Blooze Own: An F355 Six Speed N* Build Thread (Page 51/126)
FieroWannaBe MAR 13, 12:42 PM

quote
Originally posted by Bloozberry:
Next up: addressing the shock absorber problem.



I was just going to ask about that...

It's all looking well exectued.
Bloozberry MAR 13, 09:07 PM
As I mentioned before, moving the UCA mounts outboard meant that they ended up encroaching on the space where the shock absorber comes through the cross member. The body of my shocks are 42 mm diameter, and thenew, smaller space for it to come up through measured about 45 mm. Not enough room considering how much the shock changes angles as it's compressed and extended by the movement of the lower control arm.



Here's the view from the underside. Notice the OEM spring seat is formed from the edges of the hole in the cross member being formed into a 90 degree lip.



Since the adjustable HT coil-over springs are a different diameter than the OEM springs, the HT kit supplies you with new spring seats that are supposed to be slipped over the OEM seats, and peened into place. But I needed to relocate the spring seat to enlarge the through-way hole for the shock body, so the OEM spring seats had to come out.



A cutoff wheel on the die grinder made short work of that. I followed up the die grinder with the angle grinder (just barely fit) to smooth out the remainder of the old spring seat and bring it flush with the surrounding material. I needed to do this to give a nice level mounting surface for the new HT spring seats later on.



Working from the bottom, there was plenty of room to mark out and enlarge the shock through-way hole in the cross member. I used the HT spring seat as a guide to trace the outline on the underside of the member, and then chucked up a carbide grinding bit to hog out the hole, leaving plenty of material edge-wise to maintain the strength of the area.



Here's a top view photo to show how much further outboard the hole was made. Compared to the first photo in this post, the amount of material removed is obvious.



The next step was to reconnect the front suspension again and make sure the shock would clear with lots of room throughout the entire range of travel. This time everything checked out with room to spare. Considering I had only 1.5 mm clearance all the way around when I started, this pic shows how much additional clearance was gained. The upper shock mount was left off for clarity.



Next up: welding the HT spring seats and the upper shock mounts in their new locations.
Bloozberry MAR 14, 06:16 PM
The instructions that accompany the HT Motorsports front adjustable coil-overs state that their new spring seats need only be "glued" over top of the OEM spring seats with a 3/4" bead of silicone. They claim that upward spring pressure will keep the seat properly located, and that the silicone will absorb vibrations and prevent squeaking. To be fair, they suggest that you peen the new seat into place, though they say it's not necessary.



I'm not sure I would have prescribed to the gluing philosophy even if I hadn't cut off the OEM spring seat. I'd rather have something as important as the spring seats very firmly attached to the cross member, so I tacked them in place in preparation for final welding. These needed to be welded before the upper shock mounts since I needed access to the spring seats from both the top and bottom for welding, and the shock mounts would have blocked access from above.



The HT seats are actually beveled in one direction, and have a flat bar welded inside them to properly locate the spring since the ID of the seat is slightly larger than the OD of the spring. The tab goes to the outboard side.



Once they were welded in place, I test fitted the springs just to show how they sit inside the seats, rather than outside the seats like the OEM ones.



Finally, the last step before priming and painting was to weld the upper shock mounts in their new location. There wasn't enough room to move them the full 35 mm outboard like the UCA mounts, so I moved them to the furthest outboard point possible; about 25 mm if I recall correctly. I marked the optimal location the last time I had the suspension built up, so it was just a matter of tacking them, then giving them the full blast.



Here's the final outcome. The best thing about it is that it looks totally stock even to the trained eye.
Yarmouth Fiero MAY 23, 09:00 PM
Hi

My boys and I are finally starting on our 85 Fiero rebuild. Its been in storage since 1988......10 years before they were even born. We are planning a 355 kit with small block and full suspension and running gear upgrades. I just stumbled on this forum today and saw your project. Very impressive.

We're in Yarmouth btw.
aeffertz MAY 24, 12:03 AM
This is without a doubt, the most impressive build on this site! Very envious of each and every one of the many skills you have showed us through-out this build.

Keep it up, man!
Bloozberry MAY 25, 10:37 PM
Thanks for the kind words aeffertz.

For Yarmouth Fiero: Good to see there is yet another Maritimer that's into Fieros. We are few and far between so we would do best to stick together and trade ideas and info. You say you're "planning" a 355 kit... does that mean you haven't yet bought it? If not, then I highly recommend the AD355 kit over the IFG kit for reasons of quality. You'll save the extra money many times over by avoiding the IFG kit. Anyways, rather than discuss that stuff here, I'll send you a Private Message (PM) so we can exchange contact info.

Back to the thread: It's been far too long since I've posted an update (busy with spring chores) but that doesn't mean I've been neglecting the project car entirely. I've moved on to planning, measuring, and drafting the new rear cradle, which has proven to be an exercise similar to solving one of those Chinese puzzles where a whole bunch of random pieces have to be slid upwards, downwards and sideways one at a time and in a precise sequence in order for all the parts to line up and make a complete picture. More on that coming soon, so stay tuned.

For now, here's a couple photos to wrap up the front end changes... this one is the "before" pic:



And this one is the "after" pic which proves it all went back together without a hitch!



The last thing to do is consider swaybar options, but I'll worry about that later.
Yarmouth Fiero MAY 26, 05:42 AM
These are awesome shots. Very clean and precise. If I can achieve a fraction of this on our build, my OCD will be quite satisfied.
johnyrottin MAY 26, 06:38 PM
Blooz, as always your knowledge and attention to detail are spectacular. I can't wait to actually see this and your Pace Car in person!!!
Bloozberry JUN 10, 10:07 PM
Thanks Yarmouth Fiero and johnyrottin for your comments... (although I'm not sure what you mean by my "Pace Car" there Johnny).

So now onto the rear end. I must say that the rear is definitely the most challenging portion of the suspension since there are many more variables to deal with than with the front. The same three basic issues confronted me at the back: get the wheels outboard 3" per side, lower the body onto the wheels by about 2", and retain or improve theoretical suspension performance for provincial certification. In addition though, the rear suspension must also accommodate the physical space requirements of the F40 six speed and the Northstar engine... plus take into account the poor design of IFG's F355 body on the Fiero chassis. To the inexperienced, most of these criteria might appear independent from one another but as you'll see they are all interconnected.

So here was the starting point... in fact I don't know what made me think this could ever be made to look right:



I still get panic attacks occasionally wondering if it was a big mistake to buy this half finished kit. I get discouraged when I think about how much easier my life would be if I were to have bought an AD355 kit instead. I suppose I can always do that later if I can't muster up enough magic to make this look right.

A picture says a thousand words, but unfortunately doesn't quantify very much, so I needed to add the cross section of the IFG body on my earlier rear suspension drawings. I didn't get far before I realized I needed a better set of reference points than the cradle way down there, so I measured and drew up the cross section of the strut tower, then I could get more accurate measurements of the fender (in red):



I think I went back and forth to rectify inaccuracies in this drawing a hundred times before I started getting repeatable measurements. Once I was satisfied, I added it to the rear view of the stock Fiero suspension to quantify what needed to be done, and where. I also added the cross section of the stock Fiero rear fender (in blue) on it for reference too.




There's a couple things to note from the above drawing. The first and most obvious is that there is over TWICE the clearance between the top of the stock tire to the bottom of the IFG fender lip. That's 161mm or 6.4"!!! That's an unbelievable gap to try to make up into a reasonable amount.

The second most obvious thing is the stock half-track width falls at least 85mm (3.35") too narrow, so when I ordered the HT 3" suspension links (the max available) I knew that I would also need to choose the offset for my new wheels carefully to make up the difference.

The third thing to note (before you purists point out that your stock wheels don't stick out 14mm beyond the stock fender as shown above) is that I haven't drawn in the 1 degree of camber on the rear wheel in order to make my life easier. The OEM specified one degree tip-in moves the top of the tire inboard by 11 of those 14mm's.

Lastly, if this issue didn't jump out at you when you looked at the above drawing, that's OK because it took me a while to realize the problem too. Notice how the IFG fender is not the lowest hanging part of the chassis above the tire anymore. Rather, the underside of the upper frame rail is. If you disregard the easily bendable lower weld flange of the upper frame rail, the rail is still 28mm below the IFG fender lip. So that means that if I want 76mm (3") of suspension travel before the wheel contacts the rail, the gap between the top of the tire and the fender at rest would be (76 + 28 =) 104 mm! That's 4.1"! Can you say 4X4 Ferarri? Obviously something needs to change.

It's a lot to digest in one post so I'll continue more later.

(Edit: Updated drawing)

[This message has been edited by Bloozberry (edited 07-17-2012).]

355Fiero JUN 11, 12:30 AM
Bloozberry's,

You can make up a good 2-3" on the upper wheel gap by cutting the fiberglass rear quarters and lowering the wheel well down toward the tire. It also then straigthens out your rear bumper body line which also need leveling. I think the pics I sent you last year should give you a good start to where you need to cut and how you lower the wheel well. Pretty easy easy to do end to end by putting a straight square tube at the top of the rear bumper at the corner and then have it go to the front bumper top corner. This body line should be straight. On these kits, the line is slightly forward sloping whereas on oem 355s the body line is almost level. Nature of the higher Fiero frame you have to deal with. Cut the body panels and push the wheel well down until the top of the bumper and the rear quarter body line are matched up to to bar and screw the panels back in place with spacers. Glass the back end up and then start filling the gaps in on the front side. Doesn't take too much fiberglass mat to bring the upper fender well area back up and then some thin skim coats and you are set again.

Also be aware that this particular body kit also has the driver's side rear wheel well about 1-1.5" closer to the door jamb so there is that to also work into the cutting and pasting.....

Good luck and drop a line for any other info you may need to do the aligning.

Cheers
Don