Orange71 Winter Projects

Orange71 · 03-21-2010, 09:32:19 PM

It's been a long winter and I've started a few projects on the car. I've just begun to get some of those finished.
I wanted to stiffen up the suspension/chassis a little bit so i did some shopping at PTFB. I bought their front sway bar brace (actually I bought it from a site member), adjustable rear sway bar kit, and their new adjustable pro g-braces.

First to be finished was the front sway bar brace -

Installing it seemed pretty straight forward as it mounts between the frame and sway bar frame bushings. I didn't take a lot of pics of the install but there's a few things that needs to be done to make it fit right. The frame plate will need to be trimed to sit flat on the frame. The plate is a little big and interfers with the frame overlap seams. Also, on mine I had to drill out the holes as they didn't line up exactly right. I didn't like the fact that the brace and swar bar would be held onto the frame with the same bolts. So I welded the brace to the frame once I had it all lined up then bolted the sway bar back on. The kit comes with longer bolts and other hardware.
Looks pretty good with the T/A 1-1/4" sway bar.

krabben1 · 03-21-2010, 09:37:29 PM

Looks good George.

olstyle · 03-21-2010, 09:42:28 PM

Looks good George..................winter is almost over

Orange71 · 03-21-2010, 09:42:48 PM

While I was under the front of the car I noticed that the right side LCA frame mount had a cracked weld and seperated from the frame a bit

:

Many years ago when this was my daily driver, I hit a curb at slow speed (raining, bias ply tires, wheels turned, car went straight). Anyway, it broke the tire, bent the rim and bent the lower ball joint. I'm guessing that's when this started and it took this long to showup. I'm under the car a lot and I never noticed it before now.

It's fixed now:

Orange71 · 03-21-2010, 09:45:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by krabben1

Looks good George.

Thanks Chris!

Quote:

Originally Posted by olstyle

Looks good George..................winter is almost over

Thanks Guy! Almost over and I'm not ready yet...

olstyle · 03-21-2010, 09:48:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orange71

Thanks Chris!

Thanks Guy! Almost over and I'm not ready yet...

Well get busy man

Keizer · 03-21-2010, 10:09:33 PM

That's a beefy addition on that sway bar brace. That control arm mount crack was a good catch. I have seen some guys go through a re-weld everything on the sub frame. I never did this, but wish I would have.

1981zapper · 03-21-2010, 10:43:31 PM

Looking Good!

5spd540 · 03-22-2010, 03:26:10 AM

Very nice.

protour73 · 03-22-2010, 08:15:46 AM

Underneath looks as good as topside, but I would expect that from you George. MORE PICS, MORE PROGRESS!!!!

Orange71 · 03-22-2010, 10:49:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1981zapper

Looking Good!

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1973bigblock4sp

Very nice.

Thanks guys!!

Chevrolaine · 03-22-2010, 11:00:39 AM

Awesome, looks great George!

Orange71 · 03-22-2010, 11:24:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by protour73

Underneath looks as good as topside, but I would expect that from you George. MORE PICS, MORE PROGRESS!!!!

Coming right up Scott!

While waiting for parts I had a few maintenance things to do that turned into projects. One of those was a pesky header gasket leak on the bottom of the center 2 tubes on both side. This has been going on for a while and I needed to figure out why.

You can see here that the leak was pretty bad. Both sides look the same. You can also see the problem. These are Edelbrock's RPM heads with the D shaped ports. The flat machined area under the ports are not wide enough (compared to the top surface) to seal up my Hooker Super Comp 1-3/4" header tubes. The outer ports have more machined surface. I think smaller 1-5/8" headers would have been fine. The gaskets would only seal about 1/16" on the lower tube. They would seal for a while but eventually burn through.

I also found that the header flanges were not very flat. So to fix all this I welded a bead on the lower portion of the center tubes to allow more gasket sealing surface.

Grind that down and reshape it. Then add another weld bead along the top which would then be finished flat. I did this part to all the tubes.

After the final grinding a surface flatening it was time take care of the warped flanges. I cut & seperated the 2 outer tubes from the center tubes...kinda like the old blackjack headers I had years ago!

Here's a finished header next to the unfinished header.

I finished up both headers, cleaned them up and sent them out to be re-coated. Pics of them later.

Keizer · 03-22-2010, 12:43:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orange71

I finished up both headers, cleaned them up and sent them out to be re-coated. Pics of them later.

Good work on the headers George! What color are they going to be? What type of re-coating are you using? I am really disappointed with my ceramic coated Hooker headers. I have really low miles on them, and the ceramic coating is gone in a few spots. I remember Gary talking about how ceramic coating doesn't last in cold weather. When the photographer was here back in December, it was really cold the day he shot the car. He had me start and move the car a dozen different times. So the headers were getting warmed up, and cooled off really quick. That's when I noticed some of the ceramic coating was just gone.

I need to get mine re-coated too.

FRANKP74Z · 03-22-2010, 03:24:40 PM

re-ceramic coated? Who would do that, the Manufacturer? Sounds like a great idea, mine could use it also. Please let me know how? who? where?
Thanks Guys, Frank