Project: BLACK METAL - '67 Camaro

[67rally]

Off the road again...

I decided to investigate the vibration I was having at highway speeds (also the reason why the tuner shut the dyno test down early). A friend of a friend said "Don't drive it, it will eat parts." I'm glad I listened. Luckily almost all of my driving has been around town to break in the clutch, and only a few short blasts on the highway.

It turns out, the idiot (code name 67rally) that installed the engine and transmission is the same guy who measured the rear pinion angle. I guess I mistakenly wrote down a positive angle for the rear pinion angle and then matched the trans angle in the opposite direction so that the trans angle and pinion angle would be equal but opposite. This puts them parallel to each other, but not in the same plane. And then I didn't take into account the 1-1 1/2* that the diff rotates under load. It turns out that the pinion angle was actually negative, so I had the trans facing down towards the rear, and the pinion facing down towards the front. And when the axle rotated back, it added another degree or so. Blah, blah, blah. Long story short, they were way out of whack, and I need to shim the differential up 4 degrees. My fault, luckily I caught it early.

I also found the U-bolts holding the axle were loose. Not sure if this caused some of the vibration, or if the vibration caused them to come loose. Anyways, the rear end is not perfectly facing forward any longer. The passenger side needs to come forward, or the driver's side needs to go back.

I bought a couple cheap laser levels, and mounted them to some angle stock so I can place one against the trans output shaft, and the other on the face of the pinion yoke and line everything up when I do the shims.

My fault for rushing the job to get it to the tuner in time. Just a reminder not to take shortcuts, luckily this time it's only going to cost me a U-Joint:



Here's the bearing cap and bearing mush that's left: