Its been a while since I updated this so I figure its about time. Lots has happened in the last few months. First, I missed the Optima COTA deadline. I decided it wasn't worth rushing the rebuild to hit the event. One of the big reasons was due to my girlfriend who pointed out I was getting completely OCD on the project, becoming a bit of an ass due to the stress of the deadline and had forgotten about many other important things, such was my dog, maintaining my house, my truck, focusing on work...oh, and her too. It was a good reality check for my that this is supposed to be fun and I am doing this to learn how to do things right. I took a bit of a break from the car, did some traveling and now have started to focus on it again. New deadline is March of next year (hopefully).
I still haven't finished up the front suspension. I've found just how difficult it really is to package everything in the front of a car including the tie rods, sway bar and maximizing the wheel travel and starring angle. I also decided to cut the frame up even more. If I'm going to build it I might as well make it easy to work on later. This meant completely removing the spring buckets.
From here I needed to figure out how to fit the sway bar. Ron provided me some bent arms to use, and I did my best to try to fit them. Unfortunately it wasn't possible with my goal for the most steering angle possible. I decided to make a test arm with a different 30 degree bend in it to see how things fit and it seems to be the best choice.
Next piece before I finished up mounting the sway bar was to get the steering geometry correct. Ron talked me thru this process and I ordered up all new linkages. This included a bumpsteer adj centerline, bumpsteer adjusters for the outer tie rods and bent tie rod links for added clearance. Process overall was pretty simple. First I leveled the pitman arm on the steering box, it was 2.5 degrees off. This included shimming between the steering box and the frame until is was level. Next, because my pitman and new idlers arm are the same length I measured the distance from the axle centerline to the centerline mount for both with both the pitman and idle perpendicular to the axle centerline. I also needed to make sure the centerlink was level. This showed me I needed to move my idler arm mount ~1/2" from the original location. I thought about some link of fancy bracket but ultimately decided simple is better and I just drilled new holes in the frame. After they were both level and square I had to clearance the passenger side of the frame because the idlers was little much higher. Once clearanced I was able to check the angle of the centerlink thru the steering travel. I put a gauge on the centerlink and turned the box lock to lock. Happy to report it was spot an and didn't change angle at all.
