Thanks Steve. I really like the look of the Powerbond unit. Looks a lot factory like compared to ATI.

dam steve!! Everything looks soo tight and right. Nice job!!! Also, congrats on joining us in the jackstand class....

You going to paint it when the chassis is done? or just beat the snot out of it? either way, win vs win....

cheers, mike

Mike - its far from perfect but overall for my first dive into real fab work I'm pretty happy so far. An oh yea, its of jack stands in the shop. I don't have room for a lift so no choice.

Plan for now is to run car as is paint wise. I really want to reduce weight using composite panels of some kind and I want to add wider wheels all around which involves flares. beyond this I also want more aero enhancements. All of these would entail paint of some kind. I think for now Ill just run with current wheels, no flares, full weight and with as much aero as I can do without causing a respray. I just want to drive it again. I'm tired of seeing it in the shop.


On that note, I did put the rear suspension back together and put the car on the ground. I wanted to make sure everything is really aligned right...so far it seems good. The header tuck looks perfect too. Only small fear is the sway bar arms but I think since they are near the axle centerline that it will be ok. car is made to travel 2.75" and the x-member is now 3.25" off the ground, sounds pretty good to me assuming the body panels don't have any issues.

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Next steps are to clean the shop with the car out then tackle the rear suspension. Rear changes are a new pan hard bar mount to move the roll center down, adding an adj front mount for the trailing arms and installing adjusters for the coil overs.

Looks great, Steve! You're sitting lower than me but I bet you have way better suspension travel and articulation. Love the way it's shaping up.

Dang buddy! Looking pretty sweet! Looks fast!

Giddy up!

Well done!! I can appreciate the work you did on the trans xmember, looks awesome!!

I really like the work on the front subframe. Looks pretty close to what I would really like to do with my first gen, but I can't quite bite the bullet to pull it apart again.(or I'm just afraid to tell the wife)

It officially no longer rolling. The rear suspension has been cut out. Goals with the rear are to move the roll center down and make it more adjustable. Add a sway bar. Add an adjustable trailing arm front mount. I went with a full setup spec'd out per Sutton since it included everything needed. Ran into a few issues but have been able to work thru it.

First steps, cut out the old parts and clean up the frame rails... This included a lot of grinding and make a big mess... Pretty much sucked. I also got some metal in my eye. Advise for others, don't use cheap safety glasses.

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Next I tacked the Axle side pan hard mount on the axle per spec

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Next was to install the X-member between the frame rails. Here we ran into the first issue. The trunk floor has a slope and interferes with the spec'd 2" tube. Lots of potential solutions were discussed. I decided to move to a 1 3/4 tub and to notch the ends so it hangs slightly below the rails. Main 2 reasons I wanted to do this was was 1 - I wouldn't have to cut the trunk floor. 2 - having the tube hang lower gave me more area to weld the x- member

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Next I wanted to ensure the coil overs fit without issue. I wanted to change from a static upper mount to a dog bone adjuster so I wanted to get an idea how hard this would be. Here I ran into another issue. Per spec the pass side coil over hits the pan hard mount on the axle. After discussing with Sutton we decided the best fix was moving the mount in 1/2" on both side of the car. Changing the Panhard length from 31-30"

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After this I started to mock up the sway bar mounts. It took some time to get it 100% straight but I finally got it. By moving the pan hard mounts in the sway bar is extremely tight to fit but it did work. I don't have pics but the mounts on the axle were also tacked out. Main thing I checked were the angles in both the most extreme front and rear mounting holes on the arms. I measured the both to 27 degrees. its a lot of angle but at least they are equal.

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Last 2 things were to add the support for the pan hard downbar mount and to cut the pan hard itself 1" to fit in the revised position. Overall this was pretty straight forward but it took a lot of time to get the support gusset mitered for the perfect fit

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In the next week or 2 I'll be focusing on the new trailing arm mount and then will focus on the new upper coil over mounts. The latter of the 2 looks like its going to be a real challenge... Hopefully I'm more nervous than I need to be.

Amazing!!

So Steve, any new updates on the car?

Tu

Wow I love this build !!!

It looks good Steve.

Any updates Steve?

No recent updates on the car but hoping to have some soon. Having some issues with fitting the coiloivers in the rear and lost motivation. I'm highly debating mounting the coil overs in the trunk on the cage with a cantilever setup so I have more room under the car. Overall I pretty much forgot why I liked doing this hobby so I decided to pick up something new for motivation. Grabbed this '73 240Z that's been sitting since 1988

The Z is basically all stock and a completely different animal. This is my first import. It has a whopping 150hp in the 2.4L straight 6... I pulled the suspension, blasted it all and painted it along with all new bushings, shocks, springs, wheels, tires. I have to say this little car is a blast to drive. Its doing its job and quickly motivating me to get back to the Camaro .

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Good to hear from you Steve.

Nice find on the z. What are your long term plans for it? LS swap and widebody flares?

Looks like you picked up a new truck too. :)

Looking forward to updates on the cars.

I grew up with the Z..... and they were always cool cars (until the bloat set in).

Good for you!

Get a FUN daily for inspiration and some hoots. Not everything has to have 800hp


XOXO
See ya in September at The big track when we show up for the Hall of Fame Tour???

No crazy plans for this one. Initial thought was a LS swap but I have too many projects and don't want the car sitting. I also wanted to see what it was like to drive a car like this in factory form. Now that I've driven it I really like it as it is so its going to stay this way... at least until the Camaro and 59 Hauler build is complete.

Yep, got a new truck as well. Got tired of the 6.0 Powerstroke dying on me. Last time it died towing the Mustang to TWS for the final track day before they shut it down. I missed out and had enough so I picked up a new Ram with a Cummins. Its a basic truck with steps, wheels, 35's and towing bags in the back. It's so much better than the old Ford I had, I can hardly tell my enclosed trailer is behind me when towing. Very happy with the purchase

Are you talking about COTA or Motor Speedway? Either way I'll gladly make time to come hang out. Probably won't have a car for GG's but who knows, that may change. I'm itching to see your new track beast at COTA tearing up some Exotics.

Details on the 59 hauler?

We have a lot of 6.0 diesels dying on our fleet trucks as well. Seem to be an on-going issues with 6.0 Powestrokes.

I just wanna be able to run with SW and his ACR...... he's crazy good driver.

See ya soon buddy!!

Man, that interior on that Z is NICE... Great find!!!

Nothing wrong with taking a break on a project... :)

That 59 Hauler is so bad ass. I hope you get back on that soon.

And that Z is a sweet little car. Nice choice on the wheels.

The light will come back on with Camaro soon and you'll get to work on whatever that plan becomes.

:cheers:

Hey Steve, nice find!! Try and come hang out too at the Marriot across from the speedway if you can when we get done with the hall of fame tour. It is its own show and party.
My buddy mark who will be on tour with us this year picked up a white 240 two years back...
Oh and what he ^^^^ said, nice wheel choice.

x2 on taking a break. I'm in the same position with the TA. I just started back on it last weekend slowly. Working on getting back into the groove because it really does take a lot of effort and time. Good luck, Steve. I say go cantilevered in the trunk since you're so low.

Fantastic build! Just spent three days reading (almost) every post :confused18: Really like many of the build aspects and will be "borrowing" heavily from some of them for my AI build. Mines not going to be a street car so I won't be looking at the compromises needed for that. The main difference being the leafs will have to stay to run AI (don't have the coin to run AIX) so I'll be doing something different there.

Looking forward to your return to the build and will check back in then.

Bradley

Finally made some time to get back on the build. I've decided I'm no longer going crazy all in with this build. Overall its not a race car and will never win a USCA title. Its a fun street car that had taught me a lot about fab work. Goal now is to get it back on the road and enjoy the car

First set was mounting the coil overs. I decided to stick with the dogbone adjusters mainly because it's such a tight fit and would allow easier rebound adjustment of the shocks with them mounted upside down. I aligned the coil over adjusters and welded them up to the panhard crossmember after a lot of test fitting and fine tuning. The x-members are not fully welded to the frame but all mounts on the x-member are fully welded and complete. Hopefully my welds are decent and hold.. I'm a bit nervous.. I extended the mount thru the floor in an effort to add strength to the mount. I'm a little worried the mount will want to rotate so I'll be welding it to the floor and also adding a boxed brace in side the truck to connect the 2 mounts. Unfortunately the hole in the floor is a little off on one side but I'll fix that up later.

The good thing is the car is finally sitting on the ground for the first time in 2 years....


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One reason I'm focused on getting the car on the ground is to get to racing this year. I decided to sell off the 95 Stang and bought a "race ready" 3rd Gen to run in NASA CMC. Decided it was better to buy a done car and enjoy it vs wasting time on another project. Unfortunately it wasn't quite as nice as I hoped but that's what can happen when you buy a car sight unseen. Fortunately it was priced good enough and won't be terrible to make a few changes to the car to have it fully sorted by the first NASA Texas even in January. the 72 rolls out of the shop tonight and the Green Machine comes in tonight for a full once over.

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Go Big Green!

Wow! Glad to see you back on it. Your build always inspired mine. I changed my speedtech panhard bar set up cuz you. Maybe I'll give the upper coil over adjusters another go. Just seems like so much work to do but what the heck I already have the mounts.

Great job!

Glad to see you back at it...even of its just to get it out of the way for the new toy. :D

They arent a lot of fun if you dont get to drive/race them occasionally...

hey Steve, I know it's been a LONG time ago that you had the original coil-over's in the car but by chance do you recall what springs you ran? I've got a newly installed Viking conversion in my 70 and have a set of 450# springs and PTFB upper arms(stock gusseted lowers) I see in your original's you only had the adjusters up a few inches and was curious as to the height from center hub to fenderwell. I'm trying to get a baseline on mine right now before I put it back on the ground and by having the adjusters up about three inches it seems like I have much more height than I'd like to have based on lifting from the spring pocket(I know the fulcrum will be further out with the wheel on the spindle but THAT much height?) Really love your build and would love to take my 70 that direction but I also have two other cars eating the fun budget right now! Thanks man and keep moving forward. Awesome stuff! Bill

Ahmad - Don't do it. Just use the Speedtech mounts you already have on the car. If i had it to do again I would do like you did and simply modify the Speedtech stuff vs starting new. I've done a lot of "optimizing" and doubt there will be any real gain vs the work I've done. Keep the car simple and enjoy it. If you want to cut something up, get a true race car. Thats my new perspective.

The race car needs a few small details to make it right. First event is at the end of January so the 72 will be back in the shop very soon. Hoping to have it driving by March. Life circumstances have changed again, the nagging GF is now gone so I have a lot more time to focus on things once again.

I'll have to check the springs again. I know I had some 550's on it but not sure if they were the front or what the other springs were. They were the springs recommended by Speedtech with the Ridetech shocks. I don't recall the height of the fender. I basically just set it so it was as low as I could get without rubbing the tires. Nothing calculated, just made it look nice.

[QUOTE=gerno;687469]Ahmad - Don't do it. Just use the Speedtech mounts you already have on the car. If i had it to do again I would do like you did and simply modify the Speedtech stuff vs starting new. I've done a lot of "optimizing" and doubt there will be any real gain vs the work I've done. Keep the car simple and enjoy it. If you want to cut something up, get a true race car. Thats my new perspective.[/QUOTE

Gotcha. Id have to show you pictures of how I did my rear set up. I "grafted" in the panhard bar mount into the original speedtech crossmember.

I was going to do the same for the "dog bone" style adjusters your using but if it's not worth then then I might just leave them as is. I already have them but if there's no benefits then I'll probably take your advice.

I was thinking it would be way easier to jack the car up slightly and be able to adjust ride height from in the trunk.

I literally went out to the garage last night when I saw your updated and started planning it. Im in the same boat as you tho, I just want to drive my car at this point but always see the latest and greatest and want want want.

You emailed me some pics before. I liked the way you grafted it in, smart solution. Just get the car done and drive it.

I also had plans for a street/track cage, custom floors and firewall. At this point I'm seriously thinking screw it all and just get the car back on the road. The end result will be a hybrid of the 2 thoughts. It will be interesting to see how I end up.

Glad to see you're back at it Steve. I started to wonder what happened to you and the car.

x2 Glad to see you're back on it, Steve. I know that feeling of just wanting to drive the car all too well. Good luck moving forward! Also, good luck with the new green machine!

Any updates on either of your Camaros Steve?

No recent updates on the 72. Its sitting on its own wheels again with suspension tacked in.

I've been focused on the Green Machine. Car was completely gutted, cage rewarded properly, engine rebuilt, trans rebuilt, complete new wiring and gauge panel. Not sure there is anything I haven't touched. Lately I have been spending lots of time at the track tuning out bugs and learning to drive again in prep to run NASA CMC next year. Its been a great time so far and NASA guys are so much fun. I really should have never taken the camaro apart... should have just bought a real race car a long time ago

Summer heat is coming soon here in Austin so I'll be done with the track for a few months and plan to get back on the 72. Goal is to have it driving by the end of the year and then start up on the 59 Viking hauler soon after.

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Sorry, no clue why the pics are rotating...

Wow looks great Steve. Did you do your own cage?