No work being done, just research

I am not working on the car right now. I've been in Quincy a lot, and just doing some research on future steps.

In particular, I tried to buy some used tires from a guy who was advertising on craigslist. The tires are perfect, at least for the front. They are 235/60R15, which is what most people use, and increasingly difficult to find as most manufacturers don't make many of this particular size. At least one guy uses them on all 4 wheels. These in particular are Coopers and even say "Cobra" on the sidewall. He wants $75 for the set. New, each tire would be more than that. They have about 50 percent of the tread left. At a minimum, I could just use them for the time being while I am doing the build. Anyway, I am waiting to hear back from the guy. Hope I get them.

I HATE grease !!!

I mean I REALLY HATE grease. Today, I decided to install the front rotors and wheel hubs. Here are the parts being used...




The first thing, you do is to install the wheel bearings after packing them with grease. I also had put off actually filling the tie rods and ball joints with grease, so that got added to the list too. I bought some new grease at AutoZone today, because the last stuff I got was not premium stuff, and I had spilled most of it anyway trying to get it loaded into the gun. Well, today I spilled the rest of that as I was taking out the old cannister to replace it with the new. For a while I tried wearing gloves, but that stuff just manages to get everywhere. Mostly on my clothes. (Tomorrow I am going to buy some new shorts that I can wear in public). Eventually, I got the bearings greased, and I think I got enough into the suspension parts previously installed.

Here is a finished picture...


And my reward for a job well done, a Jolly Rancher bombpop from the treat wagon that drove through the neighborhood.


Fortified with frozen goodness, I decided to press on and install the front brakes. It was pretty easy, but kind of surprisingly loose fitting. The brake pads are installed in the calipers and just "float" there. They cannot come off, as the bolts that hold them to the caliper mounting brackets which I installed first are in the way. I checked it online a couple of places and am assured that it is right.

Here is the passenger side (PS) brake on the rotor...


And the driver side (DS)...


Finally, a decent picture showing the DS hub, rotor, and brake...


This finishes Chapter 6. Next up, theoretically, is to run the brake and fuel lines. To do this, however, requires me to make a decision about my engine. The fuel system is different if I choose to use fuel injection (EFI) versus a carburetor--the fuel pump has to be located differently, and there needs to be a special return line from the engine for EFI. Instead, I may work on my wheels, and buy some tires to make what I have a "rolling chasis". We shall see.

Steering rack done

I finished the steering rack today. This turned out to be harder than it should have been. First off, I ordered my kit with Hurricane's power steering option. This is not very popular, but I wanted this car to be easy for anyone to drive. Hurricane, however, drilled the mounting holes in my frame that were 16 inches apart, the right distance for the standard steering rack, but mine needed to be 15 1/2 inches instead. So I had to spend a lot of time using my die grinder to elongate the holes to accomodate my rack. After that, I had to open up the cutaway in the frame for access to the bolt that gets tightened to keep the rack in place. That was a problem because my power rack has a bigger housing to allow for the power steering fluid, piston, etc. I ended up having to cram a file into that hole to be able to tighten it, and even then it broke, just as I was getting it tightened as much as I needed.


The next step was to connect the steering rack to the spindles. This is done with tie rods. As with most builders, I found that my rack was too long, so I had to use my angle grinder and cutoff wheel to lop off about an inch off of each end. Here is one picture showing the tie rods before shortening

Another picture after shortening...

And one with it completely installed...


Next up will be the front rotors and brakes.

Working again

This past weekend, I participated in my first car cruise. It was not Cobras, it was a Model A car club near Champaign, IL. Unfortunately, the weather was awful; so much rain that we could not take the Model A out and many of the roads were closed due to flooding. It was still great fun, as there were 2 owners whose cars were more suited to the bad weather, and 2 others who drove different classic cars from the 40s, one a Ford, the other a DeSoto. I even saw a Cobra driving by us on the way home near Champaign, a beautiful burgundy car with white stripes. Sadly though, the pictures I took with my cell phone cannot easily be moved to my computer thanks to Verizon Wireless' decision to disable the ability of Motorola phones to use the USB port when the phones are part of their network. Bad Verizon!

I came back from my weekend with Sue to find that the socket I was waiting for has come in and I was very anxious to get back to my build. I put the ball joints in my freezer for an hour to get them to shrink up enough to go into the receptacles. Needless to say, that is a tight fit. I ended up not really having to use my torch to heat up the receptacles. And the socket worked great to get them tightened all the way. Here are a couple of pictures showing the upper and lower control arms with the ball joints installed.




Next, I started to install the front spindles where the brakes and wheels will be installed and where the steering system will be connected.


I still need to completely tighten these nuts, as it is pretty difficult to tighten without moving the spindle out of position. Then the final step of this chapter will be to install the front shocks that my mom put together a couple of weeks ago. Then it will be on to the steering system.

Nothing done

I have not done anything on the car the past week. Sue was down here last weekend and I am waiting to receive the special ball joint socket I need from another builder. It should come in by the time I get back from Quincy this weekend. Sue and I are actually going to visit a friend of her's and we are planning on taking a ride into Amish country in his 1932 Ford. I will try to get some pictures.

First Blood

Okay, who had May 28 as the day that I would first injure myself on this project. You are the winner.

Things were going swimmingly. Here are the parts for the front suspension build...

First I bench assembled the upper and lower control arms. Pretty simple. Next I installed them onto the frame. It took the usual bit of filing, deburring, more filing, but they seemed to fit reasonably well. Next I had to torque them to the proper foot/pound specification. Went very well. I am sort of getting the whole hang of things. Until.....

I was only paying 95% attention to the torqueing of the last bolt and the torque wrench, which I was pulling hard towards me, slipped off of the nut and I smacked myself right in the face. Here is the bloody evidence of my stupidity.

Kind of looks like the world's worst fever blister. Actually, it is not that bad, once I cleaned it up.

Anyway, I soldiered on and finished the control arm mountings, and also drilled a couple of holes for studs onto which the car horns will eventually be mounted.


The last steps for this section are to install the ball joints, spindles, and shocks. But this will have to wait until next week as it requires a special rare socket that is shared amongst all of the Hurricane builders. One guy bought it and each subsequent builder just uses it and forwards it on to the next guy. After all that, the next step will be the steering system.

Measure twice, Torque once

I finished installing the rear end onto the frame. Twice actually. You see the first time, I was not particularly careful making sure that the rear end was nicely squared on the frame. I figured it would all just pull together in the end once everything was put in place and tightened. Nope. The right rear hub was significantly sitting outside of where the left rear was, in relation to the centerline of the car. Let's back up a bit.

The first step was to bench assemble the shock absorbers. This was fun and easy. They are nice ones, an upgrade from the standard package that Hurricane threw in for me. They are fully adjustable with a little knob at the bottom to control how soft you want the handling. Here is a picture of the kit and the finished product:



Next, I moved the rear end roughly into position in the frame, jacked it up and connected the two trailing arms and 3rd link which hold the rear end to the frame. The trailing arms control how far back the rear end sits, the 3rd link controls how high or low it sits, and a panhard bar controls how far left and right it sits. The Hurricane uses "heim joints" which are very strong. They also let you finely adjust these by short twists on the brass bars between the heim joints. Here are a couple of pictures: the first is of the heim joint holding the trailing arm, the second the panhard bar.



These are some very thick bolts. They have to be tightened to 120 foot-pounds of torque. Basically, this means you pull as hard as you can until you fart. Or you use a big torque wrench to measure this accurately. Along the way, I found that the spacers put in the mount needed to be ground down a little bit and de-burred. For this I got to use my die grinder to take off about 1/20th of an inch or so. In hindsight, it may not have been too great an idea to mount my vise in the laundry room work area since most of the sparks created by the grinding either shot towards my laundry or my gas water heater. Oh well, no fire this time.

Next I installed the shock absorbers. That went okay too, but did not fix my misalignment problem. In fact it pretty well sealed my fate, that I was going to have to undo all of this work and fix it. The shocks were at about 13 degrees difference in angle and were easily a noticeable flaw even to a naked eye. So off to Harbor Freight to buy a breaker bar, which is a huge wrench used to loosen bolts that are tightened as much as these suspension pieces were.

That chore went fairly well. I loosened one bolt on each of the links and the panhard bar, and the rear end dropped enough to move it by hand to the appropriate spot. In the end, I am within about 1/16th of an inch from the same height and distance from the frame. In other words, the rear end is now spot on. Here are some pictures of it finished.




The next step is to work on the front suspension. Two more shocks to build, and this time I had a little motherly help.