Lots of time, little moneys. Which means instead of buying bike and car parts I'm getting around to applying the parts that are stacked in boxes. I put new leaf springs & shocks on the yellow mustang a couple days ago. It'll get a rear anti-sway bar and traction bars also, but the next step is to get the front suspension done. That's what the car needs more than anything (aside from bodywork, hahaha) (oh yeah, the brakes. the brakes.) So I had bought a full suspension rebuild package front & rear. Yesterday I boxed the front upper and lower control arms. Factory arms & repros are made of stamped steel and are pretty flexible. Boxing helps keep the movement where the movement belongs & it's free, just takes time.
First step, I made some templates out of cardboard in the shapes I needed & traced it onto sheet metal with a paint pen. it's about 1.5 to 2mm thick, not sure what guage that is but it's plenty stiff without being overkill. Plasma cutter makes cutting the pieces out a dream:
On to the welding. The welds were really fucking with me today. I kept getting air bubbles (it's mig using argon/co2 gas if you've got any ideas) in the welds. Otherwise good though, decent penetration & all that. I kept trying different shit- more gas, less gas, more amps less amps, more wire, less wire. several variations seemed to help, but after a few nice pulls, the bubbles would start coming back
I'm guessing that maybe one or the other pieces of metal might have weird impurities or something. Anyhow, here's the lower arms, the simpler of them, just a flat piece along the bottom:
and the uppers, a little more involved:
a close up of the welds, of course I picked the best of the bunch. Even then they photograph better than they look in person. like they are celebrities or something.
Last night they got painted. Today I'll start tearing down the front end. It's going to get a "shelby drop" modification in the process which involves dropping the upper control arm mounting point one inch. This adds some initial negative camber to the front wheels and lets the camber increase as the suspension compresses. more traction on the front in the turns. It's called "shelby drop" after some pudgy guy with a cowboy hat.
negative camber (exagerated of course, but I'd love for the wheels to actually appear like that. That would look menacing):
First step, I made some templates out of cardboard in the shapes I needed & traced it onto sheet metal with a paint pen. it's about 1.5 to 2mm thick, not sure what guage that is but it's plenty stiff without being overkill. Plasma cutter makes cutting the pieces out a dream:
On to the welding. The welds were really fucking with me today. I kept getting air bubbles (it's mig using argon/co2 gas if you've got any ideas) in the welds. Otherwise good though, decent penetration & all that. I kept trying different shit- more gas, less gas, more amps less amps, more wire, less wire. several variations seemed to help, but after a few nice pulls, the bubbles would start coming back
I'm guessing that maybe one or the other pieces of metal might have weird impurities or something. Anyhow, here's the lower arms, the simpler of them, just a flat piece along the bottom:and the uppers, a little more involved:
a close up of the welds, of course I picked the best of the bunch. Even then they photograph better than they look in person. like they are celebrities or something.
Last night they got painted. Today I'll start tearing down the front end. It's going to get a "shelby drop" modification in the process which involves dropping the upper control arm mounting point one inch. This adds some initial negative camber to the front wheels and lets the camber increase as the suspension compresses. more traction on the front in the turns. It's called "shelby drop" after some pudgy guy with a cowboy hat.
negative camber (exagerated of course, but I'd love for the wheels to actually appear like that. That would look menacing):
Goddamn, I sure wish I had me one of them wire feed welders! Oh, the things I would weld!
I do, however, have a little bag of Shelby Drops. They're not as tasty as you might imagine...
I have a friend who uses a blaster outside, he lays down heavy plastic sheeting & re-uses the media. I'm spoiled with the cabinet, but I can't do large stuff in there.
Goddamn, I sure wish I had me one of them blasting cabinets! Oh, the things I would blast!
I put down a big piece of cardboard (the box the compressor came in) and I was able to reuse quite a bit of the media. My biggest problem was water in the air line, so as soon as I'd blast the paint off of an area, water would come along and instantly rust it, hahaha. Seems the compressor hasn't been drained in quite a while, so that's on my list of things to do today, as well as figuring out how to service the old (older than the compressor) inline dryer. I have no idea how it's supposed to work or what's in it, so I'm Googling that now...
You gonna rattle can or do you have access to a spray gun?
I have a Devilbiss production gun, but it hasn't been used in many years so it probably would need some seals or something before I could use it, and anyway I think I'm going to paint this stuff over in Action Man's garage where I can close the big door and keep the bugs and dust off of the paint, and I'm not sure his compressor is even hoss enough to run a paint gun. Fastenal has a special on for red industrial enamel (epoxy, I think). I picked up two big cans for $12.