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PostPosted: December 29, 2010, 10:07 pm 
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Location: wichita falls, tx
inspiring work moti. all your pics have gone into my R&D (Ripoff & Duplicate) folder. 8)

Godspeed ya'll,
dennis


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PostPosted: February 4, 2011, 12:22 am 
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Time to rescue this build log from the spider webs that are covering the pages by now :oops:

I finally got the shock mounting perches for the front shocks done.
They were machined from a piece of 7075-T651 aluminum and then came the real trouble, trying to find someone that is capable of threading the female threads that bolt to the Koni shocks.
Holy sheep.
After spending some time at one machine shop that eventually gave up I found a local place that has a CNC lathe and the right cutting bit for this thread, and some $150 later my pieces were done so took them to get anodized and now I can finally finish my front suspension.
It's about time!

Man this took waaay longer than it should have...

Moti


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PostPosted: February 4, 2011, 12:38 am 
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Woah those turned out really nice. I can't wait to see them installed.

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PostPosted: February 4, 2011, 12:44 am 
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Blackbird wrote:
Man this took waaay longer than it should have...


Doesn't everything? :D

Always nice to see beautifully machined parts, they look great.

Ron

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PostPosted: February 4, 2011, 12:53 am 
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After spending some time at one machine shop that eventually gave up I found a local place that has a CNC lathe and the right cutting bit for this thread


Was that a metric issue or something? Did they tell you the spec on the threads, just curious..

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PostPosted: February 4, 2011, 1:15 am 
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They did turn out quite well 8)

Marcus - the thread is metric, the thread pitch is 1 mm and OD is 51 mm, but I believe the thread shape was the part that made it hard. I don't recall being told any details about it though, just that it wasn't the standard stuff.

Moti

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PostPosted: February 4, 2011, 11:14 am 
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Location: Carlsbad, California, USA
Welcome back, Moti;

What's up with the Fabworx (http://www.BlackbirdFabworx.com)? I'd certainly be interested in hearing more about it. If for some reason you don't feel comfortable talking about it on this site because it's a commercial venture, please send me a PM or e-mail. I think it would be OK here, though.

Cheers,

Lonnie
Carlsbad (North San Diego County), CA

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PostPosted: February 4, 2011, 12:35 pm 
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Been here the whole time, just not much progress with my car.
Blackbird Fabworx is my new fabrication shop that I opened aimed at the local racing / track days / performance crowd.
I actually started a thread about it in the auto talk forum - click me 8)
I need to post some more pics of the civic and the miata I posted the pics of on the other thread while they were in the middle of the cage, they are both done now and look pretty dang cool.

Moti

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PostPosted: February 5, 2011, 1:01 am 
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I hope you'll have room in that thing for some Windex and a roll of paper towels, because everything about this car is drool-worthy. :lol:

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PostPosted: March 7, 2011, 11:52 am 
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While I'm extremely busy with my new business, I still managed to do a couple things lately on the locost.
First, huge thanks to my buddy Rory who's knowledge and skills are proving indespensible time and time again, taking care of some heavy brain lifting as well as fabrication.
I'd also like to thank my buddy Steven for handling the task of rebuilding and revalving my shocks, suggesting damping curves and giving insights of shock tuning - you are THE man!

And now to the update itself -

The shocks are rebuilt and custom revalved to work properly with my suspension.
They've been dyno'd and calibrated and we're all hoping that they'll perform well given that much of the suspension tuning at this point is educated guesses - there's no car yet :lol: .
The front rockers are the next big task (suspension-wise) and they are currently in final stages of design.

Yesterday was a good day of fabrication, aligning the diff in the chassis one more time and fabricating the mounts to hold it there.
One of my main concerns when designing the mounts was to keep it serviceable, too many build logs show the diff mounted in place but good luck removing it from the car if you need to do anything with it.
This one will be very easy - pull the axles out, pop the rear cover at the tunnel, pull the two front bolts from the top, undo the three rear mount bolts and proceed to removing the diff with the rear mount. Done.

The design of the rear mount also properly triangulates the rear suspension box from the back.
Note that the diff is mounted solid - aluminum bushings in the front and a solid mount from the back.
Again, this is something that I see in some build logs that builders sometimes do - solid mounting the rear and use bushings in the front.
If you're reading this and thought about doing it the way I just described, don't do it unless you have a need to break the rear cover.

Not too many pics this time, I'll take more soon.

Moti


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PostPosted: March 14, 2011, 1:14 am 
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Adding some pics of the front diff mounts.
The bolts are just sitting there, I'll have washers on both of them when doing the final installation.

Moti


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PostPosted: March 14, 2011, 10:19 am 
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How hard is it to find an LSD unit for the 7.5? Is it from a v6 MN12?

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PostPosted: March 14, 2011, 11:59 am 
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Not hard at all, I called Jegs and $220 later had a brand spanking new Ford clutch type LSD at my doorstep.
It's off a 1990 T-bird.

Moti

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PostPosted: March 14, 2011, 12:50 pm 
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SR7 Hopeful wrote:
How hard is it to find an LSD unit for the 7.5? Is it from a v6 MN12?


Myself and OddSaabs had success posting a wanted ad on tccoa.com as well. Search junkyards as well, there should be a tag on the differential housing telling you what type of diff and gears are inside.

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PostPosted: March 14, 2011, 2:15 pm 
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Finding the 7.5 LSD was easy. Popular pieces that a lot of guys don't want in their cars because the bigger and more manly 8.8" unit impresses their friends more.

What I'm lusting after are those cool aluminum bushings to mount the front of the diff. Are they something Blackbird Fabrication would like to make more of? (hint, hint)

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