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Hackster's LSA / T56 2 door

The “splash pan” creates an area of low pressure behind/below the radiator which improves draw across the rad at speed. Wasn't talking about the OEM air dam. I use an 850 air dam which is mounted a bit more robustly.
 
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As a side note, after building this the last year and now a few months of working the bugs out of it I am getting pretty burned out and I think a break is needed from car stuff for a while.

Happy Friday!!

Sean

Definitely been there. Happy Friday!

I'm there and my car is still a pile of parts. No motivation to fix the daily driver either. Happy Friday!
 
Yay speed holes!

Haha. Thanks for the idea man.

Definitely been there. Happy Friday!

Happens on occasion doesnt it?

I'm there and my car is still a pile of parts. No motivation to fix the daily driver either. Happy Friday!

Trust me man, I totally hear you I was there about halfway through this build and needed some kicks in the ass to get going again to get it done. Glad its done now with nice weather here.

Well, Here is my short reply. I believe that the rear lower control arm bushing mounting and style are what are causing my weird front alignment. I am going to order or build some different lower control arms that have a real rear control arm mount. I believe that style of bushing is just not compatible with what I have going on.

After last weekend and this weeks repairs I was not really holding my breath that anything was going to work.

Friday after work I spent a little time going over some items, chatted with Racepak. Their tech support is not educated on anything with these dashes though. Is all he did was open the manual and read it line for line. Anything technical he had no idea how to do it or how it operated.

The bottom line is that you cannot manually program in any parameters for the speedometer (according to Racepak) and the only way to get the speedometer to work is to go through their auto calculation procedure. Seems rediculous to me.

So I go out, do their procedure and sure as **** I have a working speedometer!!!

I was pretty stoked. Get the car loaded up in the trailer for Saturday morning SCCA Time Trials at PIR with my buddy Kevin and his S10.

Got to the track, ran through Tech, no problems, registration, transponders and what not.

We got 2 20 minute practice sessions in the morning and 2 timed sessions in the afternoon.

Unfortunately my fastest lap was a 1:31.2 in practice and seemed to get slower as the weekend went on. They lined us up in our run groups by previous fast lap, Kevin and I were in the front 3 or 4 spots all weekend long so we got 4 or 5 good hot laps in before we caught lap traffic, me in front a couple times, him in front a couple, we had a blast chasing each other around and surprised more than a few people in our run group.

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In impound after our session for a debrief. It was a great rundown of what happened in our sessions, what worked, what didn't and so on.

I chased Kevin all weekend but he was just faster than me and I had to settle for 2nd place out of 2 cars in our class of MAX 1. Either way though we had an awesome time.

After our first session, the steering wheel went to about 10 degrees to the right and stayed there all weekend, made a little adjustment and said f it and ran it. None of the hardware came loose. I paint marked all hardware before we left and nothing moved at all so that was good.

Only issue I had all weekend was that and the panhard bar came loose on my second to last session, going to need to add that to the list of things to check after every run. Got a little blip of low oil pressure on Saturday, was a little low so added in some oil and ran all day sinday without a problem. Reading up on it, Holley in very small print says to run an extra half quart if you are going to track their oil pans.....good to know. so its a 6.5 quart system now

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Beautiful weekend for some racing!!

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Car did awesome, figured out tires are much happier with 36 lbs in them than the 32 I started with. Rear end is happier softer than stiffer.

Driver needs to be more aggressive and I need some more power!!! Ill be ordering a cam and pulley soon.

I was able to hit 130 on the back straight away though, so its no slouch.

Thank you SCCA for putting on such an awesome event this weekend, I had a blast, met some new very helpful people and took home some awards. There is a long story behind the spirit of time trials trophy, but it really comes down to just being there for people when they need a hand, remember life is short, enjoy it and lend a hand when you can.

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Kevins Truck is a bad machine, much more than meets the eye and it rips.

More to come soon.

Sean
 
Getting it dialed! Cant wait to see your control arm solution. Lots of inspiration in this thread, and it just keeps getting better. Thanks for sharing man!
 
The thing I love most about your car is that you built it to use. Too many cars (not necessarily in the volvo community) that have the same amount of extensive modification and devotion to detail as yours are built just to go to shows and fill an Instagram account. While yours is definitely nice enough for that, considering it has already been featured, you seem to have no qualms about pushing it at the track or putting real miles on it. I love how it is so perfect in some ways, but yet it still has scuffs on the bumper to show that it is a drivers car. Great work!
 
The thing I love most about your car is that you built it to use. Too many cars (not necessarily in the volvo community) that have the same amount of extensive modification and devotion to detail as yours are built just to go to shows and fill an Instagram account. While yours is definitely nice enough for that, considering it has already been featured, you seem to have no qualms about pushing it at the track or putting real miles on it. I love how it is so perfect in some ways, but yet it still has scuffs on the bumper to show that it is a drivers car. Great work!

Thanks Yugo. I dont do the sitting around thing well at all. Even at some of the track days we go to I get a little bored. Ill hit a car show every once in a while but only if I have a bunch of buddies going to hang out with. Totally a drivers car at this point.

Getting it dialed! Cant wait to see your control arm solution. Lots of inspiration in this thread, and it just keeps getting better. Thanks for sharing man!

Thanks, still trying to figure out if I am just going to order arms or build something off the stock volvo stuff. I am a little suprised that others have not had the same issues with the lower control arm bushings, the Volvo design seems ok, but the aftermarket push in bushings into the sleeve just seems like a terrible design.

http://www.speedhunters.com/2019/06/wooden-cars-a-v8-volvo-war-machines-more/

Not sure if you saw this article, but Speedhunters ran a few photos of your car!

I did, but thanks for posting it up. Was pretty awesome to see my old **** box grace their page. Never know who is just around the corner.......I had no idea that these pics were even taken until this popped up.

Not much to report here.

Still brainstorming on the front suspension situation.

I did however manage to get the racepak 100% functional for the first time last night. Went through and programmed in all of the gears so that the gear indicator on the dash works. I am shocked at how well it works too considering its going off of mph and rpm. Pretty cool though.

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No more track days or autocross planned for a bit now. Going to dig into the lower control arms and see what I can come up with there first.

Probably going to dive into a stereo in the next few weeks though, headphones are getting old.

Sean
 
Thanks Yugo. I dont do the sitting around thing well at all. Even at some of the track days we go to I get a little bored. Ill hit a car show every once in a while but only if I have a bunch of buddies going to hang out with. Totally a drivers car at this point.



Thanks, still trying to figure out if I am just going to order arms or build something off the stock volvo stuff. I am a little suprised that others have not had the same issues with the lower control arm bushings, the Volvo design seems ok, but the aftermarket push in bushings into the sleeve just seems like a terrible design.



I did, but thanks for posting it up. Was pretty awesome to see my old **** box grace their page. Never know who is just around the corner.......I had no idea that these pics were even taken until this popped up.

Not much to report here.

Still brainstorming on the front suspension situation.

I did however manage to get the racepak 100% functional for the first time last night. Went through and programmed in all of the gears so that the gear indicator on the dash works. I am shocked at how well it works too considering its going off of mph and rpm. Pretty cool though.

m8c6rCfh.jpg


No more track days or autocross planned for a bit now. Going to dig into the lower control arms and see what I can come up with there first.

Probably going to dive into a stereo in the next few weeks though, headphones are getting old.

Sean

I might have components left over from my old front control arm design, they would need to be welded together but its pretty straight forward as long as you can weld 1/8" 4130 safely.
 
Well, I am getting to the end of my proverbial rope with this thing now.

Continue to be impressed by the killer stuff these guys have helped me out with on this car. Huge shout out to STS Machining's Scott and Taylor for helping with my idea.

I was having issues with the rear rubber bushings on the lower control arms. I hatched the idea of a delrin bushing for the rear that was captured in the cup, Taylor made the first set, a 2 piece design that would not be able to be pulled out the front of the cup.

Here is what the end result is. A 2 piece delrin bushing, the cup welded into the actual bucket that bolts to the car. For the first time I can without a doubt tell you that this is not moving around at all.

Getting machined

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Parts cut and fresh out of the freezer ready to be installed.

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This cup was cleaned and welded in place so that it cannot get pulled out.

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Assembled

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When I took these current bushings out, the one on the drivers side had come out of the cup so far that the flange on the backside was not even holding it in any longer. The passenger side had started to pull the cup out of the bucket.

No its not the Fancy Sellholm arms, maybe those can go in someday in the future.

SO now I have lower control arms that are not moving around, great should be problem solved right.....wrong.

Still does the same ****.

You can center the steering wheel, go out for a drive and it will move from left to right depending on what you are doing.

It seems to be getting worse. If I go hard on the gas, the steering wheel will be off center to one side, if I go around a hard turn, brake or something then it will be off center to the other side.

I checked all the front crossmember bolts and they were not crazy tight, drove it again this morning before work and same problem.

I installed new hardware on the steering rack when installed. Considering that it changes on hard launches, I am leaning towards something loose in the rear suspension.

Might have time to look at it over the weekend but have graduation activities from this afternoon through Sunday.

Any good opinions I am all ears.

Sean
 
Can you dab some paint on the rack and see if its walking around?

You have fresh paint on the boxes for the bushing. Are there witness marks suggesting its moving around in space?
 
I had similar issues with the v8 drift car, the rear end was moving around a bit under hard acceleration. The rear alignment might be playing into this as well.

When doing your alignments, are you taking it to a shop, or doing it with strings?
If a shop, which one?
 
Can you dab some paint on the rack and see if its walking around?

You have fresh paint on the boxes for the bushing. Are there witness marks suggesting its moving around in space?

I started putting paint pen marks on all hardware to ensure its not moving. The boxes for the bushings are not moving at all, the underside of those bolts are knurled and lock it in really well.

I had similar issues with the v8 drift car, the rear end was moving around a bit under hard acceleration. The rear alignment might be playing into this as well.

When doing your alignments, are you taking it to a shop, or doing it with strings?
If a shop, which one?

This is where I am heading now, is going over everything in the rearend to make sure that things are not moving around. Yesterday was the first time I saw it move and it was after a hard launch, that got me really thinking about rear links and hardware.

Done both. AR Auto did the first real alignment, other ones have been strings but its pointless really as stuff moves around upon the first drive.

Thanks for chiming in, its much appreciated.
 
Is it possible the engine is moving around enough under accel/decel to contact something or move something else around?

Nope.

If that doesnt work maybe try a stabilzer bar from the front like older ford style set ups. But thats a lot of work to redo that whole area.

It took me a day to figure out what you were talking about, then I recalled my dads 64 ranchero and I totally get what you are talking about. A forward facing stabilizer bar for the lower control arm. I hope I dont have to add anything like that, I already dont love the srut setup that I have...

Well, only had about 2 hours to work on the car this weekend with 2 Graduations to attend. One in Seattle on Friday, another in Portland for our Steamfitter apprenticeship program and then a bbq on Sunday for the Neighbor who graduated Friday night.

Got a little time to work on the coyote swap for my neighbor though, just about ready to set the motor in for the first time one night this week and I can finish up the motor mounts that I got started on.

I went through the entire frontend Saturday afternoon. I cleaned, torqued and put paint pen marks on every fastener. The only thing I found that even remotely budged was the 4 bolts on the Driver side steering arm. I got maybe 1/4 turn from 3 of the 4 bolts, but that was it. Not enough to cause anything to move.

I torqued all of the motor mount hardware as well as every nut and bolt on the crossmember, and all steering stuff. Nothing in the front is moving so its time to head to the rear.

I got the car up in the air, frustrated still..

I checked every nut and bolt on the rear axle, panhard bar, shocks, upper and lower links at the axle, nothing was moving. I reached up and put a wrench on the chassis end of the upper control arms and it wasnt more than hand tight.

I continued to find 4 loose bolts for the fronts. Uppers got torqued to the proper spec. I found the lowers loose as well. They had stover nuts on them but the stover nuts were not really tight.

I purchased new washers for the bolt, new stover nuts and installed with Blue locktite.

I took it out for a trip around the area to see what I had. For the first time ever the steering wheel was in the same spot the entire drive. I was hard on it too, accelerate hard from a dead stop, hard braking, steering left and right abruptly.

I paint marked all the hardware on the body for the rearend to see if it moves at all moving forward.

Never did I think that the rear suspension moving around could cause that bad of an effect on the steering. I am really curious to see what it feels like on track now. It feels so much tighter than it every has.

Live and learn right?

So, working out the little bugs now. I have a shake in the steering wheel at about 62 to 70 mph. I think its a front hub issue, but going to tear into it this week and start measuring things out with a dial indicator to measure runout.

Gave the old girl a bath yesterday and enjoyed it being mostly trouble free for a day :oogle:

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Looks pretty meaty sitting there.

Happy Monday and thanks for those who have provided help and feedback on this thing along the way, its much appreciated.

Sean
 
In the v8 drift car with a torn trailing arm bushing, I could change lanes while keeping the wheel completely straight if I romped on it. Rear steer is a thing.
Glad you got it sorted.
 
In the v8 drift car with a torn trailing arm bushing, I could change lanes while keeping the wheel completely straight if I romped on it. Rear steer is a thing.
Glad you got it sorted.

Its crazy to think how much it can change steering geometry by a small change in rear suspension. It kind of sucks to think that anything I do from here on our suspension wise is going to require an alignment. Going to get expensive fast.

Dropped the **** box off for another alignment today. Hope its the last one for a while.

Have to order up a couple of tires to replace the fronts soon. Think I am going to rotate front to rear here soon and see if I can flatten out one of the fronts and keep it for a while.

I need a tire sponsor.

Sean
 
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