I bet I know him from the forums, I try and keep up on the old ****ty volvo's =)

Thanks man, I like bikes so there is some merit to your statement. Thanks for the props, I take a lot from my offroad experience and translate it into hot rods or these kinds of cars, it seems to work well and yeah there is a lot of DIY on my builds.

99% of cars on the road never get pushed for performance so its really not noticeable. As soon as you lower the suspension, you adjust that angle and as mentioned above induces improper geometry and less than ideal handling. I dont think the dually will ever be noticeable.

I have consulted with a few friends and discussed my application with them, some of them on this very forum. The general consensus from people who build fast track cars was to add adjustment to the panhard bar mount, and increase the travel of the rear shocks if I could.

Since there is not much if any information out there regarding this in a volvo application I figured I would share what I am doing and why and where I got my information from.


So knowing what I know, I should have ditched the stock panhard bar and mounts before I even started but I got lazy and wanted to move on. Good thing I have some good buddies that said cut that **** out and do it over with an adjustable panhard mount ya jack ass.

I cut off the stock mount and have ordered a slotted style panhard mount for the rear axle, I am hoping it will work well with what I have so far, but am not afraid at all to chop it up.

I will be building my own panhard for the rear of the car, using 1.25" DOM tubing with weld in bungs, 5/8-18 LH for the chassis side, 3/4 RH thread for the axle side. These parts are all commonly available. I am running high misalignment on the chassis side to bush the 5/8" hole down to 1/2" or near the stock size panhard hole. The axle side is just 3/4 bolted on no misalignment needed.

The new panhard will not have a bend in it, will be straight and hopefully allow me to keep the beefed up aluminum moser cover.

So now we move on to getting some more shock travel. Down travel was not going to cut it, so up we go.

After lots and lots of careful measuring and putting this off, I decided to cut into the lower rear framerail of the car and french the shock mount up in the rail. If my calculations were right, this will raise up my shock mount about 1.5".

It was an absolute horrible job on the first side, the second side I took a different approach and it was much more tollerable.

The upper shock mount ended up dead centered front to rear in the rear frame crossmember, this worked good for through bolting through the frame. The first side I did I drilled 4 small holes and connected with a small cutoff wheel, then used a die grinder and deburring bit to open the hole up for the clearance I needed. The second side I located the front edge of the opening and the rear edge of the opening and used a 1.5" hole saw, drilled two holes and used an air saw to get me close, then finished up with the die grinder. It took a fraction of the time.

In case anyone is wanting to do this on their own, the inside of the framerails when cut open measures 1.95", so whatever shock you are going to use, get or build spacers to make your upper shock mount that width, I need to turn a couple spacers still.

I used the same 1.5" hole saw to drill an access hole in the crossmember to access the nuts of the bolt for the shock, this is just big enough to fit a modified wrench up in to tighten the bolt. I do not believe that this hole has any effect on strength of the crossmember.

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4ehh4bij.jpg

You can see in this photo that I had to take a little bit off of the bottom of the outside of the framerails in order to give the shock the clearance it needed to swing in all directions and have lots of clearance. I am working off of the garage floor so this is not a fun job by any stretch of the imagination.

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4ehh4bij.jpg

So with the access needed, the holes all cut, I wanted to reinforce not only the outside of the frame rail, but also to reinforce the bolt going through the framerail.

So I came up with these guys, I believe it will stiffen up any of the strength I removed and spread the load out on the framerails just fine.

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...psg9ygqbyt.jpg

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...psxvvtemg7.jpg

The frame has a slight contour to it so these plates need a little bend in them.

These are just .120 mild steel plates.

Here you can see the clearances I will have, this is more swing than the shock will ever have.

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...pspdf0sm1g.jpg

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2poegfn0.jpg

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3iou9465.jpg

I am going to return the 4.1" travel rear shocks and substitute a 6.1" shock in its place, I will be sticking with the Ride Tech shocks. If you took the time to read through the Ron Sutton write up , it is one of the very few quality shocks built in the US and is totally tunable.

Is this perfect, I am sure its not, is it something I believe I can work around and make fast around a track, I think so.

For those of you that are still reading and want to know what kind of measurements this is. This is built at a ride height of 4.5" to the bottom of the pinch weld on a 25" tall tire, 3" of uptravel and 3" of down travel (Assuming that I dont have to limit the uptravel once its all in the car. Keep in mind with the chocks are behind the axle so actual centerline travel of the rear suspension will be slightly shorter than that.

Brakes for the rearend showed up, backing plate bracket is wrong, so those need to go back but they look awesome.

Hope that parts show up this week to get this all buttoned up, I am so sick of crawling around under the back of this car.

Sean

Gotcha. I assumed you had the rear end @ your intended ride height. In my initial glance @ the pic, the PHB looked pretty level. I figured you weren't done @ the frame mount but took the "it's gotta go" reply & wondered what I wasn't seeing that made it so bad. I misinterpreted that response.

You're correct. My dually rides/drives much better vs. the original rear leaf spring configuration even w/o an adjustable PHB (I did build the mounts to yield a level bar @ ride height & the bar is slightly lower than axle C/L). It actually handles like a 1/2 ton. It would be much better w/less weight as well as better tire selection but I kept things as 'load rated' legit as possible.....

Frame brace and shock mount look good, great idea! Looks like it’ll still work when you bring that inner wheel well in even with the frame. :sieg:

Really looking forward to see the amount of tire you’re going for and how you’re going to accomplish the fitment.

Did you do anything with the steering?

Keep it up man, take a break when you need to and thrash when you feel the need. This is all for supposed to be fun!

:flag2::thumbsup:

Kids car....I blame Sean.

You can fit so much stuff from Ikea in there!

:y0!: ....and LEGO blocks....(OK, not Swedish, but for the punchline close enuf)

Those RideTech shox look great!

Bought my wife one of these for her birthday a couple of years ago.

It really needs your Help Sean. The engine is only 2 liters, I drink more liquid in a day than that...

LS the Netherlands (world)? lol...

Been neglecting this forum a bit so Ill update it now this was 3 weeks ago now, they have not done a thing since then, we are living off of lawn furniture in our living room as all of our stuff is packed up and in the garage.

So I have always lived in pretty normal homes, all the homes we have owned have been from the 40's and 50's, things were simple and small. First home was 1080 and the second home was 1400 sq. feet. Both nice homes but nothing fancy by a long shot.

We bought this brand new craftsman style home out in the country and of course have the first flood of our lives.

We had a toilet flapper stick open and filled the septic tank closed the check valve and flooded our first floor in just 6 hours.

We have damage in 6 separate areas of the home. All of out hardwoods had to be removed and the home is drying out along with the garage and the crawl space.

We were forced to move out of our home for a little over a week. Between work and this mess I spent 4 of 22 nights in this home.

Its pretty likely that we will need to stay out during the construction of the home too. The flooring is on order from the manufacturer until middle of October/ beginning of November so we are forced to live like this until then apparently.

What it used to look like.

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...psowbqafey.jpg

Current

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...pskmzndmxn.jpg

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...pspr9e1ny0.jpg

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...pstcjgwjz8.jpg

http://i1133.photobucket.com/albums/...psgyfcwsrw.jpg

I had no idea just how bad this would be when I woke up and found my shower pan full of water at 5 am.

I cannot believe that there is no interlock between the septic pump alarm and the well pump. I guarantee there will be moving forward.

Progress on everything has stopped. I need to get the car to be able to sit on its own weight and roll and I need some roller 5x4.5 wheels and tires.

Sorry for the lack of progress, this one is going to have to take a back seat until we get our living situation figured out.