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PostPosted: January 4, 2014, 2:46 pm 
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Joined: October 19, 2009, 9:36 pm
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Location: meadview arizona
as the title says, having driven my car for over two years, several things have been anoying me and some things really need attention.

brakes are too hard to apply, my son drove the car on the way to Las Vegas and refused to drive it in the city as he felt the brakes were not efficient enough, his daily driver is a Nissan 370Z, he has never driven a car without power brakes.

he also complained about the steering, too heavy and too much play, again he has never driven a car that was rear wheel drive without power steering.

now i can lock the wheels under hard braking and the positiveness of the 1 3/4 turns lock to lock is fun to me but i must admit that the rack i chose is a piece of junk.

in addition to the two points above, the all aluminum radiator has a leak at the neck.

the drivers side wing window for some reason developed cracks all over it, i have no idea why.

the front mudguards are too short in that they allow too much debres to be thrown backwards into the drivers compartment and into the rear mudguards chipping the paint.

so this is my plan, annalys the reason for the problem and fix it.

brakes, the duel master cylinders are 1" bore so cross sectional area is to large, the original tandem master cylinder on the donor car was 1" with a vac booster, but now i have two 1" and no booster, originally i thought that being light, the car would be inclined to lock the brakes, hence the original size. however, i feel that reducing the bore size to 3/4" would make an emergency stop more controlable.

master cylinders ordered.

steering rack, i have a lot of universal joints in my column, they are all needle bearing type, and i have two support bearings, both in good condition, there is no sideways movement in the steering column, all the play is in the rack. this rack was not perfect from the start, but i didn't find that out until i had built the car and could not return it. it was a heavy duty end steer rack from Dans Performance for sand rails, its junk and chinese, there is no pinion adjustment and no real way to make some. due to the pinion being located in the center of the rack, i am limited on a choice of replacement, most competition car racks have center pinion but again, they are unadjustable with straight cut gears so a used porsche 914 rack has been ordered from the big "E"

i have rebuilt one of these racks before and they are fully adjustable with shimms, when it arrives, i will have to make the rack the same length as i have now and provide ends to suit the 1/2" hiems on my track rods, then modify the mounting points on the chassis to suit the rack.

if anyone can remember what the threads are in the end of the rack (M12 X 1.75?) and a dimension for width without the ends on, it would help. also what is the pinion spline count and diameter under the coupling.

the radiator leak, well i put up with that because if i kept my eye on the level the cooling system is so over sized that when one side tank is too hot to touch, the other is cold, even after a run in the Arizona heat.
the neck had been welded in before the tank was attached to the matrix and wasn't done very well so they had epoxied it, again not very well and the epoxy was comming off. i cleaned off all the epoxy, wire brushed the joint with a stainless brush, washed the joint with phosphoric acid and quenched with lots of water just incase there was any corrosion in the joint and used some Devcon fast epoxy, that got the leak fixed. i did this in situe.

the wing windows, i just made new ones for both side but ensured that the hinge pivots were exactly in line to reduce any stress in the perspex if the car was left in the sun (not much chance of that in Arizona).

the front mud guards, when i cast them i made a test mudguard to see if my steel mudguard was a good enough mold so i will cut a 2"-3" section from that and add it to the rearmost edge of the mudguards and repaint them.

the rear mudguards are showing a lot of stone chips so i will try and make some aluminum plates for the front face, if that doesn't pan out i will repaint them and apply some adhesive film over the top which can be changed when necesary.

i will report back as i progress with the jobs.

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PostPosted: January 4, 2014, 2:54 pm 
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Good luck with the upgrades/repairs

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PostPosted: January 4, 2014, 3:07 pm 
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Joined: July 4, 2006, 5:40 pm
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Location: Novato, CA
John, I have a list that long already, and I've only been driving mine for 3 months! Good luck with the upgrades. I have SS panels on my rear mudguards, but just as good I think would be 3M stone chip protector, a clear 9 mil vinyl film that's used for clear bras. It's very tough stuff and you can't see it on the car. It's not cheap and can be difficult to find in smaller quantities, but sometimes motorcycle shops will sell it a square foot at a time.


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PostPosted: January 4, 2014, 10:43 pm 
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John, Gald to hear you are making some improvements.

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the rear mudguards are showing a lot of stone chips so i will try and make some aluminum plates for the front face, if that doesn't pan out i will repaint them and apply some adhesive film over the top which can be changed when necesary.


I too had problems on the rear fenders getting chipped and blasted. It seemed like they were magnets for every loose stone on the roadway. I thought about the stainless sheets that so many seem to like. I found that the chips continued around the radius of the fender. It would be difficult to fit SS and still cover that radius. I opted for some spray-on bedliner. It wrapped around as well as ..... um..... paint. I wish I had more miles on that mod to claim total success. But so far-so good. I can always spray on another coat if necessary.

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PostPosted: January 4, 2014, 11:42 pm 
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I've had good luck with the stick on non-skid stuff like you use on boat decks and stairs.

It comes in at least 2 colors, black and white.

It is inexpensive and fairly easy to change out when things get too bad and is available in a wide variety of stores so it's easy to find.

Any type of metal is going to get blasted and will need lots of care and attention to keep it looking good. This stuff has actually held up much better for me than stainless or alum sheets.

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PostPosted: January 8, 2014, 7:26 pm 
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Location: meadview arizona
so today i fitted the 3/4" master cylinders, uneventful really, road test did proove that my theory of the wheels locking was right however so i shall just have to learn not to stand on them, also there is more weight transfer occuring so the bias may have to be adjusted somewhat as the rears are locking up just as the car stops, we will see as i get used to the new pedal feel.

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PostPosted: January 10, 2014, 2:26 am 
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Location: meadview arizona
porsche rack arrived today.

my original sand rail rack has clevises in each end, they are threaded into the rack using 5/8-18 threads.

to fit these to the porsche rack, the threads in the porsche rack must be changed to 5/8-18 threads from M16-1.5, to do this i intend to drill the threads out and helicoil the holes with 5/8-18 as the o/d of the M16 is very close to the 5/8.

in addition, i need to shorten the rack by 1/4" over all, but i will hold on this incase the extra length is of no consiquence, i will try it as is first.

i have to make a mounting bracket to attach the rack to my original fixings.

i also have to make an adapter to bolt on to the pinion spline coupling of the porsche to match the 5/8" -36 spline of my column.

all looks quite straight forward to do.

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PostPosted: January 12, 2014, 8:19 pm 
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Location: meadview arizona
so i started the rack change,

first off, i looked at the threads in the porsche rack which i intended to drill out and helicoil, the rack is hardened so would be difficult to drill and access to a lathe was not available so, in for a penny, in for a pound, (english saying) i desided to try just running a 5/8-18 tap down the hole, well that worked amaisingly.

the next questionable part was the connection of the pinion to my existing column, immediately after the pinion is a slip on 5/8 X 36 spline universal joint, the porsche has a two bolt flange, a thick rubber coupling and another two bolt flange with a shaft which just happens to be 16 mm, so i drill out the splines in the universal joint and cut off the porsche shaft to about half an inch long, press this into the desplined u/j and weld it up, throw away the rubber coupling and bolt this to the pinion flange.

next, i added some mounting brackets, suitably re enforced to my original rack mountings and the job is done in a day.

too simple really, i wonder what i have missed!!

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PostPosted: January 12, 2014, 8:31 pm 
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well, what i missed were lock stops.

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PostPosted: January 16, 2014, 12:04 pm 
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Location: meadview arizona
stone chips and mudguards,

first off i must say that here in Arizona everybody thinks a mud guard is a mud flap.

anyway, thinking on the aluminum shields for the rear mudguards, it occured to me that i had cast them from the inside of a steel trailer mudguard, so why don't i call Fenders and more.

i called Wes and a stainless single axle polished fender was $130 plus shipping so i did some measuring and from one i could get two 18" sections for the front of the rear mudguards that would be the right shape to just fit directly over the existing ones, then that left about a foot spare so why not cut that in half and add it to the back of the front mudguards, then the front and rear would match.

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PostPosted: January 28, 2014, 10:19 pm 
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one stainless polished mudguard arrived yesterday, so today i cut as described above and with the aid of some #10 domed cap head screws, they were installed in about an hour.

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