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PostPosted: March 20, 2017, 7:02 am 
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So the old bedframe angle iron will become a lead ingot mold today.
Yo, Marcus! Hey, good to hear from you! And making way for more Car9 construction, very cool... Ya know, those old bedframes can be handy. Sometimes, they even become sway bar end links! :shock:

Keep after it, keep us posted, send pictures!

Peace, Love and Target Practice-
JDK

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PostPosted: November 25, 2017, 6:31 pm 
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Well I stumbled a bit when I was faced with making some final decisions about front spindles and some other parts. Finally got back to looking at it this weekend because there where some black friday sales. Yesterday I ordered a set of 2" drop Mustang II spindles that are "Wilwood compatable". This style spindle has a bolt on steering arm which allows for some more options in the setup. Flexibility gives more choices and that's often a good thing. THere are far more places to buy Mustang II ( Pinto ) spindles now then there were when I started this project. There are also many more flavors, it's rather mind numbing. Aluminum hubs also seem to be becoming more available.

An area of confusion is that the spindles are offered in both 10 and 7 degree "pin angle". From the descriptions it seems that sometimes they are refering to the ball joint taper and other times the angle of the axle pin. I'm not completely sure that both descriptions are correct. Are 7 and 10 degrees common angles for ball joint tapers? That seems like more difference than I would expect. Perhaps one of the ball joint tapers is either 7 or 10 degrees?

Another thing I have finally seen noted is that at least some of the big brake kits are using hubs with more offset in them. One catalog noted that the track would increase by 1/2" per side. That's not great because these spindles already produce a lot of offset and you need to buy wheels to compensate for this.

The spindles I finally chose were "Helix Pro Touring 2" drop Mustang II" parts from a place on EBAY for about $120.

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PostPosted: November 26, 2017, 9:51 am 
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Hey Marcus!
You're back at it!?!?!? Good on ya!

It's been a while since I ordered any Pinto spindles. However, my recollection of the "pin angle" is that it means the angle of inclination of the top and bottom mounting points (ball joint locations) relative to the hub, same as "Kingpin angle" from the Brit car world.

As far as I know/remember, all the Pinto spindles use the same ball joint, but damned if I know the taper angle.

Other'n that, how the hell are ya?
:cheers:
JDK

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PostPosted: November 27, 2017, 5:08 pm 
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Hi JD, thanks for checking in. :)

After even more checking on websites I have confirmed that the terminology is used both ways. It's not clear if it's used knowledgeably that way because it seems sometimes they sellers don't really know. Often the text is written by some supplier and copied verbatim or adjusted and hen becomes broken.

The spindles can be bought with either a 2" per foot taper or a 1.5" per foot taper. Yesterday I saw a reamer being sold as a 7 degree/ 1.5" per foot taper. So a seven degree spindle might just have the 1.5" per foot taper. I have seen spindles recently that advertise 7degree pin angle and "stock appearance" :rofl:. Also a line of stock spindles "precision" CNC machined with your choice of hole locations. One just need to be careful to understand what you are getting, and the description may not be very clear.

I ordered a Pinto / Mustan II steering rack yesterday also. It's also a Helix part and the one without tie rods was half the cost. So may need to buy tie rods but I have the option of making them now and using rod ends. That may not look so street legal though. It's a quicker ratio unit, but probably not very quick. Since my spindles have bolt on steering arms, I can make shorter arms for it.

Brakes are driving me crazy too. The original units are 9.25" vented rotors. You can get 10" hybrid rotors, which have 5x5" or 5x4.75" bolt patterns instead of 5x4.5 which is properly Ford. There are also many, many 11" options. Some of these mention they increase offset by 0.5" per side and some don't mention that. Wether they all increase the offset or not I can't tell. Who knows if the 10" rotors change the offset? Sigh...

Some of these brakes are pretty heavy, I think I have seen as much as 25 lbs. for a single disk. Some are lighter and many have no weight listed. Also there is a caution on some websites that the 10" disk are only for use on dirt tracks, others mention the 10" disks as being heavy duty, but they don't consistently list the weight... More sighing. :BH:

I'll complain about wheels in a couple more days....

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PostPosted: November 27, 2017, 6:02 pm 
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I saw the same thing with the additional track increase with the MII "big" brake kits from Speedway, Jegs, et.al. I hit Wilwoods site, and I see that their cheaper line of front brake kits only increases the front track by about 1/10" per side.

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PostPosted: November 28, 2017, 10:32 pm 
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Hi Marcus,

I used a 7* reamer to clean up the tapers on my Wilwood mustang II spindles, so its probably the standard (preferred?) taper. And IIRC, 1.5" per foot is 7*. Check various ball joint mfg's specs to verify the taper needed. Howe's web site has pretty good detail.

I bit the bullet and went with Wilwood hubs and brakes. Offset was ok and weight tolerable.

Glad you are back at it :D

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PostPosted: December 1, 2017, 5:38 pm 
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Thanks for the input Dismantalus and SeattleTom. I meant to reply sooner but have sunk a few more hours into looking at various options. I've also talked with tech support at Speedway and Wilwood. The Wilwood guy seemed more sales oriented and gave me an email for someone more knowledgable. That email bounced so I'm not sure I'm going to bother calling back.

The Wilwood guy I talked to made it clear that their spindles are not available pre-drilled, so you can't easily change the geometry much. Speedway is pretty clear that their spindles are not for pavement use, only dirt racks. Wilwood says OK for pavement racing, but under no circumstances should you use the 4.75" bolt circle holes because they will fail. It's possible this is the underlying reason with the Speedway units, but that's not what they are saying. The AFCO 10" rotors don't really say anything about their intended use. All these 10" rotors come with 5/8" coarse threads and require racing style ( 45 degree ) lug nuts. Its interesting they are all drilled for 5x5 and 5x4.75 but are clearly different castings from the pictures. That's part of why I was hoping for differences in wheel mounting surface offset, but they just don't seem to know. I guess I don't feel like buying all of them.

The 10.2" rotors are nut much bigger than the stock 9.25" so I'll have to think about wether it's worth it. They may be better made. Needing to buy wheels with a different bolt pattern is a downside. I don't know if you could drill the rear hubs for 5x5...

The Diamond steel wheels are available with some pretty large offsets, so I'm looking at that to help with the front end geometry and reducing the scrub radius to something like an inch. Not sure yet if I can do better.

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PostPosted: December 1, 2017, 10:00 pm 
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Marcus, one thing to keep in mind. These oval track brakes, spindles and hubs are intended for 2500-3500# stock cars, so those "only dirt tracks" spindles would probably last forever on cars as light as a Locost, especially since 7s don't usually see the kind of wheel-to-wheel contact that dirt track stockers do! Dirt trackers can get pretty rough-and-tumble. Just Sayin'!

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PostPosted: December 17, 2017, 1:14 pm 
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Still going crazy on this choice for front wheels and spindles. My head is going to explode. Almost pulled the trigger a couple of times. I have also had to backtrack a bit and think about tire sizes because the availability of 15" tires seems to have changed a bit over the last several years. I also have some general questions.

One thing is we have to ignore the sound of a person screaming in the background - a sound like when I hit my hand with a sledgehammer. It starts to get louder when I wonder why a site like Summit Racing lists 150,000 parts under wheels and tires and why some of the individual brands list as many as 25,000 or more parts just for wheels. Honestly are they just counting every lug nut they sold last year - geez the screaming is getting so loud I can't even think. :BH: So we will ignore that and move on to a couple of simple questions....

Here are some economical wheels, Katana 15x7 40et in 5x4.5". Hmm, they were only $61 a couple of weeks ago on Black Friday. I have a hard time finding a weight for these but saw 31 lbs. listed one place. It's not clear if that was a real weight or just a generic weight for any size of that model wheel. That seems like a heavy weight, I can get steel rims that weigh 10 lbs. less. Does anyone have any opinion on that weight?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Katana-KR33-15x7-5x100-5x114-3-40et-Matte-Gunmetal-Wheels-Rims-/182275149533?hash=item2a70720edd%3Ag%3A4NAAAOSwi0RX0w6Q&_trkparms=pageci%253A38576c1a-3b38-11e7-a823-74dbd1801b85%257Cparentrq%253A17ea013a15c0abda6d247db3fffd724f%257Ciid%253A4

Does anyone know a website that makes it easy to shop for wheels and tires by size? Tire Rack used to be good for that but now I am finding I have to select a vehicle that wears what I want and then look that way. It's being a little painful.

Also used to be that you could buy a certain model wheel in different offsets, but many of the ones I'm looking at now just seem to be one offset. Is that just the cheap wheels?

I am making progress on parts but this brake rotor and also wheel selection is giving me a hard time. It seems simple but when you start digging it gets complicated real fast. I have been choosing Pinto/Mustang II parts because of the choices available but it's getting crazy. They make GM rotors for Ford and Ford rotors for GM and also Hybrid rotors. Now I have even found spindles that are hybrids, you can get GM axle on a Ford spindle and a Ford axle on a GM spindle, with or without detachable steering arms and different tapers and KPI numbers.... Sigh... :BH:

Naturally some of these combinations require their own bearings. Or is it just the seals? Maybe just the dust caps? The web sites are not always clear here. :ROFL:

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PostPosted: December 17, 2017, 2:22 pm 
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I feel your pain! I ended up going with standard Mustang II spindles & brakes, and a set of (well used, but serviceable) Ronal wheels off a Mustang II. The offset seems about right, so I'm going with it. I'll refinish & polish the wheels, and that's it. I was able to pick up a set of 205-50/15 tires, which fit the wheels beautifully, and look...um...really wide, but still "just right", if you know what I mean!

My buddy (doing a build pretty much the same as mine) is using a set of stock alloy wheels off a Mustang II/T-bird. Same 4-bolt pattern, and same width & offset as my Ronal ones, and cheap as chips.

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PostPosted: December 17, 2017, 5:21 pm 
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Try Discount Tire.


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PostPosted: December 19, 2017, 2:54 am 
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Hi Walt, thanks for the tip, it was a big help. It seems there is an odd distribution of wheels widths vs. diameter and offset. There are no inexpensive high offset 15" wheels in 8" width, those are all for traditional RWD USA cars. If you go down to 7" width, there are lots of wheels with 40mm offset. There are some similar things going on with 17" wheels.

Adding a 5x5" bolt pattern into the mix made the situation much worse. All the 10" brake rotors come in 5x5". Those rotors are 5 lbs. lighter, or more than the 11" rotor/hubs. I considered the aluminum hubs for awhile too. They are not much lighter than the 10" rotor setups. It's possible I just became too hung up on getting a small scrub radius.

So I can accept more scrub radius and get lots more choices in wheels and then if I am unhappy with the result take a try at building spindles. I actually did see some nice fabricated ones while searching thru all the oval track web sites.

Zetec7, your post made me crawl thru my basement and I found an old set of Ford rims I still have from when I raced a Fiesta back around 1980. There's still air in the tires! :rofl: The drop spindles I bought look they they would fit in the rim, there is about 2" of clearance top and bottom. Probably would need to use spherical bearings instead of ball joints though. I'm guessing ball joints might pass my state inspection more easily.

A last issue I have is that the high offset wheel looks a little more difficult to package for the rear suspension I need clearance between the body and the wheel to run a trailing arm... So there is a little more thinkering and then will buy some parts.... Lee and Tuck bought the 40mm offset rims for their build, maybe I can find out how they are doing...

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PostPosted: December 19, 2017, 3:04 am 
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Here's a pic of my Ronals...IIRC, they're 15"X9", so the 205-50/15's fit really nice. Pardon the unconscionably messy shop - no heat, so my in brief forays out there this time of year, I can either clean...or work on the car!

Attachment:
Paintwork 1 small.jpg


I ended up using a spherical-type (i.e., circle track) ball joint at the top. Here it is, during initial mock up. I still need to chop off an inch or so of extra threaded shaft at the top (gotta love my lathe!). In the pic, the front suspension's at maximum droop, and although it looks like it would bind, there's actually no binding at all (without the shock, the suspension's free to drop another 1.5"). Very slick, smooth movement.

The upper A arms are circle track items, and I fabricated the lower A-arms myself - seamless DOM tubing, etc.

Bottom ball joints are stock Ford items (F-150, IIRC?)

Attachment:
front suspension.jpg


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PostPosted: December 19, 2017, 9:44 am 
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Marcus
You should consider modifying your upper control arm mounting shaft. If the attachment hardware is turned 90* you will be able to adjust wheel camber plus caster with shims.
Dave W


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PostPosted: December 19, 2017, 1:47 pm 
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Marcus -

Vis-a-vis adjustability-wise, the mount for my upper A-arms (in the pic) have a very large range of adjustment available. The horizontal shaft of the upper A-arms is bolted to a section of partial box channel, cut away to roughly a "C" cross section (where the upper part of the C is longer than the lower part). It's 1/8" steel, so is very rigid.

Now, the holes in the "C" that the upper A-arm bolts through are slotted, longitudinally relative to the car's length. This gives considerable castor adjustability (slots give 1" of fore/aft range of movement for the upper A-arms).

In addition, the "C" bolts to the frame through vertically slotted holes in the frame's mounting plates. Due to the angled sides of the frame in this area, the adjustment range is enhanced. The inboard end of the upper A-arms can be adjusted up & down over about 1.5" of travel. So, camber, upper A-arm inclination, and even some anti-dive adjustments are available there.

All bolts are 1/2" NF grade 8, with Nyloc nuts.

With this setup, I was able to get the alignment pretty close to my desired starting point. After adding some thin aluminum shims here and there to fine-tune, I now have 8* castor, -1.0* camber at rest (increases to -3* at full compression), and 1/16" toe. Ackerman is adjustable, too, as the steering rack is mounted to a steel plate with slotted holes, giving the rack about 2" of fore/aft adjustment. At the moment, the Ackerman "looks" pretty good, but I don't know enough about calculating it to know exactly what it should be, so it will be a trial & error kind of thing once the car's on the road.

I haven't even looked at anti-dive adjustment...my severely capacity-limited brain is already full just getting the rest of it right! Who knows, maybe one day I'll consider it.

I don't know if you need (or want!) any of this, but I always figure that I can ignore information I decide I don't want, but I can't use information I don't have. Hopefully there's a nugget in here that might be of use to you, or perhaps someone else following this thread.

The explanation above might be a bit confusing, so here are a couple of pics of the upper A-arm mount, from the outside & inside.

Attachment:
upper a arm mount 1 small.jpg


Attachment:
upper a arm mount 2 small.jpg



Just shooting some ideas out there...


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