Taking the plunge: LS3 into '64 Tempest. Need help with shopping list. by b-man

11 minute(s) of a 224 minute read

.....from the weld shop today, it came out looking pretty good.







The welding on the crossmember was done by Jeff Moore at Chassis Fab in Acton CA.
http://www.chassisfab.com/
Jeff does top-quality work and has a fully-equipped shop that can easily handle the small jobs like this one or bigger projects requiring extensive chassis fabrication.

Now I'll be able to get the trans mounted in the car, this should add enough weight to make it easier to remove the front springs when I swap the old front end components for the new ones.

7-25-2009

.....and took another step forward. The weather cooled down into the mid to low 90s today, last weekend it was close to 110 degrees and just too hot to do anything.

I put the Tempest up high on small wooden pallets once again and removed the passenger side header. The headers need to be out of the way so I can remove the lower control arm bolts, a complete front suspension upgrade is my next task. While doing some fitting and checking I found that with the transmission bellhousing just barely touched one of the passenger side header tubes right where the starter goes. I knocked off the corner of the bellhousing with a large flat file to give the header tube some clearance.



Next I bolted the trans up to the engine. I bolted the finished trans crossmember to the trans mount and jacked it up tight against the bottom of the frame.



After drilling three 5/16" holes in each side of the frame using the crossmember holes as a guide I bolted the trans crossmember in place using the upper and lower reinforcement plates I made previously.



The crossmember and lower reinforcement plate hang a little over 5/16" below the bottom of the frame rail.



Right above the exhaust clearance hump you can just get your finger between the top of the crossmember and the floorpan, about 1/2" to 5/8" of clearance.



Finally, I would like to thank my two daily drivers for their patience, putting up with numerous cold starts when they're getting moved around and for braving the hot sun all day whenever the Tempest is getting attention. They're both very spoiled and really hate sitting outside.



Now there is finally enough weight over the front end to start to compress the springs, the added weight of the 4L70E trans got the front suspension off of the upper bump stops.

Next up is all of the front suspension and brake work, stay tuned.

7-26-2009

.....by removing all of the old front end components.

I put the Tempest up on two large 6-ton jackstands and removed the wheels, then removed both front shocks and the sway bar end links. Next I loosened up the tie rod adjusters, but left the tie rods attached for now so they would help keep the spindles from moving while loosening up all 4 of the ball joint castle nuts.

After removing the cotter pins and loosening the ball joint castle nuts by a few turns I used a 12" long by 1" diameter brass bar as a drift to knock them loose from the tapered holes in the spindle. After only a couple of hard raps on the ball joint studs with a 2-pound hammer they popped right out of the spindle, against the loosened castle nut. The brass bar is long enough to do all of your hammering clear of the suspension parts, plus you can get a good swing with the hammer.





Next I put my floor jack with a 2X6 wood block underneath the control arm spring pocket and jacked it up enough to remove the tension against the castle nuts. After removing the castle nuts I let the jack down just enough to get the spindle assembly out, I disconnected the brake hose at the frame bracket beforehand.



The H-O Racing front springs are fairly short and came out easily after letting the lower control arms all the way down with the jack, I didn't need to use a spring compressor. Having enough weight on the front end is the key to getting away without the need for a spring compressor, along with a short free-height spring.



To get the upper control arms off I had to remove the rubber spash shields from the inner fenders to get enough room to manuever them out. I also had to take the steering shaft loose from the rag joint coupler on the driver's side and push the steering shaft over as far as possible to get the control arm shaft off the 2 mounting bolts that are pressed into the frame.

Tear down is now complete, all I need to do now is a little cleaning of the suspension attachment points on the frame and I'll be ready to start installing the new parts.



There's really nothing wrong with the old '78 B-body spindles with 12" rotors, reinforced stock lower A-arms and Hotchkis upper control arms with greasable poly bushings. They truly made a night and day difference in braking and handling over the original factory 9.5" drum brakes and rubber-bushed suspension pieces that had over 140K miles on them.



I'm replacing them all now with SPC adjustable upper control arms and tubular lowers, American Touring Specialties AFX forged aluminum spindles and C6 Z06 brakes with hopes that I'll see yet another night and day difference in braking and handling.

This is really going to be a fun canyon carver.

8-1-2009

.....the new front end today. The weather has cooled down during the last week to the mid to low 90s, so I'd better take advantage of that and get some work done on the Tempest.

New front suspension components laid out, I'll be reusing the H-O Racing front springs.



I laid the SPC upper control arms over the Hotchkis arms and adjusted the links to get them close to where they'll need to be. Before doing this I took the links apart and put a good coat of moly on the link threads. The curved rear tube on the Hotchkis arm interfered with my 18X9" wheel at near full steering lock, I'm hoping to gain some clearance at that point.

The mounting holes in the new A-body Moog upper ball joints wouldn't line up with the two outward bolt holes in the SPC arms, those two holes are driled a little too far apart. A little work with a rat-tail file to slot the holes inward by .020" each took care of the slight mismatch. The mounting holes are already drilled to .300" in the arms which is plenty of clearance for a 1/4" bolt. I didn't like having to file on my new control arms, but after thinking about how much I had to hammer the crap out of my trans tunnel it didn't seem so bad.



I bought some new hardware to attach the upper control arms to the frame, the billet aluminum cross shafts are drilled for 1/2" mounting hardware so the original 7/16" bolts wouldn't work. This gave me the opportunity to gain some additional clearance between the headers and the bolts, the new hardware is 1/2" shorter.



Upper control arm bolted in place. You have to bend the rear corner of the opening in the inner fender inward to clear the rear control arm pivot on the cross shaft, this slight modification was already done to make the old Hotchkis arms fit.



The bare aluminum AFX spindles and cast aluminum lower spring seats were treated with an aluminum cleaner (Alumiprep #33) with an alodine solution (Alodine #1001) to protect them from corrosion. You can buy them from Aircraft Spruce: http://aircraftspruce.com



The SPC lower control arms went in easily using some new 1/2-13 Grade 8 hardware and nylock nuts, these arms already have a 1" drop built into them. After making sure the top of the spring was correctly clocked in the upper spring seat I dropped the aluminum lower seat into the control arm and made sure that it was clocked correctly as well. I was able to pull the lower arm up into postion with the spring in place by hand and slide the jack underneath it, no spring compressor needed.



AFX spindle is now in place, there's just enough weight in the chassis to compress the spring so the ball joints would mate up with the spindle. The castle nuts on the ball joints were snugged lightly at this point. If I don't like the ride height after the car is fully assembled it will come apart easily so I can either cut the springs or add spring spacers under the spring seats.



The billet aluminum ATS steering arms are now in place along with the Moog tie rod ends. Most of the major components are not tightened up yet, things will be coming apart a few times to make various adjustments.



The front suspension assembly is complete enough now that I can see how everything is fitting up, it's looking pretty good at this point.



Tomorrow I'll try to get the front hubs mounted to the spindles and see how the brakes, wheels and tires fit.