Viewing 13 posts - 31 through 43 (of 43 total)
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  • #8118
    Ward Frahler
    Participant

    Look Maw, no flanges. :cheer: So I decided to clean up my firewall also. I wish I had taken some before pics but I was sitting out there thinking about and just jumped in. Where they put the body together they leave flanges to pinch together and spot weld. I thought it would look a lot cleaner if they weren’t there, maybe in the end it won’t be worth the effort but won’t know until you try, right? I just cut 3″ or 4″ at a time, there are 3 layers of metal coming together at the same point and I wanted to make sure it all kept its position. I removed the drip rails on a Maverick once and used the same procedure. I cut the vin tag off and positioned it right where it was just closer to the firewall and of course I will clean up the welds when I’m done. I finished the 2 sides. Now just have to finish going across the cowl.
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    Sorry if these aren’t clear as to what they are but the top and bottom pics are on their sides.

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    DSC01874.JPG

    #8132
    V8 Staff
    Keymaster

    Look Maw, no flanges. :cheer: So I decided to clean up my firewall also. I wish I had taken some before pics but I was sitting out there thinking about and just jumped in. Where they put the body together they leave flanges to pinch together and spot weld. I thought it would look a lot cleaner if they weren’t there, maybe in the end it won’t be worth the effort but won’t know until you try, right? I just cut 3″ or 4″ at a time, there are 3 layers of metal coming together at the same point and I wanted to make sure it all kept its position. I removed the drip rails on a Maverick once and used the same procedure. I cut the vin tag off and positioned it right where it was just closer to the firewall and of course I will clean up the welds when I’m done. I finished the 2 sides. Now just have to finish going across the cowl.

    Sorry if these aren’t clear as to what they are but the top and bottom pics are on their sides.

    Well that’s interesting! As long as you can keep the structural integrity together, that’s a trick old customizers used to do. It does make collision repair people cringe, however… makes for a harder car to fix should something ever happen to it. But it will look smooth!

    Kevin Oeste

    #8225
    Ward Frahler
    Participant

    Well again it has been awhile but I’m always lurking, just don’t post unless I have something to say. I have been trying to set up my front suspension for awhile. A smart man (Fakesnake) once told me that running the Fatman dropped spindles with Shockwaves would be too low, well I thought there is no too low and I already had the FM dropped spindles. I mocked everything up and noticed my ball joints were almost maxed out at Ridetech’s suggested ride height. The Fatman LCAs looked like they dipped towards the outside. I contacted cmedrop (Tyson) and asked him to compare pics of mine with his because he didn’t have the same problem, he thought they were different than his. I contacted Fatman Fab. (Tim) and he looked over my pics and said he didn’t know how they got out of the shop like that. He sent a call tag and they paid shipping both directions and fixed them. Here are pics of the way they were. I had these a few years as I collected parts so I am grateful that they, Fatman, fixed them. DSC01881.JPG DSC01882.JPG DSC01883.JPG More tomorrow, have to go to work.

    #8233
    Ward Frahler
    Participant

    I got the LCAs back and mocked up both sides with different spindles. After talking to Fakesnake and Tyson, I bought another set of spindles. Fakesnake had been down this road before and after talking to him and he stressing the idea that it would be too low when running the Shockwaves with the FM dropped spindles.Tyson is running the Dropem & Stopem spindles and I liked what he had to say about them. I called Dave at Dropem & Stopem and talked to him about his spindles and was happy with all the answers to my questions. The Fatman spindles are supposed to be a 3″ drop and the D&S spindles are supposed to be 2 1/2″ drop. Now for my thoughts and ideas about the 2 spindles with pictures. Something that just came to me is that I never took a measurement with the stock spindles, I may do that just for others to use as a reference. I’m using, I think, 2001 mustang GT wheels with 5 1/4″ backspace and 1 1/2″ spacers. First is the FM dropped spindle, so this probably is about a 3″ drop. I could actually remove the spacer and probably be alright as you can see the balljoint would fit inside the wheel without conflict. DSC01938.JPG
    Next is the D&S spindle. Comparatively by looking at the balljoint location you can see even with these 17″ whels the balljoint is close to wheel. So with the stock wheel backspacing at 5 1/4″ and adding the 1 1/2″ spacer the backspacing becomes 3 3/4″ which puts the wheel too close to the fender in my opinion. I could probably safely get away with 4 1/4″ backspace on 8″ wide wheels. I should also state that I plan on running 17 X 8 wheels with this size tire which is 245/45 17 on the front. DSC01939.JPG
    Next is the space between the balljoint and the wheel with the D&S spindle. DSC01940.JPG
    Next is the distance from the wheel to the garage floor. My oilpan sits at 15 1/4″ from the floor. With the D&S spindle the wheel is at about 14 1/4″ so if I had a flat I still have a little over an inch before the oil pan is riding the ground. DSC01941.JPG
    Next is the FM spindle and as you can see it is at about 16″ off the ground. This would put my oil pan on the ground or very close to it, as chances are that you would probably have a flat on one side only at a time so the other side might hold it off the ground. DSC01942.JPG
    This is the mustang wheel I’m using for mock up. DSC01943.JPG
    Last shows that the D&S spindle has no hard stop but neither does the FM spindle. I’m going to have to come up with something here. DSC01945.JPG
    Fianl thoughts. If I was just lowering my car and not running Shockwaves at all 4 corners I would probably go with the FM spindles, but Fakesnake is a smart man and they were going to put me too low or lower than I felt comfortable with. If you want to run large brakes you can run them on the D&S spindles with an off the shelf Wilwood kit. If you want to run big brakes on the FM spindles you have to send them to FM, they machine them and then you can only buy the Wilwood kit from them which makes them higher $. You can run more backspace with the FM spindles without interference. So it all depends on what you are after. I will be running the D&S spindles for my application and will be selling my FM spindles soon. Hope this helps someone out there.

    #8249
    V8 Staff
    Keymaster

    Great info! Thanks for sharing, especially with the detailed photos. I’d like to see the brakes on when you get to that point!

    Kevin Oeste

    #8298
    V8 Staff
    Keymaster

    If you have any updates, we’ve sorted out some forum issues that might have been giving you a hassle. Thanks!

    Kevin Oeste

    #8315
    Ward Frahler
    Participant

    Thank you Kevin.

    Some times you have to take time out to pay the bills. These are pics of my layout and masked so you can follow them better. I’m very happy with my layout, some may like and others may not, but I love flames and painting them. This is my take on tribal ghost flames. The owner wanted the green pearl, I was a little skeptical but it actually came out pretty good. I also work hard to get my finish as glass like as I can. Also, don’t dog me too hard, if you study the flames there are differences but I do all my layout by eye and I’m 51yr old and wear readers. LOL Hope you enjoy. Back to the car soon.
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    #8320
    Ward Frahler
    Participant

    Trying to clean up my garage to make some room. I got my car down in the front but the back is just sitting on jackstands at about ride height. Man it looks good to me. I wouldn’t mind if it sat a little lower but the oil pan is about 4″ inches off the ground and that is about as low as I want to go for a driving height. I also installed a stock spindle to have a reference for others and to compare. With the front end on jack stands again the D&S spindle side(pass) was 7 1/2″ from the bottom of the wheel to the floor, the stock spindle side(driver) was 6 1/8″ off the floor. I didn’t take the pics from the best angle but you can kind see where the upper ball joint is in relation to the wheel. So….. the difference between the three spindles are, lets say stock is zero from there the D&S will drop that by 1 3/8″ and the FM will drop 3 1/8″ from stock. some may get different measurements but I kept everything the same, the spindle being the only variable. I hung a fender just to get a preview of the ride height look, I love it. DSC01973.JPG DSC01977.JPG DSC01976.JPG DSC01975.JPG

    #8321
    V8 Staff
    Keymaster

    Thank you Kevin.

    Some times you have to take time out to pay the bills. These are pics of my layout and masked so you can follow them better. I’m very happy with my layout, some may like and others may not, but I love flames and painting them. This is my take on tribal ghost flames. The owner wanted the green pearl, I was a little skeptical but it actually came out pretty good. I also work hard to get my finish as glass like as I can. Also, don’t dog me too hard, if you study the flames there are differences but I do all my layout by eye and I’m 51yr old and wear readers. LOL Hope you enjoy. Back to the car soon.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARfjHrfQvcY

    Nice work on the ghost flames! Those really have a nice disappearing effect when the light is not shining. The layout is nicely done, and you can tell you have them buried in the clear. Nice work!

    Kevin Oeste

    #8322
    V8 Staff
    Keymaster

    Trying to clean up my garage to make some room. I got my car down in the front but the back is just sitting on jackstands at about ride height. Man it looks good to me. I wouldn’t mind if it sat a little lower but the oil pan is about 4″ inches off the ground and that is about as low as I want to go for a driving height. I also installed a stock spindle to have a reference for others and to compare. With the front end on jack stands again the D&S spindle side(pass) was 7 1/2″ from the bottom of the wheel to the floor, the stock spindle side(driver) was 6 1/8″ off the floor. I didn’t take the pics from the best angle but you can kind see where the upper ball joint is in relation to the wheel. So….. the difference between the three spindles are, lets say stock is zero from there the D&S will drop that by 1 3/8″ and the FM will drop 3 1/8″ from stock. some may get different measurements but I kept everything the same, the spindle being the only variable. I hung a fender just to get a preview of the ride height look, I love it.

    Man, that does look good!

    I agree with you, I probably wouldn’t go any lower on the oil pan clearance. But you could always pick up the engine a hair, or mod the pan…

    Kevin Oeste

    #8325
    Ward Frahler
    Participant

    Thank you for the flame compliments.

    I thought about modding the oil pan but my tranny pan also hangs down there, and it is cast aluminum. This height is growing on me, we’ll see, of course on shockwaves when I pull in and park somewhere I can lay it down.

    Still plan on doing some (major) projects with you guys at V8 Speed & Resto.

    #9279
    V8 Staff
    Keymaster

    Have you made any progress on the ’64 Galaxie? We just learned that AMD is making a whole slew of restoration parts for these cars, should be very helpful to people building them.

    Kevin Oeste

    #9280
    Ward Frahler
    Participant

    Trying to wake the dead Kevin? 🙂 It looks just like this right now. Got started on my 73 swb f100 and got really sidetracked. I guess I should do a build thread on it here. I wasn’t going to do much with it but that escalated out of control.

    I saw that AMD was making pcs, I’m hoping for a one pc. quarter for the 64. Cool that they have them for the 63 people now, they needed that, well not if you have a parts maker like you have at your shop.

    So that was you in the tux interviewing Foose at SEMA wasn’t it?

Viewing 13 posts - 31 through 43 (of 43 total)
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