mult68

iTrader: (1)

I got a 92 project car im working on...right now the interior is completely stripped...there is no engine or tranny....and the car is on stands...im about to completely take out the entire front suspension.....ill be replacing it with a tubular k-member, tubular a-arms...and all new suspension components....my question....ill be getting a set of KB sfcs (i cant wait for spohn anymore) and a S&W 8-point rollbar.......obviously I cant drive the car to have these things welded in...plus i want to do it myeslf....i know youre supposed to have the car on its tires when you do this....but what if its completely stripped...should the car at this point be flex free...and straight assuming i level the jacks properly?? or what if I just keep certain parts in there to keep the body relatively straight (im thinking perhaps the stock k-member....wonder bar...etc...is there any easy way to do this? as a last resort..i talked to a frame shop guy..and he said if i tow it over he can do it for me...and he can use his frame machine to attach it to the front of the car and pull the thing down until its at ride height (right now with no engine the car sits way up up front).....so what should i do? Once i get the sfcs welded in...the body should stay straight no matter what right? At which point i can weld in the rollbar myself right?

erictheviking

I've made my own cage and made my own sfc's (these are not in yet).As far as the cage is concerned,I did what you said and had the car on stands and spent several hours levelling it all up before my friend welded it.From a personal point of view as long as it's level and the doors still open and close,the shell should still be as it should be.As for pulling the front end down to replicate the engine,I can't see what this would achieve other than lowering the car.Welding in the sfc's is a bitch(I watched my friend do his-welding burns and all).When you think about it the car has to be jacked up high on one side as you won't reach the welds if it were on a ramp.Besides Hotrod magazine did a cage in a camaro a few years ago and their car was stripped bare.Good luck.

ATOMonkey

Exactly right. Get the car up as high as possible so you can do a good job welding. If these welds fail very very bad things will happen while driving down the road.

ede

how you going to level it, or where you going to check it at? there isn't any place that i know of you can use as a known level surface, other than side to side. you need to worry more about fore and aft, as well as side to side. what you need to do, and can't, is park the car on a known level surface and take some referance readings with an angle finder then set the car up on jack stands with the suspension loaded with the full weight and replicate the readings you got before. i wouldn't do it as it is and i wouldn't do it without some base lines readings from an angle finder. if you can get the doors to open and close with no weight on the chassis doesn't mean a lot when the full weight is back on the car.

mult68

iTrader: (1)

well i have 2 camaros....both 92s...can i use the reading of my daily driver...and replicate it on the project car?

ede

sure use another car, i was going to say that in my other reply and must of forgot it. i used the door sills, if that's what they're called. the bottom surface in the door opening on each side for the fore and aft, then the radiator support and the rear deck lid for side to side. i put a piece of tape where i took the readings from so i used the same place, but i doubt if it made much differance. i cut up 12x12 squares of 1/2" ply wood for shims under my jackstands. my garage floor is slooped for a drain so it took a few shims to get it right.

ATOMonkey

Level isn't as important as square. Once you weld them in the orientation of the rear clip to the front is premanent. Now I'm going to tell you that neither really makes a whole hell of a lot of difference. Do you think that the chasis flexes going down the road? Of course you do that's why you're putting in connectors. Do you think that flexing changes the car's geometry? Did it ever fly off the road because of that? No of course it didn't. The worst thing that's going to happen is that the car is going to be exactly the same when you got done, only stiffer.

If it really bothers you, you can level it and measure until everything is perfect, but what if it isn't. How are you going to tweek the chassis to get it straight before you weld the connectors in?

Just some things to think about.

erictheviking

Ede I think you totally misread my post.When I said level the car I did exactly what you did as in level it from side to side at various points to make sure it was at the same level all along the car and the shell wasn't twisted.I also took loads of measurements before the car was stripped and guess what Those measurements were the same when I re-measured them.I think ATOmonkey is correct in what he is saying(square is more important -hence above levelling) and I think you can read too much into it.As for the door thing what I was saying was the doors opened and shut exactly the same way as they did with the car fully loaded.There's no way the shell is going to mutate into a completely different shape just because youv'e taken some parts off.Besides I know of 1 other person who did exactly this and the car goes like a dream,and I can't believe for one minute that everybody who puts a cage or connecters in does it to a fully loaded car.I'm not a car expert but I try to work to a high standard and if I thought I was going to ruin my car I wouldn't have bothered.

Neil(Erictheviking) Electrical engineer