Testaments 1981 mercury capri LS-Turbo drag car

[Testament]

bags and piles and mounds, an entire desert of grinding dust.

Spent almost of whole weekend on this, got a bit done.

 

started with the subframe connectors on the passenger side, cut into the factory front chassis rail then continued the cut most of the way to bulkhead the rear lower control arms mount to in order to be able to drop a piece of 75x50x3 in there to tie the front and rear of the car together seeing as ford hadn't thought that was particularly worthile.

 

 

and mounting/footplate welded into the firewall to tie it into

 

then lots of measuring and boggling around the order of business and how the seat mounts and rollcage footings will be tied into all this

 

 

 

drew some things and cut some things

 

 

 

 

then set myself on fire for some mild saturday afternoon excitement

 

 

more measuring and fettling. 

 

 

cut out the piece of cracked floor to make way for more 75x50 for the rear seat mount

 

then the tricky thing of making a plate to fit the sill to mount the 75x50 to, using various pieces of bending and drawing technology

 

 

 

 

 

turned out great

 

 

 

 

really happy with the fitup so far, still quite a bit of fiddly work with wrapping the mounting plates around the sills and things for the cage footings but I have been cutting out the plates for the other side as I go along and now I have the method worked out the productivity to boggle ratio should improve markedly.

[Testament]

well thats nearly 2 more months evaporated. im sure ive made more progress but not alot to show for it mostly boggling over how to do various things and planning what needs to be done to meet project deadlines which this in now on.

 

of course this means the 124 had to fail a wof yesterday too of course, but i digress.

 

tonights work, foot plates for drivers side seat mount rails. 

 

of course where they need to go is right where there are compound curves in the trans tunnel.

 

a couple of hours of bashing steel on steel and blocks of wood and thinking what was that bussiness sheepers goes on about stretching this or shrinking that then more bashing

 

 

and fits ok

 

 

 

 

 

then I decided to have a wire wheel party

 

[Testament]

the last few days and nights disappeared into grinding dust up my nose and welding spatter in my hair

 

first patched the floor where the old seat mounts has cracked it

 

 

 

cutting followed by much bashing

 

 

 

then some welding and a couple of hours of cleaning that damn blue paint off

 

 

more welding then, endless in and out of bits and grinding this and cutting that and eventually welding things to fit the seat rails

 

 

getting there, but still much to do. 

 

 

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more choppy choppy time

 

 

 

 

mott maxxing out his 1xRM

 

 

 

 

[Testament]

keep on welding

 

 

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more welding

 

 

 

then used cunning rat technology the worlds nutterest right angle non variable high speed drill combined with much bastardry to hopefuly get the instant center higher up and further forward given the ride height desired

 

 

 

but I think now the tide may have turned, with just about all the horrible upside down welding to shitty sheetmetal done and more straightforward and obvious fabrication left

 

anti roll bar tacked in place and prepping to install the coil over mountiing bar. have to box out the rails and make some towers for that to mount it high enough for the desired ride height with the 7" stroke shocks I have

 

[Testament]

so much easier to work not lying on the ground in contorted positions

 

 

 

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Finished building rear suspension tower/coil over mount/cage backstay mount thing

 

 

 

also additional cage bar footplates that tie into the upper 4 link mounts

 

 

Version 3 seat mounts to banger specication

 

 

 

had a tidy up finally, found I had created mount makita

 

 

funny thing is thats not even half of it, that much again was in the shop vac and half as much in my lungs probably

 

so where it sits now, gangster mode engaged

 

 

 

 

 

 

will call a guy about the cage tomorrow, hoping I can get someone local to do it who has done a drag car one before and has the 1 5/8 dies. worst case I will get the die and do it myself but would rather just pay money and have it done at this point time is critical.

 

jobs for the coming week

 

put mounts onto hilux diff

 

 

replace this cheese rusted bit I cut off

 

[Testament]

fixed that, ready for crashing into mustangs

 

 

 

starting boggling on how to do the upper 4 link mounts on the diff, copied some of sheepers trick that I saw he used on richies starlet diff to help with the locating the diff mounts but wont work completely as you can see the original fox body setup has a bushing pressed into a thingie on the diff and im changing to a rod end setup. still i can use it to help define the angle and distance apart.

 

also was very lucky - I though I was going to have to pull the whole diff apart at this point because the diff breather location appeared to be right where the mount was going to have to go. but on further investigation the diff head is offset a little and it is just going to clear so that is a win. will still have to pull the thing apart to swap the center and check axle lengths to ensure they will engage in the e-locker centre properly (a wee birdie tells me it may be a little known toyota secret that the e-locker diffs have different length axles to the LSD axles for the locking collar to engage on) but also this diff has been shortened so who knows what might be hiding inside. also will be getting a disc brake conversion but that is also a later job at this point.

 

 

 

[Testament]

made a mdf hoop

 

 

 

then said the magic words and hey presto

 

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put aliexpress QCTP on my little old lathe after some "precision" grinding for clearances and tee slot doofer fitment. started making up some bushes for the rear suspening rod ends so I can get the spacing right on the upper diff brackets. also got the side plates cut out for those and mounting holes drilled.

 

 

Then on sunday got the rest of the bending done with the help of a bending barry, pretty happy with how it turned out/didnt have to bin any tube. the front legs along the a pillars dont look super close but I cant see that we could have got them much closer and been able to drop the cage down to weld the top corners without putting the feet through the sills or something which seemed wrong to me. all the bends are pretty much jammed up into the corners/roof etc.

 

 

 

then started fitting one of the tubs together as the backstays are going to require me to cut into them to clear, so need to mock them up to figure that out. They don't play an easy game though even though the have the pre swaged seam thing and side plate with the edge bent over already, so I left it for the night before I ruined them completely,  will see if I can get an extra pair of hands to help with getting them together with the minimum of kinkage and wrinkledness.

 

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Notch much to see here

 

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Old mate American Dan came around and did some great work while I was cursing other vehicles and getting sunburnt working in the driveway. getting to look serious now

 

 

 

"Great Node of Justice"

 

 

 

still a bunch more to do but most of the longer tricky ones out of the way.

[Testament]

made a tree

 

 

Started gluing things together

 

[Testament]

only took another year and a half to get all barred up about this again

 

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right side up upside down welding

 

removed even more car

 

made a C notch for more slam and got fully sideways

[Testament]

keeping on smashing at this nugget

quite a bit of time in welding up a bunch of seams, small holes  and little reinforcements here and there. working on getting everything on the bottom of the car sorted.

a bunch more measurements to figure more or less where things will likely sit. got prehistoric on the back end of the trans tunnel to make some more room for the drive shaft.

fiexed up  the hori gearbox mount rookiedave and mott made ages ago. ground off the bits they had glued on, welded up all the holes and re machined the crossmember to suit a factory GM powerglide mount.

started on the exhaust next. with it being 3.5"/90mm really trying to tuck it up to the maximum possible to avoid getting beached at the still relatively unslammed slammedness that will be possible. to further this following some stick poking,  umming,  ahhing  decided to make a nascar boom tube inspired rear section. keeps the same or greater cross sectional area with 40mm more clearance. still a bit of work to go go from round to rectangle but happy with the progress.

need to get some more tube in 22x3 this week and try to scrounge a section of 200NB steam pipe for the driveshaft hoop. once those are done re fit the fuel tank temporarily to figure out how to mount the fuel system and get all the mounting points for fuel lines,  trans cooler lines and such things done.

[Testament]

made up a crossmember for the driveshaft hoop to mount to. need to take some 50x6 flatbar and use the rollers at work to make a circle to go on there.

tig welded up the nascar rectangle thing. fuck me my left hand is shaky  lol. good practice though apart from all the gas in my bottle disappearing rather quickly.

[Testament]

everyday turn more steel into dust

 

 

unsure exactly where I want the exhaust to end so cut it a little long and will see how it looks when its on its wheels.

put the turbo kit back in temporarily to check fitment and of course needed to slit most of the joins to take the pipe strain out so everything will play nicely. will put the guard back on and make the hole in that while its all there

[Testament]

applied maths and string theory

 

zing

they see me chooching