Car Party success

The car party was very successful. Although we did have a few relatively minor injuries - Carl's new skin removal technique, Tom's grinder to the fingernail, and my repeated head bashings into jack stands. Overall it was great. In the end the flow of beer prevailed over the flow of blood and we got a lot done.

Here are the new bullitt wheels with the 281 caps and black lugs. Although my final ride height isn't set yet, the 275s on the rear seem to be a great fit. Much thanks to everyone who took the time to help me figure out the best tire width with the longer axle. Now that you can see through more wheel, I think I need to paint the rotors black where they are currently the lush rust color.

Carl and I did the rear suspension change over. Koni coil overs and all FFR control arms. It's akin to wrestling with a dead elephant - it doesn't move, but it certainly doesn't cooperate. Using the jack in clever ways and just brute forcing it seems to be the best way to get things to 'line up'. Factory Five did forget to send me the hardware with my shocks so a quick stop to the hardware store to pick up some bolts and spacers was in order. I ended up ditching the quad shocks entirely, but if I think they are necessary I can space them out and still use them. I also had to move the axle straps. Once I got the shocks mounted I realized I drove the bolt in back to front so I couldn't bolt the axle straps on without removing the whole bolt and the shock would fall out. So instead of turning the bolt around, I just found another spot - from the spring perch bolt hole to an axle bracket. It gives the axle a little bit more motion without binding so overall an improvement.

Here is all the crap that I pulled out: upper arms, lower arms, springs, shocks, and spring perches. If anybody needs any of this stuff let me know!

The side pipes were starting to get rusty and I has sprayed some polish on them from the rotary buffer last time I polished the car and it sort of cooked on. So Tom and Brandon pulled the pipes off and sanded them down. I don't think I prepped them good enough the first time I painted them, so hopefully this will last longer.

You might remember I had a problem with the fitment of the passenger window in my soft top. The easiest solution I think is to cut the 2 metal rods off that go into the door and reweld them a few millimeters forward. This would place the window back a bit. So I cut them off and handed it off to Tom to weld back on. It's a bit tricky because they have to be PERFECTLY angled so we actually place them in the door, position the window and do a few quick tack welds to hold them in place then pull the window out and do a complete weld. Everything was going great until we ran out of weld wire. We'll get that wrapped up today.

I also changed out the set screws in my steering column for much much shorter ones. Hopefully I can avoid pulling out any more wires! I also zip tied the wires up off the steering column which I should have done earlier anyway.

We lowered the car, played around with the ride height for awhile and replaced the belt. I think that's about it. I think very successful! Here is a before and after - sorry they are nowhere near the same angle.