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Posted: Thu Apr 18, 13 10:33 pm
by John
Sounds good Paul, :thumbright:

Can you remember what power valve you ended up with and can you remember what vac you had at light cruise?

Posted: Thu Apr 18, 13 10:58 pm
by Pete
Great news!
Not surprised about the front strut - definately race car material there... needs beefing up before you turn in hard...........

Posted: Fri Apr 19, 13 11:17 am
by db
JohnS wrote:Sounds good Paul, :thumbright:

Can you remember what power valve you ended up with and can you remember what vac you had at light cruise?
The pv is a 4.5. Vac i think was about 10 pootling around town.


Thanks Mossy :thumbright:

The struts are a fairly easy fix.
The gears I'll leave for now and see if it gets better or worse. At least I know I can free it easily with a big screwy.

The tyre's the only real problem :P

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 13 11:19 pm
by db
Started on the front struts tonight.

1st pic is the original bearings which were bolted through the chassis bracket with a rubber washer either side. Utter 5hite!
2nd pic- I realised cos of the angles, my new brackets would need to be different lengths.
I've left a section of the original bracket in place as my guide.
3rd pic- Show Your Workings. At the top is the abandoned Plan 'A'. On the right, the unequal bracket templates.
Pic 4. 1st mock-up. Needs a bit of tweaking but you get the general idea.

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 13 12:13 am
by mopar_mark
Can't quite tell from the pics...

In the last picture, with the cardboard tabs, It looks a similar set up to my old front strut setup.

When welding the tabs, I made some equal width spacers, which went either side of the rod end. this allowed me some adjustability.

To be honest, I never had to change, as set up was bang on the money after welding, but I always liked having the ability to have some castor adjustment if needed.


Great work by the way, also love the detailed sketches in your note book too :thumbright:

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 13 9:38 am
by db
See, something I learned in school came in useful!! I always enjoyed Tech Drawing :thumbright:
I have to make accurate drawings otherwise stuff like this just doesn't make sense in my head, I can spot a lot of problems before they become metal!
I'll put spacers in like you suggest. If nothing else, it'll give me more room to weld between the brackets. Ta mate ;)

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 13 1:15 pm
by mopar_mark
db wrote:I'll put spacers in like you suggest. If nothing else, it'll give me more room to weld between the brackets. Ta mate ;)
If you use your digital level, you can establish the set point, mark datum. Then move strut forward 1 degree, mark point. The distance between the 2 marks will give you an idea of spacer size, etc

Posted: Thu May 02, 13 4:59 pm
by db
Gotcha. I like that.

Posted: Thu May 02, 13 9:48 pm
by db
Like this Mark?
I make it exactly 0.3" (it moved slightly as I took the pic)

Posted: Fri May 03, 13 1:33 pm
by autofetish
love this

keep up the posts :thumbright:

Posted: Mon May 06, 13 11:44 pm
by db
I sent the budget rod ends back and upgraded to super dooper ultra mega ones.
Bearing Man supplied the taper rollers and Namrick the nuts & bolts.
So, it was out with my trusty angle grinder and I knocked out the 4 brackets.
I found 2 stacks of washers equal to 0.3", assembled the bits and tacked the brackets into place.
I removed the bolt & rod end out of harms way before fully welding.
The sheet I used to protect everything from grinding debris and weld spatter caught fire at least 10 times :thumbright:
I'm chasing my engineer mate to turn proper spacers, loan me a 5/8" x 20tpi tap to lengthen the thread on the shock rod, and to turn the spring retainer plate to fit the taper bearing.

Posted: Fri May 17, 13 6:48 pm
by db
My mate Kai helped me get it all back together and set the geometry.
I used my wonderful digi spirit level, and made a very simple but very accurate toe-in gauge.

Camber is 0.5 degrees neg.
Toe-in 2mm.
Castor might be a bit much at 7 degrees, the steering's a bit heavy but very stable in a straight line!
I might pull it back to 5 and see what that's like.

I think the shocks are bottoming out so I'll up the preload a bit for now. New dampers & springs are on the long-term shopping list.

Posted: Fri May 17, 13 9:54 pm
by db
Now don't laugh, my Built in 5 minutes for free toe gauge doesn't look like much but it works great!

toe in gauge

Posted: Fri May 17, 13 10:10 pm
by sidewaysjas
Looks good, I made a similar one and it works fine. Okay it doesn't measure down to fractions of a minute but its not F1 stuff.

Jas :thumbright:

Posted: Sat May 18, 13 3:37 pm
by Dave-R
I think 5 degrees on the caster will be plenty enough. ;)