Here we go again, "key rock ballad". After working 2 years straight in camp with only a mere 5 days off of a month I went back to school and had some home time. Then I spent a LOT of time at the track, as a spectator only missing one race night throughout the whole summer. There I got to know the guys at the track a bit better, watched a friend win a championship and from a little "curious" comment on a page group I came upon owning a 1987 Thunderbird street stock car, or whats left of one.
Now it did come with a 1984ish parts car which I dont have photos of but the first task before the neighbours calling me in for junk in the driveway was. Get the parts car nose on it!
Now this build thread will go into a fair amount of detail regarding what I'm planning to build, how I build it, and hopefully will get a following of like-minded circle trackers I can bounce questions off of. At the end of the day though this blog is basically for my enjoyment, its a way of documenting a build for potentially new team members to come in and see what brought the car to this point.
Now currently the photos above were shared via facebook, its not ideal. Hopefully in the next few days I'll decide on what photo sharing site I want to proceed on and I'll get into more details. I've got more detailed photos of the car in its original state, we've gone through built a rear cage, and fuel cell bracket, the front frame is now tied into the main cage, and we've started on the door crash sliders and are starting to move into installing some home-built weight jacks. So there is a lot of content to get through and thats not even including the engine build
Thanks for reading
Davey
As arrived the car was built for the track I going to be racing at however, it hasnt raced in about 12-15 years and then there may have been a slightly different racing class as now. The car appears to have a pre-bent weld in cage kit. It had the RF strut tower modified and leaned right over. The springs were spaced out to generate the corner weights desired. it was in rough shape, some of the welds were a bit questionable but in all, the car was fairly straight.
Work first started in the rear, tying the rear end of the rear subframe into the cage and hanging a fuel cell mount as well. The was all done with scrap 1.75" DOM from the prior owner as well as a bit of new stuff.
Next step was tying the front frame rails into the main cage. This took a lot of trimming and testing to get the tubing to fit and be tight to the strut tower
Then I built a set of weight jack bolts from 1" grade 8 ready rod, and a 1/2 drive socket.
Congrats on your new addition! With a name like Davey, are you going to paint it like a Texaco Havoline tribute car? I know, I know, I'm getting ahead of things. As a long-time oval-tracker, I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.
In reply to J.A. Ackley :
the initial plan was a throwback to davey allisons talladega scheme. However it's been done several times at the local track and #28 isn't available. The current plan is to do the Rusty Wallace "midnight" scheme which might be twisted into a 92ish Davey scheme with a red number in the future. Plans are to have it #12 for now.
Winter is here, we were welcomed with a fair amount of snow overnight followed by the first few double digit negative days but work didnt stop. The goal is to get the chassis done by the end of december so we can build the engine in the shop once the real cold hits.
first thing was adding the corners brace and re-doing a few shotty welds in the door bracing done by the previous builder. and next was bringing the drivers door up to current rule requirements with a 18g sheet of plate across the bars
Now at this point Im mostly starting to guess what is necessary dor door body protection, and the slider bar support. currently Im running a 1x2x.120 wall rectangle tubing for the slider and its mounted to the cage with 1x1/4" flat stock. The flat stock is only about 2.5" long so even just three provide some decent rigidity to the bar but Im hoping is enough. I will likely add some bracing out into the fender area to keep the ends from folding in to easily.
I did manage to pull the fenders out from factory location about 1.5-2" for additional tire clearance. Now the passenger side was a bit more involved as the cage was actually damaged on this side, requiring a bar to be replaced as well as the cage doesnt move into the door jam like the driver side making the span from cage to door slider much greater (approximately 10") now on this side I used 3/4x3/4x.065 square tubing for the braces, I am going to add a triangular brace as well as some on the ends.
This is as far as I've gotten on the car to date, Im in camp again for the next couple weeks but the next plan is to add a lower rocker bar mounted im going to guess approximately 8-10" below the door slider that is tied into the subframe and the slider. This is just increased side protection and rigidity as well as to ensure someone doesnt get into the door and somehow squeeze under the rocker and roll the car over. I might be over building this thing, might be under building. Its my first go around building a stock car. Karts and autocross are my background so building something to rub doors with is a bit new
The other thing thats next on the plate is the weight jacks. The rears appear to be a bit straight forward but the fronts I havent 100% decided how to mount the jack-bolt nut yet to the frame. I can hardly find any information on front jack-bolts on a fox-chassis asside from some incredibly zoomed up photos that dont show anything. But I can either weld them onto the side of the frame rail, about 1.5" outward of the original spring bucket. Or drill a large hole through the frame above the original spring bucket and somehow squeeze, and weld the nut into the frame. If anyone has any experience or knows anything about these in a fox either thunderbird or mustang please give me some input
thanks
-davey
I finally got around to cutting out the headlight buckets.
And tacked in the new front inner bumper.
Door bars welded into the rocker guard. These are super rigid, they are not entirely welded in, and still missing a triagularization which Im trying to decide where to put it. over all Im super happy with how they turned out
The big job we got completed this week was the Jack bolts are installed (mostly). This was probably one of the biggest pieces to get the car competitive with the current rule book up here in northern BC. The rears went in so fast, turned out the washers were the perfect size to fit down into the spring bucket hole. welded them in solid, perfect.
The fronts were a bit more complicated, took some redneckgeneering and kind of guessing where and what angle would be best but they are welded in solid, I do plan on adding some gussets though to add some rigidity. Its pretty cool being able to fully unload a spring with the strut still on the car too, I really look forward to playing with wheel weights once the car is trackside. Now on the left front I had an issue I've never had to this degree before. Hand threading the rod into the bushing, just as it was coming into contact with the spring it got tight. so I took the 1/2 ratchet and gave it about a half turn more, immediately seized, cant turn tighter, cant turn looser. completely buggered so that corner does have to be cut off and a new jack bolt made and everything installed
The left front was also our first run in with rust repair. The whole frame rail over the K-member was rotted out on the outboard side. nothing a piece of 1/8" plate cant fix. Once we trim the strut towers off and build a new tower to I'll probably look into re-enforcing both sides and the top better.
Next time Im home hopefully weather permitting I'll get my little pickup into town to get a sheet of 20-22g steel for the doors. We got a huge dump of 80cm +/- snow dump within a week just before I got home last week and my little 2wd pickup just doesnt do to well in that. The plan is next week to build the door skins, trim out the rear quarters, and front fenders and get the body all tied in as well as hopefully maybe I'll get the supplies to re-do that one jack bolt and build the new tube strut towers.
thanks
davey
Looks like a lot of fun. Stay warm!
