Hackster's Autocross Track Day Truck (Garage Build)

[hackster]

Originally Posted by 89 RS

Awesome build, thanks for sharing. I'm looking forward to seeing more as you head towards completion.

Thank you!! I am just looking forward to less long days in the shop =)

Originally Posted by DBasher

Looking good!

Let's go back a bit to the front end....anything learned from the other truck on the CV suspension or brakes that you're doing different? I didn't see anything mentioned on donor mustang brakes so I'm assuming you're happy with the other build.

I dont think that you saw the white truck after the brake upgrade...





Todd at TCE Totally did a great job working with me on these. 2 piece 14" rotors, 6 piston calipers, braided stainless lines.

Truck stops incredible now.

This one is going to have to stick with the Crown Vic stuff in the front and Mustang stuff in the rear. Ill likely have to do some aggressive pads, especially with the manual brakes but want to see how it does before I start making even more changes.

I did a few things different. I mounted the rear lower control arm mounts at 45 like they are on the crown vic for proper alignment geometry.

I elected to do the SPC Camber adjustment bolts. They are a pain in the ass to install but get another 2.5 or 3° of amber adjustment allowing you to go lower without the negative effect of negative camber.

Double adjustable front struts on this truck as well so should be able to really dial it in.

I learned a lot from the other truck....a ton actually. All the little things add up. I also moved the entire cradle back 1" from the other truck to properly center the wheel in the wheel well.

Sean

[hackster]

Been an interesting couple of days. Spent last night cleaning up the total craphole of a garage it has been turned into the past few months. Also got the little beemer all cleaned up and put away in the garage.

Oh man did that feel good to get things all cleaned up and put away.



Last night I could not sleep, I mean slept maybe an hour or so, finally ended up just getting up and going to work. Worked from 2 am to 3 pm this afternoon and as of right now have basically been up for.....39 hours straight. Not feeling too great right now as can be imagined.

I put some coolant into the truck and found that the T connector from the thermostat housing out to the engine and back to the radiator was cracked.......and of course nobody has one in stock so I ordered it from back east, hope it shows up soon.....at least by the weekend.

Drug out some sand paper and got to work on the drivers side of the truck. I need to spend a little bit more time on the bottom of the doors but its getting better

Hit it with the buffer and the old **** shines up pretty damn good.







I kind of like this shot.....Cool stuff under the beater truck.



I really need to get some parts coming or I am not going to make my deadline.



Sean

[hackster]

Had a great night last night and have some damn talented friends.

My friend Scott Becker from STS Machining dropped off my hose clamps for the heater hoses and I have to tell you its pretty amazing what they can make in a CNC machine these days. He runs a small shop from his house and cranked these out in less than a week. I think he is going to try some hood hinges next. Amazing work.



I have been buggin my buddy Andrew to help me with a console for a long time and I am about to that point now so he came over and we made a huge dent in the project

We started off by making templates in chip board of the floor and then built the upper surface on it. The templates looked like this.



Then we cut out an exact replica of the carboard and did all our sanding and smoothing on that one before transfering it to the PVC Foam Board (It is very, very cool stuff if you have never worked with it before).



Once we had that done and were happy with them, we screwed that to the PVC and used a plunge router with a bearing guide on it to cut out the actual sides of the console. We used a 1/4 round bull nosed bit and gave the top edge a nice contour and made a huge mess with all the routing.



Here you can start to get an idea of what I am going for. Should look awesome when done and covered.





Center panel where the shifter is is going to get a couple of cup holders and maybe a little tray for stuff to go in It should frame the seats and stuff really well and bring the interior at least into the 2000's =)

Also ordered Seat Foams from TMI for the 67 mustang bucket seats, I got the R foams with the big bolsters.

Ordered the Seat belts as well from Seatbelt Planet, they should be here the end of next week.

Carpet is ordered, interior door handles are ordered and I think that is about it.

Parts for the cooling system should be here this afternoon so I can keep progress going. I need to get shorter struts for the front still, mine are too long.

Sean

[DBasher]

Looking good Sean! Make a mess, clean the shed, make a mess, clean the shed...before you know it you're done and enjoying what you've built.

I heard back from the guy about the thing...he said McFarland is the only person he'd ever use and that he does do small projects. With that being said, I wonder how hard it really is...I'm sure you'll look it over when the parts show up and am willing to bet a dollar you'll be doing it yourself!

[waynieZ]

Nice progress. The wheels look good on there.

[hackster]

Originally Posted by DBasher

Looking good Sean! Make a mess, clean the shed, make a mess, clean the shed...before you know it you're done and enjoying what you've built.

I heard back from the guy about the thing...he said McFarland is the only person he'd ever use and that he does do small projects. With that being said, I wonder how hard it really is...I'm sure you'll look it over when the parts show up and am willing to bet a dollar you'll be doing it yourself!

Shed is a mess most days =) Thanks for checking on the the thing with the guy....I found a local guy and might give him a shot first. I dont have covers for the seats I need a guy to sew some up for me. I want a specific color and stitching. If it were just foams and covers I would totally do it myself.

Originally Posted by waynieZ

Nice progress. The wheels look good on there.

Thanks a bunch..

First of all, I got the T fitting for the coolant hose today so I installed that today and got the coolant all filled up and let the truck Idle and warm up, burped the cooling system and checked for leaks. All good. Took it for the first little trip around the block and all seems alright. It has a little tick to it, it sounds like its pretty normal with these engines. Messed around with that for a bit, jacked the truck up and set the Fuel pressure to 55 lbs base.

Second trip out of the garage netted a big burnout in front of the house =) truck is going to be damn fun. The manual is where its at for sure.

Stay focused Sean...stay focused.

Back on center console build. Got the sides connected together to finish up the frame work and it fits well.



Then cut this piece out to fit and heated it up with a torch to get it warm enough to bend and held it in place till it cooled.



Trimmed the top piece to fit the ends and tried the first test fit in car to mark the shifter location.



Cut the hole for the shifter and all lined up really well. Console is turning out awesome. I am not sure what I am doing up front but its getting cup holders right behind the shifter I know that for sure. I kind of like the super clean simple look of it and dont know if I want to mess it up with stuff. Maybe just do a really cool double french stitch right up the middle of the flat panel





View from the drivers seat..



Truck has come a long way since I started it in September....





=)

Hope to pick up some steel tomorrow so I can build the seat brackets.

Sean

[SBDave]

sweet! just make sure the cup holders won't be in your way of your hand/arm when shifting... I find that particularly annoying on one of my cars.

[hackster]

Originally Posted by SBDave

sweet! just make sure the cup holders won't be in your way of your hand/arm when shifting... I find that particularly annoying on one of my cars.

I have thought of that, the console is pretty low and you done exactly sit low in these things so it should not be a problem but I might mess around with their location anyways, in front of the shifter could make use of that big blank space a little better.

Only a little time tonight to work on the truck, had to go to a WInterhawks game with the wife.

Managed to pull these out of the bin and get some polish out and see if they would clean up. They polished out like new. I was pretty suprised.

Old on the left, polished up on the right.



Also spent a little more time cleaning up the license plate from the 68 I parted out. I hope that the DMV will let me keep them on the truck.

Little hammer and dolly work on the license plate and cleaned it up really good and shot it with a coat of clear. Also got it on.

Rear of the truck looks cool...At this point, I have no plans to run a rear bumper.



Also go the shifter adapter and lift kit built, welded up and bolted on. It has a little angle back and to the driver, forgot to snap a pic.

I was able to find some diagrams for the seat bracket and plotted them out at work actual size and printed out and picked up some steel.

1 of the seat foams showed up today, next week should be a barrage of parts. Seat foams, carpet and inner door handles, seat sliders, bolts and hardware, second seat foam and shorter front shocks....its go time fellas.

Damn near ready to take it for a trip to get some fuel for reals.

Sean

[SSLance]

Originally Posted by SBDave

sweet! just make sure the cup holders won't be in your way of your hand/arm when shifting... I find that particularly annoying on one of my cars.

**raising hand** Me too...

[hackster]

Originally Posted by SSLance

**raising hand** Me too...

Do you know what cracks me up about this....I have gotten more comments from people on the placement of the cupholders than anything else on this truck build.

My dad even made it a point to send me a text message about the placement of the cupholders and his concern about where they are going to go.....he is a car guy and almost 70.

More on that soon...Probably not a lot of people on here who care about seat brackets for the bumpside truck but Ill update this as well as my other thread to keep them all current.

Well, today was interesting. Hands down the longest I have ever worked on a set of seat mounts in my life.

Not too sure everyone knows that they once made factory bucket seat mounts for these trucks but they were very, very rare and even more rare some 50 years later. I stumbled across someone that had taken the time to draw up the seat mounts in CAD and share them on one of the ford forums. I downloaded them at work and had one of our CAD guys print them out in actual size so I could use them as a template. (Thanks Eddie) Its one of the benefits of working in the HVAC Field =)

And here we go.

Started out with some 3/16" hot rolled plate. I sincerely believe these could be made with 1/8" and be plenty sturdy.



Laid out the template on the plate....I should mention here that I made a couple adjustments. As I am not running a fuel tank and am not necessarily a small person, in height and diameter I extended the brackets to the rear of the truck by about 3" and marked another set of holes in the brackets.



Got to work with the plasma, grinder and a flap disc and the drill press. I did a pilot hole, around 3/8 then the final 1/2" hole x 24 holes 8)

Cut out and marked for holes. I also use a punch to mark the center of the holes before drilling.



All drilled up and ready to mark them up and bend them the poor mans way :roll:



So.....I have no brake so I have to get a little more creative and its a lot more work this way but I get to the end and its a very strong good looking part. OEM, not exactly.

I marked out the lines to bend on.



Then I use the plasma to cut the lines. I leave about 3/8" of uncut material at the end and about every three or four inches I skip a 1/4" section to keep the piece together allowing me to bend it but keep the part in one piece.



This is how I do my bends. This is a digital angle guage from Harbor Freight. It allows me to get dead on angles on my bends. I think this one was 26 degrees. I bent it to 26.2 degrees and can duplicate that over and over this way.



I wont bore you with the other bends.....and I did not take any photos of them either.

Here are the 4 brackets bent up and ready to weld. I know bending is the preferred way but this is doable at home and should be no issue with strength for seat brackets.



I went to work with the welder, turned the heat up a little bit and had 2 good setbacks. I forgot I had put Stainless wire, so I had to swap back to normal wire, then grabbed the hood and found it with dead batteries. So a quick trip for a rockstar, and some batteries for the hood. New lenses and batteries are good for the vision.

Now onto the weld.

You can see that there is some compound angles going on here.





And there we have it, bucket seat brackets for your bumpside in about a half a day's work.



I am super happy with how they came out, they were a lot of work and I am very, very glad to have found the drawings.

My neighbor also found a weak link in my brake heim joint (These were not final tight yet) but I was not happy with this setup so I rebuilt it with WAAAAY more better stuff.

3/8-24 stud cut down and lick tighted into a female heim joint then into the coupler with a jam nut on both sides and burried together. There is no chance of a failure now.



Much better now.

Also got my cupholders.