Pretty good day in the garage today. I started in the front and swapped out my 0.250" wall front sway bar for my 0.375" wall MonsterBar...
Install was pretty painless, the only fight I had was getting the 3 cap head bolts out of the swing arms. Ended up using a combination of heat, penetrant and patience. When I first put this bar in, these kept coming loose...so I put a dab of blue loctite on them to help keep them snug. Problem is the back side of the hole they go in is open and rust built up in there and made removal somewhat difficult. I put a liberal coat of antiseize on them before reinstall but I assume they'll start coming loose again after use. I'll just keep an eye on them for now while trying to come up with a better solution. No issues with the frame holes at all thankfully.
I then tried to install these trick front wheel bearing spacers from AllStar.
They are adjustable in length and let you preload the inner and outer bearing races so you can snug the spindle nut up tight while letting the rotor still turn freely.
AllStar has been wanting me to try these for a while so I figured since I had to replace the wheel bearings anyway, this was a good time.
Unfortunately, my rotors (which are still in fantastic shape) have too small of an ID near the outer bearing and the spacers won't work in them. I guess I could put these rotors on a lathe and trim out the inside of the rotor a bit, but with a race coming up next Sunday I need to get this thing back on the ground for now. This upgrade will have to be postponed for now, but I'll figure out a way to make them work eventually.
My last project for the front was to press out the old stock length wheel studs and replace them with 2.5" ARP wheel studs. This is where I got stalled as I need some different plates for my press to be able to get the last 4 studs in. I know I could run them in with a lugnut and if I was in a pinch I would, but I have the plates I need at work and will pick them up tonight, finish these up and pack the outer bearings and reinstall the rotors.
I had a rebuilt TracLoc installed into my third member and this fixed the backlash issue. Just a quick reinstall of the third member, then the axles..and lastly swap 250# springs in the rear for the 200# springs to match the rear roll resistance with the new stiffer front sway bar and the rear is just about tidied up as well.
Still waiting on my new brake pads to show up, should be here on Monday. Then I can get this thing back down on the ground, bed the new pads in and spend some time getting used to the new Stage 4 Ron Sutton Race Technology high travel, lower roll setup before next weekend.
BTW,Check out this little blurb about the car from the guys at BangShift Apex that came out yesterday...
http://bangshift.com/bangshiftapex/b...itchin-g-body/