So I haven't updated in a while, but here's what I have been up to.
I installed my carpet. Basically I left it in the sun on a hot day for a while to get it malleable and get the creases out. This actually took me a while, but it turned out nice. I will need to re wrap the seats or get some form of upgraded seats, as these ones start to hurt my back after an hour or so.
I tried to polish the clear using a buffing wheel, but burnt through almost instantly. I hand polished the car instead. It turned out pretty well, only problem is you can see the imperfections everywhere now!
I cant seem to upload the photos but I ended up gapping and changing the plugs, alternator, regulator, installing an igniter ignition and rebuilt the 2100 carb for now.
And finally let my dad take the car out a few times. I found some issues with the drivers floor pan that I will need to fix before it can be safetied, but I was allowed 15 days of temporary insurance on it so we've been running it a bit. The only issue is for whatever reason until the engine is hot it has a tendency to stall out right as you start getting going. I don't have a timing light yet and will need to do some carb adjustments, but i'm sure I will figure it out eventually. The car is SLOW and kind of scary to drive right now... any slight bump in the road while making a corner throws you all over the place. I've looked up bump steer kits online but they all seem to be for manual cars, not power steering. I'm hoping the alignment is just bad, which led me to start doing the front end work.
I torched my old coils out (thinking of building my own coil spring compressor to install these. But I found something weird on top of the coils. These are cast aluminum spacers that don't seem to properly fit the spring? I'm assuming this is not normal and someone shoved these up there to address sagging coils instead of just changing the coils. That would be par for the course with this car... Regardless; unless someone tells me otherwise I wont reinstall these.
While I had everything out, I decided to fix the sandblaster at work and give them a blast. They're not perfect, but i think I will be just shooting them with epoxy primer and maybe some kind of paint. If anyone has suggestions on what to use besides powdercoat I would be glad to get some advice! I have read extremely mixed reviews about POR15 over blasted parts and for the price of it i'm not sure I want to risk it all flaking off in a year.I will be getting new
lower control arms as I dont really like the idea of changing from rivets to bolts just to save 40 bucks or whatever.
I also made these following the instructions on dazecars. The strut rods were tricky to machine.. I am assuming due to flex. I had to take the final .015" with a file and emery cloth in order to have a workable finish.. But they turned out great. The only thing I did different is the spacers....
Day used pipe to create his spacers, but mentioned they don't fit quite right so I went ahead and made these. First I threw a 5/8 drill through them.
I then bored the first .220" out to .958" to fit on the lip of the clevis. I'm using 3/16 plate so i took into account as well when determining how much to bore.
I parted them at .370" but I did most of this based off memory as i'm at work and don't have the car in front of me to re measure.
Apart from that I did the arning shelby drop and threw the 351 out (took the heads off and it looked like it sat under water for several years. Oh well, I knew it was a gamble. My power steering is leaking really bad, so I think once the
control arms are back on the car I will order the power steering rebuild kit chockostang offers and clean all that up. Right now I just need to order my
suspension parts (going all new moog and AC delco) and get everything painted.
I ended up finding a couple 600 cfm carbs for dirt cheap. The holley came with a stock 302 4V manifold. I'm not sure if I will use it. I'm considering doing a cheap quick "run till fail" build up on the 289 until I can afford to do something nice to it... Thinking about home porting the heads, going to a 4bbl carb, intake manifold and 268h cam and running her till something goes. I also am torn between rebuilding an 8.8 from a scrapper or getting a 9" built from quick performance for the rear end. Anyway, that's all for now. Looks like there's been a lot of threads since I last checked the forum anyway so while i'm saving up more money i have lots of reading to do