1969 Torino

[Lenie]

Now I guess I'll just keep throwing $$$ at it. [/QUOTE]
It never ends$$$$$$
Love old school.
Bronco's
Great frame work, beautiful rendering.
I've always liked 18's and 19's but with bigger cars it's hard to tell till there on so buy both sets
I'm not having a caged bird
Nice work.

[Ron in SoCal]

Circa 2007:

Originally Posted by FETorino

I am building a 69 Torino. This is an original 390 4 speed car. Cool car to begin with but it needed to be stepped up a notch.

Here is where I am so far.

Engine

390 ported stock heads with oversize valves Ford aluminum PI intake and Factory CJ Holley 735 carb. Billet MSD distributor triggering an MSD digital 6 CD box through an MSD blaster coil and wires. Solid lifter cam research cam 230/236 @ .050 with 560 lift and matching springs and retainers, double roller timing chain, Precision oil pumps rockers, stands and shafts and smith pushrods. Percision oil Pumps blueprinted high volume oil pump and billet pump drive shaft. Canton T road race baffeled pan. Stock 11 to 1 shortblock for now. I have FPA headers waiting in the garage and plan on having Spintech install a side exit 2.5" exhaust with X crossover.

Trans

Currently I have the stock close ratio toplader in the car but I have a TKO 600, Mcleod aluminum flywheel, driveline specialties Kevlar clutch sitting in the garage.

Differential

Factory Ford nine inch with a Detroit locker and 3.70 gears.

Front suspension

RRS Koni coilover strut conversion with 12" discs with PBR dual piston calipers. TCP strut rods and Opentracker racing Road race lower control arms. Stambar adjustable 1" front sway bar.

Rear suspension

Rebuilt and rearched stock leafs with Koni red shocks. Caltracks low profile underside bars. Solid front spring eye bushings and urethane rear bushings. 11" RRS rear disc brakes with single piston PBR calipers. I have spoke with FAYs2 about building me a WATTS link for my rear. It is on it's way.

Stock power brake booster with a Willwood aluminum 1.125 master and all new stainless brake lines.

The car sits 2" lower in the rear and 3" lower in the front and rides on some custom Elaisian wheels. 17x8 front with 245/45/17 Firestone Firehawks and 17x9.5 rear with 285/40/17 Firestones.

I'm swapping a 3g 130 amp alternator in this weekend and then working on designing some subframe connectors. When I done sorting out the suspension and driveline I want to paint the car the original Jade Black color but will still do the hood and taillight panel in the flat black (I sprayed them that way as an experiment for the look).

Still a long way to go but I'm getting there.

Yo Rob. How are those 17s w leafs workin out for ya?..

[FETorino]

Well maybe I'll start with a more detailed picture of my steering shaft.

You can see in the picture the shaft is .750" .120 wall CroMo and the ends are the Woodward 20 spline style. This style is pretty cool with a square edge on the top of each spline. This prevents the spines from splaying wach other apart. You can see in the photo below the difference between the Woodward spline and the std automotive 36 spline that is found on my rack and that I ordered for the end of my Flaming River colomn.



The other day I assembled my rotors. I still have to safety wire them but that is another post. Here is a picture of one of the rears. The hat is cast and acts as a brake drum for the parking brake. Yes full race junkys I plan on running a parking brake. The rotors are 14x1.10" e-coated and slotted but not drilled.



Today I removed the hubs from my Speedway floater and stared installing the brakes. This is just a test fit install.

The powdercoaters coated the flanges for the brake backing plates. I started by chasing the threads with a 3/8 24 tap to remove the PC


Next I took a flat file to the mounting face. I would prefer this to have no coating so the backing plate would mate to a machined metal surface. For not I just spot faced it to ensure it was flat. I may strip it entirely. More on that later.



On with the backing plate and parking brake assembly.



Now here is what I'm talking about with the powdercoat. The Wilwood caliper bracket mounts to the back of the backing plate. When you assemble it you use shims to center it on the caliper. They say to start with two .11 shims. You can see them in the picture.



Then there is another spacer between the bracket and backing plate.


The radial mounted caliper bolts onto the bracket. You adjust the centering of the caliper with the shims. I would guess the powdercoat is already spacing the caliper .11" or more outboard so although I stared with 2 shims as Wilwood recommends I really only have 1 shim of spacing. If I need to move the caliper inboard more I'd need more shims than normal. If I need more than three I'm going to clean off the mounting face. The Powdercoat is like a hard gasket of sorts and the force on the bracket isn't going to work on the "gasket" so I'm not overly concerned about it but I may be cleaning it all off the mounting face.

[badmatt]

Neat.

[Flash68]

Originally Posted by badmatt

Neat.

Rob puts in all that time and that's all you got?

[TAC]

Good to see your getting some work done on your car Rob. Chassis looks good.
I haven't been on here much lately with my project, Torino 10, since I have been out of work since December. Been keeping busy doing projects for others so there is no time for my stuff.

[FETorino]

Originally Posted by badmatt

Neat.

Originally Posted by badmatt

LOL the car looks great, Have always said that.

Look great Rob. what Wilwood kit did you end up going with?

BadMatt you are a Torino contributor and parts supplier. I'll take "neat" works for me.

I was luck enough to have Mike H and Tarrant from Wilwood work with me on putting together a kit. Up front are W6A 6 piston calipers with the dynamic floating style rotors and out back is a kit they sell for the Speedway floater rear end 4 piston Billet Narrow superlite calipers with the integrated crossover. Rotors front and rear are 14" the fronts are 1.25" rear 1.1". On Mikes advice since I plan on flogging it hard the rotors are slotted but not drilled.

I'm going to post some more details on building the rotors and the brakes overall when the wheels arrive.

Originally Posted by TAC

Good to see your getting some work done on your car Rob. Chassis looks good.
I haven't been on here much lately with my project, Torino 10, since I have been out of work since December. Been keeping busy doing projects for others so there is no time for my stuff.

Yea I saw your post on the fathers day gift. I hope you get things squared away soon and can get back to work on your project. The world needs a V10 Torino.

I sat and did nothing on mine from 09 until last year because I was feeling a little wonky about the future.

[badmatt]

Originally Posted by Flash68

Rob puts in all that time and that's you got?

LOL the car looks great, Have always said that.

Look great Rob. what Wilwood kit did you end up going with?

[Flash68]

Originally Posted by badmatt

LOL the car looks great, Have always said that.

We know you are part of the "army" on here.

[FETorino]

So last weekend I needed to remove my front hubs from the C6 spindles on the front of my chassis. I'm doing some upgrades basically new s before I finish mounting the brakes and the wheels arrive. Once I'm done I'll post some details since nobody wants text without photos.

When I went to remove the three allen head capscrews that secure the hub it was obvious I needed to unseat the balljoint. You can see in this after removal photo that the capscrew sits behind the balljoint stud and castle nut.



My first thought is I have a pitman arm puller in the toolbox I have used before to remove tierods and pitman arms and drag links and other parts with a taper seat without damage.

None of these those are some other pullers for pulleys and such.




Here is the little guy I first thought of.



Unfortunately although the throat in this guy is big enough to fit over the bottom of the spindle the sweet looking billet AL steering arm in teh previous picture is in the way.

Hm my little FOrd (you guys keep adding a J to Ford so the O is an emphasis reminder for spelling) pitman arm puller is doing me no good on this Bowtie balljoint excursion.

I also have a spreader style which is basically like a turnbuckle that causes the two ends to expand. I forgot to snap a picture and am too lazy to go back out to the garage. Anyway that same billet steering arm is in the way (no straight line between upper and lower balljoint.

I do a google search for C6 balljoint. ALL the Corvette forum guys use pickleforks No Fg way I'm going medieval on this stuff What a bunch of hacks.

So I shoot an e-mail to someone who works on this stuff all the time to ask what the preferred tool is. There is surely a special Bowtie toll part # for this application. I am rewarded with the correct Chevy part # and rush down to get one. It worked like a charm and unseated the balljint in about 30 seconds.

Just for everyone's future reference here is the Chevy specific tool.



Job done, Hubs shipped, on to the next project.