (parallel to frame rails, and mounted just below the frame rails), with pivot points that match the middle bar. And the upper, middle bar running down the driveshaft tunnel, with pivot points close to the driveshaft u-joint pivot points.
Doing this keeps the suspension parts away from where the dropped down seat pans go. I dropped the foot pans below the transmission to match the low seat pans. The transmission ends up in the cockpit...which works out just fine, and looks very racy.

 

Thanks again @A Boner , We grabbed the setup as-designed from Speedway last week. It differs from what you're describing a bit but we definitely needed a bit of guidance and reference here from a driven car and experienced builder to scratch our heads less.

This is how the SW rear suspension kit goes together. It ties the top of the housing to the rear crossmember and looks to run along/under the rails (much as you describe) and up to the transmission crossmember. The bummer there is that the T5 tailshaft goes back quite a bit further than that so the geometry there isn't as great as it could be. BUT it will give us a starting point.

Oh, the transmission it about halfway up in the cockpit the way this chassis is made. There is a few inches of drop in the crossmember so it's not in there but we still need to hoop and tunnel the subframe.

 

Following this build, love that six.

 

Right now I hate it and it is my enemy. If only there was a HURST mount for these!

 

I had a really great one, 60 over bored, oversized valves, nice cam. Split headers Offenhauser with dual carbs. With a stock three speed and shifter. This really ran good and very dependable in a heavier car about 3000 lbs. I wish I had some specs, this was about 1989. These sixes are very tough.

 

Take a deep breath & go back and view the Thunder Casket build and look at all the problems you solved by yourself in a space where you could barely move & not see the whole car at once. Pat yourself on the back & kick ass!

 

Still mad at these motor mounts but we have some correct poly blocks on order and I am starting to wrap my head around how I think I will need to make them work. SO, we've been focusing on other areas still.

We got the rear control arms on the car. The top angled arms and bracket fit pretty easy. We will need to do a little filing/grinding to relieve a little tension on the bracket since it is meant for a QC and not an OW banjo housing, but it went on with a little tapping with the dead blow.

We still need to bracket the axle tubes for the lower arms. Currently, we are trying to get Speedway to sell us a set of the arms their fab team puts on the QC they sell, since that would save us a bunch of fab time and head scratching. I have a plan B & C though, so, no worries.



Sunday I got some mock-up and planning work in on the steering column. I'm still not there yet; it needs a firm 2 points of control but we can at least get measurements and figure out what we need to do based on what I have clamped together here. After that I drank a bunch of beers and found out the Hummer seats won't fit. Also that the T5 needs an offset shifter.



Yesterday, I actually started getting a bit of inspiration back after a gloomy winter and went back out there to do some light work. I started playing with floor templates and seat ideas. I want to nail down the seating and steering soon. I am planning a low, possibly tubing and web, seat frame with a modified original seat back. Here I have taken the old seat back from the Thundercasket, cut it, and screwed it to the seat back in the Basurati to turn it into a single seat rather than a big curved bench back.

May want to just drop this rig on a sheet of 16ga so the templates are underneath for now.






I haven't seen this done and I wanted to try it. I am actually a bit pleased and excited at how it looks to be turning out. Once I brace the back and the body, next step will be to cut the bottom of the panel, move it down, and fill the gap. I think I can then mount hinges for tubing & web frames to it but I want the trans tunnel and subframe edits to accommodate it dealt with first.

 

You're building hot rods Roman style! Two at once!

 

I got a little time in on this build yesterday during the little heat wave. I go the passenger side seat back cut and clamped in place. then I put a 15" wheel on to check for clearance before the cold front started moving in. Mostly I played with my dog though.

 

Hey, has anyone tried to fit 32 stanchions to a T cowl?

 

We made some temporary plywood floor inserts for the floor so our feet don't just go through the car all the time. We re thinking about just putting a flat 16ga floor under the subframe. The idea is to get as much room as possible. We also removed the driver side floor brace to leave as much room as possible for swing pedals. Sitting as low as it looks like we are going, it may be needed. I forgot to take pictures of that.

That was mostly driven by work on the seating we did earlier in the day. We moved the seatback cutoffs to the center because I noticed they were digging in a little when they were offset. The plan currently is to set some firm 1" foam into the seat back with another 1" to 2" of memory foam on top of that to be upholstered. The bottom of the seat back needs to be cut out, brought down and the gap filled. I think I may do some wood behind it and a soft brace to the frame too since putting weight on it makes the car want to fold up a bit.

We are working on coming up with the actual seats now. I am not sure if I want to use plywood or some kind of tubing to make the frames to put webbing into (and a pad on) yet but that is the direction I am leaning. I want to put a hinge at the back and possibly make the pitch adjustable. Currently I have that sheet of plywood in there butted against the frame and the back of the body for about 15° pitch (to the ground, I forgot to read the frame and do math). With the seat pad out of my car (yes, we are robbing like, all my cars right now) we got @justa170 into what we think is going to be close to comfortable enough to order steering column components.




ignore what looks like a roll bar there; that was just to demonstrate/simulate some things.

 

Those rear end brackets from Speedway showed up, we will be posting a parts list for anyone who wants to run an original banjo on the Speedway Tribute T frame. You need to actually call them and order all the bits over the phone and knowing the part numbers saves everybody a lot of time since this is all 'secret menu' stuff.

I managed to get them cut to size before I ran out of steam on Saturday. I believe these brackets are all made the same for the 9" or the Winters kit for this chassis and their fab team just opens them up to somewhere near 3.5" from the 3" they come. Anyway, some time and focus on the band saw and I had them fitting snug enough in what we're fairly confident is the right spot on the tubes with the rods parallel to the frame.

 

Cool project!

 

The GOOD: We got the engine sitting on flat mounts that will take biscuit style dampers.

The BAD: It took a long time and I am still not exactly happy with them. We ended up realizing we had the engine clocked wrong by 10º and had to remove the head to finally find an accurate measurement which told us that the mounts do not actually interface with the frame (or K member) on the same plane. Rather than giraffe neck the driver side mount, I cut the frame adapter on the passenger side.



The UGLY:


These are functional, but they are ugly and I worry a bit about the driver side mount eventually breaking itself as it is currently. A gusset would seem to be in order there. I really did not like cutting the frame side mount but we needed an inch and a quarter somewhere to get the bottom of the bell to 0º and the deck to 30º so out came the cutoff wheel. The pas side mount is flat to the frame but the driver side needs another revision. If I can get access to a plasma table I may CAD some new mounts based on measurements I take from these then fold them up from some 3/16" plate.

 

One thing you do well is revising something you are not happy with. It is not where you want it but it will be. The time spent is not wasted it is research & development.

 

True, and I do have a friend running a plasma table so when I have my templates laid out I can transfer them to a 2d design file and have the machine cut them for me.

 

This looks like a fun build.I`ll saddle up and go along for the ride.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

Being a slant build, Thought I would post my buddy's different approach.. posted in the induction thread, But still Kool

 

Hey, Pat;
Ya know ... if you want to shorten up the dr side motor mount, you *could* set the S6 straight vertical.. . I actually contemplated & doodled this out a few years ago for a small 20's bucket. After reversing the firewall, it got me near enough space to put the now-vertical 6 in place of the old 4banger. Would have to redo the intake, pan bottom + the oil pump pickup cup. Sure would leave folks wondering wtf??? . After a lot of thought, the project didn't pan out, mostly because I sold the alum S6, but I couldn't find any other reason not to do it, since most hotrods will have built intake, headers, probably a different bellhousing so what's a thin rotated "adaptor"plate(or re-drilled blow-proof bellhousing)? Not as hard as doing one from scratch using 2 very different patterns. Another thing to check is the starter placement & teeth engagement.
Marcus...

 

I LIKE THAT MOUNT BRACKET! Is that a truck mount? Got a pic of the other side?

We are all-in with this layout now. I will say though, this engine would have been a lot easier to mount if it sat at 20º instead of 30º!

 

Yes Sir!
Later 60's /mid 70's

 

Finally getting some visible progress on this project after being laid up and useless close to 2 months. The past couple weekends, I've been able to actually pitch in and get this thing moving along again finally. We've otherwise been tinkering with getting the steering column mounted and figuring out a better seating plan.

I'll start on seating. We decided to move away from the barstool tops we had and go back to a bench. I have a bunch of T seat frames in various degrees of bad shape so I took one that was pretty OKish, cut some relief into it to drop down 2" and @justa made some angle iron extensions which we set to pull it back 2" as well. This will get the seating height close to where we wanted it, give us a good seating angle, and compensate for having A LOT less seat upholstery/springs/ framing/ etc. in back. Also, I cut the bottom of the seat back and dropped that about 2 or so inches to flush it to the new rear crossmember we put in there so it doesn't cut into your back. We have stocked up on a good bit of various upholstery foams and are shooting for around 2" of ultra firm padding to start.





Next up is the BIG visual change. You can see above that we removed the B pillars and sheet metal. This is in preparation for actually doing the longdoor treatment. During this process we found that there are 2 types of door mechs on 26/27 T open car doors. I don't know how I missed that but the ones we needed were not the ones we had in working condition. I got by with one of the square style latches for the sheet metal screw (I love sheet metal screws) mockup to follow.

Starting off, we did some cutting and clamping to get the rear of the tub on there, sistering the D pillars to the C pillars which will be heavily reinforced to make new B pillars.


Then, while @justa170 worked on a new column mounting solution, it was hack and slash time.



I pulled around 3 or so inches out of the front of the rear door and 4 or so out of the back of the front. I got them cut so I could sleeve them into one another and, of course, put them together with sheet metal screws.



The way the door is mocked up it opens, closes, and latches! So, proof of concept is a success. Next chores will be to strengthen the pillars and the door structure to compensate and decide how to blend the half inch difference between the front and rear door tops. I am thinking I will just raise the top of the front doors since I need to totally replace them regardless. One of the nice things about working with a body that has ISSUES is not feeling at all guilty about hacking it up. In fact, some of the design choices are driven by opportunity presented by the rot spots on this car.

 

Long-overdue replies:

Small valves? Reverse-flow head? Who cares?! Put a turbo on it, and those things matter much less.

I've wanted a slant since I first read about them in... the late '90s, I think.

Heh. I saved the 198 rods because I know the second I let them go I'll become obsessed with the idea of building a long-rod 225.

I got ridiculously lucky with the carbs. I stumbled across a screaming EBay deal on a NOS 7044s, so bought it immediately. Then I found out it's a really rare one, so I figured I've have to sell it and get something more common... But another NOS 7044s showed up right away. I considered this a good omen.

That thing looks awesome! I love the triple SUs.

Done. He says thanks.

Nice. Yeah, they're tough, and they're surprising versatile. You can build a bored-and-stroked 225 with a 4-barrel, or a turbo 170 with EFI, or just a bone-stock 170 (won't win any races, but it will NEVER DIE), etc.

Whoa! That looks bizarre, in a good way. I'll have to check out the thread.

 

This weekend I butchered two cheap 32 shells @justa170 got from Amazon to make the nose for the #basurati

Everything is all tack welds and sheet metal screws still but I'm liking where it's going.

 

Well, looks like I've neglected this thread for over a month now so let's catch up. Still chipping away at this and the other car. We finally got the rear rubber mounted and ON this one. The Excelsior bias-look radials look RAD; I am a bit jealous to be honest. We also got @justa170 's radiator mounted (with way more cussing than I expected to do).



With that checked off, it was time to get back to stiffening the C (now B) pillars and mounting the rear of the tub (which is all still ongoing). I did not take pictures of this stuff apparently.

I decided to build a \_/ shape out of 0.120 box tube instead of 16ga. We ran a piece of 2x2 across the back and 1x1 runners up the back side of the original pillars (which we had to trim flat for the tub to fit properly). This lets the skin ride over the C (B) pillar and actually offsets the whole works nicely. I bought a nice hemlock 2x4 and stuck a piece in the side pockets to give us something to adjust and support the attitude of the rest of the tub. With a 49" length of that 2x4 riding against the frame, it worked perfectly. This will give us what we need to get the body together and build a steel structure for support.

As soon as we got that on there I wanted to roll it out in the sun (clean the little shop) and take some pictures.

 

I like it!