Amazon: Brake System Upgrade

[john h]

Looking good.

How much for a pair of these spring top mounts? (I am serious.)

You might need to slightly tilt (and/or raise) the engine and gearbox so that the propshaft runs in a fairly straight line to the axle. Having it running at an angle rapidly wears the UJs.

For radical lowering at the front, I would consider cutting a recess into the chassis rails to mount the body lower on the cross member - all strengthened carefully of course. If you also space the steering box up by the same amount by welding on new mounts higher up, correct steering geometry would be maintained.

I am enjoying following this!

John

[Alf ista]

Excellent work!

[dheming]

Originally Posted by john h

How much for a pair of these spring top mounts? (I am serious.)

I'm assuming you mean the ones in post #91 right?. Let me get a quote for water jet cutting and we'll take it from there.

Originally Posted by john h

You might need to slightly tilt (and/or raise) the engine and gearbox so that the propshaft runs in a fairly straight line to the axle. Having it running at an angle rapidly wears the UJs.

That's a good idea. I need to look at the center bearing carrier crossmember to see how hard it would be to make it adjustable.


Well I realized today that I had completely forgot about the rear sway bar. So I installed it and sure enough it is right in the way of where I wanted to run the coilover in front of the axle. No worries though, I still have a few options. Most likely will be routing the coilover at an angle behind the axle which will kinda simplify things a bit too. Back to the drawing pad.

[john h]

Originally Posted by dheming

I'm assuming you mean the ones in post #91 right?. Let me get a quote for water jet cutting and we'll take it from there.

Yes, the ones in 91

Originally Posted by dheming

Well I realized today that I had completely forgot about the rear sway bar. So I installed it and sure enough it is right in the way of where I wanted to run the coilover in front of the axle. No worries though, I still have a few options. Most likely will be routing the coilover at an angle behind the axle which will kinda simplify things a bit too. Back to the drawing pad.

I would prioritise the coilovers and fit them as upright as possible. Easy enough to make a swaybar fit somewhere else. In fact, with a live axle, It is technically better in my view for the swar bar to just connect the two trailing arms - if you think about it, no body connection is required and this was the set-up used in later live-axle Volvos.

I am using an IPD bar for a 940 on my 164 - see page 14 of my thread (but be warned, my fabrication is not as neat as yours!):

http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showth...=60815&page=14


Cheers

John

[940_Turbo]

Originally Posted by dheming

I'm assuming you mean the ones in post #91 right?. Let me get a quote for water jet cutting and we'll take it from there.



That's a good idea. I need to look at the center bearing carrier crossmember to see how hard it would be to make it adjustable.


Well I realized today that I had completely forgot about the rear sway bar. So I installed it and sure enough it is right in the way of where I wanted to run the coilover in front of the axle. No worries though, I still have a few options. Most likely will be routing the coilover at an angle behind the axle which will kinda simplify things a bit too. Back to the drawing pad.

I'd be wary of fitting the rear sway bar at all. It can cause some seriously evil handling. Over the years I've tried them on various 120s and PVs and we generally ended up in the same place. At best it didn't affect the handling at worst it led to the car snapping from mild understeer into violent oversteer without any real warning.

I built a PV a few years ago on which we spent hours testing various setups on a circuit. In the end we tossed the rear bar in the metal skip as the car was faster without it. All it did was induce a false sense of security on a smooth road driving in a straight line.

[dheming]

Interesting info on rear sway bar, thanks guys. I think I'll move ahead without the IPD rear bar for now. It seems like it has the wrong spring rate for performance/track driving and I'm already not liking how it mounts anyways. Once my wagon is back on the road I'll see how she handles and make a decision about a rear bar then. It would be nice to use a straight style bar like these since it is super easy to try different spring rates.

[940_Turbo]

Originally Posted by dheming

Interesting info on rear sway bar, thanks guys. I think I'll move ahead without the IPD rear bar for now. It seems like it has the wrong spring rate for performance/track driving and I'm already not liking how it mounts anyways. Once my wagon is back on the road I'll see how she handles and make a decision about a rear bar then. It would be nice to use a straight style bar like these since it is super easy to try different spring rates.

I've found that it is far more effective to go for a stiffer spring at the back. I've spent a lot of time over the years driving various historic rally cars. As a basic rule of thumb what I've found works is a front spring that is fairly close to the factory rate but gives a lower ride height. Very stiff front springs can make the front do weird things.

The front IPD bar works well.

The rear IPD bar doesn't suit hard driving.

Lower stiffer rear spring.

The PV about 10 seconds into this clip is the one I spent a lot of time on. I built it for the guy driving it about 6 years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxUbmRyx7rY

[dheming]

Update: I picked up some mild steel tube yesterday and got started on the new lower mounts. The bracket that holds the coilover itself is made from 2" x 4" x 1/4" rectangular tube. I used my handy fixture to hold it steady while drilling the three 1/2" holes:



Here I'm laying out the lines for the edges and the remaining holes to drill:



This was the hard part, cutting a 2.5" hole through 1/4" steel at way too high of an RPM on my drill press:



With all the holes drilled, it was back to my trusty bandsaw for two more precise cuts:



This is the result of 3 solid hours of work. Thankfully I'm planning on getting milling machine in the next few months so my days of doing things like this the hard way are numbered:

[dheming]

I got started on the axle tower this evening after school. Made from 3" x 3" x 1/4" square tube, this will end up around 8" long and is going to be welded to the axle. It will locate a few things: at the bottom of the front side will be the Mk3 lower coilover bracket from post #108, the outer most side will have a vertical row of holes for the lower control arm, at the top of the back side will be the panhard mount bracket, and at the bottom of the back side will be the straight sway bar mount if I end up running one. Kinda hard to visualize I know, subsequent pictures this week will explain all.


Trying to cut the 2.5" hole on the drill press didn't go so well on the square tube, the hole saw walked over the edge about 1/8". This notch/fishmouth has to be pretty precise so instead I went medieval on it:







Needless to say I have a bit of filing and smoothing left to do to get it to be a nice tight fit for welding, but so far so good:

[Derek UK]

Excellent work as usual, on both of the parts. I suspect that finessing the last bracket to give a "gas tight joint" is overkill considering you're going to melt it with your Tig. Would you normally chamfer the edge anyway to help the weld to fill the junction?