Because Roadkill, -or- I bought an old ugly domestic car

[Hickey]

You need to fix that issue. It's un-American.

 

[TurboMinivan]

You need to fix that issue. It's un-American.

You are exactly correct... so I did.

I've been wanting to install a c-clip eliminator ever since I installed the Ford 8.8 axle. I finally acquired the Strange Engineering kit, which also includes an upgrade to 31-spline axles from my stock 28-spline shafts. That means I'll need to swap in a new carrier, so I picked up a Detroit TrueTrac unit with a helical-geared limited slip. Finally, some two-tire hoonage is in my near future! To cap it all off, why not toss in a gearing change? I found someone selling a take-out 3.55 ring & pinion for pocket change, so I'll ditch my 3.08 setup at the same time.

The last week of July, my friend Mike and I tore into the axle in his driveway. That evening, we only had time to remove all the stock hardware until the sun set and it began to rain. (Sorry--no photos that day.) Tuesday afternoon was round two, wherein I began by using a hacksaw to cut off the protruding ends of the axle tubes. It wasn't until the passenger one was completely off and the driver one was 3/4 removed that Mike told me to step aside so he could finish the job with his cutoff wheel.

I had insisted on using the hacksaw because I thought the added precision was desirable. Turns out it didn't matter. After both cuts were complete, Mike used a grinding wheel to smooth off the end of each tube and they both looked fantastic. Oh, well.

Next, axle prep. Strange Engineering "graciously" allows us to press a few things onto each axle shaft, which complicates the install if you don't have a shop press. Lucky for us--and the reason I wasn't doing this operation at home--a couple days ago Mike was given a shop press. We immediately schlepped it to his house in my Suburban, knowing it would be used for this job. However, he was only given the press itself. All those other little tools and pieces that come in handy to help you actually press pieces together? We didn't get any of those.

So we improvised:

A random socket, a chisel, an old wheel spacer, a couple brake rotors, some random pieces of steel... anything we could find lying around his place was fair game. It looked comically redneck, but we didn't care. It worked. With the axles ready to go in, we had to call it a night.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not suggest anybody recreate our press setup shown in that photo. As it turns out, brake rotors aren't as sturdy as you might think. When you apply lots of force such as shown in our photo, they can crack. (Ask me how I know.) Pressing everything on to the new shafts seemed easy enough, though it turns out that when the brake rotor broke it prevented us from getting that axle shaft perfect. I didn't know it at the time. As Mike and I were about to focus our attention on setting up the gears and differential, Matt (who I had wanted to assist with this operation all along) suddenly had a free schedule. With that, I pieced together my car just enough so I could tow strap it across town to Matt's shop. This meant installing the new axle shafts with no differential in the case. My brake drums still had the 4x4.25 lug pattern, so we had to leave those out, too. Instead, I would just bolt the rear wheels directly to the axles themselves.

But what wheels would we use? I wanted to use my matching Z28 wheels, but I could not--they require shank-style lug nuts, and the ones I had been using were 7/16 and thus would not match the new 1/2" studs on the Strange axles. The Ford OEM studs were 1/2", but the lug nuts I used for the Mustang wheels had conical seats. In desperation, Mike and I started going through his entire wheel collection to see if he had anything on hand in this bolt pattern that took conical lug nuts. Turns out, he did have something: a set of 19" wheels off a late-model Camaro. He laughed, because without even asking he already knew I was mortified at the thought of putting these wheels on my car, even if only for a few minutes... but I had no choice, so I bolted 'em on for the trip.

At Matt's house, we had to get creative to push my car up his driveway and into his shop. This was easy thanks to his son's stock Wrangler and an old scrap tire to use as a bumper. Just as we were beginning to push, it dawned on Matt that we were using an LJ to push an LJ. He thought that was hilarious.

Despite being the single most embarrassing photo of my car ever taken, I will still share it here so you all can have a laugh:

Into his shop it went. Matt did a fantastic job installing the diff and setting up the gears, just like I knew he would. When it all went back together, there was a surprise problem: the passenger side axle moved in and out just a bit. The other side was rock solid. I called Strange for ideas. "It sounds like the pieces are not quite fully pressed onto the shaft on that side," they told me. (sigh) This is the side where the brake rotor broke, and I guess it kept us from perfecting the job. So Matt removed that shaft, put it on his own press, and tweaked it a bit tighter. After a second reassembly, it was perfect. We bled the brakes and I was good to go.

I love having a matched set of wheels again:

That brings us to yesterday, which was my shakedown drive. Remember how I used to say this car was a bit tail happy? I was wrong--that was nothing. If any of you out there want a good limited slip diff for your muscle car, I give a hearty endorsement for the Detroit TrueTrac. So far it has turned both tires every time, even when one tire is in loose gravel and the other is on dry pavement. Combined with my shorter gearing, suddenly this car is much more of a handful at full throttle. I quickly realized I ought to avoid WOT anywhere below 60 MPH if there are other vehicles in adjacent lanes, as I don't want this thing to get out of hand and get me into trouble. As it now sits, this car is ridiculously overpowered and is a menace to polite society. In other words, it is exactly what I had always hoped it would be.

Hoonage videos are forthcoming, as soon as I can find time to have a friend shoot some.

 

[Hickey]

Those wheels are too cool on that car.

 

[RogueJeepr]

I'll shoot some Hoonage vid with ya.
Id like to get some dirt road action soon, while in the lehi area before I tear mine down for the winter.
I know of a good deserted paved road.

Car looks great.

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[TurboMinivan]

THREAD UPDATE: I just went through this entire thread and updated all my photos... again. Now they are all hosted at Imgur and properly linked here. With any luck, this will keep them permanently visible.


In other news, today I experienced something new with my Grand Prix. While coming back to work from getting lunch, I got on the interstate for a short distance. On the on-ramp, the trans kicked down to second gear. I then rolled all the way on the throttle and held WOT for the rest of second. Once I hit 5500 rpm (at 81 MPH), the transmission shifted into third gear... and the tires chirped.

The 3.08s never did that.

 

[Pile of parts]

Imagine what would have happened had it been 88 MPH...
That's got to be a lot of fun!

 

[mbryson]

so....how long are the Cooper tires for this world?

 

[TurboMinivan]

so....how long are the Cooper tires for this world?

Oh, probably not very long.


Having the day off work, yesterday I decided to go to the local Pick N Pull. My top priority was to find and remove the steering gear box (along with the pitman arm and steering shaft) from a ZJ Grand Cherokee. Being Utah, the yard was full of ZJs. I literally had more than a dozen potential candidates, which meant I could be choosy... so I decided I would check mechanical odometers and select the one that was the lowest (assuming the corresponding gearbox showed no signs of leakage).

Being highly organized, Pick N Pull puts all their compact/mid-size SUVs in the same section. This meant I could also keep an eye out for 99-05 2WD Blazers at the same time. (For those of you not into G-Bodies, the 2WD Blazers of this specific vintage offer an easy twin-piston brake upgrade that bolts right onto my car.) However, this is Utah... meaning a 2WD Blazer is about as rare as hen's teeth. So you'll understand my surprise when I saw they had one such 2WD vehicle, a 1999 GMC Jimmy. But wait--it gets better. As I took a closer look, I saw that someone else had already beat me to this prized gem... but apparently all they wanted were the front coil springs. When I looked at the front wheelwells, this is what I saw:

That's right, each knuckle was hanging there, attached only via the upper ball joint. All I had to do was cut the ABS sensor wire, remove the castle nut, and hit it with my hammer. Plop! The entire assembly then fell harmlessly onto the conveniently-located carpet placed there by whoever yanked the coils. In one fell swoop, I got my knuckles, hubs, calipers, caliper brackets, dust shields, all the bolts and nuts, and even a set of okay pads. I could not believe my good fortune.

The only downside was I didn't have enough money on hand for these items and a steering box... but, who cares. It's not like I won't be able to find a steering box on my next trip here.

 

[moab_cj5]

Awesome find!

 

[TurboMinivan]

It's time to install my upgraded brake hardware. As I began dismantling things, I noticed the ball joints appear to be vintage 1980 pieces... in other words, the well-worn originals. I thought I ought to swap in some new ones at the same time. It'll never be more convenient, right?

Good grief, is it always this difficult to install new ball joints?

I'm still working on the first side of the car, and the first ball joint (meaning I'll still have three more to go after I finally get this one installed). I did rent a ball joint press kit from one of the local parts stores; doing the job right requires the right tool for the job, correct? Well, not so fast. We put the new joint in place along with the cup and cap to press it in, then we put the receiving cup and cap in place in order to have something to press against. But with all that in place, the C-clamp is too small to fit over everything... and thus it is completely useless. We tried removing just one cap, replacing it with a piece of flat steel. This let the C-clamp fit into position (which is good) but when we applied pressure the new ball joint went in crooked (which is bad). We removed the ball joint and started over, but only managed to repeat the undesired effect.

So we decided to improvise. Mike has a small pipe bender, which we dismantled and tried to use as a press (of sorts). Our hope was that we could 'aim' our pressure in a more correct direction and prevent the ball joint from going in crooked. To say it looked Roadkill would be an understatement:

This backyard-engineered setup helped the ball joint to go in at less of an angle, but it still won't go in straight. Frustrated (and tired after a long day at work), we hung it up for the night. The next day, we changed our setup slightly to see if we could get the joint to go in straight. Still no luck.

(sigh) So that's where the car sits. I'm starting to wonder if I should just buy some new control arms with new joints already installed.


I swear, the next time I ever have a car that needs new ball joints, I am taking it to a shop.

 

[RogueJeepr]

Maybe you can pull the A-arms and have the bushings done at the same time as the balljoints. Unless it's cheaper to replace the arms with new bushings/balljoints.
There are certain things I'll have a shop do simply cause its faster and I can make money while at work.

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[Gravy]

Yank the A-arm and you can use a shop press.

If you don't mind driving, you can use mine.

However, if it has original ball joints, you can bet those are original A-arm bushings as well.... and that doesn't bode well for those parts of the road that aren't straight lol.

Maybe new A-arms aren't a bad idea.

 

[TurboMinivan]

"Get the right tool for the job," Dad always said. I thought I had done so--I did rent a ball joint press, after all. When that didn't work, I ignored Dad's advice and tried adapting the pipe bender into a bizarre press, as seen above. Not only did that not work any better, it also permanently deformed Mike's bender.

Oops.

I decided to look for a better tool. I eventually found a newer, much larger Super Mega Deluxe Turbo Ninja 3000 ball joint press kit at a local AutoZone. The first kit I rented only had 6 or 7 pieces in it, total (including the c-clamp and screw-in piece). This newer kit had over two dozen pieces in it. Maybe this would help.

Stacking the odds in my favor, I also coaxed another co-worker into coming over and lending a hand. Dave has years of experience working as a suspension tech, and he was confident he'd be able to button everything up rather quickly. Surprise, surprise: his experience plus the wealth of pieces in the big kit did allow him to get both lower joints pressed in with little delay. To say I was grateful would be a severe understatement. Not content to stop there, we also used his air chisel (with my large compressor that I had brought to Mike's place) to remove both upper joints and bolt in their new replacements. With all four new joints properly installed, we bolted in the upgraded knuckles and their attached hardware.

It's finally starting to look like an assembled front end again:

This was destined to be my stopping point for the evening. Why would I stop when I am so close to being finished? Well... when I first put the car on jack stands and began to dismantle things, I removed both shocks. The left side came out and looked fine, as expected. The right one? Not so much.

Because Roadkill:

I am baffled by this bent shock. How on Earth did that happen?!? Also, did you notice how the body of that shock is ground away at the top (kinda hard to see against my fading paint)? Needless to say, I will be replacing this shock with a(nother) new one... which means the project won't be finished until that arrives.

But at least I'm very close.

 

[RogueJeepr]

I wonder if the shock is too long to bend like that ?
Maybe find some cheap OE shocks and compare.

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[TurboMinivan]

Yesterday afternoon, the game plan was to finish the GP and trailer it to my work where it would get an alignment. To that end, I drug my trailer over to Mike's place and backed it down his 100-yard street/alley (like always) and dug right in. I began by inspecting the right side to see how or why the shock might be contacting. After closely looking from multiple angles, I noticed the coil spring isn't properly seated. The control arms each have notches to hold the spring ends in place, and it seems we didn't rotate that coil into the proper position when we put it in. As a result, the spring is 'kinked' and not perfectly straight as it should be. Since I won't be driving it away from Mike's place, I'll just leave the shock uninstalled for now; I'll reorient the spring when the car is on the alignment rack.

On to the brake hoses. For safety's sake, I decided to install new ones. Looking up the correct part for my Blazer brake donor, there were two hoses listed; the caliper end was always a 10mm banjo bolt, but the vehicle end was either a 3/8-24 or 7/16-24 fitting. Hmm. I got two of each just to be sure. It turns out the Grand Prix has 3/8" metal lines, so I installed the matching hoses and was ready to add fluid... lots of fluid. We bled each side until there was no air and the fluid came out clear, which required refilling the master cylinder three times. At last, the project is done and I'm ready to drive the car onto the trailer.

As I went to mount the wheels, I quickly discovered a problem: my lug nuts didn't fit.

This car has been a lug nut nightmare since day one. Way back when I first mounted the Z28 wheels, I had to buy a full set of 7/16-20 mag wheel lug nuts with washers. Later when I swapped in the Ford 8.8 axle, I had to get new conical lug nuts to hold the Mustang wheels in place. Then when I just installed the Strange axles, I had to get new 1/2-20 mag wheel nuts to fit the new studs. And now I discover that the Blazer hubs have M12-1.50 studs on them. Mike and I didn't have any mag wheel style nuts on hand in that size, and of course we didn't discover this until five minutes after every parts store in town closed for the night... so I got to drag my empty trailer back home.

Today I will source ten new lug nuts, then return to his house to finally get the car off jack stands and trailer it to work. I hope.

 

[Pile of parts]

 

[RogueJeepr]

Funny how 1 mod here can affect others down the road.
I recently had the same type of problem.

Im getting ready to mount modern shocks on my 32.
When I installed the cross steering box , I blocked one of the bolts to remove the original "ride control" system and I can only get a wrench in the frame to move a 1/2" at a time.
This is gonna be fun. [emoji15]

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[TurboMinivan]

On my lunch break Monday, I stopped by the local O'Reilly and purchased 12 shiny new mag wheel lug nuts in my needed M12x1.50 thread pitch. (True, I only need 10 of them... but they are sold individually and in 4-packs, and one 4-pack costs less than 2 individuals. Go figure.)

Anyway, I hurry home after work to dress down and jump in the Suburban so as to drag my trailer back over to Mike's house again so I can finally get my car out of there. Right off the bat, I open one pack of lug nuts just to check that they are what I need. Sure enough, the lug nut threads on like butter. Yes! I take it back off, then lift the first wheel into position and begin threading two lug nuts (and washers) into place by hand. I snug them all the way until they are hand tight...

... which is when I discovered the back of the spokes contact the new larger brake caliper.

I don't mean there is a slight rub. No, even with just the two nuts hand tight I cannot turn the wheel at all due to so much contact. #BecauseRoadkill. If this were somebody else's car, I'd laugh. But it's mine, so I try no to cry even though nobody is around to witness it anyway.

I'll say this for Mike, though: he stocks more parts than AutoZone. When I called him with my unfortunate news, he didn't bat an eye. "In the shed are two sets of 5x4.75 wheel adapters." I go looking and find them, and I learn that one of them even has M12-1.50 studs on them so I can use my nice new lug nuts. Gee. I clean them up a bit, go digging for the small open nuts to hold them to my car, and manage to get them installed. At last--finally--I get the front wheels put on the car, remove the jack stands, and put it on the ground. I got it loaded up and towed it to work without further incident.

Since I'm no longer running the stock rear axle, I decide to compare the rear track width to the now-augmented front track width. The adapters push each front wheel about an inch or so outward compared to the tail... meaning the front stance was about identical to the rear but now it is a couple inches wider. I need to get rid of those adapters... which means now I need to find some different wheels for the car.

The saga continues....

 

[smartass_kid]

when i had my 63 buick i went through so many issues with lugnuts and wheels.
did you know they used left hand thread lugnuts on one side of the car? i found that out. got studs swapped out.
i painted the steelies that came with it and the wheel stud holes were wallowed out and lugnuts damn near slid through; solution? 1 inch lugnuts from the local race shop that were tapered on each side
i finally got some nice rims ordered from online and they wouldn't fit over the large brake drums; wheel spacers fixed that
THEN the wheel spacer center hole wasn't large enough to fit over the center lip on the drum; my buddy's father-in-law redneck machine shop to the resuce!
and when i ordered new rims they tried to sell me matching acorn lugnuts for way too much money. i said i'm not stupid i can find those local for way less. guess what? i couldn't find them local and was too proud to call them back so i ordered from summit instead.

was it worth it? DAMN RIGHT

 

[TurboMinivan]

was it worth it? DAMN RIGHT

:thumbs: