Need a little help figuring something out

[SSLance]

There has to be an easier way Norm, right?

Some progress tonight. Got my drill rod and washers in today. After having the washers turned out to 0.475 ID I headed home to put the rods and washers in place. As Ron warned me, I had to ream out two holes on the driver side and one on the passenger side to get them all lined up in a row straight enough to get the rod through. After some finagling, I got the rod and washers in place. A couple of the holes could have used a bit more work, but since it's all coming apart and more work on the holes needs to be done, I left it for the night.

Some notes in case anyone else wants to do this on a metric chassis. The stock LCA bolts are 12 mm. I ended up with a 12 mm drill rod, and 7/16s case hardened extra thick (5mm) washers which we turned the inside out to 0.475 ID which is also the ID of the bushings in the control arms. The 12 mm washers I ordered first had 1 mm of play between the washers and drill rod which isn't acceptable.

Anyway, here's the pics of the rods in place.














Also had some time to try out my new laser pointer to check the bump steer. I started at 26" fender height which might be where the ride height ends up, then dropped it by 1", measured, then 1" and measured, then raised it to 27" and measured. I had the graph paper up against the front of the inner fender and was using a marker and there wasn't any room between the marks, so I moved the graph paper up 7 feet in front of the car and remeasured.

7' in front of the tie rod ends, the toe moved out 3/4s of an inch with the 2" of suspension compression, and a 1/4" in with the inch up from ride height...and was the same on both sides. Someone better at math than me might have to help figure out how much it's moving at the tires...I know this though, it ain't much.









That's it for now. Up next is the moving of the holes and welding the washers in place.