Project: BLACK METAL - '67 Camaro

[67rally]

I spent about 4 hours under the car lining the drive train angles up. Lots of pics.



Here are the el cheapo laser levels that I bought from Home Depot and mounted to a piece of angle aluminum. I bought some "Super Magnets" and placed a couple on each side, sandwiching the aluminum, so I could attach it to the pinion. I had a few times where the magnets didn't cooperate and I have a couple blood blisters where the suckers pinched my skin. These are serious magnets!




Here's a nice blurry photo of where my pinion was pointing. The laser level is attached to the face of the pinion with the magnets:




I bought two different kinds of 4* shims. The "hollow" ones are from Speedway Motors, and the ones with the long cutout are from Belltech. I wasn't sure which I would use, and better to have a couple options once I was under there:




I jacked up the rear by the axle, supported the car under the subframe connectors and under the leaf springs, loosened the U-bolts around the axle and then raised the diff until the leaf springs were "floating" between the axle and the shock plate. I removed the urethane pad, and here's the pin on top of the leafs (looking towards the rear):




Here's the Belltech shim on top of the Speedway Motors shim. The hole in the Speedway shim was the perfect size, while the Belltech one was too big and could allow for some movement.




This was the Belltech shim with the urethane pad on top. With the monoleaf spring perches, the leafs would not even be in the perches:



I decided to go with the Speedway Motors shims and no urethane pad. The corners of the spring perch are rounded a little, while the shim is cut at 90 degree angles and hit along the edges. The arrows show the witness marks:




I rounded the sharp edges over with a bench grinder and then my angle grinder with an 80 grit disc:



I moved the passener side of the axle slightly forward, and the driver's side slightly backwards and bolted everything back together...A little better alignment:




I took it out for a test ride, and was out for about an 30 minutes. I hit the highway...parking lot. Route 1, parking lot. I couldn't get over 35mph before I ran into more cars. I hit some back roads, got up to about 60 from a stoplight and tmore traffic. I went everywhere I could think of that had an open stretch of road and spent most of my time parked in traffic. I'll test again tomorrow. I didn't have any vibration, but couldn't really get it up to speed to say for sure.