blueovalz

Nice work. I "felt" the same way about the weight. I think with the added stiffness of the arm, this is a very small penalty.

They were a semi-finished redo on the front brake cooling ducts/ram air duct. I installed the small retangular lights at the top of the ram duct (which covered only the top half of it). Below this is the horizontal divider has since been removed, and replace with a piece of grill from an old Grand Am. Future plans are to hook the ram/fresh air back up to the back of the grill work. Racing without lights and with ductwork (Before): Street with lights, and bling grill (After): No tilt front end. The required location of the hinge point would have required too much bracing and additional weight I did not want forward of the axle, So it found some VW Scirocco hood hinges that I could fit to work.

Dang Mike, Now I've got to clean the coke off my keyboard :ugg::ugg::ugg::ugg::ugg::ugg:

It is a home-made design and build-up. Couldn't afford the kit I really wanted (the GTO), so I spent a lot less money on making this body (but a lot more personal time and labor). Thank goodness my money wasn't very green back then, or I'd not have experienced the satisfaction of building it "myself"!

Rudypoochris and Rival5 have installed the same engine (basically) with two different results in regards to the oil pan/crossmember relationship. This issue is probably the single most important point in a SBF install, and once the specifics of why these two differ is answered, then I feel 80% of the frustrations and apprehension of this swap will be addressed. DavyZ, I get calls and emails even to this day on the Zhome.com write-up that I did many years ago. It would probably do a lot of folks a service by going into more specifics as to what, why, and how I did what I did. I'll bet the queries slow down then. Sounds do-able. We've got lots of folks to proof/critique it for additional comments that would benefit the reader as well.

When I reinforced the brackets to the firewall, I used 1/8" steel plate welded in place. Then I bolted the bars to these plates through captured nuts on the back of the steel plates. The location of these steel plates should be as close as possible to any corners or reinforcing angles that are stamped into the OEM unibody components. I placed mine up against the angles at the front of the cowl, and at the corners under each fender.

Perhaps we could start with basic clearance issues. 1) Where the oil pan sits in regards to the crossmember, and the corresponding distance between the rear of the block, and the firewall 2) The position of the damper over the rack 3) Header clearance at the firewall and steering rod, and the specific header used (shorties seem to be pretty popular, and probably a good starting point) 4) The driveshaft adapter flange could be easily machined and could be purchased or supplied by a volunteer (I wouldn't mind pricing one) Probably the most needed piece or information is a well thought out engine mounting system that could have accurate dimensions provided so that it could be copied or produced for others, without any variations between one or the other. Has there been ANY issues with Asil's (? spelling) mount? If not then this would be a prime starting point. Twoeightnine was correct in that my application is so far removed from a "popular" application (engine plates, home-made crossmember, extended wheel base, etc) that It has little application or usefulness in this discussion.

Another convert! Good job. Thought Jon was posting more pics when I first saw them. Anyway, I am curious about the adjustment window on these heims. The statement: made me wonder about this. What is the industry recommendation on the minimum amount of thread used to support the rod end. Is it 1.5 times the diameter, or some general factor such as that? When I fabricated my ends, I began to wonder just how small the adjustment window would be. Based on the 1.5* factor above for a 3/4" rod end, I'd have: 1 1/8" (penetration) + ~3/8" (jam nut, but it may be thicker) = 1 1/2" thread use at maximum extention, which leaves about 1/4" maximum adjustment window for safe operation. I allowed for a bit of adjustment on the inside movement (1/8"), which at that position only allows me to extend the joints another 1/8". Even at 1* factor (and this would be iffy IMHO), I'd have have a total window of 5/8", which leaves me only 1/2" movement outward, but is a 1* factor resonable and safe? I realize most loading on these joints will be under compression and tension, but there will be some shear forces introduced as well. At what point is the amount of thread engagement (or lack of it) risky? Anyway, something to review.

Yeah! You aint livin' unless you go to work with a couple of good bruises on your body somewhere at least once a week

Kickboxing, Kajukembo, Wing chun, and a little grappling via plain old wrAstling!!

Sounds like a project the Ford guys need to submit..... Oh, that's me!

What is your goal? Is it to reinforce the core support, or to stiffen the suspension mounting points? My take on this design is that it does keep the core support and the strut towers rigid in relationship to each other and should help reduce shifting of the radiator area. If you're goal is to improve the rigidity of the suspension pick-up points, then this may not provide what you need. I feel this is one goal you should strive for in tying the towers together. Even though you've got the area forward of the strut tower line tied together rigidly, there is nothing to prevent this entire area from moving in relationship to the rest of the chassis. So what may happen is that this area (both strut towers and the core support) ends up shifting slightly in relationship to rest of the chassis (rear wheels). Two islands tied together by only the frame rails, when you really want a single island with both front and rear tied together. This is why many folks reverse the tubing so that the towers are tied to the firewall, which is tied to the rest of the chassis. Attaching the firewall to the towers then helps eliminate movement of the front towers with the rest of the chassis. As I see it, your drawing offers little benefit over a simple, single bar connecting the towers (not only because of the issue described above, but also because of the forces placed in the middle of the two green bars. Any compressive and tension force between the towers will try to bend the middle bar fore and aft). I guess this all stems from the mechanicals in the way of placing straight bars in better locations, which is going to make this job tough.

This is only an idea. You'll need to change one side to blend around the muffler, but it should cover the tank, and look nice when done (just remove (photoshop) the vent and the two exhaust bezels.

From the photo provided, the 6" BS appears to be the maximum you'll achieve, provided you get the spring and seat fully above the tire. I'm sure you could get an even shorter spring than 8", but even at 8", you'll need to investigate coil bind, and how it relates to the specific rate of the spring itself.

If I'm following you correctly, I'd say there is no difference in wheel offset requirements simply because of the disc brake swap, and this issue does not even need to be considered. I say this because the OEM drum pushes the wheel outboard the same amount (or very close to it) as the disc will. The caliper will not extend past the "hat" area of the disc, so this will not have any impact on the spoke clearance, or disc of the wheel, so that is not an issue either, so lets drop that part of the discussion (unless of course I'm not seeing this correctly). The one thing that will increase the available back spacing is the coil-over springs. I have 5" backspacing with mine (and it could go to 5.5"), but my springs are 10" long. With the ride height of my car, I find that there is no advantage to the shorter 8" coils because the section width of the tire is still very close to the bottom of the spring, and thus will not allow any increased back spacing. For those vehicles that are not as low as mine is, (or with shorter tires) the 8" spring may allow yet another 1/2" more back spacing for a total of 6" of back spacing.

Correct. The wheel torque decreases with each shift, but speed, or amount of work being done, is increasing, thus the horsepower at the rear wheels stays the same regardless of which gear you're in (that's my understanding of this). The torque is what moves the car, and the horsepower is the result of this. This is why it seemed so "foreign" to me too accept the concept of using a higher gear ratio to increase acceleration. This, to me, is like lining up for a race and taking off in 2nd gear because I've got a high-torque motor. Now if the tires are spinning all through 1st gear, then I could understand, and this may be at the heart of the issue. This is why you'll see situations where the top speed of a specific car is actually achieved in 4th gear even though you have a 5th gear available. The decreased torque of the higher gear will not overcome the increasing drag of the air, whereas the increased torque of the lower gear will overcome more of the increasing drag, and allow the car to achieve a higher terminal velocity.

It is, but the turbo applicability is lost on me being the origins of this string come from a N/A motor. I wonder, 2 shifts to pass through the quarter mile at the top of 3rd gear, does not seem to be a lot of shifting.

In regards to the rear disc set itself, you'll not be restricted on any wheel offset.

That's why I mentioned the turbo set-up. They create a lot of torque, and can take advantage of this. My 4:11 set-up lets me get to 60 MPH at the end of second gear. This is great if I want to out pull someone and not get to dangerous speeds on the street. If you're racing someone, and you need to get up to 130 MPH to beat them, then you deserve the win.

This whole thread is kinda wierd. A higher gear ratio (smaller number) would (should) slow you down (acceleration) as it provides less torque to the rear wheels. Yeah, I know a turbo car can use that, but 95% of the time, the lower gear ratio (high number) will be quicker, but not ultimately faster. The only advantage of higher gears would be if you had a real torque monster in the low RPM range, like a diesel.

I'm interested in the details of how it came out. If it came out while in reverse under braking, then I would think it would have come all the way out and would have been immediately apparent that something was amiss (was it all the way out and suspended on the end?). If so, are the strut mounts on top (along with the rubber bushing on the inner pivot and sway bar linkage) rigid enough to prevent the wheel from rolling forward (due to caster) as the car sits on level ground, and collapsing completely? Just some general questions I've always wondered about when I see something like this happen.

I feel like I'm playing catchup. Up until two weeks ago, I'd not been out-pulled by anything. Then a 2005 Viper handed me my... Typical life, if you can't adapt, change, compete...you'll be left behind.

Finally. Someone understands me! I installed slip-rings on the inner shell of my wheels, with brushes directly from my battery to induce the attraction. Unfortunately, the polarity was reversed, and well, you know the end of that story. (it had the same dire consequences as the helium in the tires).

Jon, if I may: The adjustment on the outboard ends do not have the "granularity" for infinite increments of movement. Basically, the smallest adjustment is 1/2 turn (180º) of the rod end. At 16 TPI, this then is an adjustment of 1/32" over a length of about 6.75" (on my set-up anyway). This equates to about 1/8" minimum toe adjustment (measured at the tire's OD) when making toe adjustments at the "green" arrow. If a turnbuckle at the "green" location were used, then infinitly fine adjustments could be made, but this introduces some complexity in design and strength (I hate excessive links and joints) in my opinion. At the "red" arrow, the adjustment can be infinitly small because the turnbuckle can be turned any amount, whether it be .005º or 360º (and in this example, can be used on any control arm, left, right, modified or not)

I believe this is the heart of why it was believed for so long (decades?) that "theoritically", no tire could grip better that 1g. Once it was understood about how adhesion works, the 1g barrier no longer existed.