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Stomis' 94 Street Truck - Snail Trail

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Got the crossmember even more notched for the steering shaft and the steering shaft ran.









Got some gas hooked up to that little tig and gave it a try. For being at a fixed amperage, which Im totally not used to with Tig it didnt do too bad. I think I'll buy it off my buddy and get a pedal for it. The post flow on the gas is hardset but does its job just fine, the high freq start works great too.





With a pedal it should do everything I need it to do for only a couple hundred bucks!
 
So I got the rack all welded in, buttoned up, etc etc.







Went to start working on the outers and had the most sinking feeling when I realized the spindles/steering arms were never going to work with the rack. I made the terrible assumption that the tie rod would need to be on such an angle it would be well below the steering arm, except not so much, more like right in the middle of it like this...





As it sits right now my lower control arm angle is 1.5* down to the outside. Which means the tie rod needs to be the same so theres no bumpsteer. Well with these spindles with the heim slammed to the bottom of the steering arm (which it cant be there needs to be some misalignment) Im at 7.5* down. The bump steer would be utterly horrendous, like crazy bad. I wont even considering assembling it like that. So I have some options to explore. I could make a bolt on steering arm for the spindle, which I just thought of sitting here typing this, I could try to use a G body or other cars spindle if the ball joint separation is correct (doubtful), or I could go full tilt and just build a custom fabricated steering hub that uses a camaro/corvette 2wd unit bearing, aftermarket rotors, and calipers.


Theres a plus side to going fully custom. I can ditch some serious weight on the brake setup. The truck currently has a hub/rotor combo on the spindle. A unit bearing and a lightweight street/strip rotor with a removable hat like this could effectively save me some serious rotating mass. Plus I could couple that with replacing the cast iron calipers with some cheaper aluminum units for more benefit. I would be able to place the steering arm where ever I want and also build it in double shear properly for the heim. Double shear seems to never be a problem for guys with hotrod/race car stuff but the offroad roots in my just cant stand that open bolt configuration... The downside is obviously money. Steel, solidworks r&d, plasma time, machine time is all more or less free. The only tool I dont have that I would need is a ball joint taper reamer. Id be look at roughly $100 for bearings, $120 for rotors and hats, and $200-$300 for calipers...
91031906_L.jpg






This rabbit hole is so so deep...
 
Can't you mount the whole rack lower and attach the tie rod to the bottom of the knuckle? At also looks like where it is it will hit the frame when the suspension travels up but that could be an illusion. If not mounting the rack lower would solve that too it appears.
 
The rack is basically as low as I can get it with the way the MII rack mounts. In hindsight I would never use an MII rack in this application again. I would go with some sort of pinch mounts so the mounting centerline is in line with the rack itself. Yes I could have gone lower physically but mounting the rack wouldnt really work pushing it low enough to be under the knuckle with misalignment too. Im kind of stuck with my situation. Im one of those kinda of people that would rather push forward than take a huge step backwards and redo stuff.

As far as the frame theres no interference there. The boot is barely on the frame but the tie rod itself is off by a mile. Also thats getting chopped off and chromo tubes anyway :D
 
Well the good news is the spindles are ductile steel so I'm going to wind up cutting the end of the steering arm off and making it double sheer below and above the original piece. Im going to put the bottom plate on and leave the original arm in tact, spot the hole to ensure the ackerman angle remains the same and then remove the piece. Then I'll add the double sheer piece to the top.
 
So I got a good deal on tires from a customer at work. 315/60r15 M/T ET street radials whcih measure out to 30x13.5 aka a 30x10.5w. Basically the tire is a 10.5 treadwidth, theyre big. They barely fit on the truck about 3/4 of an inch from the inner fender and Im going to have to do a little work on the outer lip to play it safe.






The funny part is the guy had them on brand new weld draglites. He was nice enough to let me borrow them so I could check backspacing to order pro-stars for the tires. Well me and my buddy just kept looking over at the truck and I said to him "dude Ive never been a fan of draglites on cars, but I think Im liking them on the truck..."

20mins later I called him and bought the wheels too :D



 
Cough, cough, now you need turbos.... Finishing a TT 5.3 today. Gonna dyno it real soon. Should be 600ish to the tires.
 
Its tempting but I still really want do that high compression meth 408 we talked about. What do you think a safe compression number is with 50/50 meth with the tune depending on it?
 
Well, that's like 115 octane when mixed with 91. With a dynamic CR at 12:1 you will want about 108. If we can keep the fuel consistent or higher grade then I don't see a problem with about 15:1.
 
Finally getting somewhere. Three nights on the knuckles after work later...


Night 1





Night 2





Night 3 - Welderup








Obviously double shear, which is a very good thing. Kinda out of the ordinary in the street/track world but it seemed like a good idea to me. Way more engagement on the stock knuckle with welding. The top and bottom brackets were all rooted into the spindle/knuckle before I capped the sides. I preheated everything to get some heat into the piece before welding. If you dont the cold solid chunk of steel will suck all of the heat out of the weld and crack it. Burnt in HOT at around 250 amps with the pedal to the floor dumping 3/32 filler rod into it. You basically let the heat undercut the materials to get the penetration super deep and then plow a crazy mount of rod into it to fill it up. The main welds are big 3/8 wide beads :D Theres 3 plug welds and then all the perimeter welds on the caps just to retie everything in.

I'll be running a 5/8 heim with a high misalignment spacer with a 9/16ths bolt. I gave myself some wiggle room to spin off spacers to fine tune the tie rod angle so its dead on with the control arm. They just need some paint and the front end can be buttoned up.

Time to finally order a clutch........
 
Hey it steers again!


Adjusters:




Ride height:




Droop:






Got miles of misalignment with the high misalignment spacers. Definitely could have used the standard 5/8 misalignments but meh a 9/16ths bolt double sheer is plenty.


O and it turns super easy too.
 
Got the tailgate back on, except about 30 pounds lighter. This might make it a racecar now...








Still gotta put two more dzus' on the bottom somewhat centerish. Im also going to make an aluminum backbone to seam seal to it. Unfortunately this bed will be gone in the long run. Its got some rust issues brewing behind a big pinch weld splice in the taillight pocket. Its just the kinda of thing you cant really fix without some major major dismantling and reassembly, totally not worth it. I had wanted to do a new bed floor, and gut the interior braces of the bed and do aluminum skins and wheel tubs but Im drawing the line for now. Theres no point in doing all that without backhalfing the truck and theres no way Im springing for all that money and rework right now. I wanna drive this thing come march, not be 3 months into another year long project...
 
Body work is finally done...

Had to reweld the seam on the roll pan because PO had no idea what he was doing and it was cracking. Got that all buttoned up, bed side is finished, couple dings on the top rail all done. Did the vent for the fuel cell through the bed floor and got the cowl pieces back on.











Ive decided to leave the back of the truck alone more or less for some time. I want to back half it one day but Im not gonna half ass it. I want to do a gutted bed and chromo backhalf with a 4 link or ladder bars and coil overs. That shit just isnt in the budget and I dont want to start another year long project and get screwed out of driving it another year. Im gonna do mini tubs so I can narrow the rear a little more and whip up some caltracs at work.
 
Good progress. It looks nice.

You trying to have it ready by next summer at this point?
 
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