2118 replies to this topic

[SA EH]

Total car porn Heath, awesome fabrication work buddy 🤘

[Heath]

Cheers guys. But I wouldn't say it was a simple solution to execute! Maybe a simple concept.

 

So back track a bit and you may remember that I had these offset spacers made to put the front K-frame forward 10mm.

 

I had a nicely rebuilt front end in this car but there was no point in molesting it so I'm going to sell it to someone else. I picked up a fixer-upper (LX RTS) from LS1 Taxi on here:

 

 

 

Stripped it down and cut off the engine mounts:

 

 

Shifted 10mm back:

 

Marked out some areas that could benefit from some clearance:

 

 

I've been avoiding the MIG on this car, but shit it makes these jobs 100x easier, hahahaha

 

I used the crush tubes from the old rear stay bushes (cut down to length), and cut out some 3mm material to make an offset solid mount:

 

Fitted in okay, zapped it in with the MIG again. Note I had already cut out the bush area at the back of these crossmember stays with a holesaw.

 

Battered LX lower arms from the front end:

 

Stripped down, did some welding repairs, made a template for the UC style shock hole (to get big bore shocks through the lower arms) and got cutting:

 

Gave them a hit in my mate's blasting cabinet on the way home:

 

Also collected a new 24mm Rear Mount Front Swaybar (BHF37):

Edited by Heath, 18 June 2017 - 10:49 PM.

[Bigfella237]

I'm a little disappointed Heath, after the high standard set by the rear suspension, I expected to see a set of custom tubular control arms up front

[Heath]

I definitely thought about it, but I actually want to drive this car before I die. I'm trying to make a few areas a little easier. 

[Peter UC]

That and there isn't really any problems with the standard arms, if you wanted more strength, just box them.

[Racehatch]

Awesome engineering in this build, looking forward to seeing how it progresses!


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[Heath]

Always kinda regretted just holesawing those plain holes in the rad support that was a bit rusty in certain sections. Looked kinda crap. But it's just metal. I bent up some new ends and borrowed a finer assortment of dimple dies.

 

 

 

 

Zap zap

 

 

 

If someone told me that in 2.5 years my car would still look like that... not sure I'd have started the project hahahaha

[Heath]

Sold my complete front end to another fella and sourced some stub axles and UC upper arms, the bits I was missing.


Pressed out the old bushes and spent a few hours with the grinders to finish them nicely.


Rod Shop caliper adapters still had that lasercut finish, yuck!



All blasted up and ready for some etch:

[LJ RB30]

Hey Heath

Very impressed with your work 👍

What disc & calipers are you putting on the front?

[Heath]

Ahh Daz I still haven't finished with the rotisserie! Still gotta do exhaust, fuel lines, park brake cables etc. Give me another two years I reckon!

 

Front brake setup is just a Rod Shop "320mm" kit (actually 310mm) with the alloy Wilwood hubs etc. I'm working on the brakes ATM so all this stuff will start to come together soon-ish.

Edited by Heath, 11 July 2017 - 02:13 PM.

[Heath]

I determined that the 260mm rotors that were supplied with the floater kit weren't really what I wanted.

 

Drew up some adapters and had them milled out of ally plate.

 

Up to 300mm on the rear with some new Wilwood rotors:

 

Sourced some Wilwood MC4 mechanical parking brake calipers:

 

Begin Cardboard Aided Design:

 

8mm steel plate might be stronger than cardboard?

 

Working this geometry out was really quite painful (real CAD and laser cutting would have made a lot of sense, oh well!)

 

Turned up some bushes to make a stand-off/offset in the bracket (to clear the back of the floater hub)

 

Welded the brackets all together

 

And did another test fit

 

 

Now gotta run handbrake cables across the underside of my non-standard floorpan. 

Edited by Heath, 17 July 2017 - 11:26 PM.

[Heath]

The UC Torana floorpan has a different handbrake cable path to LH/LX which is helpful, but it isn't exactly how I need it:

 
I want the cables to tuck against the floor nice and tight. The Wilwood parking cable kit can deal with a nice short radius with no binding of the cable, so it'll work with this no problem.

 

 



 
Once the cable tucks against the floor near the back, it will use the chassis strengthener as a bulkhead (this will also allow left/right adjustment of the handbrake cable), and then up to a frenched shape in the floorpan near the parking brake pedal. So I had to make some more hardware:

 

 

 
Looking up through the trans tunnel

 
Inside view

 
Still gotta turn up some more ally fittings and cut the cables to length, attach it at the pedal, etc. but getting there.

[bullitA9X]

frOcking awesome work your doing heath....

[Heath]

While I was under the car again, I figured it was worth making a little stainless skid for the leading edge of my chassis brace... this car won't be very high so inevitably my loop will hit shit at some point... this will make it slightly less violent.

 

Now to deal with the master cylinder. Had an old booster lying around which I used to measure the linkage that connects to the pedal from.

 

Didn't really hesitate to cut that linkage off the old booster to repurpose it for my new billet 7/8" Wilwood tandem master, also bought the fruit on the side with the prop valve etc. but not shown in this photo

 

Pulled the pushrod out and ran a die down it a bit further:

 

Drilled and tapped a hole in the pedal linkage thing and hey presto! Adjustable pushrod.

 

Now to the firewall. Holesawed a bit of 3mm sheet into a donut to suit the smaller spigot of the new master.

 

Zap zap

 

Grrzzrrr gzzzrrrr

[Covert]

Good work Heath, your a clever bloke 

[SA EH]

I reckon this thread should be pinned in the fabrication section, bloody great work. Remind me again what you're gonna use this thing for? It looks like a targa weapon or something...

[rodomo]

It wont be as fast as my hatch..................ever!

[Heath]

Haha, to clarify - this is just a road car. No cage, even.

[SA EH]

Yeah boy, my kind of road car🤘

[koalasprint]

Good to see top quality work progressing!

 

Just wondering if you should have a re-think on going LPG? My road car is duel fuel.(Supercharged, injected LPG) But my local servo has pulled out their bowser and others are following suit. http://www.abc.net.a...tations/8612570

 

Thanks for putting me onto Edgars in Nottinghill! They took their time with the wheel alignment and got it as good as possible.

 

Regards, Steve

[Heath]

Hi Steve, that is an interesting one. I guess there's nothing stopping me from converting it to petrol in the future if required (not that I want that), but I recently went across the Nullarbor in that XB Falcon (dual fuel) and if it had the size of tank I'm planning for my Torana, we probably could have made it without using a petrol bowser.

What the future holds, I'm not sure. But at this stage I'm not re-thinking my plans. Been speaking to some guys about vapour injection & Haltech... pretty keen.

Had an old one of these lying around, did my thing:



An old pair of U-bolts from a Corolla diff made their way onto my K-frame as tie-down points:


The picture is somewhat deceiving, they aim down but still sit about 5mm higher than the base of the K frame, not reducing ground clearance, and still clearing the steering rack okay.

[SA EH]

Had an old one of these lying around, did my thing:

Love it mate, add 500, minus 200👍
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