The car looked great this weekend! Sorry I didn’t get the chance to say hi due to the run/work order.
The car looked great this weekend! Sorry I didn’t get the chance to say hi due to the run/work order.
In reply to XenaFordPrincess :
It was just some cold rolled 1020 we had lying around.
In reply to Spoolpigeon :
Shoot. We would have liked to talk to you too. Maybe next time!
In reply to 4Msfam :
I couldn't have said it better than alfadriver. I am no expert in this subject. We just built the bar because we figured it would help. I would just add on that the way I think about it is depending on the angle the bar is at it will change where the cornering load is being transferred to. It can be transferred to the front of the car if it has under steer problems or to the rear if the car isn't putting power down or over steering.
As far as acting different in left or right hand corners I am not sure. We did notice that we would spin the inside wheel more in one direction on the course this weekend than the other but that could have been a lot of other things.
Update from Sunday!
Sunday my codriver and I each went about a tenth faster than on Saturday. We would have had to go about 3 seconds faster to qualify for the CAM challenge though so we were out after the first three runs. I finished 26/35 and Jarrett was 31/35. In the overall index I was 143/173 and Jarrett was 155/173.
Overall it was a great weekend. Our car stayed together and we met our goal of not last!
Here are a couple of on track pictures someone had on Facebook:
We have some in car video as well but I'll have to see how to get that uploaded.
Dang this is awesome.
Having played with shock-tower Fords a little I have to ask, what's your secret for getting the front springs out and not dying? Those things are SO long. The last time I tried to get a pair out my spring compressors slipped off a half dozen times and almost took off my ring finger a week before my wedding.
Beyond that, well done sir. Looks like a handful of "simple" suspension modifications have really made the car work.
In reply to Gunchsta :
We made a tool. It was pretty much a long piece of threaded rod that bolted to the lower shock mount. We disconnected the lower shock mount from the upper A-arm and turned down the nut on the threaded rod until we could drop the upper A-arm. After the A-arm was out, the nut was loosened and the spring came out. The first iteration of the tool had too short of a threaded rod to allow the spring completely decompress. We lengthened it and it worked well. I plan on making an extra deep socket so an impact can be used for the spring compressing instead of a wrench.
I can't find a picture of the whole tool but here it is in the car.
In reply to Jack Heideman :
i bet there's a market for that tool...
AngryCorvair said:In reply to Jack Heideman :
i bet there's a market for that tool...
Yes there is and I’m interested and in Detroit. I need this for my Cougar suspension replacement this winter. Rent it perhaps?
If you can weld, or know someone who can here is the article we followed. We didn't cut up an old shock, instead we just made a piece that bolted up to it out of angle iron.
Well classes have started and I haven't worked on the car much lately, but I have been watching for some used parts. The original bench seat wasn't quite cutting it at Grissom so I was hoping to replace it some sort of race seat. I found a local guy selling these Kirkeys for pretty cheap. They're the 15" size which is a little big for me, but it looks like I can add some more padding to it to make it fit perfect! I'm hoping to cut some weight with these as well.
In reply to Jack Heideman :
i bet the OE front bench with tracks weighs a good 80-90 lbs. the OE buckets in my '65 corvair were 46 lbs each with tracks.
Well I have started down the slippery slope of power adders for the wagon. The 2 barrel is gone!
A while back I bought a $50 Holley 4 barrel for the old 289 I had in the wagon. I just needed a 4 barrel intake. I wanted an aluminum one for the heat dissipation advantages along with taking some weight off the car. Bill Wiswedel helped me out again. He had a 1969 Ford Performance aluminum intake for a 302 sitting around his shop. It has been welded in a couple places but I figured its better than whats on the car now.
Here's some pictures:
The swap went pretty smooth. I expected to find a lot of stuck bolts but to my luck everything came free very easily. As for weights, There was a pretty significant change. The new intake and carb saved 22 pounds!
The 4 barrel sure made the engine sound different. It also seems to pull a little harder at higher RPMs like we would expect, but I won't be sure till its back on the dyno.
Yeah cast iron intake manifolds are no joke. So SO heavy!
Good call on the threaded rod spring compressor, I hate that front suspension for that reason alone. Seems like a fun car, keep up the good work!
Hey Jack, did you catch the new round of pics added to this album?
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155985986133323&type=3
In reply to gumby :
I haven’t. Thanks for sharing!
Dyno Data!
Ive been pretty busy with class recently by my dad was nice enough to take the car to the dyno yesterday and test the 4 barrel. Here's the graph:
The car really picked up at higher rpms!
Any particular reason you have kept the drum brakes? Better braking would really help your times, too.
In reply to maj75 :
My excuse for the brakes has been that the car is so slow I’ve hardly touched the brakes.
But all jokes aside I do plan on upgrading them at some point. As this car gets faster the drums will cause issues
Didn't realize that fender was painted like that. Such a rad ride.
In reply to elhartspeedshop :
Thank you! Nick does really nice work!
Headers Update!
It's really been a slow semester for my project cars but I was able to get a little header work done on the Wagon!
I ordered a set of cheap Ford 302 headers off of Speedway Motors in hopes to get a little more power out of the car.
Although they said they would fit a Falcon the drivers side required some re-routing to fit around the clutch linkage. Fortunately Only one tube had to be rearranged to sneak around the clutch.
Here is a picture of the header cut all apart and mocked in place before finish welding.
And here it is all welded up!
The passenger side would fit in the engine bay but wouldn't quite fit around the transmission mount I build for the car so a notch was added.
The old exhaust matched up very close to the new headers so all that we needed to do was shorten the original exhaust and add a 2.5"-2" adapter to fit to the headers.
The car is scheduled to go to the dyno this Friday. Hopefully we come back with good news!
dang, those floors and rockers are solid!
I took the Falcon to the dyno today to see what the headers had done. We didn't expect much since this is a 1970's truck engine with a cam designed for low-end torque and poorly flowing heads with small valves. In fact, we wondered if we'd see any difference below 4000 RPM or so. As the graph shows, we picked up a little and were pleased that it was pretty much across the whole range.
We struggled a little bit with the dyno and the graphs today. We run on JR Marchand's dyno at Gingerman Racetrack and he recently upgraded the sensors and software. We're getting some goofy noise like the squiggles at the right and also aren't used to the new software yet.
I spent a little more time in the software and got a little better graph:
The red line is with the 2 barrel carb/intake and cast iron exhaust manifolds. The blue line is 4 barrel carb/intake and cast iron exhaust manifolds. The green line is 4 barrel carb/intake and headers. I still don't know what caused the squiggles in the green line--probably just noise with the new sensors.
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