Nice nice take your truck for an ass kicking for me since i can't drive mine

 

Once I get it dialed in I'll be going out for a beat down for sure.

This weekend I'm picking up a couple big stacks of slicks from my uncle. He runs a 69 Z/28 in a vintage trans am series and he runs his tires a few track days and replaces them. He says he has 4 or 5 sets of them for me. He runs them on 15x8's and I found the aero wheels I want in the right backspacing for just over $200 a set. Next season will be a blast!

 

Are they going to heat up enough thou

 

He says about the 3rd lap they'll be hot and start hooking up.





I just grabbed enough for next season. The rears are an inch taller than I run now and the fronts are about the same. That'll work well when I drop the rear an inch more before next season.

 

Thous are going to need alot of heat give them a shot thou and see if they can retain heat

 

I hope they hook up decent when cold, I'd be ecstatic if they hook as well as the street tires I run now and get better as they heat up but I doubt that'll happen.

 

So when I put the parts in the truck I retarded the cam 4 degrees for a bit more top end. It ran just fine but it wasn't a spectacular change. Last night I advanced it 4 degrees passed zero and it's a fawking turd so tomorrow it goes back to 2 degrees retarded and I'll leave it at that till I have time to degree the cam properly.

 

Today I swapped the rear springs for a set from an '89 4x4. The 4x4 front main eye has the spring coming into the middle of it instead of into the bottom of the eye like the 2x4 version. Also the 4x4 has a military wrap eye with the second leaf wrapped around the forward eye for support.

I changed to urethane bushings at the same time so with the addition of them and the second leaf the rear is stiffened up a bit. I can feel the rear is more planted now in hard corners so I'm absolutely stoked about next weekends first autocross event.

I'll snap a few pics tomorrow when I shorten up the shackles to drop it just a bit more. In my class I'm not allowed to change the suspension mounting locations so I can't re-drill the forward mount or raise the shackle tube into the frame so I'm doing what I can to stretch the rules.

 

Don't know if anyone has ever thought of this, or if it's even possible, but I wonder if you could rearrange the leaf spring pack and make it so the shorter springs are on top, basically reversing the order of the leafs. It will get you a little lower, but you'd still have a full spring pack and it should still be pretty stiff.

Clear as mud right?

 

I've seen it done on of all things a samurai... We called it the ice cream truck since it was painted white and dumped in the weeds.


I'm not out to make it crazy low at all I'm just trying to get it down far enough to be able to replace my 3" blocks with 2" and keep a nice low ride height for handling.

 

So the 4x4 springs were a easy swap and how much drop? Look forward to the photos

 

Yea they are a direct bolt in but you'll want to remove the 3rd leaf which isn't in the 2x spring pack and most likely use the 2x overload too.


So here is the main eye obviously in droop on the lift.



I shortened the shackles right about 1/2". I didn't measure their length prior to cutting them but they are at 2 3/4" centers now.

And here's my current shackle angle. My driveline is perfectly straight to the trans from the diff with 3" blocks. I'm pretty fawkin' stoked at how it turned out.



It did drop the truck about 3/4" or so out back. I'll snap a pic in the light tomorrow of the new height for comparison.

 

Before:



After:

 

First box scheduled to arrive today is from LCE. 9 lb aluminum flywheel, short shifter and a new rubber boot for the base of the shifter. There is another box coming with a 6 puck copper/ceramic clutch set.

Later this week a box will show up from summitracing.com with hawk carbon metalic pads, new rotors, an msd HEI module with built in rev limiter, shorty bumpstops for the rear of the truck, a few quarts of red line mt 90 for the trans, an adjustable proportioning valve so I can finally ditch the lspv and a summit 5" tach with gauges built into the face.

The tach is cheesy but it's the best bang for the buck with a built in shift light. I have a jacobs ultra coil I'll couple with the hei module so all together I'll have a shift light and rev limiter with a high output ignition for less than the cost of an msd 6al.



Lots to do soon! Not sure I'll have much time before this weekends events.

 

Round one!





Round 2 is due Wednesday, the brake pads and rotors are being drop shipped and I haven't gotten an update on them as of yet. I'm so excited to get these parts in.

 

Clutch and shifter are in. Holyfawking****Iloveit! The clutch pedal is actually a good bit softer than the stock replacement that was in there so that's fine but the slight grabiness and engagement being higher in the pedal will take a bit of getting used to.

The quicker revs are nice and the shorter throw is fantastic. I'm looking forward to getting some lap time with it.

For anyone wondering about the W58 short shifter I'll break it down just like I will to LCE's tech department.

The kit I used was meant for an 88-95 2wd, part number 1097000.

The spacer fit perfectly. However the included white (1.655") shifter seat is not only too thick but a bit large in diameter too. The red (1.60") seat would be a better fit due to its slightly smaller diameter but odds are it'll need to be modified just like the white one. I carefully thinned down the bottom of the seat about 3/32" so the stick would sit far enough into the base. The bolt on extension for the stick had to be clearanced to allow the stick know to move without hitting the base. I ramped the upper 3/8" towards the top center to allow the stick to move fully.

So with some slight mods they could have another short shifter on the market. We'll see what they have to say about it.

 

How's driving with the flywheel?

 

It will all take a bit of time to get used to but so far I like it. Once the clutch breaks in a bit more things will smooth out. Right now there is just a touch of chatter going on.

A high quality organic clutch with a hard clamping pressure plate would be a sweetheart setup for a dd.

 

Tach/gauge cluster is in. Not permanently but it'll do for now. I'm going to be pulling the whole factory cluster out and replacing it with a panel and sinking this gauge setup into it and adding leds for blinker indicators and high beam around it.

 

Hmmmmmm I've been eyeballing the lce short shifter, good stuff going on here