[bulletpruf]

Rear Bilstein's showed up yesterday. Nasty weather here yesterday and today (freezing rain, snow, etc) and car is outside, but hope to get them installed this week after work one day.

Will be ordering Inline Tube stainless steel hard lines to replace the original crusty ones on the car now. While I'm at it, I'll install the Inline Tube front disk brake conversion kit. Comes with booster, master, hard lines from master, proportioning valve, brake assembly including new spindles.

Also think I found an alternative to the Umi upper/lower tubular control arm set. Summit sells a set of 4 for about 1/2 of what the Umi's cost. I'm sure it's made in China, but I'd prefer to buy from Summit instead of some random vendor on eBay.

Will upgrade springs front and rear while I'm at it - stock height Umi that are a bit stiffer than stock.

Car should ride/drive quite a bit better once the suspension upgrades are done.

Scott

[bulletpruf]

Summit tubular upper and lower control arms showed up. The lowers were too d@mn narrow (distance between bushings) on both sides, but managed to get them installed. Made up a few new curse words in the process. The welds weren't great, either. Should have gone with Umi's but they're a lot more expensive.

Disk brake conversion kit, all new hard lines, new brake line clips/bolts, etc should be here in the next few days from Inline Tube.

[dataway]

I don't believe any of this without pictures

[bulletpruf]

Originally Posted by dataway

I don't believe any of this without pictures

Point taken. I'll get some pics posted.

Question - when replacing torquing front control arms, do I need to do so while the car is sitting at ride height with weight on the wheels?

thanks

[2manyponchos]

Originally Posted by bulletpruf

Point taken. I'll get some pics posted.

Question - when replacing torquing front control arms, do I need to do so while the car is sitting at ride height with weight on the wheels?

thanks

Poly bushings are less critical on that. Rubber should definitely be done that way. I have always considered that do be good practice.

[dataway]

^^^^ X2

[bulletpruf]

Finally going to move back to the states for good at the end of August -- we'll be in San Antonio. Will need to make a road trip to NC in my new tow vehicle (01 Suburban K2500 4x4 with 8.1) in September to pick up the car and bring it to Texas. Punch list is still a mile long, but anxious to get after it. Pretty sure I'm going to swap out shocks and springs for a set of coil-overs. Also considering going with aluminum heads, a bit more cam, and larger headers...yeah, mission creep is in full force here.

[The Boss]

Welcome back!

[bulletpruf]

Originally Posted by The Boss

Welcome back!

Thanks, Chris.

I've been back for a few months and still haven't made the road trip to get the car yet.

Have been spending some $ on my 72 Alfa Romeo GTV. It's finishing up a nut and bolt restoration back in Italy. I'll go back to Italy in a few weeks to arrange shipping back to the states. I'm not really much of a DOHC all aluminum 4 cylinder and 5 speed kind of guy, but it was a fun frolic and detour while I was in Italy. Pretty good chance that I will sell it soon after I get it back to the states and put money back into musclecars.







Have also spent too much time on my vintage chainsaw collection - Stihl, Jonsereds, Husqvarna, Solo, Echo, etc. Have about 100, and need to get down to about 20. Before you ask, yes, people do collect chainsaws, and I was getting really good deals on saws in Europe (esp. Sweden and Germany), so liquidating the majority of my collection is going to help fund the musclecar addiction.

Here's a pic of the back wall of the garage; all vintage Jonsereds. All for sale.



Ciao, y'all.

Scott

[bulletpruf]

Just returned from a road trip to pick up the car in North Carolina. About 2700 miles round trip.

It will sit in the garage for a while; we just bought a new house and it needs a lot of work. However, I'm taking over the garage; will convert it to a shop and install a 2 post car lift in the middle.

Once all that is done, I'll get back to work on the car. I think I want to ditch the springs and shocks and go with coil overs. Just not happy with how the spring swap turned out and I'd like to have adjustable ride height.

Also giving serious thought to some engine modifications - aluminum heads, more cam, larger headers, and electronic fuel injection.

[dataway]

Looking forward to pics from your never ending supply of projects

[bulletpruf]

Originally Posted by dataway

Looking forward to pics from your never ending supply of projects

Ok, so the Alfa is done. It made the trip across the pond with no issues. I have since removed the bumpers; much cleaner look.

[bulletpruf]

Finally got going on the car again. We bought a house in January that needed a fair amount of work, so that's been sucking the life (and $$$) out of us.

Working on removing the brand new stainless lines that I got from Inline Tube. Gave me too much trouble trying to get them to seal up so I'm going back with mild steel, or whatever the OEM type stuff is.

When I rebuilt the front end (new upper and lower control arms, new tie rods, new sway bar, etc), the alignment was off by a fair amount. Got it pretty close yesterday. Still have to work on caster and camber a bit.

Going to remove the new springs front and rear; car is sitting like a 4x4. I'll put some used OEM springs out back and trim the fronts. At least that's the plan; coil overs sound enticing, too, but they're not cheap.

EDIT: forgot to mention -- I picked up a new project -- barn find 1969 Bronco . 302, 3 on da tree. Solid, but needs a lot of love.

[dataway]

Oh No!!!
Evidently your days all have 36 hours.

Bronco still has the 302 in it?
Those have quite the following these days.

And, must have been a blast working with a bunch of Italians on cars

[bulletpruf]

Originally Posted by dataway

Oh No!!!
Evidently your days all have 36 hours.

Bronco still has the 302 in it?
Those have quite the following these days.

And, must have been a blast working with a bunch of Italians on cars

I stay pretty busy...

Bronco still has the 302, but I bought a347 stroker kit for it. Also swapping out the 3 speed for an NP435 - 4 speed manual with granny first. I'll keep the 9" out back, but looking for a Dana 44 to replace the Dana 30 up front.

It was interesting working on my Alfa in Italy. A bit of a language barrier, but I speak Italian well enough to communicate.

Thanks

[dataway]

Build a Boss 302 for it, one of the quickest 0-100 cars I ever rode in was a Boss 302 mustang with 5.13 gears in it ... but wouldn't go much over 100

Paint it yellow and black, with some ground effects and louvers on the back window.

Most complicated thing I have worked on with Italians is the explanation of a coin-op laundry in Rome. I'm there every spring for a week or so ... love it.

[Sidponcho]

Before you do anything else. Thoroughly check the wiring that runs through the exhaust manifold to the starter. An electrical short here can be catastrophic. Also get a fire extinguisher for your 51 year old car. By the way, cool car

[bulletpruf]

Originally Posted by dataway

Build a Boss 302 for it, one of the quickest 0-100 cars I ever rode in was a Boss 302 mustang with 5.13 gears in it ... but wouldn't go much over 100

Paint it yellow and black, with some ground effects and louvers on the back window.

Most complicated thing I have worked on with Italians is the explanation of a coin-op laundry in Rome. I'm there every spring for a week or so ... love it.

Not a huge fan of the Boss 302 in this application; I'm after low end torque.

Love Rome! But our favorite city in Italy is Florence. We spent a fair amount of time there. Naples was great, but I never could get used to all the trash.

[bulletpruf]

Originally Posted by Sidponcho

Before you do anything else. Thoroughly check the wiring that runs through the exhaust manifold to the starter. An electrical short here can be catastrophic. Also get a fire extinguisher for your 51 year old car. By the way, cool car

Thanks. I keep a fire extinguisher in cars that I'm driving, among other things. I need to tidy some things up under the hood; will check on the wiring.

[bulletpruf]

Have a Q-Jet rebuild/refresh kit on the way from Cliff R.

One new brake line on the way from Inline Tube. I had ordered the hardtop kit instead of the convertible kit so the intermediate line doesn't work well with the convertible's boxed frame.

New parking brake cables on the way from Inline Tube as well.

Hope to get brakes sorted and bled this weekend.

Then I'll tackle the springs and ride height.

Have a motor for my Alfa Romeo showing up this week; hope to be able to disassemble to see what kind of shape it's in. Most of the bits will be replaced, but I need a good block, crank, and cylinder head.