Pace car build

[cougman67]

Thanks, I wish I could find 16” wheels but for now, 15” wheels I’ll do.

[cougman67]

I took a few hours off to prime the bumpers. The rear one still needs work, the front is pretty good.

[curtisboyte]

Looking good


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[cougman67]

I took Friday off to work on the car. I planned on painting the engine compartment if I didn’t find any surprises. As usual I found a few.

Here are some progress pictures.

[cougman67]

A few more progress pictures.

[cougman67]

Here is a surprise. It looks like a stress crack that I hadn’t seen previously. If this is common I’d like to know.

[cougman67]

Sealed ready for paint.



If anyone wants to know whether you should remove the rubber hinge boots.

[cougman67]

Voila, painted.


The colour looks more like gold than pewter but it’s original.

Patrick

[wraithracing]

I have seen stress cracks around the accelerator cable before. Seems to be most prevalent on the early cars. I think they increase the sheet metal thickness later in production.

I remove the hood hinge boots to clean up, primer, seal, and paint behind them. Then I install either new ones now that they are reproduced or good used ones in the past.

I will say that most of the mixes straight out from the paint suppliers today all seem to be WRONG in regards to the color and have either too much gold or too much brown in the mixture. I know one member here had saved his original fuel door and they matched the paint to the original color. I have not seen the car in person, but the Pewter looked much more silver on his car then most of the other repaints I have seen. I would not be surprised if you current paint is actually off in regards to the color. Otherwise the PC is looking good! Congrats!

I do need to comment that at least in your pictures the color on the hood does look pretty close. The side shot of the engine bay does seem to show more gold color to me. Unfortunately slight color and shade variances are very hard to see in pictures. So as long as you are happy with it, then no problem.

[82GTforME]

Looking good! It's a nice feeling putting some paint down! Did you use a single stage paint or are you going with a base clear?

[cougman67]

I was worried about the colour. They had an old paint chip from 1980 and it matches the code. The code didn’t appear in 1979, the paint codes were already sent out before they built the pace cars.

I used PPG base / clear. I plan on doing all the interior portions of the car, assembling and paint the exterior of the car in one session. I will have to get it painted by someone else in the spring if all goes well.

Patrick

[cougman67]

I have started assembly of the front end this week. As you can see, it’s a full maximum Motorsport front suspension. I purchased it to reduce bump steer when the car is assembled.

[cougman67]

Now I need to purchase the rack and pinion and, if possible, a bolt kit for the rack. I have not had any luck in Alberta finding some.

[dagenham]

I had a 84 F150 that I had to weld up the hole for the clutch m/c.

[BMW Rider]

You'll need the newer smaller size rack bolts for the MM K member. I found a set out of a wreck at PnP. Should be easy to find from a parts car I would think.

[cougman67]

Update and questions. Hello everyone I am in the process of assembling the maximum Motorsport front-end. I just found out I have to drill out the tire rod opening for the bumpsteer kit. I would prefer the kit where I can use the factory taper. My questions are:

Has anyone tried using the taper bump steer kit version on the maximum Motorsport front end.
I am also concerned with the clearance on the steering rack and wondered if it’s normal.

[cougman67]

[BMW Rider]

MM has a tapered style bumpsteer kit also. I used the bolt through one on my 79, I drilled the spindles out using my milling machine to achieve the accuracy needed. The rack does seem a bit tight, they do make a spacer kit as well which is for the manual rack, but it may solve your clearance issue.

[cougman67]

I had watched the YouTube video from Eric the car guy about this suspension last year. It’s a good video if anyone is considering purchasing this kit. He used Steeda outer tie rod ends and never said if they were an issue or not. I made the mistake of reading the instructions after I installed the front end. While they have good instructions, they have them separate for each system.

I have an email in to maximum Motorsports to get some direction.

[cougman67]

Maximum Motorsport says it’s required for their kmember installation.

[BMW Rider]

I made the mistake of reading the instructions after I installed the front end. While they have good instructions, they have them separate for each system.

I did that too. I had to pull the spindles off again to drill them out. Not a big deal but yes, it pays to read all of the install instructions first before starting. It would have been nice to have a complete start to finish single set of directions for all the components. Then there is the setup and adjusting stage where you get to go back through many of the instructions to find all the specs and torque values.

[cougman67]

Thanks Ed, how difficult was it to remove the spindles? I just torqued them both on Friday if that made any difference.

[cougman67]

Maximum Motorsports initial response is:

Patrick,

See the attached sketch.

This shows the front suspension and steering system geometry required for minimum bumpsteer. This means that as the front suspension moves up and down, the toe angle of the front tires does not change.

The sketch shows the FCA, the tie rod (inner plus outer), spindle and strut. The small circles in the sketch are the pivot points of each of these links. Some of these points are not visible since they are inside a part. A good example of this is the ball joint pivot in the FCA.

The top and bottom lines in the drawing, meet to define the instant center of the front suspension on the left of the sketch. This is the point around which the tire on the side shown moves in an arc as the suspension moves. For minimum bumpsteer, the line drawn through the tie rod must also meet at the IC.

When the car is lowered with stock parts, the angle of the FCA changes quite a bit. This makes the IC much lower down. This causes a number of handling problems. To compensate for this, the MM k-member has two sets of FCA pivot holes. One is raised 1". The other set is raised 2". When the car is lowered, moving the FCA to one of these holes allows the FCA angle to be restored, which puts the FCA angle back to stock.

However, when the car is lowered, the angle of the tie rod has changed quite a bit and it will therefore no longer meet at the IC. To fix this, the inner pivot of the tie rod must be raised, the outer pivot must be lowered or a combination of both. The MMST-6 steering rack bushings allow the steering rack to be raised or lowered a maximum of +/-0.375". How much the steering rack can be raised is a function of clearance to the oilpan. The MMTR-2 kit only allows the outer end of the tie rod to be lowered about 0.75". This is due to the small diameter of the stud. If we made the stud longer, it would be too flexible and would break. If you installed the FCAs in the lower set of holes in the MM k-member (1" up) and were able to raise the steering rack 0.375", there would maybe be just enough adjustment with the MMTR-2 kit. The additional caster which the MM k-member and c/c plates add to the suspension also requires that the outer tie rod be lowered a little bit more. So, even though the 0.375"+0.75" = 1.125" adjustment is more than 1", it might not be enough. If your oilpan gets in the way, it definitely won't work.

For all of the above reasons and the ability to move the FCAs to the upper set of pivot holes in the MM k-member, we require the use of the MMTR-1 bumpsteer kit and drilling out the hole in the end of the steering arms on the spindles.

If you want to understand more about bumpsteer, including seeing videos of it in action, see the link below.

https://forums.corral.net/forums/8565296-post36.html

[BMW Rider]

The only hard part was breaking the ball joint loose and even that was not much of a problem. Much easier than if they have been on there a decade or two and seen many years of harsh climates.

[erratic50]

Good progress on this build. MM makes a bumpsteer measurement gauge that helps. Biggest problem is you don’t know ride height until it’s all assembled

Following the comment on balljoint removal ....... Nobody would have wanted to be around when I broke a balljoint press designed for working on one ton trucks while trying to get my OE balljoints out. I resorted to map gas in a portable torch and another press to get my originals out. Hated it. 30 years at the time and nearly 1/2 million miles on the nasty salty harsh nebraska roads did not do any favors. Then I still had to change the bushings which was no easier.

I didn’t go there with my 85 — simply bought new OE style replacement A arms so the fox style joints would press right out and there were no A arm bushings to deal with.

Proper rubber bushing setups are secured to the arm and the metal insert. The insert stays stationary and the rubber flexes to allow the arms to move. You can’t really duplicate this with replacement stuff, another good reason for replacement arms.

New low friction SN95 balljoints are a great upgrade BTw.