Drove the Beast of Burden to work today! Slight vibration at freeway speeds, but that could be the engine not being tuned up perfectly. New shocks are great, engine is plenty torquey, and the exhaust note is pretty much spot on for the car's attitude. While I have it out, I'm gonna go pick up some aluminum sheet for Jennifer's new radiator fan shroud, and maybe some other stuff.
Thanks! Now it's back to the regularly scheduled mundane problems, like gauges not working, cylinders not all firing, oil leaks, carb tuning, and fuel tank vent hose leaks.
Don't feel bad, I still have yet to replace my filler! I still can only put half a tank in, and it still sloshes and leaks out!
Another curious thing is that the vibration seemed to actually go away when I got on the throttle. This was born out by my rearview mirror getting less blurry with more throttle. I'm thinking that my 1" lift in the back altered the pinion angle, and getting on the throttle squishes the bushings to bring the pinion angle back in line.
That can happen also. Any time you lift, you check/reset pinion angle and service the u-joints, whether needed or not. That comes from my membership on Fullsizebronco.com.
Got some new lower control arms from Coleman Racing. Used 3/4" rod ends with right and lefthand threads and 17.5" rods. (Edit: for those planning to do the same, use 17" or 16.5" long arms as 17.5 is just barely too long. For those using 5/8" rod ends and the Coleman Racing "tie rods," then 17.5" will probably be fine, but would still recommend 17") Just need some spacers, bolts, and to drill out the holes in the brackets. Also ordered a 1-wire alternator to replace the 3-wire one with a bad diode, and a temp sender to hopefully get that gauge working.
Turns out the issue with the temp gauge was actually that I had the ignition and signal feeds swapped. Oops. Anyways, got the alternator swapped, and made some spacers for the control arms out of some iron plumbing pipe. Hopefully, I'll have the control arms and have the pinion angle adjusted tonight.
Very cool. And, not to make you feel like an idiot, but just a pointer, the closest you get to a zero degree offset between the output shaft centerline and the pinion shaft centerline, the happier the U-joints will be. I wanna say the tolerance spec is either 1/4 or 1/2 degree, plus or minus.
I'm planning on biasing it down slightly so that under load (particularly under normal freeway duty) it will flex to even. I don't know of a good way to measure pinion angle under load, but I should be able to feel if it's going wrong and adjust accordingly.
That's why the spec has tolerance designed in. You basically use the pinion angle tool to set it where you want it; IIRC, the explanation is that both u-joints deflect at the same rate as the rear squats, so once properly set, both shafts stay more or less parallel.
Got one side installed-ish last night before I ran out of light. Had to chop down the links a quarter inch on each end because with the rod ends threaded all the way in it was the same length as the stock arms with no room for shortening to raise the pinion angle. Now that I know what I'm doing, the other side should only take an hour or so, then I can square up the axle and set the pinion angle.
Got the pinion angle set and went for a drive, and at one point, there was no vibration, even up to *ahem* kinda high speeds. But then the vibrations came back. So maybe the vibration is actually from an out of balance tire that cancelled out when synced with another out of balance tire? Perhaps I'll have to swap in the dinky Mustang tires to check. It'll look goofy, but hey, at least it'll be street legal by getting the snows off.
Snow tires? Yeah, I'd wager you have 'issues' with one or more. They aren't exactly designed for highway-speed highway driving. People *are* supposed to slow down when the roads are a frozen mess.
Took the Beast for a cruise yesterday, and it performed pretty well. Did clog a fuel filter (and I planned ahead and brought a spare), and the carb had a bit of a bog off idle, and it only got maybe 10mpg running on the small tires, and there were still vibrations, but hey, nothing catastrophic! And I picked up the tires from my buddy, so soon I'll have properly sized tires that aren't snow tires!
Nice. You're having more fun than I am. Babe's battery died (was a used one) and I have to wait for the Eagle to poop the beginning of next month to get a replacement.
I do need to get a second battery so that the Beast and my Mustang don't have to share. And I could really use an O2 sensor for the Beast, but now it looks like those free funds are now likely earmarked for a camshaft replacement in the Mustang. I could take the one from the Mustang, but I really don't wanna undo the wiring I used to put it in.
