Thread: Project $ 3 K Is Underway

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That site you posted Bob is unreal! How they ever got the Hemi and Corvette IRS under it I will never understand. Talk about 10 pounds of something in a 5 pound bag!

What is also surprising is how many various Healeys, MG's ,etc have been modified with many different powertrains. Very cool, thanks for digging that one up.

Don

This reminds me of my '73 Midget which seemed to be valuable as a chrome bumper model but with round rear wheel wells. Well a ton of money went down a hole to bring it back from a car I bought with a small tree growing up through the floor! I tried to go the route of souping up the little engine with a 3/4 cam, popup pistons and a header but while that did pep it up I always wanted to try a rotary engine or a Pinto 1600 cc engine. I met one guy who said he was clocked at over 110 mph on a level road in a Midget that only had improved carbeuration but acceleration on mine was basically able to keep up with traffic even with the mild hopup. The handling was great and it was fun to drive as on country roads in England but a bit low on US Interstates. I eventually got it to about 95% restored but the maintenance was constant and I finally sold it.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by Bob Parmenter

Ah......you guys are pikers! Check this out;
Untitled Document

If you click the back link at the page bottom you'll find photo links to more modified Sprites with rotaries, various other transplants.

I have to admire someone with a deep enough passion to drop a fortune in time and money into that little car. But not for my taste. I like a little room in the engine compartment to keep the nuckle blistering down, and my wife happy. Doing that to any number of cars that are bigger would be more of a pleasure. I guess we all have our passions. When I was a kid my Dad imported Lancias, Alfa's, Feraris, Maseratis, and other exotic used cars from Italy into the US where he sold them. Since my brothers and I were all between our High School years, he'd get us to work on them. I hated taking the radiators out of the Lancias because there was no room for anything under the hood. They were a pain to get under as well! Butttttt... they were a blast to drive and very quick in the low gears!
I remeber test driving one after a little work on a Friday night with my friends, yelling how fast are we going, everything was in metric, and the guages were in Italian, so I'm squinting down looking at the dim speedo guage reading 160 kph when I see a pair of red lights ahead rapidly aproaching(tail lights of a car in front of me) I had to down shift to avoid rearending the guy in front of me, blew a hole in the muffler! Told my oldest brother when I got home, so we did a high school muffler patch, i.e. aluminum foil, wrapped with an aluminum soda can, clamped with bale wire. My Dad never noticed or said anything when we returned the car to his house the following week. Steve.
The car was a 1967 Lancia Zagato. Very cool car.
Sorta like this one but just red.

Awesome, Bob. I'm sure that Sprite is a blast to drive, at least in a straight line. I, too, wonder how they managed to get that Hemi and Corvette suspension under that tiny body. Also I wonder about foot room. Those Hemis are wide and the Sprite cockpit is small even with the original engine. Goes to prove you can swap anything into anything if you have a big enough torch or hammer.
Somehow, however, I think the essence of the "British Sports Car" would be lost in the process. The light, easy and responsive handling of these cars is what distinguishes them from other forms of drivers. In terms of ultimate cornering speed many modern cars can far surpass these models.....it is the balance and feel that I love and want to maintain.
Different strokes.

Just a little update on what we have been up to lately. I've kind of mothballed my '39 Dodge because I want to spend as much time helping Dan get his '29 running as I can. Don and I have started to go through his T bucket again and correct all the little things that needed attention.

We pretty much parked it and threw a cover over it after the broken steering arm fiasco, and he has a new girlfriend, so his interests have shifted slightly. But this week we began working on it again. The car has never been quite right, I think in our hurry to build it in 88 days we simply rushed some things too much and were also mentally and physically burned out and just missed some things.

We think the motor problem is behind us. The new head work seems to be holding fine, so now we just have to put some miles on it and dial it in. The suspension is another matter. The car just didn't handle right, and had a very bad hop in the rear that was getting worse. I took all four of his tires to a friends shop so he could balance them on his super duper balancing machine. He found out one of our brand new wheels was made crooked at the factory. I called Coker and they are issuing a pickup for it and will send us a brand new one. I put the wheels on the car the other night and ran the engine while it was up on jackstands, and one wheel really wobbles.

We also wanted to make sure the whole car was "square" to the frame, so we ran a line down the dead center of the car and started measuring kingpin locations. We found the front axle was out of square about 1/8 of an inch, but we found out the wheelbase on the drivers side was shorter by 9/16ths of an inch from the passenger side. So he and I removed all the radius rods and redid everything and now the wheelbase is exactly the same on both sides and the axles are square to the frame.

We also reset his caster down to 6 degrees. It was too high at about 9. Another thing we did was buy a new set of forged Speedway spindles to replace the modified Chevy ones he had on it. I miked the bearing surfaces, and the outer wheel bearing was 6 thousandths too loose on the spindle, so there was some wiggle in it. I also adjusted the play in his steering box as it was way too loose.

Finally, we modified a stock Corvair forged steering arm and got that painted today. Monday night we plan on reinstalling all the front brakes and maybe taking it for a test spin. I feel pretty confident that we have corrected a lot of sins in the car, and it should handle much better now. I guess that is what we get for rushing to get the car done for Daytona.

Don

Yesterday I did a little more work on Don's T. We are scrapping the entire front brake setup, spindles and all, and are going with some Wilwood front brakes. The GM setup seems to have a little too much weight, so we kind of think by going with a lighter setup we will lose some unsprung weight on each wheel and the car should maybe handle better.

I installed the new spindles and new steering arm and got everything lined up much better than we had done it originally. I also took some of the play out of his steering box, it was pretty sloppy although brand new. I'm not totally sold on these Flaming River boxes yet. For the price they charge and the reputation they have, it just seems like there are some areas that always need adjusting or fiddling with.

While I was doing all of that, Dan was working on his '29. He is now making the rear crossmembers, and the first one he is doing is the one that supports the shocks. He needed to position that one so he can position his panhard bar and remaining crossmembers. He doesn't like the look of the plain round tube crossmember (surprise, surprise ) so he has decided to punch all 3 of them full of holes and sleeve them with 1.25 inch tubing. At least it will give him a chance to play with the Tig and gain some experience with it.

Here are some pictures of how the first crossmember came out.

Don

what did i miss? now youre taking off the gm calibers and rotors ? why? i just bought a set from tp for my bucket . did you get rotor vibration ? please dont tell me i just waisted 415.00? what was the car doing that you didnt like?

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Just a little update on what we have been up to lately. I've kind of mothballed my '39 Dodge because I want to spend as much time helping Dan get his '29 running as I can. Don and I have started to go through his T bucket again and correct all the little things that needed attention.

We pretty much parked it and threw a cover over it after the broken steering arm fiasco, and he has a new girlfriend, so his interests have shifted slightly. But this week we began working on it again. The car has never been quite right, I think in our hurry to build it in 88 days we simply rushed some things too much and were also mentally and physically burned out and just missed some things.

We think the motor problem is behind us. The new head work seems to be holding fine, so now we just have to put some miles on it and dial it in. The suspension is another matter. The car just didn't handle right, and had a very bad hop in the rear that was getting worse. I took all four of his tires to a friends shop so he could balance them on his super duper balancing machine. He found out one of our brand new wheels was made crooked at the factory. I called Coker and they are issuing a pickup for it and will send us a brand new one. I put the wheels on the car the other night and ran the engine while it was up on jackstands, and one wheel really wobbles.

We also wanted to make sure the whole car was "square" to the frame, so we ran a line down the dead center of the car and started measuring kingpin locations. We found the front axle was out of square about 1/8 of an inch, but we found out the wheelbase on the drivers side was shorter by 9/16ths of an inch from the passenger side. So he and I removed all the radius rods and redid everything and now the wheelbase is exactly the same on both sides and the axles are square to the frame.

We also reset his caster down to 6 degrees. It was too high at about 9. Another thing we did was buy a new set of forged Speedway spindles to replace the modified Chevy ones he had on it. I miked the bearing surfaces, and the outer wheel bearing was 6 thousandths too loose on the spindle, so there was some wiggle in it. I also adjusted the play in his steering box as it was way too loose.

Finally, we modified a stock Corvair forged steering arm and got that painted today. Monday night we plan on reinstalling all the front brakes and maybe taking it for a test spin. I feel pretty confident that we have corrected a lot of sins in the car, and it should handle much better now. I guess that is what we get for rushing to get the car done for Daytona.

Don

Don---Am I missing something here? Is coker selling wheels now, or was it a tire with tread shift that they are replacing?---Brian

You know Glenn, I see tons of cars running the GM discs, even T buckets, and the guys seem to be ok with them. For us, they just seemed to be problematic, so we are pulling them off.

What we were getting on his car was death wobble. Without any warning the front would go nuts, to the point of shaking the horn button off of the steering wheel! It didn't do it al the time and no particular thing seemed to trigger it, but we just knew it had to be corrected or he was going to get hurt.

I bought the front end setup off of Ebay. Everything was freshly chrome plated and nice, and the ad said they had just replaced this setup with Wilwoods instead. After we started having problems I miked the spindles and found one was turned about 6 thousandths too much in the area where the outer wheel bearing goes. You could phyically move the bearing around on the spindle slightly.

I had a discussion with Mickey Luria from Total Performance at Daytona and the first question he asked was "you don't have GM brakes on the car, do you?" He went on to say they hear this all the time, especially at about 50-55 mph, where the front starts to shake. He attributed it to too much rotating mass from the heavy GM rotors and the heavy caliper sitting back there.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I found a whole lot of problems with the alignment of the car, and the bent rear rim wasn't helping either, so I have no idea if the front brakes would now be ok because of those areas being corrected.........but we are just not going to take any chances and are going to a lighter Wilwood setup. We won't even give or sell these spindles to anyone because I wonder if the previous guy also had problems which is why HE changed them out. I just know over a addional $ 1000 I am not going to see my Son hurt himself, someone else, or worse. We want to make sure we have eliminated every possible possibility from the equation.

But, like I said, I see cars on forums and all around me using these, so a lot of people must have luck with them.

Don

Brian, yep Coker sells wheels and will even mount and balance them before shipment. We had them shipped seperate from the tires so we could paint the rims fully before mounting them.

The tire is fine, it is evidently that the wheel (Wheel Vintiques) was trued up incorrectly when made. (Friday on the assembly line? )

Don

S19243H--I wouldn't be too concerned. I built and ran a 27T with Volare discs and GM calipers on a tube axle, and it drove and steered like a charm----never had a problem in many thousand miles.---Brian

I agree with Brian, I think we just had a whole bunch of little issues adding up to one big problem.

Don

ive already ordered them so ill take my chance ill have them turned before they even go on the car.thanks don

I read a recommendation somewhere about balancing the GM rotors and wheels together as a unit. Seems that some of the rotors currently on the market are WAY out of balance. My guess is they're Chinese imports. Probably doesn't effect a heavy sedan too much, but plays heck with a light T.

The old spin balancers that spun the tire on the car are getting hard to find. I guess you would have to rig something up on modern balancing machine to do this.

I also read that the SoCal Speed Shop won't let a car go without a steering dampener, just to be on the safe side. Of course they also sell dampeners!

BTW I think your son will like the TIG after he gets used to it.

Mike

I believe the front end shake problem was probably the excessive caster. When I took my coupe to the local Jiffy-Mart for gas the first time, the front end would start shaking uncontrollably at about 30 mph. The only way it could be stopped was by coming to almost a complete stop. As soon as I got it home, I started twisting more and more toe-in into it to get it to quit shaking because I was trying to make it to my first cruise-in the following afternoon.

While I was at the cruise-in, a friend of mine told me he would bet it was way too much caster and advised me to check it and set it at 5 degrees. When I finally got to it a few days later, it measured 11 degrees. I checked the toe in and, in my effort to get it to stop shaking, I had put 1 1/4 inch toe-in into it! I adjusted the radius rod ends to get the prescribed 5 degrees and then reset the toe to 1/8 inch in and have never had another problem. I have '75 AMC Hornet disc brakes on my coupe. These are the same Bendix calipers that are used on late '70's Ford pickups, so they ain't light.

The Wilwood brakes are prettier and lighter and I'm sure Don Jr. will like them, but my point is, I wouldn't hesitate to sell those other parts to someone else. Just be up front about your experience with them and let the buyer beware...