they have a guy that does their narrowing and repositioning of the spring perches and what not. but it does look amazing
the axles are superior axles. i don't do the welding or straightening. we have an old school dragster builder that does an amazing job. its not worth my time to try to do what he easily does.
today I had a whole day to work on the car, put it up on the hoist, and got started unbolted the distribution for the rear brake lines got the brackets off got it off the car with bryant's help couldn't put my old housing next to it but this is the new 9" on the right and an 8" for another customer bryant was working on just for comparison tadaaa, here is the 31 spline Strange 9" center section with 4.10 gears painted $45 to get new U-bolts 3 1/8" wide and 7" long and 0.5" diameter the old vent hole was in the wrong position, we put a bolt through it and tapped a new one I also had to cut the tips off the exhaust to make the new larger housing fit here are the tips we used bryant's new cool toy to drill a hole into a pipe here is the new U bolt and the old bracket here I marked with a marker and used a grinder to open up the hole Also ran pattern and looked good to me but bryant thought that we need more pinion shim He ran a new pattern but I didn't take a pic, looked a lot better, the pattern came up close to towards the top of the teeth. We were running behind and bryant went energizer bunny and started doing a thousand things at once, I took so many pics my camera ran out of batteries so here he is putting in a new...I forgot the name of this thing This part took a loooooong time. We kept cutting, grinding, cutting and grinding to make the axle fit. They were cut to fit axles and they did anything but . . . put on the new wilwood disc brake parking brake bracketry Had to use spacers to make the old bracket work put in new studs for the axles pretttttty Got it all done and put it on the ground. The back was sitting lower since the housing was larger. Finished the day with . . .
the 4.10 gears are great. the wilwood breaks after bleeding them are solid and an improvement for sure.
Pretty cool, man! I'm kinda surprised that you did not put in longer lug nut studs. Your race does not require studs that are longer, similar to NHRA? Good job guys on the install! Can't wait to see it in action.
I have been having a vibration problem when driving, don't know what the source is. High pitched vibration that's not very annoying but worse when I take my foot off the gas and no difference if I'm in neutral or in gear.
yes, definitely think longer studs would be a good idea and yes, the spacers are aluminum and probably a little too soft. I'll be changing them next week.
Changing U bolts I hope ? Those are WAY too long. And the spacers are a bad idea for a quick fix. You might be better served changing the spring plates out and replacing them by using a set of Lakewood traction bars that have the spring plates integral with the bars Your vibration problem was probably there before the rear swap, the change to 4.10 gears just magnified it. That's due to the higher rpms the driveshaft is turning now vs what it was before. If you're going to swap the U bolts, try adding a set of pinion shims under the springs and change the pinion angle to see if the vibes go away.
Had to go to the shop, noticed that a bolt on the housing was tearing up my shock on the driver's side. The varishock housing is aluminum and the bolt really shredded that side of it and dented it. The shock looks like it's still working but I may need to send it in and have them inspect it. We put a bolt to cover the extra hole in the housing. The bolt head was interfering with the shock housing. I just cut it down and sanded it down, had enough clearance after. Went to get some steel tubing to remove the aluminum spacers. Yes, baddad is right, not the best option to put those spacers on there. I'll take them down and clearance the spaces later. For now I decided to get steel tubing since the aluminum is just too soft and I didn't trust it. The U-bolts don't need changing, I can take a cut off wheel to the extra threads later on. Look how bad the aluminum spacer got shredded already. Here is the steel ones I put in and they are smaller as well. This is what it looks like now, not great but solid.
You don't even need the steel spacers, now that you've posted better pics. Plenty of thread above the plates. Use grade 8 flat and lock washers under the plates and cut the excess length of the U-bolts off when you're done. Just me, but I'd also put a 1/4" steel spacer between the spring plate and springs to stiffen the stock spring plates, seeing as you're going road racing.
I was wondering why you used spacers as well.. Did you use them so you can use a socket ? I would trim the u bolts and just use grade8 washers... I would think the pipe spacer would collapse over time... Looks really good tho...
Yea, the vibration used to be there when I was in the 80-90mph cruising speed. Now it's just coming on sooner I guess with the higher gears. I'll talk to bry about the pinion angle but I'm wondering about the drive shaft as well.
The spacers were necessary because the folded edges of the plate were too close to the u-bolt to allow the nuts to turn. We will need to get a drive shaft stronger than mo's 6cyl shaft made any way. That will ensure that the balance is good and then we can see if it's a pinion angle problem.
