DAY 1
DAY 2
DAY 3
DAY 4
DAY 5
DAY 6
DAY 7
DAY 8
DAY 9
DAY 10
DAY 11
DAY 12
DAY 13
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DAY 10
EXTREME BUILDUP 2000 Project 2
Damian's 1970 800a
With springs attached to the correct place, we are ready to finish up the little stuff…like brakes - but lets look at some little details first.
With the front suspension being considerably stiffer than the rear, we have to take into account a few things. When traversing uneven ground,
the rear suspension will tend to do all the work, leaving the front suspension “un-flexed”. This is common with this conversion and the only
way to fix it is to build the front as soft as we made the rear. I guess this means future coils-over up front (hehehehe).
One way that we helped this is by using the old spring packs. The 800 springs are very short and they have no real width. This is why
they are built with multiple thick “hard-to-bend” leafs. Commonly we would have used a spring from a Scout II or full-size Chevy/Ford -
which are wide and thin (making them very flexy). Quarter Elliptic springs usually doesn’t have spring clamps on them either. Without
the clamps, the bottom leaf is free to flex as far as the axle can pull it. In our case, we kept the last three springs clamped together.
This will limit the travel a bit, but it will also allow the front suspension to flex when called upon. Once the front suspension is
rebuilt, we’ll remove the clamp.
Here are a couple of pictures of the rear spring, and its mounts. Note the custom shackle, they allow
the axle to twist and drop without binding up the springs.
Note that we changed the way the pack is held together at the thick end. Although we used those thick plates before (day 9) we opted
to loose them and use this smaller sleeve instead. After everything is setup, we’ll use gussets and angle iron to build up the attachments
to the frame. Look close and you can see the "fanning" of the spring leafs.
Here is a view of the complete link and spring setup, minus the shocks of course.
And some pictures of the 800 on the lift.
PLANS
| Day 1
| Day 2
| Day 3
| Day 4
| Day 5
| Day 6
| Day 7
| Day 8
| Day 9
| Day 10
| Day 11
| Day 12
| Day 13
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