Working off the list

[Blue Streak 21]

It was a busy weekend spent in the garage working off that long list of things that need to be done to the car. I was most happy that my new H&R front springs came in today, and I was able to put them on. The new springs are 550 #'ers. I swapped the 350 #'ers to the rear. The change out went smoothly except when I dropped the rear axle after removing the bolt that holds on the shock. Oops. No harm, just a bit of a surprise. I'll stick the wheels on the car tomorrow, and set the ride height. That should be fun.
I also fiberglassed the cracks in the front nose. This was a first for me, as I had never attempted fixing fiberglass. I had good advice and support from a couple of experienced guys in my office. So far everything looks good. I'll sand it down tomorrow, and repaint. I filled in the hundreds of holes in the lower lip of the nose (where the air dam gets riveted on) with a Bondo product. It's called Bondo Glass, and has lots of glass fibers in it for strength. It was a bit thick for filling little holes. Next time I would go with straight resin and small fibers. To give the Bondo Glass more surface area to bond to, I counter sunk the holes prior to adding the bondo.
I bought a strip of ABS to be cut into another front air dam. The old one was shattered after the car came off the trailer. I got enough material for a couple of spares. I think I'll need them. After shaping the 4 1/2" wide x 84" long piece, I'll riveted it back on to the repaired nose.
So I'm knocking things off the list, one at a time.
Next on my list is setting ride heights, alignment, and then corner weighting. A fellow racer just purchsed a set of digital scales, and he's going to rent them out (in his facility) for others to corner balance cars. Pretty cool!
More later.opcorn:

[Cobra4B]

^ Awesome... I'm going to do the same, but was going to let a shop do the suspension setup w/ the manuals we now have.

I don't have scales etc to corner weight it correctly.

[Gatorac]

If you want to do any fiberglass repair, get this book Fiberglass Repair and Construction by Jack Wiley .

It will show you all kinds of techniques for repairing. Comes in handy with a fiberglass race car.

[Blue Streak 21]

Thanks for the tip on the book. I'll go check it out at Borders.
I was told today the the Koni's are single adjustable shocks. I was lead to beleive that they were not adjustable at all. I removed one shock, and verified that it's true. I'm going to get the instruction manual from Koni and see how they are set (soft to firm rebound). I'll post it once I receive it.

[Cobra4B]

^ I just posted.... I have 4 new shocks and the rebound is adjustable... but I have no clue what to set them on.

Oh... and when you're setting them to zero the adjuster button will seem to get stuck down... a tiny screwdriver can pop/pry it back up carefully.