More and more reading on this topic and this is where I am looking to land. In Vegas it was 220+ and I was a little worried about it. I think the cooler stat is going to do me good.

Thanks man, Yeah I am a nut job what can I say. I am happy to be using it, just got a little frustrated that this stupid steering is what is going to kick my ass is all.

I believe that the "rebuilt" rack is my problem.

You crack me up.....whats in Georgia?

On a brighter note, Turn One was great so far, parts are shipped out and I should have them on Tuesday in time to get it back together and make it out to the SCCA Time Trials at PIR. As long as everything goes back together and no leaks I should be good to go.

I ordered some PowerFlex race bushings for the front, that is about all Ill be able to get done this coming weekend, still out of town for work until Friday night.

Sean

Did a terrible job of taking pics.

Could not give up a perfectly good (Sunny and dry) weekend with the car sitting missing parts so I got a parts store rebuilt pump and threw it on Saturday to see how things were working.

Bled it, put in Royal Purple fluid in the system this time. Drove just fine around the neighborhood so I loaded it in the trailer Saturday night and got my **** ready to go.

https://i.imgur.com/7kivgmHh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/wmRYcMdh.jpg

Went to McMinnville to run autocross with the BCA club. Great club, really good event.

Rest, Run, Work schedule. 70 cars in total, Raw numbers I am mid pack at 35.

Got some good testing in. Steering did the same thing.....its not the rack, believe it to be lower control arm bushings moving around under the car so I will address that this week.

Front brakes are too hot, I am locking up the front brakes on corner entry no matter what I do......I need to learn to be a better driver.

Temps were running right about 200 sitting around. We got 8 runs in less than a 2 hour run time so we were pretty fast moving. I was happy with these temps and didnt think I had anything to worry about. Temps were in the high 80's, just under 90 and we were in the sun from 7 am to 4 pm when I left.

https://i.imgur.com/CcLgEO2h.jpg

I definitely need to work on the driver more. I feel I am overdriving the car and need to work on smooth before I work on fast. That is a very tough balance and I am still very new to the car as well as autocrossing. I know that there is more in me, I feel like I need some instructor time to help me pick up the pace.

Hope I am able to get the car dialed in before next weekends SCCA Time Trials.

Sean

Seems to be the most normal pose for the car, might as well take a pic of it.

https://i.imgur.com/FIlHup2h.jpg

Couldnt stand not knowing what was going on under there so I jacked the car up and got to work. Finding it was easy. Jack car up, wheel moved....

Grab wheel, the front lower control arm mount moves about 3/8" or so. I start digging further and the "stover" or lock nut is loose on the bolt that holds the lower control arm. Not only is it loose on there, its loose like you can thread it like a normal nut onto the bolt.


https://imgur.com/TfVFdkn


Also the hole in the crossmember is 14mm, while the bolt is a 12 mm bolt.

So here is what I came to the conclusion of, Replace the lower control arm bushings with the race superflex ones I ordered. I drilled out the sleeve for the front lower control arm up to 1/2" and ran a new grade 8 bolt with a new stover nut on it a little lock tight and it should be good. This was a much tighter assembly even when things were not tightened up unlike before.

I got one side done last night. Still need to do the other side tonight. It took me a little bit to figure out what I was going to do to fix it.

The hole in the crossmember was not egged out either, it was still perfectly round.

I am sure that I screwed something up somewhere but this is what I have now, should be better than stock in my opinion.

The good news is I can have the lower control arms out of the car in like 10 minutes now after doing it so many times. :roll:

Sean

Race, break, fix, rinse... repeat

Keep at it!

Andrew

I can't imagine the feeling in the steering wheel that movement must have created?

You do realize that each time you make a fix like this you are going to have to learn the car all over again, right? :D

Nice work!!

I see the Volvo is getting some love on Speedhunters. Right on the front page today!

http://www.speedhunters.com/2019/06/...machines-more/

Too funny, that is what I first typed up =) So true too.

It was horrible feeling in the car man, turn the wheel then wait for the car to change direction.

I am still learning to drive it anyways so not much time lost there =)

At least I am out using it and getting seat time instead of just looking at it in a parking lot or a field at a car show. Dont get me wrong I like a few car shows here and there but would much rather be out using it.

Someone sent me that yesterday. Was pretty awesome to see it on there. Thanks for sharing!!!

When I got over to the passenger side, the nut and bolt were also loose, not as bad as the drivers side but still, not suspension parts tight like it should have been.

I done have any fancy machinery at home but since this isnt a pretty part, it just needed something to allow it to bite into the crossmember I had at it with my hacksaw to give it some teeth.

https://i.imgur.com/u0ecy8Qh.jpg

Performed same treatment on this side, drilled out sleeve to a tight .50" hole, replaced the lower control arm bushings with the superflex black "Race" bushings Used a new .50" bolt, heavy washers, stover nut and lock tite on the bolt.

Took the car out for a quick stroll to see how it was. Most solid the car has felt since its been on the road by a long shot. Curious to see if these stay tight over the weekend if they do I think its problem solved and move on to something else.

Turn one pump showed up last night looks nice, billet pulley is sweet but the pump is not drilled to accept my brackets......so call them and figure out whats up with that.

Now to get some sort of an alignment on the thing before the weekend.

Sean

In search of how to get a little more air for the radiator....I had always liked the front bumper on my friend Jerd's Gold wagon so I got to chopping. Stupid pilot hole drifted a little bit so they are not all where they are supposed to be but a little bit of black paint on the inner structure and you will never see them at least I hope.

Thanks for the idea Jerd.

https://i.imgur.com/OUmUDoch.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/K9Lrg6kh.jpg

Power steering pump showed up as well, have not gotten a chance to install yet, might wait until next week.

Beautiful piece though.

https://i.imgur.com/71Wkrlrh.jpg

Helping the neighbor with a 70 F100 and we needed to cap the lines on the mustang tank sending unit. So a couple small plugs and silicon bronze TIG'd it up last night. Should hold back fuel no problem.

https://i.imgur.com/OVzyDRbh.jpg

Truck is cool, Coyote, MT82, crown vic, coilovers front, boingers in the rear still but doing cal tracks. I have done most fo the welding and fab work on it. Still gotta do motor mounts and tranny mounts and we can drop the engine and trans in.

I ordered a GPS Speedo cause I am sick of not having my speedometer working. vnet module shipped out but antenna is coming from Texas so its a week out.

I did a string line alignment on it after all the frontened work and for my first try with it I think I did pretty good. Wheel is straight, tracks well both under power and under braking.

SCCA Time Trials this weekend at PIR so hoping the car does well.

As a side note, after building this the last year and now a few months of working the bugs out of it I am getting pretty burned out and I think a break is needed from car stuff for a while.

Happy Friday!!

Sean

I always find a little track time is an excellent cure for car burn out fatigue...

I'm in week 5 of a 3 week project myself and finding it difficult to motivate to finish the last few details. I'm SO close...yet still so far away from hearing this thing run. I'm sure once it fires for the first time I'll relight that fire inside...

Isnt that how it goes though, Trust me my friend I totally get that. Keep at it you are too close now to stop, car looks awesome by the way, its going to be a ton of fun once its back together.

Good track time is a good cure =)

Well, Here is my short reply. I believe that the rear lower control arm bushing mounting and style are what are causing my weird front alignment. I am going to order or build some different lower control arms that have a real rear control arm mount. I believe that style of bushing is just not compatible with what I have going on.

After last weekend and this weeks repairs I was not really holding my breath that anything was going to work.

Friday after work I spent a little time going over some items, chatted with Racepak. Their tech support is not educated on anything with these dashes though. Is all he did was open the manual and read it line for line. Anything technical he had no idea how to do it or how it operated.

The bottom line is that you cannot manually program in any parameters for the speedometer (according to Racepak) and the only way to get the speedometer to work is to go through their auto calculation procedure. Seems rediculous to me.

So I go out, do their procedure and sure as **** I have a working speedometer!!!

I was pretty stoked. Get the car loaded up in the trailer for Saturday morning SCCA Time Trials at PIR with my buddy Kevin and his S10.

Got to the track, ran through Tech, no problems, registration, transponders and what not.

We got 2 20 minute practice sessions in the morning and 2 timed sessions in the afternoon.

Unfortunately my fastest lap was a 1:31.2 in practice and seemed to get slower as the weekend went on. They lined us up in our run groups by previous fast lap, Kevin and I were in the front 3 or 4 spots all weekend long so we got 4 or 5 good hot laps in before we caught lap traffic, me in front a couple times, him in front a couple, we had a blast chasing each other around and surprised more than a few people in our run group.

https://i.imgur.com/qFdKrsnh.jpg

In impound after our session for a debrief. It was a great rundown of what happened in our sessions, what worked, what didn't and so on.

I chased Kevin all weekend but he was just faster than me and I had to settle for 2nd place out of 2 cars in our class of MAX 1. Either way though we had an awesome time.

After our first session, the steering wheel went to about 10 degrees to the right and stayed there all weekend, made a little adjustment and said f it and ran it. None of the hardware came loose. I paint marked all hardware before we left and nothing moved at all so that was good.

Only issue I had all weekend was that and the panhard bar came loose on my second to last session, going to need to add that to the list of things to check after every run. Got a little blip of low oil pressure on Saturday, was a little low so added in some oil and ran all day sinday without a problem. Reading up on it, Holley in very small print says to run an extra half quart if you are going to track their oil pans.....good to know. so its a 6.5 quart system now

Beautiful weekend for some racing!!

https://i.imgur.com/wFAyVCoh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/r986Utuh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Pl0Jmkmh.jpg

Car did awesome, figured out tires are much happier with 36 lbs in them than the 32 I started with. Rear end is happier softer than stiffer.

Driver needs to be more aggressive and I need some more power!!! Ill be ordering a cam and pulley soon.

I was able to hit 130 on the back straight away though, so its no slouch.

Thank you SCCA for putting on such an awesome event this weekend, I had a blast, met some new very helpful people and took home some awards. There is a long story behind the spirit of time trials trophy, but it really comes down to just being there for people when they need a hand, remember life is short, enjoy it and lend a hand when you can.

https://i.imgur.com/sip94YXh.jpg

Kevins Truck is a bad machine, much more than meets the eye and it rips.

More to come soon.

Sean