The fickle motorist who wants a weekend warrior.

Today was b-pillar day. Which meant I had to cut out the rh pillar and finish making the replacement then weld them both in and start making the car more like a car and less like a cheese grater. 
 

So much lead. 

hard to tell from the picture but the layer of lead was over 1/4" thick. 
 

Anyway. New pillars in. 

Then I started doing the inside part so the car is less sharp. 

I wanted to button that all up but then I ran out of cutting wheels and remembered I hadn't eaten all day. 
 

So anyway. Trying to figure out what to do with the front:

Any suggestions?

Tune in next week for an exciting rendition of "how low can we go?" Staring "the suspiciously absent spring compressor", our friend "the grinder" and "poor judgement"

As promised:

That's better. The rear was much easier than the front since no ball joints. There is a little over 2" of bump (at the wheels) in the front before the bump stops hit. Had to make clearance for the front wheels a little. May run spacers. 
 

Dirt nasty lowering kit. 
 

*edit. I hate and love the pickle fork. It is both handy and terrifying. Also I may need to replace the lowers as they were a little looser than I like. I also need to make shorter front sway bar links. And i no longer have access to an alignment rack so I guess I'll learn to do that myself. I think next will be clutch stuff since that needs to happen before I can finish the firewall.
 

Still to do: seat mounting, brakes, electrics, fabricate a clutch pedal, figure out gas pedal, replace rag joint, loop steering lines, mount gas tank, install trunk hinges, build the exhaust, fabricate hood mounts, fabricate radiator mount, install starter, mount alternator, figure out battery placement, decide what to do for bumpers, poly windshield, replace u-joins, tons of patching and welding... lots left and time is running away. 

So while these Monroe-matic shocks don't bottom out (even with 4-5" drop!) they are pretty bad. Is there a good way to source cheapish performance shocks by dimensions and mounting style? Fronts are like this:

and the rear: 

Amazing work so far!  Were you influenced by the Fairmont Futura roofline?

In reply to noddaz :

Funny thing is I almost bought a two door fairmont for this project. I can't say I was influenced by it (our roofline was a byproduct of shortening the car and chopping the roof 3") but it's funny how close we ended up. 

Monroe has a dimensional catalog online. From there you can reverse lookup part numbers for application to shop performance variants.

http://www.monroe.com/downloads/install-instructions-guides/MonroeMountingLengthSpecifications.pdf

I use kyb catalog. Try to interchange to 90s-early 2000s gm trucks. They commonly have bilstein shocks and are in the junkyard. 

Your fronts look s10 2wd. Rear may be adapted from a blazer.

Awesome guys. Thanks. The front do look just like the ones I bottomed out when I dropped my s10 4". Rockauto lists bilsteins for a 79 thunderbird, though they're more than I'd like to spend and they specify stock ride height. Also we're way down on weight and I'm no expert but I think that'll make a pretty big difference. Homework time I guess. 

Bump for chat. 

Following from this morning.  Sorry I missed the live walk-around chat.

In reply to glueguy (Forum Supporter) :

You didn't miss much. It's very much incomplete and there are more than a few problems I don't yet have an answer to. Yet. 
 

I had an hour after work today so I slung the tank and removed the last of the aluminum side molding as well as ground off all the tabs that it mounted onto. And a sliced out a section of c pillar where there was too much lead to work around. I'll have to make a patch for that later. I think we're going to try and run a compression test Saturday just for peace of mind. As long as compression is reasonable we're just going to rush to get the thing running and driving before worrying about head swaps and cams. Not sure what we'll do if the test gives us bad news. Adapt and overcome I suppose. 

Had a little free time tonight. Did some body work. Tied the LH pillar in, made a few patches and burned them in. Patched the c pillar where we chopped it and found lead when I tried to weld it back together. 
Before:

and after:

The good part about using the sheet metal I cut out of the car as patches like this is that the paint is a perfect match. The bad part is after the cutting, grinding, bending and hammering, the paint is trashed. Oh well. Free metal. 

Lunch break update. We don't really have set goals or deadlines (aside from finishing before October) and we don't have plans as to how that will happen. But there are some major things that are easy to identify, such as a firewall. Then we find there is a sort of order of operations which needs followed. You can't build a firewall without knowing what clearance you need for the engine and trans, the driveshaft, shifter, clutch linkage.

Clutch linkage: the trans came with a hydraulic setup which I didn't know how to mount since there is a surprisingly small amount of real estate in front of the drivers footwell. What with the brake booster, wiring and a whee which lives 5" higher in the fender than it used to. 

So then dad says we should just do a mechanical linkage. Well, this car is body on frame, the engine is a smog era low compression lump, the trans cane from a half ton Chevy, this is a truck! No reason not to have old truck style clutch actuation. So I started making a hinge

So this is just some scrap pipe because that's what plumbers have laying around. Flapper disc the paint off of the 1/2 and it slides right into the 3/4. Hinges need lube:

Reclaimed grease fitting from the old u joint. Now it needs levers

And now I kinda know what I'm working with I can start to put it in the car

Also I made door handles which I didn't take pictures of yet, and I finally got around to un-powering our steering

Now I'm gonna go see about making a clutch pedal. Wish me luck  

I worked until the CO2 tank ran out. Got the clutch pedal mount/hinge figured out. Started with the clutch pedal from the truck our transmission came out of. The dude gave us everything. 

except it will not fit in this orientation. So, death wheel. 
Then I found an old piece of 1" tubing I had in the pile and wouldn't you know it? It's just the right size to slide over the bushing on the pedal and make a nice hinge

some more death wheel action and some molten metal later:

That didn't turn out half bad. So I made it part of the car

It was at this point that the welder started to act up. But I got the business end of the pedal tacked on to check placement and now I present, in what may be a world first, a clutch pedal in a 79 thunderbird:

Hopefully my feet can get the hang of driving a Chevy clutch and ford brakes. Might get confusing. 
That's it for today. 

Problems?  No problems here. Only solutions. 

jfryjfry (Forum Supporter) said:

Problems?  No problems here. Only solutions. 

Solutions are usually easy if one is patient. Cars are not complicated. 
There is one big problem though. Time. I have little of it with two toddlers and I'm still working. And it's an hour round trip just to get to the car. And I work SLOW. That clutch pedal and z bar took me 8 hours. Didn't even start on the actual linkage yet, but I think I have enough clevis hinge things to make it work. 

In reply to barefootskater :

Sweet success!

Aaaww  Yeah !        

The "system"

That came out well. Any idea how much the car is going to weigh when it's done?

In reply to Racingsnake :

Somewhere south of 3k I hope. Pretty eager to find out once I can drive it to some scales. It's light right now but from here on it'll only get heavier. 

Today started bad and didn't get any better. #2 got up at 5 and it was my turn to deal with that so I had a very grumpy toddler until #1 woke up at 630 then I had two very grumpy toddlers. Wife took forever to give me the ok to leave then halfway around the block my mom called and asked if I could go pick up a ladder so she can keep painting the walls. So I had to turn around and head back and figure out how to fit the big ladder in my small car. So when I got all that unloaded and actually got to pull the car out of the shop it was 11:30. Half the day wasted. 

So then I started on the firewall. Started with the area around the shifter because the floor is shaped oddly there and I figured if I could square it up a bit the whole thing would go easier. So I did that then continued the same plan at the front on the drivers side. That area is quite tight. Especially since I needed to leave room enough to get the valve covers and headers off in the future.
 

So I'm plugging away in the most awkward positions, in and out and in and out and contort around the shifter and strain under the steering wheel and start building the firewall a small piece at a time because the shape is odd and I need to make sure the clutch linkage can move and that I have somewhere for a loud pedal. I get the worst of it finished and go to weld in the first easy piece and I get no wire. Spool ran dry. So I cleaned up and pushed it back inside and called it a E36 M3ty day. And no pictures because I was too busy trying to get something done. In vain. 

Tomorrow has been commandeered by mrs. bfs. So in an effort to get something done anyway, I ordered harnesses and a sheet of polycarbonate for a windshield. I guess that's progress. Next big expenditures will add power or traction. 

Dusterbd13-michael said:

In reply to Indy-Guy :

If he fills the quarters with lead, he could have the first challenge wheelstander!!!

I was thinking about this comment last night. It may be too early to say anything, but if we make it this year (and make it back) and decide to participate in 2021, (travel budget may prohibit, time will tell)... I have a car and a plan. It won't be a contender and I won't have the budget to make it the car I want it to be, but I can promise the front wheels will come off the ground. I've done it before, and I'm pretty sure I can do it better and cheaper this time around. 

This is a heck of a project, but you make it seem really simplistic (in a good way). Keep up the good work, this is fun to watch!