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After fixing the rollover damage from February, the body and shock damage from Memorial Day, and the little things from the JI Binder Bash, I went down to Bozeman to race in August... and broke it again. :D
This time the damage included the violent removal of the new lower shock mount I built on the driver's side along with a broken shock shaft on the new reservoir shock on that side..
Along with the front driveshaft contacting the transmission pan and doing some damage, and more frame cracks.The new rear setup worked well, aside from getting hit by the U-bolt plate and bending a little.
The transmission definitely took a beating, though.
There's a bolt that was not just ground a bit by the driveshaft and spun/pulled out of the case, but it also got shoved sideways through the pan..
So.. since I'd just broken a very expensive shock and had to order a pile of parts to "rebuild" it, I realized the error in my ways of mounting the shock, and decided to change things.
Originally, I ran the shock bolt sideways, relying on the heim joints for the "articulation" side to side motion. They obviously ran out of motion, and then snapped off.
Instead, I turned the shock eyes 90-deg so that as the axle articulates, it pivots around the bolt. The heims only work their magic as the axle moves forward or rearward slightly as it cycles.
Start of the new upper mounts.
I bought some gussets and shock mounting brackets from AA for the job.
Checking out full droop thanks to the porta-power.
After the rollover in February, I had to lower the radiator when I built the new tube mount.. in Bozeman I found out the draglink was cutting the lower rad hose because the radiator was too low.. so I had to do some adjusting.
The simplest solution was to raise the radiator. Can't do that with the tube in the way since the hood gets in the way, so I cut the tube.
After building the dual shock mounts top and bottom on both sides, I decided it was time to do something about the shock uprights wanting to crack the frame from flexing.. the solution was a piece of tube, turned down on the end to get the clearance I needed, tying both shock hoops together.
The nuts for the bolts are actually INSIDE the uprights, so I wouldn't have to sleeve the bolt hole to keep from collapsing the upright when I tightened up the cross bar.
The cross bar is still removable so I can get the engine out.
... and after I mounted the reservoirs to the cross bar.
Here's the new lower mount.
And looking up at the upper. Note I had to customize the tilt front clip supports to clear the shock now..
If you look closely, you might notice that the top and bottom mounts are NOT inline with each other - the lower mount is slightly ahead of the upper mount, and they're also cocked at a slight angle, too. The idea was that the axle won't move *forward* very much, but will move rearward, so I set it up such that at normal ride height the lower shock eye is actually forward of the upper, to try and equalize out the heim misalignment so it won't bind as the axle goes to full bump and swings rearward (thanks to the reverse shackle)
I replaced my bump stops up front, trying to avoid the shaft hitting the pan again.
Here's the Ford Escort Motor Mount I've talked about in the past.
And that same $22-ish mount after it met my bandsaw.
See the steel bottom plate? :D
I also lowered the stops by raising the spring plate almost 1/2".
And in an attempt to keep the passenger body mount from peeling away from the frame some more, I put a stand-off to the rollcage and frame.
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