Project Poncho: Daily Driven Muscle Car

In reply to budget_bandit :

Trunk looks great, and you're building a post-apocalypse skill set. I dig the Pontiac rally wheels, I hope they stick around.

budget_bandit said:

 Looks like hot garbage.

Nonsense. Looks Great. Take a break, and get back to it.

Keep after it!  Skills are built over time with experience.  You got this.  

"The vision for this car is to build a daily driver in the spirit of the "General Mayhem" charger. Ratty, but mechanically sound."

Nice to see that you've abandon that vision. Figure that a wire wheeled and undercoated sub-frame is just about as far away from General Mayhem/Road Kill as you can get. The most recent episode featured the Lads re-doing the floor in a rusted out Mustang, no sectioning metal segments and welding involved. Just smash super thin hardware store sheet metal pieces down against the original rotted floor and screw it down in place.

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

If I had 4 of them I might keep them, but the car only came with 1 of them, 1 wheel that i think is from an s-10 blazer, and 2 steel spare tire wheels. I got a set of 4 old school alunimum 15x7s for it

In reply to MuSTANK :

I forget who, but someone earlier in the thread mentioned another version of the mayhem, after Chris Birdsong fixed it all up after the removal of all the hellcat stuff. He put all new clean sheet metal in it, properly welded, and even fabricated some subframe connectors. Undercoating (really just Chassis Saver paint) isn't too much of a departure from that i figure...

Makes sense. I'm in a similar situation with my '65 Mustang base-line coupe. Started out as a quick fix just to get it on the road, now much more involved than I ever would have thought . . . I lose and regain interested in the car every third week.

budget_bandit said:

In reply to MuSTANK :

I forget who, but someone earlier in the thread mentioned another version of the mayhem, after Chris Birdsong fixed it all up after the removal of all the hellcat stuff. He put all new clean sheet metal in it, properly welded, and even fabricated some subframe connectors. Undercoating (really just Chassis Saver paint) isn't too much of a departure from that i figure...

I believe that was me. I know of the Mustang that was mentioned too, but you have to remember the difference is Freiberger wanted to KEEP General Mayhem, that Rustang just had to last 1 episode. 

One thing that i've noticed, after spending so much time crawling in/out/around the trunk, is that the rear leaf springs on the car are totally junk. With no gas tank, interior, or rear glass, the springs have sagged so much that the rear spring eye is touching the frame rail. So that will have to be addressed.

I've found cheapy stock replacement type leaf springs for about $125 each, but they come from some no-name website and are presumably not high quality. Also, my 97 pickup has rear leaves...kinda makes me want to not have leaves on this car.

I think fabricating a basic 3-link would not be that hard, or even a torque arm suspension (like my 3rd gen trans am has) if packaging the upper link is problematic without cutting the floor out of the car. Can anyone say scope creep? Probably the "right" answer is just buy the new leaves and move on.

I would probably install a 4 link. There are quite a few kits available for the 69-74 X-body cars.

Your existing springs may be repairable through re-arching.  See if there's someone local to you that you could ask about having that done.  Maybe a year or two after getting the car back on the road, a torque arm or similar suspension change would be doable, and for now you keep your costs down and the project keeps moving.

In reply to Recon1342 :

surely those are out of budget...total cost (including the welder i bought) is $6000

In reply to budget_bandit :

What's your overall budget goal?

Re-arching the springs is a good stop-gap to get you running and driving, but if you want a different rear suspension, it's going to require some cash. 

In reply to Recon1342 :

Total budget expenditure must be $5900(amount i made selling my harley)+(whatever i can make doing odd jobs/selling parts off the car). That budget includes the purchase price of the car, all tools purchased, etc., and is the only way I was able to get my wife onboard with this deal. I anticipate final expenditures to be around $6500. I have a detailed spreadsheet keeping track of costs, and right now I'm on track to make that work.

So, $1500+ on a 4-link kit is not in scope. But, i budgeted a few hundred dollars for rear suspension parts, so my thoughts were instead of buying new leaf springs, i could get some tubing and fabricate the parts myself for comparable outlay to new springs. perhaps a little more after a cheap set of coil springs...

In reply to budget_bandit :

Gotcha. In that case, I'd just keep running leafs. Maybe put in sliders instead of shackles...

As a die-hard leaf spring guy, my recommendation to you would be to measure your current spring pack, particularly the distance of the main leaf between the spring eyes. Go to the junkyard find a leaf spring pack from a modern SUV or truck or van with a similar length. Preferably one that you can cut the spring eyes off of and still have the main leaves support the entire main Leaf of your pack. Then mix and match the leaves of both packs to build a pack of the desired height and rate. Use a slider on the rear instead of a shackle and make the front segment as parallel with the ground as you can for as limited roll steer as possible. Then Rock the berkeley out of it.

As a follow-up, this is exactly what I did for my Duster. Using a Durango leaf spring pack, customized front hangers, specs adjustable shocks, sliders, and lowering blocks to fine-tune the ride height. I adjusted ride quality a bit as well by clamping the pack in various places

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

can you clarify the part about the spring eyes? you're saying to cut the eyes off the junkyard pack and just add those leaves into my original spring pack?

In reply to budget_bandit :

Pretty much. Use the original main leaf to keep axle location and spring eye location. Then mix and match from junkyard pack to desired outcome  

You can use a cut down main leaf from the donor pack (cut off eyes) clamped upside down on your main leaf to flatten and lower the pack, or as a a booster spring to raise height if oriented properly. The shorter leaves add more rate than the longer ones. 

I had hoped to soften the front springs of a 10 lug Superduty chassis I have - beam axle.  Only has two leafs / side. 
looked at them closer recently... front eye is on one spring; rear eye is on other! 

This is gonna be a wee bit harder than I thought!

i think Ray Charles welded this subframe together

In reply to budget_bandit :

Prior accident damage badly repaired?

In reply to MuSTANK :

I don't think so. I don't see signs of metal deformation, and these cars are apparently known for having some poor subframe welds. Some folks grind off and re-weld the whole thing

In reply to budget_bandit :

Are they poor, or just not pretty? 

Looks like it's lasted 50 years just fine