Well I've been busy with work, family and the holidays. Time to start the slow going build thread now that I've gathered some parts up. The car started as a 1 owner 1979 cutlass supreme with 70,382 miles that's been sitting since 1987. This won't be your typical drag car build, I'm shooting to build a road race car.ive already decided to run ridetech suspension so I'll be saving up that huge chunk of change as I go.
After the guy came to pick up the old drivetrain my cherry picker was freed up and I set off to pull the body. The apprentice from work wanted to come over and see my progress plus I figured I would need a little help to get it separated.
I don't recommend doing it the way I did unless you plan to remove the drip rails from the car. A few days went by that I didn't mess with the car due to work. However while I was at work I made some new washers to weld in where the body mounts went that were rotted. I also cleaned up some seams and rewelded them, I guess there was no QC the day that frame was out together they were pretty bad...
I used a flap disc when I was done just to shine it up.
I only had 3 to fix which wasn't too bad.
I was searching the interwebs for parts and I came across this low mileage lq9 with flowtech twin turbo manifolds, and ati balancer for $1,200 I think that was a pretty solid deal. The manifolds are for sale if anyone is interested. I plan on doing a na build with ITB's.
Then yesterday I added a tube to strengthen up the frame in the rear. I'll be placing an order for some steel sometime this week so I can box, notch, and brace up the chassis. Christmas is putting a dent in my pocket book like usual. On the bright side though my girlfriend suprised me with my Christmas gift today. I got a sn95 8.8 rear. I know alot of guys run the fox body 8.8 but I didn't want to deal with swapping the axles to a 5 lug and these have disc brakes already. As for the axle being a little longer I will just get a different backspacing when it comes time to order my wheels as for the 8.8 being 5x4.5 "5x120" and the normal pattern of 4.75 "5x120.65" So, 4.75" is equal to 120.65mm. 120mm is equal to 4.72441". That is a difference of 0.65mm or 0.02559" of overall diameter. That is OVERALL. Which means it is half of that on either side of the diameter. Half is 0.325 mm or 0.012795". I just plan to run 5x4.5 all the way around I don't think it's significant enough to worry about.
This week the plan is to abrasive blast the whole frame and rear end to get ready for all the chassis work.
I was searching the interwebs for parts and I came across this low mileage lq9 with flowtech twin turbo manifolds, and ati balancer for $1,200 I think that was a pretty solid deal. The manifolds are for sale if anyone is interested. I plan on doing a na build with ITB's.
Then yesterday I added a tube to strengthen up the frame in the rear. I'll be placing an order for some steel sometime this week so I can box, notch, and brace up the chassis. Christmas is putting a dent in my pocket book like usual. On the bright side though my girlfriend suprised me with my Christmas gift today. I got a sn95 8.8 rear. I know alot of guys run the fox body 8.8 but I didn't want to deal with swapping the axles to a 5 lug and these have disc brakes already. As for the axle being a little longer I will just get a different backspacing when it comes time to order my wheels as for the 8.8 being 5x4.5 "5x120" and the normal pattern of 4.75 "5x120.65" So, 4.75" is equal to 120.65mm. 120mm is equal to 4.72441". That is a difference of 0.65mm or 0.02559" of overall diameter. That is OVERALL. Which means it is half of that on either side of the diameter. Half is 0.325 mm or 0.012795". I just plan to run 5x4.5 all the way around I don't think it's significant enough to worry about.
This week the plan is to abrasive blast the whole frame and rear end to get ready for all the chassis work.