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Kyle242GT's 1959 5.044

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Cut out the firewall, tunnel, and test fit things.

Shifter seems okay, suspension still has travel, looks like a I can fit a radiator, room for clutch/starter, oil filter is a no go (at least the length that's on there) and I'm headed for trouble with the headers.

Had been hoping to use the BBK shorties, either stock or swapped, maybe even flipped, but none of those are going to work as is.

Can either move the engine forward and down a bit, putting the crossmember in between the sumps; that'd screw up radiator fitment. Guess the Explorer WP is shorter?
Or, move it back about four inches, which makes header fitment a fantasy, but would fit the engine sexy far back and sexy low.

Chassis engineer types, what's mission:critical here? Far back as possible, low as possible, or just focus on feasible?

On the upside, I think I'll have ample room for pedals, though I still think I'll be kicking out the clutch side of the footwell.
 

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sh!t just got real
 

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Last pic is blurry, but the idea is the lower control arms are still a bit under level, and there's a couple-three inches between the upper arm and the bumpstop.

Nice thing is, though this is a major hackfest, it's still a PV as far as the front end is concerned. :rockon:
 
Moved the engine around a bit, got it where I think it'll wind up. Sitting forward from my initial placement, but that makes the exhaust clearance a bit easier. A bit. Shifter looks to be in a good spot too.

It also gets the engine lower, and centers the crossmember in the sump. Clearance for pulleys, water pump, and radiator will be an issue, so nothing's set in stone yet.

Posted in OT about the header situation - nothing off the shelf for this, so I'll have to roll my own. Leaning toward a sprintcar-style kit, cheaper to buy prebent sections (with flanges, collectors, gaskets, bolts) than individual bends. Might revisit this.

But as I got to thinking about the exhaust fab (which really should be pretty fun, if not exactly easy), I realized I needed to sort out the steering. In turn, the pedals need to be located, so I know where the brake booster will wind up.

That brings us to today. Pulled the column and pedals out of the Mustang, layed them in place, and did some :???: for a while. Column weighs a lot, don't know if that's to be expected or not? Will need to have the lower end shortened and probably section the upper end, wheel is out a bit far.

Brake booster looks doable too. Think I'll wind up with clearance for exhaust under and in front of it. Issue at this point is the pedal cluster (and attendant linkages) expect to be mounted vertically, and the firewall of the PV is sloped quite a bit. If I somehow manage to mount the pedals at the angle dictated by the firewall, the booster and master will (probably) stick out the top of the fender.

What I'd like to do is cut the firewall out where the pedal cluster attaches, and rebuild it around the pedals and booster. That would also move the booster back and allow more exhaust clearance. Obviously the firewall is structural, so not sure how much of it I can cut out. Opinions welcomed!
 

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Open to any and all input, so if you have any good ideas, let's hear em.

The PV Spearing Column (TM) is non-collapse, and one piece all the way into the steering box. As I'm planning (and praying to GAWD I can figure out a way) to swap to RnP at the bottom end, I need a different column, and lo and behold, what do I have parked in my yard but a Foxtang.

PnP generally has a 1/2 price sale on labor day, so hopefully I can source a rack (currently looking at Miata, Chevette, Mustang II, Pinto, Fiero, any other small narrow non-power-steering car) and maybe a column too.

Upside of the Fomoco column is the ignition switch has the necessary outputs to feed the O2 sensors. Who knows why they did it that way. :roll:

Frankly, I've been worrying about the brake/clutch pedals, brake master, that kind of stuff, since it needs to be sorted before building the headers and engine/trans mounts.
 
After some helpful discussion on OT, decided to hack out the firewall and frame spar in order to mount the Mustang pedal cluster and brake booster.

This is because he PV firewall is angled, the Mustang is vertical. Rather than reinvent the pedal situation, I decided it'd be easier, cheaper, and more consistent to use the donor pedal assembly; this includes the clutch and throttle cables as well as the brakes.

Cut a hole, made it just right, tacked the firewall section in place, verified the pedals were usable, and then filled in the join.
 

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From the cardboard template, I made a piece of metal to fit, foogled around with it for a while, then welded away.

Looks like I'll be enlarging the footwell to make more space for my clutch foot. Kind of expected this.

Otherwise, the mounting of the pedals is good to go. Very solid, no flex to speak of. Will have to reinforce the clutch cable mount when I get that far, but since it will hit the new firewall (to be created still) I will ignore for now.

I'm not much of a welder, but getting better. At least I have plenty of grinding wheels.:cool:
 

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I take it you realise that the stuff you're cutting is structural? A PV shell is like an egg, there are very few box sections in the structure. The front legs are cantilevered on the bulkhead and under the floor and the seat crossmembers feed the forces into the inner rockers. Those front legs are like a Y laid horizontally and you've cut one part of the Y feeding the forces into the bulkhead to fit the servo. The transmission tunnel is also part of the structure.
 
Yessir I do! :ahoy:

The frame spar and firewall section are both welded to the booster well, which is welded to the firewall all around. While no engineer, I think I've more than replaced the original strength of that upper spar.

I will be rebuilding the firewall and trans tunnel after I get the engine location finalized. I will also be adding some reinforcements, likely behind the dash, down to the tunnel, and up to the front frame rails.

I'm also going to wind up replacing the floor pan, at least on the driver's side, it's rusted out pretty well from the firewall to the seat rail.
 
Updatski!

Took the plunge and cut the pitman arm off the other day - a bigger job than I expected, this car was built to last, tellya whut.

Then revisited the engine's position for a couple reasons - hoping to keep the existing accessories and drivebelt setup, and body-on mockup showed the engine really had to move back quite a bit. The pics here are as far back as I could shove it for now, since that's as far as I cut the tunnel out. May well move it back more once I get moving on that. Once committed to having the rearmost exhaust runner make a tight 90 and angle forward, the sky's the limit. Front-mid engine, anyone?
 

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Bought a rack and pinion (freshy reman from the looks of it!) from a 96 Impreza at PnP, about $60 after core and whatnot on half off day.

Then a $25 tap to cut more threads on it... and chopped about 2" off one side and about 1" off the other - had to put the rack in off-center in order to have the input shaft clear the frame rails. Other solutions, such as routing the shaft through the control arms or through the crossmember itself seemed like an asinine solution when I didn't even know how big an issue it would be.

Outer tie rods are from many Toyota things and were about $10 each. I had to bore out the steering arms about 1-2mm, but there's still loads of meat on the bone, so I think I'm solid there.

Made my self a fancy-dancy wooden crossmember to hold the rack while I mocked everything up. Worked out so well I may just fiberglass it to the frame rails and run it! :-P

Since it's what the cool kids always talk about, and since it actually is probably a good idea with something this custom, I measured the bump steer. Very interested in any feedback on these numbers. Not sure I have any real solution, since the rack and tie rod length is fixed at this point.... moving the rack up a touch might be possible, but from postings in my OT musing threads suggest down is the way to go, and since that would create issues with the steering shaft, I think I'm just going to leave it.

My baseline ride height is 285mm (floor to tabs on the framerail - arbitrary point). Got that by setting the engine in and then standing on the frame to account for fluids, sheetmetal, etc.

Height - Pass - Driver (toe change all are toe-in)
230 - 0 - 3 (bottomed out, shocks, I think)
250 - 0 - 0
270 - 0 - 0
290 - 1 - 1
310 - 2 - 3
330 - 3 - 9
350 - 13 - 15

My thought is to lower the car (convenient solution) 25-30mm, putting static ride height in the sweet spot. That would give me 30mm compression and 30mm rebound with a max of 3mm bump toe.

Funny thing about all this, and the pics don't really show, but the long tie rod is on the driver's side, so the inner tie rod pivot is closer to the "ideal" line between inner upper and lower control arm pivots.
bsdrawing.jpg

So, theoretically, that should be the side that has less bump steer. But it doesn't work out that way. Maybe there's some voodoo at work here, but since I never bothered to find the instant centers, probably not really worth getting excited about.

I *am* excited to be moving on this thing finally. The bump steer issue is one of the things that pops into my mind at 3-4am for some damnfool reason. :rant:

Kidding aside, I got a free.99 sprint car frame off CL (delivered, no less) that I'll use as a source of tubing. Will have to think things through about the actual mounting of the rack - feedback welcome on this as well:
The crossmember is a bolt-in item, not sure if that's worth preserving or not; but if I weld the rack mount to the frame to the crossmember, that would be an issue.
Not sure if I should worry about tying the rack crossmember to the suspension crossmember anyway....? :???:
There are some captive nuts in the frame for swaybar mounts, so I could maybe run some tubes from the crossmember to the frame, use the swaybar captives for a bolt-in, and then mount the rack on top. Probably be a bitch if I ever have to take the rack out, haha. But this sure feels like an epiphany. My back is killing me (getting old is fun) otherwise I'd probably hustle out there and eyeball things.

Engineering a car from a stack of junk sure is fun! (actually quite enjoying the process!) :neener:
 

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as a followup to my own posts, used some paper laid on the monitor to eyeball the instant centers...

At the baseline height of 285, the instant centers are more or less on the ground.
At the lowered height, they are wayyyyyyyyy underground.

Pretty sure underground roll center is a bad scene, especially being as far from the center of gravity. :omg: yipes, thing thing might wind up one ass-jacked jack-ass of a handling nightmare. :e-shrug: At least it should be pretty fast.
 
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