The Mule rides again (sort of) - pics.

[Series8217]

Strange, those deburring tools are quite ubiquitous here. I think I even saw one at the local hardware store. I bought a decent tool on Amazon recently. McMaster carries a few varieties as well, though I don't remember the quality being that great on the ones I have used from them.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I've used them... just don't see them in very many places.

Last night I took a garden sprayer I bought from Home Depot Racing, squirted in some dish liquid and filled it with the hottest water I could find in the house. I jacked up the car and used the sprayer to hose down the underside of the engine compartment. I rinsed it out and then used it to rinse the underside also. That cleaned off the oil, coolant and clutch fluid that was still hanging around from my various issues over the last few months. I then started it and lay under it to see where the oil was coming from.

I thought that the front cam cover hadn't quite sealed up after I replaced the seal after I found that it leaked when I reused the seal when I removed it to re-torque the head studs. Yeah, that was a complex sentence. It looks like it isn't leaking much, but my oil filter is. I remember there being some marring of the surface of the filter adapter. It never gave me problems with the OE style filters, though. I guess the seal was wide and thick enough to make up for the surface irregularity. The PurePower filter uses an o-ring that apparently does NOT make up for the surface irregularity. I'll have to see if I can skim the filter adapter in a mill this weekend to correct that. The angle between the filter mounting surface and the block mounting surface is NOT 90 degrees, however, so that may take a little finagling.

[Series8217]

After I pulled into my driveway this morning, I noticed a drip trail starting in the middle of the road and running right up the driveway to the car. <sigh>
I looked under and the cross-cradle pipe connection to the 17" flex tube is peeing coolant on the ground.
I jacked the car up and put the connection back together. Fortunately, I had enough mixed coolant on hand to fill it back up.

I guess I'll have to order that beading tool sooner rather than later.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Yeah, I know.

Same connection was fine for years with the previous hose...

[The Dark Side of Will]

I tried to install my anti-dive setup today, but ran into a couple of difficulties.

First, I was expecting that there would be enough slop in the lower control arm rear pivots that I could just loosen the bolts in those, and the crossmember would drop enough to install the spacers. This is not the case. If that had been the only problem, I would have just pulled harder and made it work.

However, the right rear vertical crossmember mounting bolt broke. So I had to drop the entire from suspension assembly to have access to it in order to drill it out. I didn't get to that today, so I'll hit it first thing tomorrow.

Also, the caliper bracket to knuckle bolts had worked loose I've NEVER had that happen before. I guess I'll have to break with tradition and loctite these instead of anti-seizing them.

The crossmember bolts are 10x1.5x25 with a 10mm unthreaded pilot on top of that. I'll need an additional ~25mm for the rear bolts and additional ~40mm for the front bolts, so that means 10x1.5x50 rear and 10x1.5x65 front.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Removing the broken bolt did NOT go well...

[Series8217]

Uh-oh. How bad? Time for an 88 crossmember swap?

[The Dark Side of Will]

I tried to drill the bolt. I got started centered, but didn't have a good visual reference for perpendicular. By the time I realized that I should have made a drill guide bushing first, I'd already gotten it started badly. I *might* be able to use a burr in a die grinder to grind away on the thick side of the bolt until it breaks up.

However, the only sure way to do it is to cut a flap in the frame rail and pull the nut plate out to repair on the bench.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Got the bolt removed over the weekend. I had drilled it at an incorrect angle and ended up taking out some of the threads in the nut plate. My dad's friend the welder was able to get to the bolt with a TIG torch and weld a 1/4-20 bolt to it. Since I had drilled away the threads about 1/3 of the way around the bolt, it just unscrewed once the 1/4-20 bolt was welded to it.

I essentially only took the threads off the inside of the hole in the nut plate. We were able to use a drill guide bushing to drill the hole for a helicoil centered and at the correct angle. Helicoiled it and it seems to be doing fine. I had to increase the bolt length to 75mm for the forward bolts and 60mm for the rear bolts. I was only able to find 8.8 and 10.9 bolts locally. The manual calls for 52 ftlbs--quite a bit for 10mm bolts--and specifies to use new bolts every time. I'll order some 12.9's so I don't have to replace them every time.

Now, on to the anti-dive block installation:

IT'S FUCKING AWESOME!!!!

I should have done this YEARS ago. Brake dive is reduced to almost nothing. When I hit the brakes, it FEELS like a supercar for the first time EVER. I haven't been able to hammer the downhill side of the mountain yet, but I'm REALLY looking forward to trying that once the weather warms up.

Pics of the parts:










I slotted the bolt holes slightly in the vertical axis in the LCA rear pivots. The fore aft position was a little bit off, but they went back together with an about average amount of "persuasion" considering that this is still the 84-87 suspension that doesn't go back together cleanly even with stock parts.

The steering shaft coupling did not go all the way onto the steering shaft on the rack, BUT it went on far enough to engage the pinch bolt.

The diagonal braces that go forward fron the cross member to pick up the rear bolts of the lower radiator support needed to have the holes slotted at both ends.

The caliper bracket bolts I had previously tightened to 35 ftlbs (I think) worked loose. I tightened to 83 ftlbs this time. They're 12mm bolts... they can take it.

The upper shock mounts needed a little more effort to get bolted back in than usual. I hadn't realized that lowering the crossmember would put the shock closer to its droop limit. This means that the suspension doesn't have as much droop travel as it did stock. It also means that the shock's bump travel will not be fully exploited. This would actually be a good thing for cars running lowering springs.

The car also sits 1" higher in the front than previously. This will be rectified soon when I install my Street Dreams aluminum 2" lowering knuckles.

It also needs an alignment.

[Series8217]

I'm not familiar with the early Fiero suspension so I don't know what I'm looking at in those photos.. So you spaced the front of the crossmember down about an inch or what?

[The Dark Side of Will]

I rotated the crossmember forward enough to add about an inch between it and the body at the axle centerline.

The UCA has pivots on either side of a tube that's part of the crossmember. A long 12mm bolt goes through both bushings and the tube, similar to the outer end of the '88 rear.

The LCA is more of an italicized A-arm. It has a strictly lateral component going from a pivot below and centered between the UCA inner pivots to the LBJ. The spring perch is pretty much right over this member and it takes ~90% of the spring load in bending.
There's also a semi-longitudinal component that has the damper lower mount in the middle of it. The inner pivot for this component is welded to the body.

I rotated the suspension forward around the LCA rear pivot on the body. I had to slot the bolt holes slightly in order to get the bolts back in, but overall it went together very easily.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Graham tool has me in the next batch of 25 tools. No further incidents of unplanned disconnection.

I have two different lengths of 1.5 to 1.25 coupler... Columbia River had short ones for $10. I need to mock something up to see if I need to weld to the Northstar thermostat housing or if I can attach the coupler to it and weld up the tubes going down to the cradle crossmember.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Been having crazy thoughts about custom fabbed front suspension... playing with the idea of offsetting the spindle centerline forward relative to the kingpin axis like BMW did with the E36 (and maybe E46?) M3's so that I have have a significant caster angle and attendant good self-centering and caster induced camber gain, while keeping the caster trail small for light steering effort and good contact patch feel.

I'm thinking about how to make the spindle fore/aft offset adjustable... but if I do that, I'll need considerable adjustment range in the locations of both upper and lower ball joints in order to be able to adjust the caster to what I'd like it to be.

Interesting.

[The Dark Side of Will]

http://forums.corner-carvers.com/showthread.php?t=47211

[The Dark Side of Will]

Anti-dive is still awesome.

Graham was supposed to have called me back by now...

[ericjon262]

any chance of the anti dive spacers being produced? or the dimensions being made available?

-262

[The Dark Side of Will]

I'm thinking about it... there are a couple of things I'd do differently.. like adding pilots on the spacers to make sure the spherical washers stay centered.

Also, a production "kit" *should* have an updated steering shaft.

[ericjon262]

I'm thinking about it... there are a couple of things I'd do differently.. like adding pilots on the spacers to make sure the spherical washers stay centered.

Also, a production "kit" *should* have an updated steering shaft.

if it's far enough to engage the pinch bolt, that's far enough for me. but there's also the possibility of getting a shaft from another vehicle, GM used these columns all over the place...

[The Dark Side of Will]

http://www.ipsco.org/Custom%20Services/ ... ousing.htm

FelPro Seal # 35710... I'll have to check that out for applicability to the Northstar thermostat.

[The Dark Side of Will]

if it's far enough to engage the pinch bolt, that's far enough for me. but there's also the possibility of getting a shaft from another vehicle, GM used these columns all over the place...

I'll look into that when I have a little more time... Just got laid off, so I'm trying to figure out what's up.