Nerd Rods, 55-59 Truck Frame Project 1956, C4 suspension, 5.3L Auto, Kit Frame Design

[rat_rod_russell]

First, I was correct, the inner tie rods on the truck were not correct. They were the 84-87's on an 88-96 rack. That's why I had to cut them. So that will probably be an easy fix. Here are a few shots from another chassis in the shop with the steering arms bolted up.





Down side this only has 14mm of thread engagement on the rod end. While "the diameter of the shaft" in threads worth of engagement is acceptable by most books this just doesn't feel like enough for an almost all tension stress. So I'll probably still replace the end. Go to a male 14mm rod end and have a 14mm threaded sleeve made for the two the both thread in from each end. Cut a little off the rack and pinion's inner tie rod and call it much safer for the kit.


Now the report on the steering and driving feel.

I have put a few miles on the truck around town and on a longer trip to the Austin Cars and Coffee this last Sunday. The verdict at the moment is that it feels much better now that you are not fighting the steering with each turn but the turning radius is only slightly improved. Noticeably improved but not completely. I feel like its good enough for most customers since the "fighting steering wheel" feel is gone but it could be better. I've not gone back to my "test site" because of the local carnival is in town and the ferris wheel is right in the middle of the concrete I use for that particular test. The butt measuring tape says 4-8 feet tighter since the wheels aren't fighting each other any more but I won't say any more till I get an accurate testable metric to confirm.



I'm going to try one more prototype on the red truck with a "drift racer" trick and shorten the arm length to increase the angle of the steering arm. This isn't the best way to get more turning radius since it also creates "Ackerman migration" that exacerbates the farther you turn but if guys have happily been suffering bad Ackerman and bad turning radius this whole time I think Bad Ackerman and an acceptable turning radius are more desirable outcome. We'll see what I can do. I need to fix up a computer to start plugging in numbers to my suspension geometry program and see what I can do with the pivot location to make this workable.

Also find me on Instagram or Facebook for some daily updates user name NerdRods on both.

Later
-Russell @ Nerd Rods

[rat_rod_russell]

Oh, also picked up a cheep front bumper and slapped some powder on it along with the side trim. The center caps on the wheels were screwed too so they all got the black powder coat treatment that the center grill got and it really brought the whole front end together. Go figure I'd wash the wheels and it would rain the next day but I'll take the cool weather in the Texas summer for having to wash a car or two, hands down. It was 102°F Today it was 78°F. DONE!



I'll get some good photos when the tropical storm finishes blowing through.

Later
-Russell

[rat_rod_russell]

Took her out to the Luling Watermelon Thump Car Show while I cleaned the shop some.





We've been plugging floor board holes, and tweaking the fuel vent line. Dad's building a cover for the vintage air box under the dash and I'm tuning the shift points and VE table for some isolated knocking. More of that when I get the photos off my big camera.

Later
-Russell

[rat_rod_russell]

Getting closer to wrapping up. Added a vacuum accumulator to help the little booster out and got some simple seat belts in. Better than nothing, which is what I've been doing. Sorry guys, I would work faster but the customer's asked me to slow up a bit for now due to some family health problems. So suspension tuning it is! I'm going for closer to Cadillac than Corvette. Now to play with it but more than likely I'm going to need to fit longer shocks on the V2 frame to make that really happen. I'm looking into cutting down the bump stops some as well. Handling is on point (especially now that I can go around corners without holding onto the door) but its solidly on the firm side. The seat handles a good deal of it but I'd like to have a recipe for better ride for customers looking for that finish.







Later
-Russell

[rat_rod_russell]

Ah yes, been one of those weeks.

First we had to clean out the AC lines because of a cross over mistake under the dash by one of my team. It happens, get upside down and backwards and this kind of thing just happens. Not the customers problem so its all out of pocket.

Dryer replaced because any water in them and they are toast so that got replaced as well.

Clean all the systems out and now the heater valve is "ticking". Also drawing 2 amps of power when the car is turned off. Vintage Air systems have their own circuit wired to the battery so all that current isn't going through the key. Makes since but this mean it can draw if necessary. I email into Vintage and they had a new one over to me the next day. They are only an hour drive from my shop in reality, but they should still be commended for getting that part out the door the same day as my question came in. So new on goes on and we add a heat shield just for good measure just to make sure that won't be a problem in the future.

We go to charge the system and two of the high pressure lines start leaking. Turns out the local shop didn't use the right dies in their machine when crimping these lines. Everyone there knew that they had the equipment to crimp AC lines but not everyone knew the procedure. It wasn't malicious and they gave me free hose to replace the bad parts so I was only out the ends to get it re done. And time but again that's my problem, not the customers. Turns out their machine was too big to crimp the 130° bends so I had to go visit a friend in Bastrop (45 minute trip one way) to use his tool to do it. I learned a bit about the "Lizard Skin" spray in insulation and sound deadened as well as some quick connect ends for the AC lines I'll be using in the future so thing won't be a problem ever again, so there's always a silver lining and we add more to the knowledge base.

I get back. My younger bother had moved the truck out of the way to work on his fiancees's car. I go to drive the truck back in the shop and............. rod knock............. at least that's what I'm pretty sure it is at this point from our inspection. Just sitting there, I have no clue what could have happened to make that start. I've never seen rod knock on an LS engine so there's a new one. We'll get her on the lift next week and take the pan off to confirm for sure.

Oh, and its been in the high 100's all week with 50-75% humidity in the area. Like I said, been one of those weeks. But we'll get it taken care of and next time **** hits the fan we can just reminder ourselves, "yeah, but it wasn't as bad as the summer of 18".

Back to the sauna, I mean shop.

Photo from us hoping it was a collapsed lifter or bad rocker arm and doing a compression test as well as bore scoping it from the top.



Later
-Russell

[GregWeld]

A LOT of LS motors have cold piston slap that's pretty dang awful.....

[rat_rod_russell]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

A LOT of LS motors have cold piston slap that's pretty dang awful.....

This went from nice and quite to sounding like its going to knock and hole in something from one quick back out of the shop to the next driving it back in. Compression is gold all the way around too. I'll get the pan off and poke at the bottom and see if anybody moves first then get probably pull her out.

Thanks for the input! I need to head up north of Austin and see your toys one of these day.

-Russell

[GregWeld]

Originally Posted by rat_rod_russell

I need to head up north of Austin and see your toys one of these day.

-Russell

You better hurry Russell -- those guys are cranking! It won't be there very much longer!