been awhile ,hope everyone had a great Xmas and newyears .
sorry i don't have a lot of photos of all the steps but the images will show you where its at .
Since the last post in early Dec , before removing that arm i had a good look at it and came up with a few changes that will allow for all the adjustability i"m looking for.
caster , camber and toe as well as in/out for tire clearance issues.more on those later .
Yes i did need to go back to the more original setup on the inner heim joint as i thought , due to not being able to remove the bolt .
quick walk through went like this .
bolt the bearing assembly 3/4" above centre line to the 3/8" plate .by bolting the bearing assembly to the plate instead of welding it allows for replacement if required or even shimming out if needed .as well the bolts will stick out enough to allow the outer bearingcap to be attached with a washer and nut .
i was going to mount the caliper directly to the 3/8" plate but decided in using the supplied caliper mounts that sandwich between the bearing housing and outer bearing cap .figuring if there is some form of distorsion on the trailing arm the caliper and disc will always be true.
taking the plate/bearing assemble back to the car it was bolted to the torsion arm and the process of using the angle iron mentioned earlier on to square the assembly to the torsion tube was used .i was able to now place the inner heim joint back to the inner position as before and with the stub axle installed in the bearing housing locate the best position for the lower diagonal arm .special attention was used to make sure the shock clearance was not a issue with that arm .
removing those components it was time to mount them all back to the jig , lower plate with bearing assemble was mounted as well as the inner heim joint with a short piece of tubing attached .also a jig was fabricated to allow easy setup in my drill press for notching the 1 1/4" tubing .instead of using tubing for all trial and error i used wooden
1 1/4"dowel which cuts way easier , way cheaper and allows for easy changes .once the final angles were completed i would then install the steel tube and make the final pieces for both sides before changing setup in the drill press ,
I figured if i allowed the diagonal arms to pass through the plate it would be way stronger than flat welding the tubing to one side only of the 3/8 plate . a easy solution for figuring out the compond angle was to use a pipe with a I.D of 1 1/4" angle cut at one end and 2 inches up cut at 90 deg .i slid this up the wooden dowel test diagonal arm and slid it down the dowel until it rested squarely on the 3/8 plate .tacking it in place with the mig left me with a perfect guide for the hole saw .
once removed from the jig i set it up on the drill press and bored the compound angle through the plate .
back to the jig and what you see is were I'm at .
what happens is after welding is completed the 3/8 plate will be cut to size/shape .you can also see a test wooden dowel being used for the upper diagonal arm .but before i finalise that i will tack the lower arm together and test fit once more and make sure of the upper arms position as its close with the new shock placement .will get some images of that later and how the rest of the modifications to the stock trailing arms come into play .
good to be back at it and it looks like it will all come together as planned