95naSTA

Butt hurt? Really? I'm just trying to give you guys examples of what you're calling unsafe.

Both my cars are over 200k and 3.5"+ lower than stock.. one with negative camber one without.. I'm not worried one bit about the CVs/Balljoints/Tierods/Bushings. Since I know how to maintain a car, I'll know when there's play and therefore a potential problem. I'll let you know when my wheels snap off though. It's very easy to say things weren't designed to function a certian way. But facts are facts and virtually no issues speak for themselves.

My Bonneville is running larger wheels overall. CVs at crappy angles: wear out faster but not dangerous, they'll be letting you know they're bad wayyy before it's dangerous Ball joints: Ball joints have plenty of travel to accommodate lowering and are also designed with a high engineering safety factor - not dangerous Tie rods: Same Suspension bushings: same as CVs, not dangerous Wheel bearings: Same Negative camber: Not dangerous - Auto-x guys run up to -4 or so. All I'm getting out of that is more maintenance. You guys are acting like tire stretch just started happening. It's extremely common and done without issue. It's hardly as dangerous as you guys make it out to be. So this guy maybe hits a pothole and bends his rim worse. That could happen with a larger wheel and low pros.

How is that unsafe again? I bottom out that same front strut in my car. It looks a whole lot better than the typical weak offset/cheap wheel/1-1.5" drop W-body combo.

That actually looks decent.

You weren't kidding about the leather being in good shape. Nice pick up man.

Progress isn't as fast as I would like but I'm getting there. I wasn't going to be home for 2 weeks so I made sure all those CAD files were developed/tested before I left. I got the files sent over to S&W Race Cars right after I left a few days ago.. I love how cheap water jetting is.. For these plates in 1/4" mild steel: Rear block for jack shaft mount Rear trans Front trans (trans side) Front trans (subframe side) This plate in 12 gauge mild steel: Clutch master/pedal ... $45.xx Granted it took a bit of time developing the CAD files and testing them, I'd much rater spend my time doing that vs. monster-trucking metal on a grinder. It'll still take some of that but maybe a quarter of what it would have been.

Thanks guys. The rear trans mount plate is finalized in CAD. I printed it out and threw it in on last time to mark off where I want it to end. I just lined it up with the stock rear mount which I'll be moving inboard about 3/4".

The trans got bolted up and everything was pulled into place to start the mock up. A decent amount of material had to be removed from the unibody frame rail. It'll be notched in with thicker sheet metal for strength. With everything in place I was able to get a better idea of what I need to do to the trans plates I CAD'd. Why I'm not going to use the stock rear mount. (The stud is too mar IMO) The paper is the original rear mount I made. I'm going to extend the rear plate to the lower self that the OEM rear and use a universal mount. With it extended, it'll be easy to put a quick 90 down to a universal mount. Edit- I figured out how to use the stock mount so I can make use of both of those shelves on the subframe. The front plate ends up forward of the OEM mounting holes.. I'm going to get rid of the lower dog leg on the front trans plate, extend it to the driver's side, and weld in a piece perpendicular to wrap it around, and make a mounting point at the bottom of it. Now I have to modify the plate drawings and figure out what universal mounts I'm going to use. Bad part of this though.. I need to re-do 1 primary and flip the collector on the the front header since it hits here the HTOB line makes a bulge on the trans case.

It was her 1st part on a lathe too.

A member of a Bonnie forum was nice enough to make me a cup for the intermediate shaft bearing. This part will be used in conjunction with the metal version of the last pic in my past post. V3.0 of the clutch pedal plate is drafted up and test fitted. I wasn't happy with how ragged the clutch pedal master hole was. The plan was to fix it.. But, since I'm going to have so many parts water jetted, I figured I might was well draft it up. I'm going to drill the mounting holes myself with the old plate to endure those are perfect. Vid of the paper part in action >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSfeo79j2X4

coiloverssssssssssssss I still cross my fingers every time I open this thread hoping you got everything together for those.

Since I've been home most of this month I got a few things done. I pulled the trans and took measurements for mocking up mounts. I also drafted up some of the plates needed in CAD and test fitted them.

Thank you! I snuck in a little work today and all wiring that got nicked when I was fabbing up that firewall plate is now fixed/soldered with epoxy lined shrink tubing.

100% hilarious. And 'blyat' is similar to saying shitttttt!

Nice on the TB. Has anyone else ever punched out the neck of a F-body UIM?

Sandy gave me another day off so I got to work. With no gas for the MIG or epoxy lined shrink tubing, I decided to start mocking up the jack shaft mount. Most people flip the aluminum mount 90* or cut it. I decided to remove it, flip it, and make an adapter plate. The top two jack shaft mount bolt holes will be drilled/taped/helicoiled into the adapter and the bottom will have a nut and bolt. The four mounting points include 3 on the block and one on the S3 oil pan. A gusset or two may be added depending on the thickness of the metal. The mock up: And I finally got around to sealing up the HVAC duct which allowed me to bolt up the shifter for good.

Hurricane Sandy Progress. (having a garage FTW) I cut a hole in the firewall and trimmed the top outboard part of the mounting plate so that they can make up an oval slot for wire routing. Here's everything bolted up with the MC installed: And here's a rubber grommet in place with the OEM hood latch grommet trimmed to fit it. In the case of the relocated wiring, a new, tighter, grommet will be used. This whole plate area will also have sealer once finalized. Not shown in the pics is another bolt hole at the top of the plate. So, there will be 3 bolts surrounding the clutch pedal bracket that also go through the firewall. The only thing really left to do with this is fix some of the wiring, mess with the MC hole a little more, and weld the pedal stopper solid. Other than that, next on the agenda is making the jack shaft to block mounting bracket.

Plate V 2.0. The master has full stroke and I tacked a stopper in place to limit pedal travel down. The master isn't giving me much room for slipping the wiring by safely. So, I'm looking at enlarging the firewall hole up and outboard toward the hole for the hood latch. I'm also realizing that bringing the ABS module in the cabin will actually increase the number of wires going through the firewall. Most of the wires go the the abs block and some to the fuses.. So it looks like it's staying. I started figuring out the wiring routing but I ran out of time for today.

After a few days of messing around with it, I'm happy with the mounted location of the clutch pedal. It took a bit of trial and error to get it where I want it location and travel wise. The plate you'll see in the pics below is the prototype for all intensive purposes. It'll be revisited with new metal and only the holes necessary. A second plate will also close the top of the slot. The second try.. By now I had already figured out I needed to grind out the pedal bracket in the MC rod end area to gain rebound travel of the pedal. The floor board was limiting downward travel with the pedal bracket sitting square against the firewall. With the extra rebound travel and spacing the bracket off the firewall, the overall travel was much better. The top of the pedal bracket was also interfering with the dash support and the pedal needed to be moved outboard. Close, but not quite. The third try involved me moving all three pedal bracket mounting holes upward. This gave me some more interference with the dash support in the same location as before. The fourth try was just moving the upper outer stud hole, which seemed to be too far inboard. Problem is, that put the hole in the slot for sliding the plate up around the wires. So, I riveted in a piece of metal to extend that area into that slot. Which ended up here: Closer but the pedal was still clocked.. The last and final try included slotting the top inner hole on the clutch pedal bracket it's self and undoing one of the aforementioned rivets so the pedal could be clocked. The upper inner hole in the plate was at it's max left position before it ended up in the OEM void through the firewall. So, I slotted the bracket so I could keep the rigidity of bolting through both the new plate and firewall. I marked the two inner bolt holes so I knew where the outer hole should be in relation once bolted up. There it is. All lined up. And plate v1.x in all it's glory. This poor guy got abused. Next step is mounting the master cylinder which will tell me where I can run the wires. Then a final version of the 2 part plate. Oh and unpinning that ABS module connector might not happen. I cannot figure out how to unpin it without messing it up.

Work has me away from home quite a bit but I'm still making some progress. Since the last post I: -Picked up a spare block a few weeks ago for mocking the jack shaft bracket up -Make a stopper for the clutch pedal as it's sprung up. Before the spring pulled the plastic master cylinder rod end into the pedal bracket. This stopper will make it easier to figure out how far away the MC needs to be placed in relation to the pedal. -Started working on pulling the trans/CC/abs wires into the cabin through the hole I'm using for the clutch pedal -Started making the plate that will replace the original wire pass through and mount the MC/clutch pedal assembly Pulling the wires into the cabin requires separating the wires out of this gooped up bundle that comes through the firewall. This is a huge PITA. The pic below is what I had to deal with.. I powered through and freed all those wires from that gobbledegook. All 3 trans connectors and 1 cruise control connector are through the firewall and free up to the upper dash excluding 2 wires. Due to the amount of wires this involved un and repinning a lot of the wires at the connecter to untangle them and get them together. I started to pull the ABS module through and it wasn't going to work without a ton of un/repinning. So, I saved that for next time. Bringing this guy in the cabin will be funnn. I also started to make the plate that'll replace the wire pass through and mount the clutch pedal/MC. I'll have to make this a 2 part plate since there's no bulkhead connector at the firewall. That extra area that's not cut off will be for clutch pedal mounting. This area will be trimmed but it's necessary so that I can bolt the assembly through this plate and through the firewall.

I read an article wayyy back talking about the development of the awd system for the 6000. What I can remember is the system was designed to take much more power than the 125 trans could, and was intended to be able to function with 4 wheel steering. In other words it had plenty of room to grow. It's a shame the chitcanned it so early..

95 L36 Bonneville: 3" SS exhaust with long tubes, magnaflow cat and Borla muffler. All DIY. I need to add a resonater bad. [media]http://youtu.be/fhs-_cRdteM 98 VQ35 Infiniti i30: 3" SS exhaust with headers and DIY Y-back using a Magnaflow cat/res/muffler. The resonator is physically the largest that would fit in the exhaust tunnel. [media]http://youtu.be/7JAAr0ZSEFg

Smh.. I didn't. This was when I was still sort of living with my parents and it had to go asap. Ahh well, hindsight is always 20/20.

Having the dash out looks crappier than it really is. It took maybe an hour and a half and that's with taking a picture of every single bolt/nut/screw, in order, for when it goes back in. Thanks! There's already a full guide on that swap! It should be cake! lol. I've been thinking about that group of wires I pushed aside to make room for the clutch pedal assembly. The trans selector switch and ABS module wires run through there IIRC. So, I'll probably be pulling those two items into the cabin to eliminate the wiring through the new firewall patch panel. I also have a lead on a spare 3800 block locally so I can mock up the trans jack shaft to engine block bracket. I could kick myself for throwing out 3 blocks 6 months ago..