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Kyle242GT's 1959 5.044

Making a plywood crossmember to mock up the steering was a great idea, except it's totally in the way when it comes to mocking up the actual crossmember.

Took a couple basic measurements (rack distance from suspension crossmember and frame rails) then used the lift and some jackstands to get it more or less held in place.

Went out to my trusty sprint car frame, and cut off a likely looking section of tube.

Ground that down to fit pretty well, then turned my eye to the rack brackets. The passenger side bracket is just support, the driver's side does the actual location laterally as well as pitch.

Built a couple of brackets... the driver's side needs to be worked on further - I'm going to use the extra length to tie back to the rack crossmember as well as (probably) gusset it along crossmember, gotta be sure the driver's side bracket won't flex.

Next step will be to tack the brackets on the crossmember, verify that the universals clear the frame rail (that's my main interference point), and lay the engine in (AGAIN) to be sure the crank pulley clears the rack and crossmember. Still considering moving the engine back even further... both for added underhood room as well as weight distribution.

Not sure if I will bother tying the rack crossmember to the suspension crossmember. Any thoughts?
 

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After much handwringing in an OT thread about how to mount the rack, wound up mounting it as I'd originally planned... :e-shrug: time will tell how it holds up.

Crossmember is 1" x .070 or therabouts chromoly. First time working with it, really nice material. The passenger side bracket is a couple pieces of tube, attached to some 1" square steel I had laying around. It's really thick stuff. The driver's side is all square tube, since it needs to form a square with the OEM bracket.

The bead you see around the business end is to get it up to the right width. I'm not terribly excited about it, since the OEM bracket is the right width and should more than suffice for side-to-side loading.

Then took (another) look at engine placement. Ran it back as far as I easily could, found the driver's rear sparkplug would be all-but-unchangeable. Guess I could make an underdash access panel. :-P
 

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So, since that wasn't going to work, moved the engine back up, and checked things out. I think this is where it'll lie.

OEM alternator and bracket fit fine. Assuming PS will be okay as well.... :x: it mounts on the other side. Worst case scenario, custom brackets for that one.

Lots of room on either side for headers, mufflers, etc. Still thinking that one through, but leaning toward mufflers in the inner fender area with fender-exit tips. Also madly pondering turbos, since they would look pretty bad ass sticking out of the tops of the front fenders. :cool:

Plugs will be accessible, though #8 will continue to be tricky. Funny that it almost lines up with the detent for the original steering column.

Speaking of which, if you squint your eyes just right, you can see the tiny hole of daylight I have to sneak the column through. Hoping to keep the Ford pedals mounted as-is, to keep the heel-toe relationship.

Nice to see the clutch will be well in front of the pedal area, just in case something lets go... my feet should be okay. :lol: Gonna have a funny bump in the floor for the clutch cable at the fork.

Details, details...

Also a shot of the front bodywork mounted, sitting more or less at the new static ride height. Will come down a bit more when I lower the rear, since the measurement point is at the tip of the front framerails. Will need some widening of the fenders, but knew that all along. Looking forward to it, actually. Always wanted something with E30M3 style flares... :ninja:
 

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Pretty cool, but be careful with the bumpsteer situation caused by the rack and pinion position..

Here is my PV544 rack and pinion placement, and you can see that the rack arms and the lower control arms run parallel, which is very important here.. You will also see the bumpster adapters I made, and you may have to make something similar for your application..

Dont mean to hijack at all, just wanted to point the bumpsteer out, and will share any help if I can.. I would like to see more and more of the Modern Builds of the Classic Volvo's.
Flattered to hear swapping in 15-20 year old tech is "modern"... I'd been considering this more of a dollar-cheap, labor-intensive V8 swap. Just the V8 swap led to a complete reworking of the steering along with the drivetrain, clutch, and brake master situation.

This pic shows the static ride height (I think, it's a little grainy)
http://forums.turbobricks.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=10686&stc=1&d=1349567727

Here's the data from earlier in the thread:
Height - Pass - Driver (toe change all are toe-in)
230 - 0 - 3
250 - 0 - 0
270 - 0 - 0
290 - 1 - 1
310 - 2 - 3
330 - 3 - 9
350 - 13 - 15

Basically planning to set static height to 260 - 270 (vs the 295 baseline). That's 1.5" down and up with minimal steer and toe. Don't know how much actual suspension movement I'll get, or how significant a few mm of bump steer is...

Ran things down until the shocks were fully compressed (ie, crushed the stops with the engine weight)- didn't really get any worse. so there may be room to go lower :cool: with different shocks and shortened stops.

I've also rationalized that toe in during droop might be a way to maintain stability when the front lifts under acceleration... :roll: Which I do expect it to do, with the engine as far back as it is.

Lowering the rack might have been the way to go, but then the crossmember would block the steering shaft - hence the really deep setup you've got up there. The other issue is the lower the rack, the narrower it needs to be. That's really hard with JY parts.

For sure this is in no way optimal, but I'm using (barely modified) stock components at this point. If I get serious about the front end, I'll likely wind up redoing the whole thing, and then there's even less Volvo left on the car.

Mostly, I have to stop waffling and start building.

Though, I'll admit, I'm curious about pricing of the front end kit. Don't see any numbers on your site? For reference, my disk swap was about 300, rack and pinion about 100.
 
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Well isn't this cute, over a month and no updates. I'd like to say it's because I've been busy working sheit out, but sadly, not the case. Bought a new MTB and have been enjoying that as much as I can, and the short cold days kind of suck the wind out of my sails. Spun my wheels for a few weeks trying to get a steering wheel on Ebay :roll: guess the secret's out there. Wound up with a 13" Grant black leather job, which will work great.

Over the last couple days I worked on the steering column situation. The column is from the 90 mustang. I'd already planned on relocating the ignition to the dash for old skool coolness, and the latemodel plastic combo switch bugged me to no end, so time to figure out how to mate the 544 TS to the fox column.

At first, I was stoked to see that the 544 combo switch holder and column shroud pretty well fit the column, but after drilling/airhammering the Ford TS/ign mount off the column, found out it wasn't quite going to fit, and even if it did, the TS fingers would be too far inboard to work right.
 

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So I took the Ford upper bearing retainer/plate, trimmed it down to fit the narrower grant horn contacts, and then realized that the contacts wouldn't reach the grant adapter anyway... because the airbag clockspring isn't there anymore. Ahh, details. And though I looooove my 6V horns on 12V :omg: I turned my back on that, and dealt with getting the column as short as possible, and getting the 544 TS switch to fit right.

The Ford setup has the upper column bearing in the ign switch. Since it's not part of the picture anymore, I had to figure something else out. The bearing happens to fit nicely in the column housing, so it was a matter of making a lower perch and tacking on a couple bolts to hold the upper retainer plate.

Three or four hours of measuring and thinking, followed by ten minutes of actual fab work. :doh: I sure am glad I signed up for engineering a car from the switchgear out. :roll:

Similar situation for the TS switch. Initially planned on mounting it to the upper retainer, but decided I'd be better off having it be something I can access without removing the wheel. :grrr: That's one of the hardest parts of this project, all along - planning for future servicability.

At any rate, got the signals to cancel without making untoward contact with any other moving pieces. Next up will be the horn contacts, then mounting the column to the car. Currently thinking of the pedal cluster as a tie in (OEM in the Ford) and a 544-style lightweight upper retainer at the dash. Want it to be sturdy, but no need for major structural overkill, since the steering wheel isn't really subjected to the kind of beating that suspension components get. Gonna be fun threading things down between the brake and gas pedals. :x:
 

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hey! I just realized that you now get to fix the problem of the 544's wheel being off-centre from the driver's seat! nice!

The only thing that bugged me about my 544
 
Hah, shows what you know.

I'm planning to have the column come into the dash at the stock position, which is by OEM offset a couple inches from the seat. What makes it more hysterical is the pedals being shifted quite a ways to the left. Twister anyone?

The ink isn't dry, but I'm kinda stuck with the pedal position, and there's a shockingly narrow aperture for the column to snake through. At this point, willing to let the chips fall where they may. Mixed metaphors anyone, I have the blender ready?

To add to the hilarity, if I were to try to move the column to the left, there's the frame rails to address... the rack is way inboard, and optimal column would be outboard.

:run:
 
Oh hai neupage! :wave:

Didja know I had a 62 ropeshaft Tempest. Neat car. One of many on the long train, basically sold off for the rust work needed, unobtainium interior bits, and Naderesque handling. Course 205's on 4" wheels didn't help. :lol:

The driver side universal will be inside the firewall. One of the significant upsides to the collapsible column is the leeway with the endpoint. But given the location of the block, frame rails, pedals, I don't have a terrible lot of options.

Frankly, I'm hopeful that it will all just sorta shake out in the end. As long as it handles reasonably well, stops straight, and goes where it's pointed at full boil, the rest of the ergonomics kinda fade out. It's turning into something of a test bed for a Factory Five project, or a full-on Kool Kal Kustom, or me hanging up my wrenching bits and calling it a day. Given that my previous bragging rights build was a trans-raised and narrowed lowered 64 Bug, I'm makin bacon on this thing no matter what. Worst case, I'm out 5K or so. Watch it burn. :rofl:
 
At this rate I should finish this project roughly by the year 3,000. :roll:

It's taking a while because everything depends on everything else, so it's hard to know where to put components without mocking up a bunch of other pieces.

Got the first column mount figured out, spotwelded for now. The upper mounts will be to the dash. Still playing around with the left/right up/down specifics there... nice to move the column more central to the seat, but then it takes on a notable twist. Very little room around the clutch quadrant and gas pedal.

Big news today was building the universal shaft. The upper end is from the Mustang, the lower end from the Subaru, and the middle is more sprint car tubing. Ground down the DD Ford end to fit inside, the Subaru end fit already. Did my best to get it more or less straight, then welded it up.

So now the steering wheel turns the wheels! :party:
 

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Motor mounts!

Not really a big deal, just had to get the engine situated, make sure there was clearance for the steering shaft (hence the early focus on the steering, pedals, and column).

The mounts actually rest on each other, instead of the bolts.

Wound up with about 3/8 clearance between the bottom of the front sump and the crossmember. Hopefully that will be enough, otherwise it'll be some more surgery.

Have the bottoms welded in, will finish the tops a little later.

Will also add some sort of bracing for the rear end of the mounts, was planning to bolt in to preserve that aspect of the front suspension... but the way the mounts fit in, I don't think the crossmember would be droppable anyway, so I may just weld them to the frame rail. Thanks for any advice on that.

Not sure what I'm doing next, tax season is starting up, so I'll have a lot less time and energy for a few months. So much left to do, I don't really know where to start. :cool:
 

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Update time. After getting some great feedback in OT, I turned my attention to the rear axle.

The stock setup:
544%20Rear%20Suspenion.jpg


The axle clearly won't stand up to the V8, but I didn't see any glaring shortcoming in the rear arms and panhard. Top link will have to go, however, due to the way it attaches to the axle housing.
DSCN2657_zps350f1461.jpg


I don't have the ability to modify the Ford housing to match, and suspect the whole shebang may get upgraded to a four link kit in the future. However, I do want to get the car running and driving, so this is the easiest way to get something functional.

I modified the Volvo bushings that secure it to the trailing arms. I cut them with a utility knife then cleaned them up with my bench grinder.
DSCN2652_zps260c2eca.jpg


There's a lot of crap on the Ford axle, but none of it is it the way... if I get it narrowed, I'll have the pros remove the unnecessary brackets at that time.
DSCN2656_zps03b4f238.jpg


Voila!
DSCN2658_zps6f82d8cc.jpg


The Ford axle is about seven or eight inches wider, but at least it's symmetrical, being from a Mustang instead of an Explorer.
DSCN2659_zpsbf3c9710.jpg



I have this crazy idea of putting 275/60s on the rear 15x7's, in place of the current 195/55's. That's going to make the inner fender space helpful, but really make the rears interesting.
DSCN2661_zpscb2157e5.jpg

DSCN2662_zpsc3a92b23.jpg


No idea where that will end up... currently thinking of just cutting the stock fenders up into pieces, then working them and filling in as I go. I hate the simple slice-and-widen treatment, really ruins the curves of the car.
1962-volvo-pv-544.jpg


This could work, and has a certain insane flair to it.
Gasser001.jpg


Then again, always thought box flares would fit well with the fender trimlines.
purposebuiltwt5.jpg


For now, I'll just run fenderless.


In retrospect, not sure what the delay was getting this step done. Chalk it up to summer vacations and all that good stuff.

Next step will be the top link. You can see where the top plate attaches - the holes next to the tunnel.
DSCN2663_zps263ddd23.jpg


Interested in any ideas. My basic plan is to tie the Ford top mounts to one Heim that mounts to the 544's top mount plate. My main worry there is using a Heim and the threads in tension/compression.
 
Got a pretty simple solution for the upper link for your rear axle. Let me see if I can find the pics on my other laptop to illustrate better.

I would get the rear mounted under the car and functional before worrying about the fenders. Once it's mounted and your wheels/tires are on it you can modify the fenders to fit. Maybe find a set of rear donor fenders to give you the extra sheet metal you need, already curved to match.
 
just narrow the rear, its actually very easy to do at home in the garage. i did my 8.8 only on one side but still its maybe a 2 hour process taking your time.
 
Got a pretty simple solution for the upper link for your rear axle.
Working on mounting the 544's upper mount to the Ford inner ears.

Curious to see your suggestion!
Can it be narrowed?
just narrow the rear, its actually very easy to do at home in the garage.
Don't really want to address the axle width until I have tires/wheels picked out. Just trying to get it rolling.
Don't the axles have to be resplined?
Also not sure if my 135A 110 welder is heavy enough to weld the axle housing....
 
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