The old car hasn't been touched for a while, but I'm trying to make progress again on it.

Today saw the front suspension reassembly completed -- mostly -- and the front wheels back on the car. The front end rebuild got QA1 tubular upper control arms, QA1 adjustable strut rods, Bergman Auto Craft LCA pins & Delrin LCA bushings, new Moog lower ball joint assemblies plus inner & outer tie rod ends. The "mostly" comment is it looks like I need a new idler arm, too. After that gets swapped out, the alignment is gonna need a major adjustment.

Need new front brake hard lines, also... I completely forgot one side was damaged during disassembling of the front end before the frame repairs were done, and the other side was having problems getting it to thread into the hose to the caliper today.

Another thanks to Mike Hynes for putting a cattle prod to my butt to get back into the garage.

Very cool !!!!!

Don't stop. Do a little every day.
Doug

looking good . Be interested how those Delrin bushes hold up

Tex

Move those brake calipers so they are behind the spindles to move weight to the rear, I did on my old pump gas Duster and it helped

Looks nice!

If I was going to do anything w/ the front brakes, it would be to switch to the aftermarket calipers (and rotors?) that AndyF recommended to save some weight. At this point I'm not making any changes that deviate from basic reassembly. Thx

Oh, I did confirm that I have .860" torsion bars now. I don't recall if those would have been /6 or 318 bars originally, but they're not what were on the car when I bought it.

Cool beans.

0.860 torsion bars were used with the slant six. Pretty springy for a street driver but might help with the launch at the track. Have to be wary with slant six bars under a big block since they are over stressed. Can snap on you.

New brake lines and Pitman arm are here. Plan is to get back into the garage tomorrow, so maybe I'll have an update Sunday night or on Monday.

Part of the problem with doing a little every day is the car is packed into the garage with a bunch of other stuff because repairs to water damage in the house from a couple months ago haven't been completed. It takes 30+ minutes just to move enough stuff out of the garage to make room to work on the car, then there's the time needed to put it all back afterwards. It's a major PITA...

If you move back to Oregon you can share shop space with me. I won't even charge you rent.

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I'm thankful right now that most of the water damage to the garage ceiling has been repaired.

Personally, I don't see much difference between Andy's setup and mine...

Doesn't everybody's driveway look like this when they're working on their cars?

Surely you're not letting that Scatty sit outside? I feel for ya.

Nothing about this car ever "just goes back together"; everything needs to be worked on in one way or another.

Front suspension is all together and steering is also. Hard lines are replaced, so I'm hoping nothing else about the brakes needs attention, other than new fluid and bleeding the system.

I think there's something different between the original upper control arms and the QA1 tubular arms, in addition to the geometry improvement they claim. I had my old UCA bumpers trimmed shorter to free up sime extension travel per feedback from John Calvert. With the same bumpers and the QA1 arms, the front suspension is completely topped out and the arms still have about a 3/8" air gap before touching the bumpers. I put in some taller bumpers that compress some at full extraction, but won't know anything else until the car is back together and I can check static ride height and available travel from that position.

Unexpected air gap at full extension

Unless QA1 has changed the R Series Stocker Star front shocks since I purchased mine years ago, they're too bleepin short for B/E bodies if installed as directed. I had to change the bushings to allow mounting the shocks lower to artificially lengthen them. This is something I figured out before the car came off the road the last time, but I was reminded of it today putting the shocks back on.

I don't know why the image is loading sideways, since it appears correctly on my phone...

Sadie, our adopted Weimaraner, is fitting nicely into the role of shop dog. She's not bothered by noises like bench grinders and circular saws, is happy to flop on the cool concrete floor, and can even find a comfortable position next to my old 8.75 housing and previous fuel tank.