Ok.
Short of buying a bunch of junk for the car, the "progress" part of the build thread has been limited to removing what was left of my tail lights.
Seems my wife, (we'll just call her the "cat") takes a dim view of me spending any part of my weekend working on it.
I consider myself fortunate that she is turning a blind eye to the every other day arrival of yet another box of goodies for said car. I scurry the part off the door step,..or off the end table, and into the pile of boxes that are starting to accumulate down in my garage as soon as I see it when I get home. (It serves the purpose of this story that I be referred to as the "mouse").
My wife has to travel for her job,...but rarely does her travel take her away for a weekend,..typically she's gone during one-two week nights,..every other week or so. Today, however was a different story,..she had to be in her corporate offices in Toronto Monday, so she had to leave early this morning.
So in essence,......The "cat's" away........
THIS MOUSE BE PLAYIN'!!!!
So,...no sooner did her tail lights fade off in the distance,...I backed the Gila Monster out of the garage,..and jacked the rear a mile in the sky,..got out the pressure washer,..and just got filthy.
The plan for today,..was to see if my 17" 315's were gonna fit in the stock wheel wells,..but there was no way in hell I was gonna cut, saw, and grind 35 years worth of crud w/o at least trying to get most off.
The under carriage was for the most part, fairly clean,..the rear end,..trans,..and engine, on the other hand were coated on a layer of caked on grease that my wusskin pressure washer wouldn't touch,..but I wasn't trying to get the rear clean,..I was trying to get the floors clean........ I succeeded.
After I got 10 pounds of Arizona desert off of the underside,... I rolled it back inside and put it back up in the air,..and got to removing the nasty ass 7.5. Once it was out,..I rolled one of my rear tires into mock up position to see if it will fit.
No way in hell.
A minytub-in-dectomy was gonna have to be performed. I gowned up.
That's "Doctor" mouse to you.
When I minitub a car,..I use the stock inner wheel tub, and just cut and section it over however much I need to get a tire to fit. (I figured I needed an inch) At the same time, I wanted to keep the tires as wide apart,..so I also rolled the wheel lip. The process starts with a 4.5" grinder w/ a 1/16" cutoff wheel. I make several start cuts to lay out an out line for the sawzall to follow.
The next thing I did was remove the trunk,..because the weight of the trunk will distort the mount points of the hinge assy if left on.
Then I cut the mount points for the hinge reinforcement, and the package tray.
Once cut away,....I got out the sawzall,.....and connected the dots.
Now,...I've actually skipped a part
After you sucessfully get that sawzall moving along,.you'll get frustrated real fast if you attempt it from above. The upper coil spring mount, the upper shock mount, the axle snubber,..and all of the reinforcement are just beggin' to bend the hell out of the blade. So......You have to cut from underneath,........with all of those hot-assed, little tiny metal shavings flying all over the place,...mostly in your face,..down your shirt,...in your shoe.
The part I skipped, was I forgot to take a pic of the frame rail before I did what was required to make it look like above.
All of those mounts, and brackets that you hacked through are just sittin' there,..staring at you,...daring you to spend another 1-1.5 hours drilling out the spot welds, and cutting and grinding the reinforcements to get it this way. I coulda left the hacked through parts alone ,...and nobody would have known the difference. But It woulda bugged me.
So I drilled out the spots,...cut the remnants,...and ground down the rest to get it clean. I still have to make a cut in the frame rail and install a 3.5" half moon " vertical "tunnel" to allow clearance for the coil over to sit in.
I'll do the out of exhaust tubing.
I mocked the thing up to see how it was gonna fit.
And I put the tire up in there to check my clearance:
The angle on this pic doesn't show it but there is about a half an inch between the sidewall and the wheel lip.
Anyway,...when I get the other wheeltub hacked up I gotta stick both wheels in their place to see how much (if any) I'm gonna have to narrow that SN 95 rear. If I do,..I'll probably install the small bearing 9" ends I've had for years, and get rid of the C clips.
The wheels? What about the wheels?
I got one lousy pic:
And an even lousier one of the tire in place from behind:
So,..it took me the better part of the whole day to clean,..mark,,cut,..grind and then mock up ONE WHEEL,...
Who knows how long it'll be before I get to the other one?
Maybe Wednesday.