Another build thread? Yep, my track-style T

[Itoldyouso]

Wow, sort of a "Busman's Holiday", huh? Those are incredible. I didn't know they existed or that there were organized events and all.

Very good, and we forgive you for keeping us without updates for the last week or so.

Don

[bluestang67]

Jim the site refreshed that you not only participate but the team has took the heats from the school great job they did .

[J. Robinson]

Although I have been busy with other things, I have managed to spend a little time in between on the roadster. It has taken me a week to do about 3 hours worth of work and I haven't had enough time in front of the computer to put together the story...

Anyway, I left my last installment at the point where I had formed the long tubes for the radius rods. The next step was notching the ends of the tubes and cutting the short little pieces that will become the rubber-bushed eyelets. These short pieces are made of the same tubing as the long tubes; 3/4" inside diameter tubing. I cut them carefully and then grind them, if necessary, to make them as close to the same exact length as possible (in this case 1 3/4").

When the little pieces were ready I welded them to the notched ends of the long tubes being careful to get them centered and perpendicular. One last step before final assembly - I cut straps from 1/8" x 3/4" flat stock, bent them into a "U" shape and welded them around the eyelets on the top tubes. Under hard acceleration, the welds on the bottom tubes are in compression (the rotational force of the rear end is pushing on them), but the welds on the top tubes are in tension (the rotational force of the rear end is trying to pull them apart). The straps ensure that everything stays together.

I said earlier that I would explain the "why" of rubber mounting, so here goes... The front axle is a forged I-beam which is pretty dense, springy material. You can use an I-beam axle with hairpin style radius rods and when the car leans over in a corner, the axle twists slightly. It acts like a sway bar and rebounds to normal when the car straightens up. A tube axle or a rear end housing (which is a big tube) has almost no torsional flexibility. If you use hairpin style radius rods on a tube axle or a rear end, you create a binding problem whenever the car leans in a corner. Something somewhere has to flex. More often than not, it is either the radius rods themselves or the metal of the tube axle or rear end housing immediately adjacent to the radius rod bracket. Eventually, the metal will fatigue and break. There are a couple of solutions to this problem: (1) use a four-bar system or a "wishbone" arrangement which does not bind or (2) use flexible bushings that allow limited movment of the components without damage. Since I wanted traditional looking rear radius rods on this car, I chose to do the latter. I have used this same method I am showing here on various cars for years and it works very nicely.

[J. Robinson]

With all the components fabricated, all that remains now is to do the final assembly and welding.

First I made rubber bushings from 1/2" heater hose. Usually, if you get heavy-duty heater hose, all you have to do is cut it to length and slip it into the eyelets. It is 3/4" OD and fits right into the 3/4" ID eyelets. The ID is 1/2" and the 1/2" bolts I use go (snugly) through the center. This time I was out of heavy duty hose and the regular stuff is only 11/16" OD, so I wrapped a few rounds of vinyl plastic tape around the hose to make it fit. (I will replace it with the correct stuff when I do final assembly.) I had to do this twice... After I wrapped the hose pieces the first time, the bolts wouldn't go through! DUH! I wrapped them too tight! I had to unwrap all four pieces and rewrap them WITH the bolts in place.

OK, I finally bolted the axle plates and tubes together, set everything up with shims as needed, lined everything up with squares, rulers, and measuring tape, and welded everything together. Voila', a finished pair of heavy duty, rubber bushed radius rods.

Now I can mount the rear end to the frame..., but, bad news, I have discovered that my rear end housing is warped! It has been welded on before and is bent badly enough that it's visible with the naked eye! I guess my next installment will be about straightening a bent rear end housing.

The good news is I got my engine and transmission. It's a 2.5L four-banger out of a 1987 Chevy S-10. The trans is only a 4-speed instead of a 5-speed, but the price was definitely right ($0). The exhaust ports on this little jewel are clean and dry; I'm going to clean it up, paint it, and run it as is.

[J. Robinson]

Well, the Electrathon races went well on Saturday. Now I can get back to the roadster a bit more steadily.

I have a couple of questions, though, that maybe some of you can answer. This '87 S-10 engine has TB injection and HEI ignition. I have absolutely no intention of using anything that requires a computer on board, so the TB injection is going to be replaced with a carburetor. My questions deal with the distributor. Can I convert this distributor to work without the computer? Failing that, will the earlier year (points & coil) Chevy 4-cylinder distributors fit on this engine? Or is there a distributor that will fit this engine that is closer to the V-8 HEI that has the coil in the cap and only requires one wire to make it work?

[shawnlee28]

Change the intake or you look pretty crafty,make a adapter plate for a carb and use that intake,the 87 hei should be a regular hei on a trottle body engine,I am not sure,but it should work.The older computer/electronic stuff was originally just used for the fuel injection/emissions and the related components.I am pretty sure it was not untill later that the ignition/distributor went electronic

[Hotrod46]

Jim

I'm not sure, so don't take this as fact, but I think that is the same engine I had in an 84 CJ5. It had a carb and standard HEI. AMC was buying GM engines before Chrysler bought them out.

The carb was a progressive 2 barrel and it had a standard large cap HEI. The kind with the coil in the cap.

If the distributor you have is the large style and has a vacuum advance canister I would say you can change the module over to non computer control and use it. I doubt it has any advance in though as the computer does that on TBI engines. But at least you know that they are available in the salvage yards.

Mike

[Itoldyouso]

Hey James, you are making me look like a slacker here.

Even with the races, you are moving along really well. I think I see this car going to Daytona in November.

I just left the shop, took the day to clean up my mess. Dan is there working on his '29, and is ready to pull the body off to do the final welding. I told him if our cars are held together with Kleco fastners, they are still going to Daytona for sure this year.


Don

[J. Robinson]

Hmmm... Having this roadster ready for Daytona is awfully optomistic. If this thing is driveable by then (November), I will be amazed. That would be the fastest I EVER put a car together.

Regardless, when it gets closer to time, we need to plan a Club Hotrod get-together at Daytona. We tried that this last year, but I had relatives show up and had to leave Daytona before the scheduled meeting time. Maybe this year we can try again and set it a little earlier in the day...

[J. Robinson]

OK, break time is over. Everybody back to work!

In my last build installment, I had discovered that my rear end housing was warped. In the first pic you can see where the old brackets had been welded on and torched off. Also, the straight-edge shows that the housing is bent right at the old welds. Before I can attach the radius rods to the rear end, I have to straighten the housing. There are a couple of ways to go about it.

One solution is to heat the old weld area to stress-relieve it. If it doesn't relax far enough, I could help it along by whacking it with a BIG hammer. The problem with that is I run the risk of bending it too far and having to start over. I could also leave a big dent in the housing that would effectively turn it into junk.

The other option is to do some welding on the opposite side of the tubes to draw them back the other way. That's what I did. I began by grinding off all the old welds and the slag left from torching them off. Then, directly opposite the old welds, I ran some parallel weld beads halfway around the tubes. I checked the bottom side of the tubes with the straight-edge after running each ofthe weld beads. It took five on each tube to draw them back where they need to be. After all the welding was done, I ground them smooth and checked the top side one last time with the straight-edge.

Now I'm ready to attach the radius rods...

[J. Robinson]

I'm baaaaaaaaack! The housing is straight; there is nothing holding me back; it's time to hang the rear end under the chassis.

I began by lifting the body off of the frame and setting it aside (again). The first step to mounting the radius rods is to set the frame on blocks and the rear end on jackstands so that both are level, the rear tires are off the ground slightly, and the rear end is centered and squared under the frame rails. A third jackstand goes under the pinion snout to achieve the proper angle. In this case I have tilted the pinion down at a 3 degree angle. It takes some bumping and nudging things around and re-measuring everything several times to get everything set. Take your time here; if you get the rear end mounted crooked under the frame, the car will "dog track" down the road. Once satisfied with the location of everything, I stuck my big welder's magnets on the rear end to help keep it centered.

Next, using blocks & shims, I set one radius rod in place so that I could determine what was needed for brackets. I cut two pieces of 1/4 x 2 flat stock and put the necessary 3/4" hole through the bottom end. (How do you put a 3/4" hole through something with a little drill press that only holds maximum 1/2" bit? With a 3/4" holesaw, of course!) After cutting and drilling, I bolted and clamped the brackets together and ground them to final shape simultaneously so they would be identical. (I have shown this process a couple of times in previous posts, so I didn't bother this time. )

When the brackets were finished, I bolted one to the front of the "mocked up" radius rod and clamped it to the frame. I used another welder's magnet to square up and hold the rear end bracket assembly to the housing. After checking to make sure nothing had moved, I tack-welded the brackets to the rear end housing and the frame. For the second side, I blocked and shimmed the other radius rod in place, used my measuring tape to duplicate the locations of the brackets on the frame and the rear end housing, and tacked everything in place.

[J. Robinson]

Here are the pics of the brackets tack-welded in place. I can weld the frame brackets permanently in place any time, but the rear end brackets will remain tacked until I fabricate the gusset straps. I need the straps so I can weld all the way around the housing tubes. I already had to straighten this rear end once because of poor welding practices...

OK, it still needs springs, shocks, and the panhard bar or watts link, but with a block of wood between the frame and rear end it rolls on its own 4 wheels. When I got my coupe to this point I rolled it out for pictures, so here it is in the light of day.

[hotroddaddy]

Are you using a stick welder for your tack welds? there is an awful amount of smoke residue around the weld areas.

[J. Robinson]

No. I'm using a Firepower FP 130 MIG with flux-core wire and no gas. It has a slag similar to a stick welder, but not as thick and a lot less spatter.

[hotroddaddy]

Ok , i new you were not using mig, i dont know how you guys enjoy using the fluxcore method, to me it is as bad as using stick, i still prefer mig or tig, i love the cleanliness of those but to each his own, the project is coming along nicely.