RebekahsZ

No good deed goes un-punished. Guys, at least on this thread: if you don't have anything good to say, please keep it to yourself. Faithful Moderators, feel free to delete this thread before it changes completely from sunny skies to stormy weather. It has already become partly cloudy. It was good while it lasted.

I will be over at my storage shed tomorrow and will try to measure my 16x8 Rotas. I hope you have really looked at those inexpensive stamped wheels-the hub mating surfaces look sketchy to me.

I would love to replace the psycho who lives next door!

I am considering the bridge jacks but I'm worried that they may be too tall in the down position to drive the car over...anybody have any experience on that? Im still searching for that height/clearance specification.

My office manager was over-contributing to my 401K and just found the mistake and had to refund me before the first of the year. Its like getting an extra tax refund! So, I'm suddenly rich and want to get two lifts for my new 30W X 36D shop, which has 13' ceilings and a pair of 10' doors. The lift bays are already wired for 220V. This was something I was saving for, but now that I'm sitting on the necessary funds I'm ready to get the purchase done. Plan: (1) 4-post lift for doing alignments, welding exhaust and car storage, (1) 2-post lift for doing major demo work and repairs. The parking plan is to park my daily driver S10 truck under the 4-post with the Z overhead, and to set up the 2-post with a wide enough drive-thru clearance to allow me to park my dual-axle 18' open car hauler trailer between the uprights during the off-season. Even though they are more expensive, I have settled on Bendpak because they offer the lowest loading height when it comes to the 4-post lift. Their ramps are only 4-1/2" above grade, whereas most of the other brands have ramps that are 7" above grade. I'm figuring on buying extended loading ramps to further facilitate my ability to get a lowered car onto the lift. Question: The 9,000 pound 4-post alignment lift with all the alignment bells and whistles is only $900 more than the 7,000 pound lift. If this lift is intended to help with the building of race cars and supporting my racing program, would you guys get the alignment lift? Any drawbacks that I'm not considering?

And use low torque (like 25#) on bolts that go into the soft steel of the belhousing I stripped one out.

Don't know anything about the auto trans. My truck's manual trans, cammed otherwise stock LQ4 with a LS1 car intake and long-tube headers made 389hp and 428#tq on the chassis dyno. In hindsight I would gladly give up some hp to not have so much un-burned gas coming from the tailpipe at idle. I daily drive it on 87 fuel. I don't know the specs on the cam. I think it is pretty easy to get 400-ish hp from a 6.0, but getting that extra 50 hp is gonna take some cost and effort. The new FAST intake is $1,000 and even with my mild can, parking lot speeds are a bit of a rodeo. An auto trans would likely calm the bucking that I have at low speeds. Good luck!

Search the forum for the 5/8" bolt mod in lieu of spindle pins.

I found a bent stub axle when I did a rear disc brake conversion.

Weird that you are having to do so much crossmember surgery..who's mount kit is this? Do you have a spare slip yoke to try? They are like $30 from Speedwatmotors or Summit and you can have it in 2 days. I've twisted 2 yokes off and one of them had to be knocked loose because the twisting kinda locked it on. Even so, it did not damage the output shaft of the tranny. I'm sure you've checked both for simple burrs? While the trans is out, saw off the nipples on either side of the back up light. They will bump the tunnel too. Don't get frustrated, I had my motor in and out a million times before I was satisfied. And I'm still not satisfied. You are doing great. Slow down, take a deep breath, take your wife out for a fancy dinner. Then get back to work!

Front crossmember slotting pretty well finished today-just gotta clean up the paint where blistered by the welding and shoot some paint on it. Getting the doubler plates aligned was a chore. I'm gonna have to clean it up just a bit to get the slot totally evened up on one spot. The 400# coil springs arrived. Will wait until I get it all back together and set ride height. Then I can order bump-stops since they come in two heights.

Thanks! I've gotten everything I know from the others on this forum. And by making lots of mistakes and buying lots of parts twice.

Everytime this topic rises to the top I forget I'm looking at the Interior forum and I get all excited about somebody putting a blower on their motor, like a Maggie, Wipple or Paxton. Someday I will get the HVAC system back into my car...its been at least 15 years, and it would be kinda nice. Y'all interior folks, have fun! Happy New Year!

Yeah, this was a suck job with my sore neck. Going Tuesday to talk to somebody about a steroid shot. I wish I could just have a neck transplant. C3PO seems to get one at the drop of a lightsaber. At least it isn't under the dash-I'm dreading putting gauges in this junker. I can't measure the side-side (horizontal) distance: the crossmember is installed in the car and I couldn't give you an accurate measurement. I used a plumb-bob and a bubble level to TRY to put them vertically the same spacing as the lower (stock) holes. Vertically, the drilled holes are centered 22mm above the original. The holes have a diameter of 14mm. So, I measured 29mm above the top edge of the bolt hole with a caliper and popped a divet with a center punch. So, the total length of the slot is 22mm + 14mm=36mm. I should have 22mm of vertical adjustment. I need to find a pair of new 14mm bolts (grade 10.9) that have the same shank length but a little longer threaded portion so I can run a thick washer on both sides of the crossmember...looks like a bunch of time searching on boltdepot.com ahead. Welder comes Saturday to weld the plates on. Cut the slots with a dremel tool laying on my back in the dark-wish they looked like a machinist did them, but they will have to do. I still have a long way to go....getting ready to do some on-line lift shopping-it was a good year at the office. The old office manager was over contributing to my 401K and the new office manager caught it and just gave me a big refund check that should just about cover it. If you need me to, I can go measure the center to center length of my TTT LCAs adjusted to their shortest dimension. They are in the trunk. I can only give you unassembled measurements of parts. Ask me what you want me to measure and I'll run out and do it to the best of my ability. Going to dinner and a movie in about an hour.

Plates are supposed to be 14g steel, but I couldn't find any so I used 1/8".

I think: 1998-2002 Camaro water pump and idler pullies and tensioner. From the same car and year: crank pulley, alternator, alternator backets (2). 1998-2002 Camaro or C6 corvette oilpan, gasket, dipstick, windage tray and oil pickup with fresh pickup o-ring. Look into Mr. Gasket's aftermarket thermostat water neck that swivels 360-degrees.

Send a text to 256-366-4685 asking for bellhousing pictures. I just took some, but I haven't figured out how to rotate pictures on my new phone. I can send them right away. When a bellhousing needs re-certification sticker, you send it back to the manufacturer, so I would assume that the manfacturer would want to see their modification, and their modification only, but I'm not positive. After I received my bellhousing from Speedway Motors, I contacted QuickTime's tech support line and got a job number, then sent them a letter with the job number asking them to do the window mod. QuickTime doesn't have a retail capacity, so you can't just do it all at once with them. You have to buy from a distributor, then send it back to the company that made it in the first place. Kind of a "round-robin" but that's what it takes. I want to say it took 6 weeks to get it back from them-they aren't in any real hurry. The value of a window in the bellhousing was seen this month when the hydraulic line retention pin backed out to the slave cylinder on my truck. I could see the pin backed out and the line dangling. So, I just grabbed the line just as it exited the bellhousing and carefully guided it back into the slave cylinder. Then I took a long screwdriver and pushed the retention pin back into place. Then, I bled the system with my remote bleeder. A 30 minute job. Without a window, I would have had to remove the shifter and console, drop the driveshaft, the crossmember, the exhaust and the transmission, the reassemble repeating the process in reverse. The window mod is a hassle to add to the bell, but it is really handy for visual inspection and little things like that hydraulic line repair.

Look for a Mustang T56 reverse light switch. It has a 90-degree plug. Hard to find. I haven't rebuilt any of my diffs. If they feel smooth, I run 'em.

There's no bolt-in kit, you gotta cobble something together. But, to get your build done, you could just put an air filter on your throttle body-cold air is a bit over-rated. In terms of isolating the tank, you really don't have to isolate it unless you are building to a rule book that requires it to be isolated. Just use a vent line and a non-vented cap. Almost everybody has vent lines and a fill tube passing thru the interior back there.

I would go ahead and pull the tank up higher into the trunk to preserve some ground clearance. You gotta have an empty trunk at the race track anyway. Consider adding a tow hitch or parachute mount at this point. Never say never. You are at a effect point to add those things and you already have the welder out.

I'm still just using size 6 or 8 sheet metal screws....

I'm really out of my league here. I'm gonna sit on my hands and just listen for a while. Edit: I couldn't stand it! Rob, if you have any skinny front tires, swap those on and re-try that section of the road that has the ruts. I really just think you are "train-track-ing". Ruts and cracks act like train rails and steer your car along the ruts, just like if your car was a train on rails. Wide , low profile tires really make it worse. Slotting isn't gonna fix that. If I recall, you didn't have camber plates at ZCON, and yet your car was so much faster than anything I rode in (race rubber, a V8 and great attention to detail in the build). If you don't have camber plates up front, that's the ticket for adding camber. There's so much temptation to over-think our cars. Dave drove his car from NY, adjusted his camber plates, did not adjust toe (so I know his toe was off), ran his car hard for 2 days, re-adjusted his camber to his street setting, and drove back to NY. Camber plates are awesome! To slot your crossmember with it mounted on the car, you need to remove your tie rods from the rack, to include the inner tie rod. Then, if you crank the steering first to one side, then the other, the rack is out of the way to do the drilling. I wrapped the exposed rack sector with saran wrap to keep metal filings out. I used a 90-degree drill with a stepped bit after using a dremel tool to remove the spot welds that retain the washers. Then I used the dremel to connect the two drilled holes and convert them to a slot.

"Make a big difference." Rob, for suspension behavior, I think we have to be REALLY specific in terms of what type of bad manners we are trying to correct. And based on the one time I got to do ride-alongs in your car, I'm not sure you have any problems to correct. I'm looking into slotting for a very specific car behavior problem. And, fortunately, landspeed racing is super sanitary: the car is accelerating at a fairly constant rate, accelerating in a straight line on a (relatively) smooth, concrete, non-rutted course. The only thing the suspension is doing is going up and down (theoretically) absorbing bumps. So, there are really only two forces that could cause my specific problem: dynamic toe changes (front or rear) and aero influences. The front tires have zero cornering forces (theoretically) since I'm going in straight line. Trying to tune a car for twisties must be so much more difficult because you have so many other variables: bump, compression, track surface, banking, off-camber changes, tire temp, body roll, tire roll, tire wear, chassis deflection/twist, throttle input, braking, ackerman angle, static and dynamic camber and caster, tire width, tire compound, spring rate split between front and rear, steering rate, driver factors (everybody's biggest problem): fast/slow entry, turning the steering too fast, not fast enough, braking too hard or not hard enough, accelerating too fast or not fast enough, or just bad driving line. "Bad or suboptimal handling" could come from any or all of those factors. And any single adjustment ANYWHERE in the system affects ALL the rest. I would bet that that 7/8" measurement reflects more the practicality of how difficult it is to do this mod with the car on jacks with the steering rack still installed, or maybe even the size of the rod-end bearing installed in the LCA. I would not try to extrapolate the necessary adjustment based on a part of dubious origins. What research went into this oft-quoted "JTR mod?" Did other mods were on the development vehicle? Roll center adjusters? Camber plates? And what were the other suspension set-up numbers on that car? We don't know and we can't know. I have the welder coming on Saturday to weld the doublers onto the crossmember, so I'm making (slow) progress. I will measure my bumpsteer with the LCA pivot at the stock location before I change it. Please don't take your sweet-handling car apart for suspension mods until I demonstrate any real improvements that slotting can make (if it makes any difference at all).

Oh yeah, this would be pretty easy with the engine out of the car. And, what makes this tough is figuring out what point to measure from. I will look for some pictures of the window mod. It is definitely something you could do yourself, but I fear that if you did it yourself you might ruin the SFI certification. IF you race in a super anal organization that requires that you keep your certification up to date, that could be a problem. The organization that I run with does not currently make SFI dates an inspection item on anything other than seatbelts. If you aren't racing in a club that has a rule book, or at a track that has a rule book, I don't know that I would bother with a steel belhousing. I would just use a stock one and skip all the hassle. The steel belhousing is larger and heavier than the stock aluminum version. I had to "clearance" mine in order for my exhaust to clear, so if I ever sent mine in for a new SFI sticker, it would probably fail. But, they don't currently climb UNDER the car to check it. They just look thru an open hood to see that you have it. And even that probably varies from one inspector to the next. The rule books are so complicated that it takes a pretty sharp guy to see everything. Some inspectors try to fail everybody, and some try to pass everybody. Just a matter of luck when you are going thru tech. Driving 9 hours each way to race, I wanna pass.

I think wide tires are gonna follow rutt-ed pavement no matter what.