The panty dropper

[WSSix]

Next up is the parking brake. It took me forever to decide how I wanted to route this. I wanted them hidden as best as possible. I thought about running them down the outside driver's side like DSE tends to do, but that would have just caused me to fab and cut a lot more than I wanted to. What I decided on was to run the primary cable out the floor just like stock and tuck it up against the floor board on it's way to the top of the transmission tunnel where it meets up with the rear cables. There's plenty of room above the drive shaft for this. I used Lokar cables front and rear. I passed the rear cable through the rear frame rails. I got some thick walled steel tubing from McMaster Carr to make the pass through in the frame rail. To seal off the cable where it passes through the floor board, I made a simple steel plate along with some rubber gasket material behind it and bolted it to the floor. This should work well enough.

Rear frame rail pass through


Another angle


Here's where the front cable passes through from the pedal


Where the cables come together in the tunnel. It's not as straight as I thought it would be but I was working on my back. It'll do though.


So far, I'm not very happy with the cables at all. The parking brake simply won't hold the car. I'm investigating the parking brakes themselves, but I think it's cable related. I spent a lot of time adjusting the cables. The pedal would be nice and tight on the first press yet it still wouldn't hold the car. When released, the pedal also wouldn't spring all the way back. The next press of the pedal would be weak like the cables needed adjusting. So I'd adjust them and try again. I did this a number of times and it's not gotten any better. If anyone has a suggestion, I'm all ears. Otherwise, they have been a waste of well over $200.

[WSSix]

The fun stuff now. I got all my suspension parts from Keith at Custom Works. For the front I have his coil over conversion kit using Viking shocks and 650lb springs. I also put in his front subframe brace that goes under the radiator. I kept the stock LCAs but have gone with Speed Tech UCAs. Not the high clearance ones that require AFX spindles, just the factory replacement ones. I still need to get the front aligned and adjust the coil overs a touch.

I put the same shims I had with the factory arms back on as recommended by Speed Tech. The increased camber at basically the same ride height as before is tremendous. I had the stock arms at about 1* negative. The wheels are pushing 2* negative now. I'm actually a little worried I won't be able to bring the passenger side back out closer to 1/2-1* as Speed Tech recommends because of how few shims I have on that side. I've got my fingers crossed. We'll see what happens. I measured the UCA mounts before and after welding and they didn't move. This was discussed in another thread involving a second gen doing a similar coil over conversion. No idea if that's something that could occur but I measured anyway just to be safe.

OK dinner time. I'll finish this up later.

[Stovebolter]

The title commands attention for sure. Lol. That's a sweet machine. Always loved them!

David

[GregWeld]

Trey --- I've never had any of the aftermarket "e-brakes" work worth a damn. Wilwood... manual cable or the "E-Stopp" system... Ditto with Baer Brakes. They don't work on either of my hot rods - never worked on my Nomad either.

Wish I could offer you some better advice! Maybe someone else will chime in.

[WSSix]

Originally Posted by Stovebolter

The title commands attention for sure. Lol. That's a sweet machine. Always loved them!

David

Thanks David. The name of the car is completely tongue in cheek. My car doesn't come close to so many of the builds on here in terms of quality. I appreciate the compliment all the same.

Originally Posted by GregWeld

Trey --- I've never had any of the aftermarket "e-brakes" work worth a damn. Wilwood... manual cable or the "E-Stopp" system... Ditto with Baer Brakes. They don't work on either of my hot rods - never worked on my Nomad either.

Wish I could offer you some better advice! Maybe someone else will chime in.

Greg, it's just the cables. That's what kind of ticks me off. I have C5 rear brakes with the factory parking brake inside the rotor. The setup came off a low mileage C5. They should be working but with the pedal changing its feel in between presses, I can't help but think something is weird with the cables. I'm going to look into it some more. Luckily, putting it in gear holds the car. Thanks.

[WSSix]

Ok, back from dinner.

On to the coil over conversion. It was pretty straight forward really. The directions provided weren't bad. Bigger pictures would have been nice but that's ok.

Here's before


With everything cleaned and ready to weld. You'll need to cut out the inside of the spring pocket. I just took a cut off tool and went around the perimeter from the inside. If the tool uses 3" cutoff wheels, it should fit. I would also recommend only cutting the top of the UCA mount far enough back from the folded over portion that it leaves a straight edge. That way you have more of a lip remaining to weld to. The directions say 3/8" is what should be left and I don't feel that's enough.


Mocked up and checking for fit and clearances before final welding.


All welded in place.


Here are the tools I used to get everything cleaned so I could weld it all in place. Took a little bit of time but it wasn't bad. I used brake cleaner to clean the surfaces down too.


If you use your factory LCAs, you'll need to reinforce them to hold the coil over. I bought some 3/16" steel plate and made a round part to weld into the bottom of the LCA.

Here's the part.


All welded in place and ready to be cleaned and painted.


Everything back together and looking pretty.


As you can see, it's a tight fit. I've moved the suspension through its range and it shouldn't hit. These pictures where taken with the suspension hanging. The coil over will move towards the outside as it compresses. I'll keep an eye on things though just to verify. You can always open the spring pocket up some more if this is too close in comfort for you. I'd be careful though as there's not a lot of room left.

[WSSix]

I didn't take any pictures of the rear because it's just 225 lb monoleaf replacement springs with Viking double adjustable shocks. I did go with Keith's HD shackle kit which uses thick plates for the shackles which puts delrin bushings in the frame rail. I used his competition axle locator kit with a 2* wedge also. I went ahead and upgraded to 1/2" ubolts to hold it all together. Keith was able to supply those as well. It wasn't difficult to drill all those holes out to accept the larger ubolts either.

Here are the pictures.




This last one hopefully shows the increased camber on the front end. Remember, this is essentially only changing to UCAs that has caused this increase in camber. The other factors remained essentially the same.


I'm going to have to give the rear some time to settle before I know if I'm happy with it or not. I really wanted the rear to come down some more and instead it went up at least an inch. I guess my stock springs were more worn out than I though. I'm building a street car mainly so looks matter. Unless an over riding factor presents itself, I'll be changing the rear suspension regardless of how well the monoleafs work if they don't settle low enough for me. One positive from being raised is I don't scrape the exhaust coming in and out of the drive way like I did.

Well, that brings everyone that cares up to date. I'll get out to drive it and adjust everything as time allows. I'm anxious to see how it will handle.

Thanks

[Ron in SoCal]

Great progress Trey. Post up your driving impressions!

[intocarss]

Nice work

[G4CERAT]

Never the less, I've enjoyed seeing your progress. I hope the rear does go lower but nice job on the stance anyway. So cool to see that year looking so much better...