Post by eflow on Mar 14, 2006 15:23:34 GMT -5
Just finished a marathon 3 day fabrication session. A good friend of mine (the professional sand car manufacturer - Brent) and I did the "Thunderbolt" shock tower mod using the kit from Crites. Warning: this is not a job for the faint of heart or small of skill. The kit is sparse. The instructions are few. And customizing is huge.
The kit comes with really nice fibreglass forms for marking the towers. The sheet metal is stout (1/4 inch plate for the upper arm re-enforcement). Except for the re-eforcing plates the rest of the metal needs to be cut and ground to fit. Excelent welding skills are a must. The engine had to come out. The springs removed. Upper arms and shafts came out. While Brent was in the the engine bay I went ahead and cut 1 and 1/2 coils out of the springs (I think we got a total of 2 inches lower in front). I also took this opportunity to replace the upper and lower ball joints, the outer tie rod ends, the swaybar end links and the upper shafts. I used the kit from Kanters. Not a complete front end rebuild but close to it. Meanwhile, after lots of grinding and fitting, Brent gussetted the upper arm mounting plates then moved on to fitting and welding the pannels around the hole created from removing the shock tower. Then we shaped and fit the gusset plates to box in the front of the tower. We weren't sure if this was for looks or strength. Considering the thickness of the steel we'll say both. Brent also jumped in and made a plate the cover the rusted out section under the old battery tray. I never had to ask he just volunteered to do it.
Considering this was a first for either of us and that we didn't know what to expect (like way more hidden spot welds than you can shake a pickel fork at) it went much slower than we would have liked. From start to finish we both put in three 12 hour days give or take a few hours for meals and parts/tool runs. That was from pulling the hood to putting it back on. We figured that if we didn't do the suspension rebiuld we would have saved some time (maybe 8 hours or so). Our rebuild was also hampered by the fact I had to scrape off 44 years of road grime, grease and dirt to just find half of the parts. In the end we are very happy with the results. I love the room afforded by cars with Mustang II suspensions and the Meteor's old engine bay was just too cramped for my headers (see my post on headers and that whole nightmare). This mod really opens the space up, looks good ("badass" might be a better description) and makes working on the engine much easier. I wanted to just leave the hood off it looked so cool!
Hopefully I will have some pics soon to put up of the finished job and the new lower stance (I think that the springs will need to come out and lose another 1/2 of a coil or so). I didn't take any pics during the process since we had so much to do and a very tight deadline and I was so covered in grease and dirt I would have ruined the camera. We could not leave the job and come back at a later point since it was in my buddy's shop and he has at least six cars lined up to build. The phrase "get'r done" and "we've got'er on the run now, boys!" was heard echoing late into the night more than once this weekend!
The kit comes with really nice fibreglass forms for marking the towers. The sheet metal is stout (1/4 inch plate for the upper arm re-enforcement). Except for the re-eforcing plates the rest of the metal needs to be cut and ground to fit. Excelent welding skills are a must. The engine had to come out. The springs removed. Upper arms and shafts came out. While Brent was in the the engine bay I went ahead and cut 1 and 1/2 coils out of the springs (I think we got a total of 2 inches lower in front). I also took this opportunity to replace the upper and lower ball joints, the outer tie rod ends, the swaybar end links and the upper shafts. I used the kit from Kanters. Not a complete front end rebuild but close to it. Meanwhile, after lots of grinding and fitting, Brent gussetted the upper arm mounting plates then moved on to fitting and welding the pannels around the hole created from removing the shock tower. Then we shaped and fit the gusset plates to box in the front of the tower. We weren't sure if this was for looks or strength. Considering the thickness of the steel we'll say both. Brent also jumped in and made a plate the cover the rusted out section under the old battery tray. I never had to ask he just volunteered to do it.
Considering this was a first for either of us and that we didn't know what to expect (like way more hidden spot welds than you can shake a pickel fork at) it went much slower than we would have liked. From start to finish we both put in three 12 hour days give or take a few hours for meals and parts/tool runs. That was from pulling the hood to putting it back on. We figured that if we didn't do the suspension rebiuld we would have saved some time (maybe 8 hours or so). Our rebuild was also hampered by the fact I had to scrape off 44 years of road grime, grease and dirt to just find half of the parts. In the end we are very happy with the results. I love the room afforded by cars with Mustang II suspensions and the Meteor's old engine bay was just too cramped for my headers (see my post on headers and that whole nightmare). This mod really opens the space up, looks good ("badass" might be a better description) and makes working on the engine much easier. I wanted to just leave the hood off it looked so cool!
Hopefully I will have some pics soon to put up of the finished job and the new lower stance (I think that the springs will need to come out and lose another 1/2 of a coil or so). I didn't take any pics during the process since we had so much to do and a very tight deadline and I was so covered in grease and dirt I would have ruined the camera. We could not leave the job and come back at a later point since it was in my buddy's shop and he has at least six cars lined up to build. The phrase "get'r done" and "we've got'er on the run now, boys!" was heard echoing late into the night more than once this weekend!
