Sound Proofing

Over the weekend I finished welding the new brackets to the front frame and stripped the frame down for primer and paint.

I want to paint the inside of it with something like Lizard Skin and found it is only latex paint with micro spheres mixed in. This will help with sound deadening. The first step in this process is to calk all the vertical frame members. i used 3M 5200 marine calk. this is really great stuff, sticks to anything and is paintable. the difference in sound when knocking on the side panels was amazing.

Steering

I bought a Triumph Spitfire rack on e-bay. This turned out to be a good choice as it was dead simple to shorten. I removed 6.25" from the right end of the rack and 3" from the housing. the housing is smaller in dia. which allows it to mount lower and further back.

The result of all this is that the tie rods are much straighter than with the Chevette rack. with it mounted lower it puts the outer tie rod ends at the height they need to be to correct bump steer. Ackermann looks great too.

today i found that the rack bushing wouldn't fit into the cut off end of the rack. i had to bore out the rack to fit the bushing.

FRONT SUSPENSION

Today i started the revision of the front end. First the existing front end. The upper arm slants the wrong way and gives positive camber with body roll. the tie rod end is too low and causes bump steer.

The solution is to lower the upper arm brackets. The new brackets will also be located more to the rear giving more caster.

The pic doesn't show this very well but caster is improved. With this setup I now get negative camber as the wheel moves up as well as when the wheel is turned into a curve.
i'll try to get better pic's of the caster change.

Here is a pic of the front end with both sides modified. Since i removed the upper a-arm bracket i now don't have an upper attachment for the SS front support bracket. I saw on the JZRUSA site a pic of a different way to do that and i copied the idea. The tubes now connect to the new a-arm pivots and down to the engine mount.

The next issue is that with the upper a-arm moved to the rear the shock no longer fits in the upper bracket. i cut off the rear leg and made a new part to fix that issue. this all may look complicated to do but it took one morning to complete each side. it took many, many hours of study, drawing and working with the Wishbone program to sort out just what to do. sure hope i got it right.

where does it go?

Yesterday I went through all the stuff that came with the car. It is like a puzzle figuring out what the previous guy was doing. I found out where the electrical parts go as well as most of the brake plumbing and fuel pump. In the the lower corner left side of the dashboard is a brake proportion valve and a brake lock knob. This will act as a parking brake. you push the brake pedal then push the knob and the rear brake will stay applied.

I did a trial fit of the dashboard instruments.

The output from the tranny has a boot on it with the bike so i made an alum. flange that will bolt to the firewall and seal off the driveshaft from the cockpit.

Transmission Repair

the legs that hold the clutch release arm were broken. i machined a piece of alum. to fit the case to fix it. worked great.

next was to fit the gear shift lever.

now for the steering column and dash board.

i'll have to order the bits for the intermediate steering column. plan to use polished SS since those are so visible.