Installed Front Brakes and Filled Differential

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I got started this morning on the front brakes which are a little more of a pain than the rears. The bracket that holds the caliper on doesn’t fit the FFR spindles without some modification. After searching the forums, the consensus is to grind the spindle until the bracket fits. The only interference is with the upper mounting hole on the bracket, but that part of the spindle is super thick. I only needed to remove about 1/16″ of material, so strength is not compromised.

With the Big Brake kit from Levy Racing, there is very little clearance between the wheel and the caliper, so the caliper needs to be biased inboard a bit. The instructions from Gordon are to shim the caliper inboard enough that the outboard pad can just barely be inserted. I ended up using about 0.150″ thick shim to space the mounting bracket inboard which lets me insert the the outboard pad with about 0.012″ of clearance. Even though the gap is greater on the inboard side, this will even out the first time the brakes are applied. Since there are pistons on both sides, the inboard pistons will just extend a little more.

Wheel spacers are used to shim the wheels outboard about 0.090″, but that still only leaves about 0.040″ between the back of the spokes and the face of the caliper.  Since the calipers are rigidly mounted and don’t float like most OEM calipers, this is more than sufficient clearance.

The reason I wanted to get the wheels on now is that I need to measure for the struts. The manual says the chassis ride height should be 4.5″ from the ground to the bottom of the 4″ main tubes. I laid down three 2x4s and then set the chassis down on them.

I did the same thing in the front and then adjusted all four control arms to put the wheels at zero camber.

I put a couple of bolts in the upper and lower mounting brackets and measured for the ride height distance. It’s a little unclear whether the upper end of the shocks should bolt into the upper or lower hole.

I drained the differential in preparation for filling it with new fluid.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that both the fill and drain plugs both included magnets to catch any loose metallic particles floating around in the oil.

My dad brought over this contraption he made to fill transmissions and differentials. It hooks up to a compressed air source and then has a needle valve to control the air pressure in the canister. There is a pickup in the bottom of the canister that connects through a fitting to the tubing on the top. When pressurized, fluid is forced up the tube. The plastic canister can’t take much pressure, so it takes awhile to pump 2.5L of fluid up into the diff.

Flipped Control Arm Fittings

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I was reading back through the instructions to double check our work and noticed that they say to make sure the grease fittings are facing up on the upper control arms. I didn’t double check this earlier because the upper ball joint really defines the orientation of these control arms. Looking more closely at the photos though, it was clear that the upper fittings were installed upside down on the control arms we received. I removed the bolts and flipped the upper fittings. This changes the geometry slightly, but it will definitely make it easier to access the grease fittings for future maintenance.

Front Spindles and IRS

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Jenn got started this afternoon installing the hubs on the front spindles. These only required some light tapping to get them on far enough for the nut to be engaged. Tightening the nut allow the hub to be pulled on the rest of the way.

Jenn’s excited to finally get started on the car after a brutal work schedule over the past six months.

The kids wanted to help, so we had them tighten the axle nuts until they were too tight for them to turn.

Now that Madeline’s an expert, she can supervise Matthew as he tightens the other axle nut. After the kids took them as far as they could, I torqued them to spec.

After wrapping up the front hubs, we moved on to installing the differential. Jenn’s tapping the bushings into the front mounting holes.

Getting the diff in place wasn’t too painful. We stood it on end and used the floor jack to lift it most of the way into position. I then pivoted the diff horizontal while Jenn started the rear bolts.

After installing the front bolts, Jenn torqued everything to spec.

We assembled the toe arms and bolted them in place.

We then bolted in the lower control arms and torqued them to spec.

After inserting the half shafts, we bolted in the upper control arms.

We slipped the rear hubs over the end of the axle and used the axle nut to pull the hub part way onto the shaft. We then aligned the three mounting ears with the various control arms and bolted it in place. We then torqued the axle nut and mounting bolts to spec.

The entire IRS it installed; it looks pretty damn sweet!

Started Work on Suspension

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Jenn and I started work on the suspension this morning. First up is to mount the F panels. These are the Fat Tire F Panels from ffmetal.com. They let you run wider front tires (up to 275 or so) without rubbing when the wheel is turned to the stop. These are basically slid up until the lower bend is at the corner of the lower steel tube and the slid forward until the forward upper end is at the apex of the bend, then clamped in place.

That positions the panel a little bit above the upper support, so we marked and trimmed it to fit.

After laying out the holes on the F panel using a rivet fan, Jenn match drilled it to the chassis.

Since we’re going to be completely disassembling the chassis for finishing, we’re going to hold all aluminum panels on with screws until then.

Afterward, we bolted the upper and lower control arms in place and then attached the spindles.

Jenn had a dinner planned with her friends, so I used that opportunity to run down to the TechShop and modify the rear knuckles. After roughly cutting off the extra ears on the band saw, I mounted them to the bed of one of the milling machines and used an end mill to clean up the cut.

Finally, I used their large disc sander to radius the corner and the scotchbrite wheel to smooth everything out.

I then mounted the hubs to the knuckles. These are ready to mount on the car.

Received Wheels and Continued Masking Engine for Paint

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We received our wheels from Factory Five today. These are the 17″x9″ front and 17″x10.5″ rear Halibrand replica wheels. I pulled them all out to make sure they look good, but didn’t get any pictures of them.

Afterward, I finished masking the block. Other than a final cleaning, this is ready for paint.

I thoroughly cleaned the timing chain cover and started masking it for paint. The process I’ve been using is to use tape around the perimeter of each section with regular masking tape since it sticks better than the blue tape, then using a razor blade to slice to the exact edge. Larger areas are covered with blue tape or aluminum foil. This is pretty time consuming, but it should produce a nice finished product.

Chassis and IRS Knuckle Prep

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I spent some time cleaning up the chassis. Although the workmanship is outstanding, there were a few things I wanted to address:

  • There were a number of sharp corners and edges that I wanted to smooth over so we don’t scrape ourselves working on the car.
  • All of the laser cut brackets had some sharp burrs from the cutting process that I wanted to clean up.
  • There was some weld splatter all over it that I wanted to clean off.
  • There were a number of places where they had ground down part of the weld, but I wanted to make them flush so that the aluminum panels would lie flat.

Here’s an example of some of the cleanup I did. There’s still a bit more to do, but the chassis is already looking much better.

The IRS knuckles have a really sharp parting line from the casting process. I didn’t want to get cut working on the car, so I wanted to remove it. I used a carbide burr in a die grinder to take it down flush to the surrounding material (you can see the difference below between the left and the right side). After grinding it down, I used a scotchbrite roloc disk to smooth out the surface. This took longer than I expected, so I only completed one side.

Received Tires

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There are very few tires that fit the 17″ wheels that Factory Five sells; one of the few are Toyo Proxes R888. We decided on these awhile ago, but I wanted to order them now because we need to get the wheels on the car with the chassis at ride height in order to measure for the shocks we’re ordering.

When I tried to order the tires, almost every place was out of stock (at least for the front tires). TireRack.com showed only one of them in stock, but a quick chat with one of their salesmen showed they actually had two in stock. It turns out that Toyo just discontinued the R888s and I purchased the very last two 255/40ZR17 they had in stock. They only had a handful of the 315/35ZR17 (rear) tires as well.