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  #121  
Old 03-07-2017, 09:13 PM
preston preston is offline
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>What made you pick the single Ridetechs I wonder? They do seem like a great value before stepping into the high priced world of double and triple adj.

Yeah that's 100% a budget decision. My butt's not that sensitive anyway. 7 years of shifter kart racing gave me a glimpse into what a competitive program entails so I just go out there to have fun. The rest of this show is costing me too much already.

Besides they're the easiest component in the whole car to swap out later if the red mist starts to show up. Or someone will make me an offer before that happens. Ha. A little black humor there.

With the start of biking season (not to mention the boy's flag football season) though, this project will probably slow down enough that I'm beginning to wonder if it will even be running this summer.

I love the designing and welding up of chassis and suspension components, what kills me is then having to re-engineer my P/S mount (belt hits the rack), rebuild the up-pipes, re-do the steering column/shaft, modify the M/C's, on and on an on.
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  #122  
Old 01-05-2018, 03:45 PM
preston preston is offline
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I finished building the Ron Sutton style front suspension and a new front frame stub.

But that was the easy part. I also had to -

Buy and install a new steering column and shaft.
Rebuild ALL the turbo piping (air inlet, discharge, I/C discharge, merge snout, bypass valve)
Rebuild the upper and lower water pipes.
(I am still recovering from a stress injury to my shoulder from all the TIG welding).
Design and build new brake brackets and route new brake plumbing.
Build new mount points for the front tray.

Hmm, well that list doesn't seem so long but I basically had to re-engineer the front half of the car, and it took forever.

Highlights of the changes are:

Ron Sutton blessed geometry
Very long control arms - front inner pivot points are only 9" wide
Sweet R&P with a lot of ackermann from rearward rack placement
Ron Sutton valved Ridetech single adjustable shocks
draco 9000 series springs
screw adjustable shock mounts
1.75" Nascar Sway bar with 15" long cro-moly arms, mounted down low insted of up top Trans Am style like my last suspension.
JOe's racing dual bearing bolt on upper a-arms all slug adjustable for camber and caster
5 degree SAI custom uprights from Coleman with high ackermann steering arms
RE-used my GN 5*5 aluminum hubs, Howe adjustable low friction racing ball joints and braking system
everything is heim jointed now and very smooth. My previous jonny joints had a lot of friction and I"m not convinced they knocked out that much NVH anyway.
"soft spring, big bar" setup with 4" of compression travel
315/30/18 tire on a 12" wide rim with full clearance of sheet metal and excellent (virtually OEM) turning radius

I also increased the size of my turbo discharge piping from 2" to 2.5" heh heh (I don't actually expect it to matter but I had to rebuild it anyway and the old pipes just seemed so small for a 427")

As you can see in the posts above I also put in a whole new rear suspension and so I added a little more sound proofing and interior touches as well for all that matters.

I drove it around this weekend sans sheetmetal and it ran and felt good..great actually, so fun to be King of the Road again. Should have it all back together for road testing in a week or two, as I was running around the neighborhood on old Hoosier A7's that have sat outside for 5 years. I couldn't believe how hard it was to find 315/335/18 tires, Rival S and some Pirelli's were the only options. I really wanted some Michelin's but I would need 19" wheels at least on the back to work it out and that' snot in the budget. So I ordered the Rival S and they should be here next week. They are not supposed to be exposed to <40 degrees, so I might have to take the wheels on and off every time I drive the car until march or so. And goddamn are these big tires expensive.

I'm still planning on trying to sell the car this Spring at least in a test the waters manner, it really is time to move on with my life, but at this point its like losing a child. I have absolutely no idea what the market is for it but I don't want to give it away either. My ad will say "unmotivated seller" ha ha.

Obviously that means I won't be hitting the big track and I would need to put in another $2000 for harnesses, HANS, helmet and fire system. But we have a local group that autocrosses on a pretty fast course and you can run all day without shagging cones, so I'm looking forward to that at least.

After I get my Rival tires and do an autox I'll let you know how it all feels.

Hm, when you attach photos rather than hosting them its hard to put captions on them so I willl list it here

1) building a frame jig on the old chassis to maintain alignment. You can see I am using my $35k blanchard ground 1" thick tool steel chassis table.

2) Starting work on building the new frame stub. One trick I learned when butting tubes together is to "cap" one of the tubes so you have a solid internal gusset and a good seam for really getting good weld penetration. You can't see that cap in the photo I'm just calling it out.

3) A good picture of how long the arms are and how close the pivots are. To my eye it would look better if that sway bar tube was gusseted at the ends but I need that real estate for turbo piping, and the DOM tube should be plenty stiff.

4) Sway bar attachment - that main plate is 3/16" with 1/8" gussets.

5) A picture of my upright with the wheel sensor attached (RaceLogic traction control). Be careful with those sensors they are $130 apiece and I managed to damage two of them while rebuilding hte front and rear

6) A couple shots of the car before the body goes back on. Hard to believe how much turning radius I have, I was amazed when I drove it I thought it would be pretty limited which is very annoying for a daily driver (ha).

God it felt good to get it back on the road though even if I am going to try selling it. I guess these long projects over the years have taught me I don't really need a car like this if I can live for years at a time without it running!
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  #123  
Old 01-05-2018, 04:34 PM
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Man I'd love to see video of this thing on a road course.
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  #124  
Old 01-05-2018, 04:41 PM
preston preston is offline
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I do plan to make a few startup/drive videos (autox ?) so there is that to look forward to.
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  #125  
Old 01-05-2018, 04:44 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by preston View Post
I do plan to make a few startup/drive videos (autox ?) so there is that to look forward to.
We'll take what we can get and like it!
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  #126  
Old 01-05-2018, 05:34 PM
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Very nice! Will you ever leave it alone long enough to enjoy it though? You gotta make time for that too!
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