1971 Firebird Build ("The Other Woman", a.k.a. Project "T.O.W.") - Page 52 - Lateral-g Forums

carbuff · #**511** 09-03-2015, 09:18 AM

Unfortunately we are at a standstill at the moment. Eric had to travel to attend to some family business on short notice, so fab won't be done this week. I can share a few pictures of the progress though.

Here are some of the early shots of the sway bar arm mock up.

Apparently it took a lot of heat to get this shape:

This is how the bar itself is mounted: through the trunk. Delrin bushings go in the ends of the tube to center the bar and allow rotation:

Shot before the frame rail cuts:

These arm mount holes were too long, so after talking to Ron, we determined that using shorter holes on the arm was actually going to be better. Now we can get a more vertical angle for the links:

Some of Eric's handywork.

I don't have any more pictures of the torque arm since he started cutting it, but here you can see what we are after. Shortening the arm and making mounts to attach it to the bottom of the housing to allow rotation. We will get rid of the pinion mount plate and the 2 bars you see will control the pinion angle. We believe this should work well for us.

As part of this, Eric built new crossmembers for both the transmission and the torque arm mount. I don't have pictures, but I'll get some next week once we are back on it again.

carbuff · #**512** 09-03-2015, 09:24 AM

Here are a couple of pictures which you can mock me for.

carbuff · #**513** 09-03-2015, 09:29 AM

A few more shots of the reassembly:

A good bit of elbow grease required to clean up those pistons:

Working to get the wipe pattern correct. It was too high here, but came out about perfect after the addition of some shims.

Panteracer · #**514** 09-03-2015, 09:57 AM

Byan,
you guys are doing some fabbing here
Cool stuff

Bob

**WSSix** · #**515** 09-03-2015, 11:40 AM

Awesome work by Eric! Sounds like it's going to be a fun ride with the changes. Good luck, Bryan.

carbuff · #**516** 09-03-2015, 01:12 PM

Thanx guys! I'm really looking forward to the next step in the evolution. I'll definitely get some more pics when we have her back up on the lift. Hopefully next week when we are both back from traveling.

chichirone · #**517** 09-04-2015, 09:40 PM

Looking great Bryan. I am really intrigued with the rear sway bar. Will you enclose it through the trunk or is it my imagination it is still under the trunk floor out of sight.

Also, will any of these changes with the sway bar and revised torque arm setup effect spring rate?

When will the Frankenstein be back to life? I am curious if the cam and head change effect the sweet exhaust sound of TOW. Still one of my favorites from the USCA videos I have from this past March.

**glassman** · #**518** 09-04-2015, 09:46 PM

Man dude, your short block is in waaaay clean shape!! Is it new? Mine looks nothing like that ( a lil used and abused)

Fun stuff!! But funner driving...

carbuff · #**519** 09-07-2015, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chichirone

Looking great Bryan. I am really intrigued with the rear sway bar. Will you enclose it through the trunk or is it my imagination it is still under the trunk floor out of sight.

Also, will any of these changes with the sway bar and revised torque arm setup effect spring rate?

When will the Frankenstein be back to life? I am curious if the cam and head change effect the sweet exhaust sound of TOW. Still one of my favorites from the USCA videos I have from this past March.

Thanx Jay. I will try to get a picture of the sway bar mount this week, but I may not get there until Friday. To give you an idea, Eric ran a 40+" piece of 1 3/4" chrome moly tube all the way through the trunk. So yes, it does go through the trunk, but the trunk will not be exposed to the outside. Eric will weld the tube to the trunk floor and new brackets once everything is finalized.

And yes, we are definitely changing the rear springs. We are softening things up significantly, which will help both the ride quality as well as the loose-on-exit problem I was having during the USCA event (leading to one of my offs).

The engine should be back together this week. We are not sure yet if we are going to have to cut and re-route any of the exhaust or not though. We are going to try and keep the over-the-axle pipes we have now, even if we have to clearance them a bit. To me, the engine note changed very little with the engine changes earlier this year, and like you, I'm curious as to what this round will do. I would expect that the higher cam overlap will be the biggest change, but I expect that when on the throttle it will sound pretty similar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glassman

Man dude, your short block is in waaaay clean shape!! Is it new? Mine looks nothing like that ( a lil used and abused)

Fun stuff!! But funner driving...

This is the engine which went into the car back in March, build by TSP. When I pulled the heads, it wasn't so clean:

It took a lot of careful scrubbing to clean that all off...

carbuff · #**520** 09-15-2015, 10:38 PM

Not the best photo, but the engine is back together. I have some plumbing and electrical work to do, which I hope to finish tomorrow. We won't be able to fire it up for a few days though as Eric is still working on the suspension.

New fuel rails. Holley rails on the Edelbrock intake.

The Holley rails are 5/8" inside and use -8 fittings, which supposedly allows for better balance across the 2 sides. I like the nicer black finish.

Back at it tomorrow...