I had an awesome day today. Painted and prepped the crossmember and the upper/lower control arms and various parts.  The pics here were taken after the first coat, two coats went on in the end. It's just spray-bombed, but it'll suffice. 

Here's another view. If I had it to do over again... I would have pulled off all the front end metal. I ended up having to work around it way too much, and  removing the whole doghouse would have made life much easier. 






But I digress. Let's move on, shall we?






... So- after the paint dried,  I got the passenger side all buttoned up...

 

... and I moved on to the driver's side. Starting with the upper control arm ...

 

... followed by the lower control arm ...

 

... I then compressed the snot out of the spring, placed my floor jack under the lower arm and set it in place. At that point I mounted the spindle... 

 

... and then the disc brake bracket...

 

... followed by the rotor. There are two bearings - an inner and an outer - that need to be packed. Then a light tap seats the rotor right onto the spindle....

 

... and once that was done, I could mount the caliper. It's important to bench-fit everything before hand, some of these are a bit of a tight fit. Finally, put the dust caps on and that's it 

 

Well, more or less. If you've got common sense and plan everything out, you're golden. 

Check out the unsprung ride height: 

 
Keywords: Chassis Engineering Mustang II M2 Heidts IFS Install 

Now... on to the REAR END!

Chassis Engineering Mustang II Crossmember Install - Part One

Isn't it amazing how a few hours turns into the whole day? 

Powered up the compressor and got my air chisel out. There's a little bullhorn bracket on either side that has to come out. It was a bit stubborn, but once I'd woken up the neighbours they both came out. 

Next, I test fitted the crossmember. Actually, I drove over to my buddy John's place and borrowed another 2 pairs of stands and a bigger jack. Mine is just too small. Anyway, I was ready to go, so I went ahead and lifted the crossmember into place and put the hats on. And... wow... it was NOT a perfect fit, and I really had to play with it to get it to sit right. Reason, is that we're dealing with a 61+ year old car. It was only off by about 1/4 inch side to side. 

I marked the holes and drilled out the new holes and enlarged the ones reqired. You've GOT to do this before you start bolting it in - because the two inner rear bolts will NOT be accessable to a drill once the tophats are on. 

Once the crossmember and top hats were in place, I passed the drill back through all of the holes, to clean them up. Then, bolt, lockwasher, locktite and the bolt. Torquewrench and... 

voila!

I need to give it another coat of paint, and now that the crossmember is done, I'll be pulling the lower rad support and the old swaybar (I have a new one). 

There's still a TONNE of work to do, but I[m happy with the progress so far. 




Tomorrow, I'll probably try to get the control arms painted and installed. Woohoo!

PS: DISCLAIMER- I don't know what I'm doing, I'm learning and making it up as I go along. Would NOT have been able to do this without the guys on ChevyTalk.com

It's Spring!

Whew! Winter is over. Sort of. We've had a run of great weather so I dove in and started working. But first...

Over the course of the winter I've picked up a few parts- new master cylinder and underfloor pedal assembly, new rear end (3.11 POSI!) and other smaller parts and pieces. The winter was spent planning, dreaming and scheming.

Last weekend, I found the time to pull the steering column out. That was a good start.

So- with the good weather today, I finally tore into the front end of the Chevy - and nobody was more surprised than I, when 2 and 1/2 hours later the entire front end was out of the car.

Tracee got some really nice pics while I was "concentrating". Thanks Sweetie! 

You'll notice that I did not pull the fenders or front end to do this work. Instead, I cut 4 inches out of the inner fenderwells which allowed me to access the bolts. I had some funky stuff happening (a weirdly and crudely fabricated battery box, holes and a bit of rust bolts frozen solid, that sort of thing).

I decided it would be easier (for now) to leave the fenders and front end in place. It will eventually come out, but I need to get the beast rolling again quickly. I don't like leaving it in the driveway wheelless anyway- so within the next couple of weeks the Mustang II front end will be seated, and hopefully I can set the motor and transmission in so I can fabricate the transmission mount.  

While I was in there (literally!) I started grinding down the firewall ribs and cleaning things up. I must have been tired though, I kept shredding cutting disks. I'll continue tomorrow. Yes, there will be more pictures as I progress further!