i got out to my dad's late, like we are talking 2-3 in the morning. my buddies car kept breaking down for unknown reasons, and i have to look at it tonight as well. my dad woke me up bright and early on saturday, and we went out junkyarding in hopes to find a brake caliper mounting bracket in a junkyard. we went to:
ecology
pick a part
and a few other places until we got a tip on a dude in san bernardino who has a load of cars from the 60's sitting in a real junk yard. within 5 minutes, the guy had what we needed, and we scavenged for other parts (maybe going back at some point). the part ended up costing us 50 dollars, which is unusually high, but pretty on key with what it would cost anywhere if you could even find it.
in that picture you can see the brackets attached to the spindles. finally!
what you can't see is my dad made a bushing adapting one of the spindles to fit the granada bracket, as for some reason the bolt hole had changed in whatever year it came from.
we made some other rounds and picked up a new water filler neck (the spectre one would not work), distributor clamp, and silly things we needed.
i tore apart my old control arms, and removed the spring perches. i cleaned these pretty good, and then painted them for good form.
also, here is a better picture of the alternator setup that my dad has working right now:
we got the spring perches mounted on the control arms, and then put those up in place.
i also started chipping some residue off of an old spring guard, i still need to do the other side:
my dad ran in and cleaned up some of the other suspension part.
we got the control arms up in place, and then mounted the spindle. what a great feeling.
my dad mounted one of the junk rotors, and a tire to see what our clearence looked like (we are moving to tires about two inches taller overall, etc...)
the next morning we went out and got some shocks, as well as borrowed a coil spring compressor.
next we got one of the mustang springs and started sucking it up!
we lowered it in and with some banging, got it in the perch.
these springs are incredibly stiff, and i'm not sure if they are going to work, but we have yet to see. they seem like they will raise my front end quite a bit in comparison to the original springs, and we might switch back over.
after we had both springs in, we turned our focus to finishing the radiator mounting. my dad got his plasma cutter hooked up, and marked out a few spots we would need to eliminate for the radiator to fit.
sure beats using a torch/cutting wheel.
next we mounted a piece of tube steel we had picked up, for the radiator for rest in (along the bottom rail).
having a welder as a dad sure helps.
sitting on the rail:
next we measured out the top mount, and made some holes/cut it fit into the frame.
next we got down to brass tacks again, and welded the piece in place.
i didn't get pictures, but we laid down rubber for the radiator, as well as used a rivet gun to add screw in's for the radiator (i had never seen this type of rivet before, and was really stoked on it)
my camera got funky, but here are some pictures of the rest of the night:
shocks installed!
installing tie rod ends. we ended up going to autozone twice to find the right tie rod ends, the first time we went, we got two tie rod ends that were wrong, but in the right box. what are the odds.
from here i took the long drive home, and i'm sure i'm missing a lot of detail, but my dad informed me that he has purchased the front brakes (cross drilled rotors too!), and those will be here for next weekend. we had hoped to get the rear end in but my brother was being lazy, and my best friend was too busy with midterms.
here's to next week!
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