Here's some pictures of the radiator now that it's been modified.

If you look at the older pictures in previous posts you'll see I had a neck put on the radiator which I hoped would help with bleeding air. It turns out I had to cut a hole in the hood to accomodate for it as well as butcher my radiator support to make it all fit. The new pictures show the neck removed and an air bleeder put in it's place. I made a small hole to fit it for now. I'll have to revisit it and make a proper hole in the support to give access to it.

Ok, here's some pictures of the Rear suspension. I had some doubt (and still do) about how much flex I can put into the driver's side driveaxle/cv joint.

Driver's side rear suspension, sitting on the floor. Everything is relatively level. Notice how much flex is on the cv boot indicating how much of an angle the shaft is at.



Passenger's side rear suspension, sitting on the floor. Everything seems fine with this axle, however it is much longer than the other.



I raised up the rear suspension and held each control arm up with jackstands. Both wheels turned freely with no problems. I slowly lifted the car increasing the angle until there was drag on the wheels due to the angle. Here's where I got to. ..
At this point the wheel had a slight drag while turning by hand in two spots. I lifted the car another 3/4" and the suspension was freely hanging. I could still turn the wheels with both hands but there was a VERY noticeable drag in two spots.

So, the saga continues........

Got the "ultimate sway bar" from WCF installed today. When I originally received the product the mounting plates were not the same bolt pattern. I phone WCF about it and whoever was on the other end of the phone was going to get back to me to let me know if this was correct or not. They never did. A year later I decided to bend the brackets a bit and egg out the holes to align them with the stock holes. There was BARELY enough room but they did fit. They sway bar seems to work but it's tighter than (enter politically incorrect cliche here). When I lowered the car back down I actually had to push on the front bumper a bit to get it back to it's normal resting position. I hope this works itself out. Yet another thing I'll be keeping my eye on.

I pulled the dipstick on the engine and noticed it was sitting a litre or two high and that it smelled like fuel. When I started up the engine a month or so ago the carb had flooded and I assumed that's what filled the crankcase.....WRONG! It was water. There's two ways this thing coulda took on water. 1. through an intake/head gasket (since I only filled the engine and rad with water so far) 2. When I had the car at the shop for the wheel alignment it was sitting outside for the better of two weeks with only the little edelbrock air cleaner on it. I'm pretty sure those things don't protect from water.

I drained the oil and put the plug back in. There was at least a litre of water in it (That's a quart for the americans). I then filled the cooing system back up with water. We'll see tomorrow if there's a lot of water in it again. If there is I'll probably drop the cradle again.

Used some undercoat and sprayed both the inside of the trunk and underneath. Amazing what undercoat can hide

Continued bleeding the clutch using a one man operation. It seems to be coming along fine. If it all works I'll document it.

Oh yeah, I also changed out the alternator on my 88.

Bump

so turns out the water in the engine WAS from being out in the rain.

I pressure tested the cooling system and it held pressure for a few hours. However, after that several hours it started to lose pressure due to a leak at the water pump. DOH! I think I created my own problem there

I mounted the front sway bar and it turned out to interfere with the battery box so now I have to relocate that. Hopefully I'll have time to relocate that this weekend with new pictures.

quote Originally posted by Soelasca: so turns out the water in the engine WAS from being out in the rain. I pressure tested the cooling system and it held pressure for a few hours. However, after that several hours it started to lose pressure due to a leak at the water pump. DOH! I think I created my own problem there I mounted the front sway bar and it turned out to interfere with the battery box so now I have to relocate that. Hopefully I'll have time to relocate that this weekend with new pictures.

Hope it works out for you. Thanks for the updates, looking forward to the pictures.

Well, I finally got around to removing the drivetrain from the car again to see why the driveside axle was misaligned. I found out 2 things.

1. the LCA from RCC were installed backwards. I lined up he LCA and they seem to be about 1/4" offset from each other. Probably not enough to make a difference, but I lined them up correctly anyways. If you buy RCC rear LCA they don't show you which way they are oriented. Put the sway bar bolt holes toward the front of the car.

2. I loosened off the front and rear tranny mount bolts and the front engine mount bolts (thank goodness I didn't weld it in like the instructions recommended). I double checked the front engine mount position with the instructions (16 - 1/2" from the centre of the front mount to the centre of the crank.). That distance was correct. I decided to remove the old engine mount and compare it to the WCF poly mount I was using. Here are the pictures. You be the judge.









Do you think this might be the problem?

So here's the latest. I ordered a poly transmission mount from rodney to replace the WCF one that was way out of whack. Rodneys mount seems almost identical to the stock one. I put it in but the transmission still seemed to be a little out of whack. Luckily Rodney's mount is made with a spacer plate (hopefully it's not detrimental to the structure of the mount) I removed it and it seems to be just right now.

I was still having issues with bleeding the clutch and decided to take apart the master cylinder to see how it works. Ummm....yeah.... don't remove the resevoir from the body of the master cylinder as it's pretty much impossible to get it baack in with the seal. I ordered a new one from the fero store and installed it. Took about 1 hour of gravity bleeding and about 5 minutes of having my wife in the car pumping the pedal on demand and it works fine.

I pushed it out in the driveway yesterday to fire it up and see if the clutch was actually working before I took it into gt the exhaust done. However it didn't want to fire up. The engine wasn't getting fuel. So I spent the day chasing the fuel problem. It turns out it was the fuel pump and of course the tank was full. I also had a slight electrical problem which ended up being that I forgot to reconnect and tighten the front electrical harness underneath the hood. (whoops)

I install the new fuel pump today and remade my battery cables. Tonight I pushed it out into the driveway and fired it up. Set the fuel pressure @ 6 psi and tested the clutch. The clutch seems to work fine. It doesn't move when I've got it in gear and the clutch engaged and it seems to have quite a bit of grab. However, it seems like the clutch is VERY easy to push in. I'll have to keep an eye on that. Other than that the engine got REALLY warm REALLY quick. it turns out I forgot to connect the water pump electrical. So the water pump wasn't running at all. Sok... it only ran about 5 minutes and nothing was glowing red.

Fuel pressure set to 6psi
Oil pressure was 40 psi @ idle (850 rpm)
I didn't get a chance to check temp since I didn't have my temp gun with me.
Timing is set @ 6 BTDC at idle

Anyways, when I get back from work in a week or two I'll be taking it down to get the exhaust done and then maybe I can road test it

So how is she doing?

Any updates on the front suspension?