'63 Tempest project

[MGCslugger33]

Have you made any progress? Fellow tempest owner here. Interested in your build.

[rohrt]

subscribing

[andrewb70]

.....

Slowly but surely. I'm hoping it will be road worthy about a year from now.

John,

We need updates!

Andrew

[boodlefoof]

Hey guys!

Sorry to leave you hanging. Things over the past year required the Tempest to be put on the back burner for a bit. Had another baby and then we inherited the old family farm and most of my free time and car money has gone into restoring the late 1700s farmhouse. Funny that my restoration there is much like the Tempest restoration: trying to keep it true to original while adding functionality out of sight. As soon as this snow stops the roof will be coming down so that I can raise it back to where it once was! I hope to have the house project done in the next six or eight months and then (hopefully) be able to turn at least some attention back to the Tempest.

I have managed to do a little on the car in the meantime. I'll try to post an update soon.

[49slead]

Just joined and subscribed to your project thread... I have a 63 Lemans project - watching you carefully.. nice work

[boodlefoof]

I've had very little time to work on the car in the past year. Kind of depressing. I did scrape together a few hours in the past few weeks to figure out my front brakes, though. The car came with a Mustang II front suspension setup with 11'' disks and GM single-piston calipers, but being that this is pro-touring.com we can't have any of that, right?!

So, I tried to figure out a good way to get big (but not too big) brakes at a less than big brake kit price. I think I made it work. First, I found a good deal on a pair of Wilwood billet hubs for the MII spindle online: $120 each. I already had the bearings and seals from the MII brake kit. Then, I wanted to identify a good off-the-shelf rotor that I could use. My criteria were to find a 1.1'' wide rotor with about a 12.5'' diameter and which obviously had the right bolt pattern. After quite a bit of searching (since there doesn't seem to be a good way to search factory rotors by size...), I found that the rotors from an early 2000s BMW Z3 M Coupe fit the bill. They are 12.4'' x 1.1'' directional vane rotor. The best part is that they were $35 each on Amazon! I had to turn down the Wilwood hubs just a few thousandths of an inch to have hub-centric rotors. Also on Amazon, I found a pair of the tried and true Wilwood FSL four-piston calipers for the 1.1'' rotor. With pads, they came out to about $180 each. I modified the caliper brackets that came with the MII kit to fit the narrower 3.5'' lug spacing for the new calipers. So, with about 4 hours of design and fab time and a new parts cost of just about $700 that is what I put together:



I figure that if I had to buy the bearings and material to make the brackets and other odds and ends it would be another $100, putting me even on cost with the entry level Wilwood kit with .81'' wide rotors and Dynalite calipers.

[344reman]

I have a 63 Tempest, 4cly project car.

Are you interested in doing a frame build out as shown on your threads. Ge the car to the point of dropping a 421 with modern drive train?

If so, shout back.

[tekuhn]

Boodlefoof, I also have a '63 Tempest that I have just installed a Mustang II crossmember in. I used Paul Horton's Welder Series 58" universal kit. That along with using 5/8" shorter than stock control arms and Granada 11" rotors, my track width is perfect. My question is related to your steering rack relocation. I am also installing a traditional Pontiac V8. In stock location, the steering rack is at least a couple of inches taller than the top of the crossmember which will require the engine to be raised substantially to clear the oil pan. It looks like you were able to lower the rack and apparently improve the bumpsteer curve at the same time. I need to do exactly the same. I am not experienced in steering suspension geometry and do not have any software to simulate changes. In stock form, the tie rods and the lower control arms are basically parallel. If I lower the rack below the lower control arm pivot, now the tie rods will be sloping upward to the spindles. Is that all you did, or is there a way to lower the outer tie rod attachment so that they are once again parallel to the lower control arms?

Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated. By the way - this is not intended to be a pro-touring car, so my intention is to simply have good street handling and tire life.

Thank you!