Bill, I have been watching your V8 swap with interest and would like to hear some of your driving impressions.  On the road in daily driving as well as how she handled on the hill climb.  I have driven a few sports cars with swaps and generally was disappointed (TR6, MGTD, and Sunbeam Tiger – a factory “swap”).  I have owned each of these with fa…[Read more]

The hillclimb has its own thread now.

Pagoda Hillclimb 2018

Patti heard before I did and texted me wanting to know where you worked. There is no good side to this except that you are Ok.

That 5 is a very crude S. Car number 14 running in class Specials 3.

Bill. Great videos and photos. Question…what does the 14 5/3 stand for?

more pictures from the hill climb please

I’ll install new springs and see what we have with position of tie rods.  seems they should be parallel with the lower A arm.  My other issue is that my wider rims hit my shock absorber mount.  I’ll see if that can be moved inboard or relocate shock to inside spring.

Well, this is the end result. I had the radiator taken apart and re cleaned and installed a larger cooling fan. The fan will require some re engineering to mount the headlamp brackets together. We ran with no front body work. We did it…it works.

Plausible but I don’t understand why you’d relocate the steering rack. It should be in a pretty positive “stock” location, and if you raise it up won’t it tend to keep your tie-rod angles in the cockeyed condition they’re in?

OK – I think I know what is wrong with my steering.  I lowered the front end too much without making any modifications to the steering.  My tie rods angle up towards the wheels.  I believe I read somewhere that they are supposed to be level.  Car needs to be raised back up a little and probably need to remount the steering rack higher.  Sound plausible?

Not sure I should even reply on the steering topic because my TDr is VW based but mine had stiff and irregular steering due to- 1. Poor alignment of column and steering box, 2. Flimsy mounting of column at both the dash and chassis ends, 3. Missing bushings inside the outer steering column, 4. Shaft coupling rubbing on the fiberglass side panel,…[Read more]

Glad it’s running. New springs are in order. Cutting one coil increased the spring weight by ten percent. Cutting the second coil it went up ten percent from that rate. I did that myself and it rode like a rock.

Two more steps on your pictures. The screen where you clicked on “copy image”, click on “edit” instead. Then click on “ copy image”.    …[Read more]

Ric, congratulations! Now it’s just down to sorting.

I don’t know about the photo problem maybe someone else will chime in.

Why are all my pictures posting as a square?  Part of the picture is being cut off.

Drove car for a short distance.  All gears worked, brakes worked, steering is very heavy.  Clutch has to be all the way in to shift and all the way out to engage.  Maybe it will get better with use.  Front suspension is very stiff.  Chevette spring had two coils cut.  May have to get a replacement spring.  Any ideas?  May also look into power steering.