Front End Done!

Well!

Today was a beautiful day, and I managed to finish the assembly on the front end. I still need to lube and then plumb and bleed the brakes, but NOW I can measure for the steering column/shaft and also start thinking about how best to yank out the transmission.

This was the most (and least) fun part of the build so far- those springs are scary to compress.

But I'm extremely happy with the results - and how much I've learned!

I'm also lovin' the end result:

That's awesome- I expect the springs to settle another 1/2 inch, and then the motor to weigh it down another inch and a half- which means the end result will be a nice low front end rake.

Next... Yanking out the rear end, torque tube and transmission... in ONE PIECE?!? (ha ha, I'll try!)

PS: I did publish a step-by-step photodiary on chevytalk.com ~ Click on the title of this post to view it!

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!

Transmission is done!

Alright! I managed to get my Saginaw 4 Speed 3 ringer rebuilt! Took a little while, and to be honest the mysteries of the manual transmision are still... a bit of a mystery to me. Actually, it's not really all that complicated in principal- but you've gotta love the engineering that went into something like this. Gears, counter gears, sliding in and over eachother. It's transmission porn, I tell ya.  It took a bit of work to put everything back together, truth be told - there are a LOT of parts. The manual was... to put it lightly, mandatory. 

While I was working at it, I also cleaned up the shifter and aligned it as best I can for now. I'll need to torque down the tailshaft bolts (I don't have the right ones in there right now so there's no point) and make sure it doesn't leak, but it's assembled, and that's what counts.  The shifter and linkages will all need to be replaced, but it works well enough that I'll be able to install the transmission as it is until I can afford a nice HURST shifter for it. Priority now is getting it everything ready so I can install/fabricate mounts and brackets as needed.

Next up: Brakes! I'm planning on ordering a disk kit for the rear end and working out what to do for a master cylinder/pedal/clutch etc...

Lots of stuff done this week!

I finally managed to get the transmission apart and the casings cleaned up and painted. Next week I'll order a rebuild kit and put new bearings and gaskets in it so it's ready to go. Then I'll move on to the shifter, clutch and bell housing so it's all ready to drop into the car in the spring. There's still a lot of work to do, but at least I won't be TOTALLY covered in grease as I'm working on it. Notice the tailshaft housing has not been tapped yet for the shifter - I'll get to that next week and start restoring and mounting the shifter assembly.

In addition to that - Santa (okay, UPS) delivered part of the front end:

Yup! That's a Chassis Engineering bolt - in crossmember. I'll paint it this weekend before I put it in storage for the winter... I'm running out of good weather - and I'm afraid it'll be freezing by the time I get the whole front-end rebuilt, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to drop in the motor yet anyway: I still need to do the clutch, bellhousing, rebuild the transmission, and then I want to give the motor a good cleaning and a fresh coat of paint. Maybe new valve covers, too.


Now I'm waiting on the Mustang II components, and the transmission rebuild kit...

Woah

JPL called me right after I put the order in for the Mustang II front end and gave me an awesome deal that included shipping, sway bar, and the braided brake hoses as well! It'll probably be too cold to start working on the car when it all arrives (we'll see, I love winter and I have an awesome suit) but there's still lots of stuff to do over the winter anyway.

I've just loaded the tranny casing into the back of the truck - heading up to Dad's so I can tap out a stuck side cover bolt. By the time that's done, the tail housing should be here and I can re-assemble the transmission, paint, fill and set it aside.

Once that's done, I'll start on the clutch... so that IF we get a warm-enough spell that I can put the new crossmember on, then I can shave the rest of the firewall, paint the firewall, set the motor & transmission in the car and fabricate the transmission mount as soon as spring is here.

THEN it's on to the rear end (which will get disk brakes, either in kit form or if I'm lucky and I find an LS1 camaro rear brake setup then I'm golden).

We're movin' slowly!