This pinion is too berked to save even with a die. I'm ready to cut my losses and pursue a different path of extreme measures or save that motivation and effort for a different project and live with the smog era gearing. Sometimes I hate myself for ruining this truck so much but that's also where this truck derives most of it's charm from.
Come on, man. You have turbo gearing. Context matters. Dig it.
Are both the major and minor diameters oversized? If so, a machine shop could turn it down to the correct major diameter and cut new threads for you. It might not leave a perfect thread profile, but if I was in your shoes, I think I'd machine it and see what it looked like with new threads. The cost of that should be easier to stomach than living with sub-optimal gearing. If the minor diameter is already in spec or under, you might be screwed.
Well I really borked the threads too, I got a nut to start on the threads and then impacted that nut to try and clean up the threads. That did not work. I have a 5/8-18 die and locknuts on order, I need to figure out how to chuck it up in the lathe at the new office.
I swapped the hydroboost out with one I bought off of ebay. No leaks yet, fingers crossed. I also installed a clutch pedal stop which I desperately needed. I took it for a jog around the neighborhood, the truck is so much easier to drive with those two simple changes. I need to finish the fender rolling on the driver's side, fix the fuel gauge and give this thing an alignment. It should be good for a bit then, the new shifter and LS3 can wait until it's brutal hot outside and I don't want to drive truck anywhere.
Finally found some free time to get the pinion gear chucked up on the lathe at work. Turned down the diameter to 5/8" and cleaned up the lead in so I could get the die started clean.
I also chucked a junk head up on the mill to see if I could easily deck a LS head with the 2" face mill we have in the shop at work. Great success!
I had a nice long write up typed up and then I clicked the back button on my mouse on accident. Berk. So here it goes again.
I've been driving the truck more since my team got shuffled around to a new office. Our group is growing very fast and we outgrew the space we were allocated in the shiny new building that is less than 2 years old. So we are renting space from our old facility back and have more space, more tools and less bureaucracy out at the new old new space.
The new office is 4 minutes from my house so driving a truck with no AC in the Southern Heat isn't too terrible. Though I have noticed a couple things that need to be improved upon, the truck needs a cupholder stat and then a parking brake whenever I get to it. Other than that it's a decent little street truck.
I acquired a tall stack of wheels with trashed Hoosiers on them from fellow GRMer Will a few weeks back. These will require aggressive flares be added to the truck in some manner. But that can wait until the truck become severely traction limited again. It's pretty manageable right now with 2.59 gears and a calm 4.8L engine. I imagine that 3.54 gears and either a corn fed NA LS3 or a turbo 4.8 would make it fairly sketchy again. The former of those options is probably what is going to happen, the latter is something for a different chassis I think.
Big Ol' Fatties aka 315/35/17
I started setting up the gear set this weekend after waiting on an extra set of pinion bearings for a bit. First stab at it, still a couple more adjustments to be made but in the ballpark.
I'm not normally much of a car show guy but they had an employee car show at the main office today and there was free lunch so what the hell.
I had to pop the hood just to show off that it wasn't just a dinged up truck with E36 M3 paint. Turns out the truck was pretty popular. I was pretty surprised myself but I'll take it.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Well deserved
Pretty loose definition of "late model"! I like their thinking.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
Very loose definitions for sure.
Not a truck update but adding this for future challenge build reference. I found a bunch of sheets of steel in the dumpster at work today that at one time were a large metal desk or work bench. Most of these sheets are .058" but there's a couple sheets of .041" and .115" steel as well.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
$0.00 if the dumpster is not behind a locked gate.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
It's locked after business hours so probably will have to add it at scrap value to a challenge build. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Either way it was free to me.
I drove the truck to work the other day and came out to this. Luckily I parked pretty far in the back and no one was behind me but 3rd does not make a good parking brake. Parking brake install gained a lot of priority on the to do list.
Rear suspension removal in process. I have a growing hatred for U-joints and their stupid, tiny little bolts that are always rusty for no god damn reason the more I wrench on this monstrosity. 3.54 rear gear going in whenever I have time to lay up underneath this thing again, work has been crazy busy lately.
These suspension parts need cleaning, maybe paint and definitely new bushings.
Finally addressing the hood latch. The factory latch has proven to be sufficient at speed but the manner in which the front corners of the hood dance around at highway speed does not inspire confidence. Aerolatches to the rescue.
I had to spin down the swaged end on the lathe at work so I could add some more threads to get the pins at the right height.
Started thinking about more stuff today after staring at the hood for a couple hours today. I have to splice this up into a few pieces to send to the printers. I have a few other ideas along this line but this was the simplest of them to whip up in CAD.
Here's a learning opportunity. When you do ridiculous suspension swaps with old junk replace the bushings first so your 30 year old worn out bushings don't cause you issues with maintenance later on.
It appears that the old bushings that were in the rear suspension components when I initially built this monstrosity allowed for much more movement and slop than the new poly bushings. Trying to force the lower control arm into place is a possibility but I'm afraid that will cause binding. Loosen everything up and slowly tighten down is another option but again, binding is a concern. I may fab up a new 4 link chassis pickup that allows for adjustability and in the future I may make some adjustable 4 link rods.
One step forward and two steps back.
Our c4 bound up when we went poly. Initially. It loosened up after a half a season, but we eventually went heim joints and swedged tubes for the four link rods. Noisy as hell, but cured some wheelhop issues.
Dusterbd13-michael said:Our c4 bound up when we went poly. Initially. It loosened up after a half a season, but we eventually went heim joints and swedged tubes for the four link rods. Noisy as hell, but cured some wheelhop issues.
Well now I'm not sure if this is a GM designed these a little tight issue or I was using old bushings and TIG welding on my back half drunk issue. Probably more of the latter.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
I agree that it's probably more of the latter. Should have been fully drunk.
Try raising the knuckle to ride height. The trailing arms aren't quite parallel or equal length, so the knuckle rotates a bit with up and down travel. It will probably go together mid-travel.
Loosened everything up and pieced it together in a different order. Voila.
Whew! I was one more minor inconvenience away from pulling the bed off, ordering a tube bender and searching marketplace for Ford 8.8 IRS diffs.
I made a couple changes to the truck upon reassembly. First when I reassembled the rear end I maxed out the rear camber adjustment. The camber measures at -2.3* at ride height. A little aggressive but I figured it was worth messing around with. Even with the new gear ratio I can't get it to step out by just lead footing it around a street corner, I have to kick the clutch pretty good to upset it. Good info for whenever I decide to actually take this thing to an autocross.
Second change I made was replacing the 7/8" bore clutch master with a 3/4" clutch master. With the 7/8" master I had about 1.5" of throw and north of 60lbs pedal force. Couple that with a 6 puck semi metallic clutch disk and a Spec stage 2 pressure plate and it was an unslippable on/off switch. With the new master the throw is increased but the pedal force is greatly reduced. It's like driving a normal car now. I still need to adjust the pedal stop and maybe even my linkage length. The clutch grabs really low and I had a slight smell of clutch material when I got home today.
I need to get back to working on my shifter relocation again. This new gear ratio makes first almost useless and second is very short now. I'm shifting a lot more but it feels a lot faster when I stab it.
What was your ratio in the rear before? Pumped to hear you got it all back together without having to completely redesign!
In reply to classicJackets (FS) :
It was a 2.59 gear now it has a 3.54 gear. I need springs and a better cam in this little 4.8 because 6500rpm comes up real fast in the first 3 gears now.
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