Project Slowly Underway: Berrien 295

[vanapplebomb]

Here are some shots of the bump stop that I relocated above the trailing arms. When I welded it on I angled it 10 degrees up to allow for a little more swing out of the arms. Triangular gussets help stiffen things up.





Cutting and turning the front beam a 1/4 in. To get leverage so I could twist the section I cut out, I tack welded on some scrap bar stock. Worked great. Twisted with one hand and tack welded the center section back in with the other hand. When finished, the bar stock lever was just cut off. The last one doesn't need any help twisting. It snaps right into position once cut free from the rest of the tube. I was surprised by how thick the beams are. These pictures were taken after the first tube was cut and re-welded.





Just for fun, I measured the position of the upper torsion anchor before and after the cut and turn using the front vertical face of the shock tower as a zero reference. First picture shows the Zero referance. The second picture is the torsion anchor in the stock position. Third picture is after the cut and turn. The upper arms dropped about 11 degrees.






Now for the fun part. Measuring the amount of swing the trailing arms now have. I used the underside of the snubber as the zero reference. Looks like I got approximately 80 degrees of swing between full drop and jounce.





Stock link pin trailing arms have a center to center spacing of 150mm between the link pin and the end that rides in needle bearings inside the beam. To figure out the distance of the arc traveled by the trailing arm just convert degrees into radians, and multiply by the length of the arm.

80deg = 80pi/180 radians

Arc length = 150mm(80pi/180) = 209.44mm, or about 8.25 inches for the metrically challenged.

That is a pretty fair distance for absorbing bumps. If you only care about vertical travel, just add the vertical distance the arm travels up from horizontal, and down from horizontal. As I mentioned earlier I welded the snubber mount 10 degrees above horizontal. The snubbers themselves have a 20 degree taper. Split the difference and add that to the angle it was mounted: the trailing arm can swing 20degrees up before contacting the snubber.

150mmSin(20pi/180) = 51.3mm.

Since the arms articulate 80 degrees between drop and jounce and 20 degrees of that is above horizontal, there is 60 degrees of articulation below horizontal.

150mmSin(60pi/180) = 129.9mm.

Add the two together and you get 181.2mm, or about 7.13 inches of travel in the vertical direction. Not bad for stock trailing arms.


Here are just a couple additional pictures I took. I still need to extend the shock towers as well as gusset the steering knuckles and spindle carriers. You can see the little strips of c-channel I welded in between the mounting brackets...reinforces the cut and turned section, but more importantly can serve as a mounting point for an ATV winch. With the places I like to go, I figured a winch may be important to have some day.

[vanapplebomb]

More fun with cardboard... 1/4in hot rolled will be more than adequate for these parts.

[vanapplebomb]

I put the beam under the knife again today.

...But first, two quick measurements. I needed to know the taper of the shock towers, and how far the leading edge of the tower is laid back. Turns out the towers taper 8 degrees, and the leading edge of the shock tower is laid back about 30 degrees. Sweet.






So, the plan is to cut open the shock towers, splice in a 1/4in plate, weld up the seams, add a M12 threaded boss to the plate, then gusset the shock tower at a right angle like the aftermarket shock tower kits. $90 for a couple pieces of laser cut steel welded together...what a joke

Time to do some butchering!!! I cut out the spot welded seam from the bumper mount all the way around to the opposite side. A 1/6in thick 4.5in cut off wheel on an angle grinder gets her done. This is just wide enough to jam a 1/4in plate in. Notice I did not cut through the existing shock boss.




You guys already got a sneak peek at the cardboard template for the insert. Here it is welded into place. What you can not see is that I made a slot up the center so that it will slide around the shock boss in the original shock towers.




Since this is low carbon hot rolled steel, it will need a sturdy gusset to keep it from tucking inwards at the top where the shock will thread into the M12 boss. I haven't gotten that far yet. Not worth starting when the welder is just about out of wire. This is the last week of classes before finals, so things are going to be kinda a zoo around here for the next couple weeks.

[Deleted]

Nice work NOW GO STUDY and pass your tests!!!!!!!!!!! Again nice work. I might have some work for you this summer.

[vanapplebomb]

Passed all the tests. Latest project is moving across town to a new house some friends and I are renting.

I hope at least one of the 120volt outlets has a 20amp breaker...

[vanapplebomb]

I poked around the crawlspace for the breaker panel. I found that the washer and dryer room has a 20amp circuit. Guess I will just have to run an extension cord out the window. Not ideal at all, but for sheet metal it should still work alright...I hope.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Houghton, the ground is rock. Everywhere. The foundation of our house looks like it was pored without leveling the ground first, so there are rock outcroppings sticking up a foot or so out of the concrete in a few places.

[vanapplebomb]

Lately I have been having way to much fun bombing around the UP. Lots of great exploring to do here in the keweenaw. I'm usually out whenever I'm not in class or working on a project. Waterfalls, copper, and Iron have been calling my name. I found a bunch of new specimens of copper as well as some beautiful samples of specular hematite (iron ore). I also scrounged up some good sized greenstone (the Michigan state gem). Hopefully I can find someone who can remove them from the basalt and polish them up. Could be pretty if done right. But now the black flies are out and exploring has become a bit more painful. The other day I popped a tire (3rd time this summer...gosh) and had to stop in the woods to patch it. I got eaten alive out there. You can hardly see those darn black flies but they draw blood! Thanks to them my arms, legs, and neck look like I have chickenpox. It's fantastic...

...So I decided to get back to this project.

I started some work on gusseting the shock towers. The gussets run between the upper torsion tube and where the threaded shock mount boss will be located. Not to much to show. I only got one fitted and welded down. Pretty simple really. The only tricky part was contouring the face that butted up against the existing shock towers. Even that wasn't to bad...just time consuming for the most part. The last picture shows the threaded shock mounting boss clamped to the inside face of the shock tower. The tower will get drilled through and a spacer-ish like thing attached on the other side to locate the shocks...don't know yet. I am kinda winging this one. Nothing quite like flying by the seat of my pants 

[MadMike]

Hey Dirk,Glad your out 'touring', Dem little 'Black flys' got BIG teeth
try eating a lot of Garlic,I take a garlic pill too,,, It does help,

[vanapplebomb]

Interesting. I have never heard of that before. I may have to try that next time I go tramping around the woods or scouting for a good fly fishing stream. Thanks for the tip!

[thedirtydutchman]

By the looks of your fab work this thing is gonna be awesome!

[vanapplebomb]

Fab work...you mean HACK JOB? Hahaha. This has pretty much all been done with nothing more than an angle grinder and cut off disks. I'm sure there are a lot of people around here that have much cleaner cuts and prettier welds than I.

But seriously, thanks for the compliments!

[thedirtydutchman]

Looks better than what Im capable of! But then again maybe thats not a very good compliment, hahaha.

[vanapplebomb]

Guess some cut off wheels and a 140A welder must do alright then

I have to give a BIG thanks to DaveT for packing away some parts for my build. I'll be around town in a few weeks, and I will get you that $20 bill I misplaced and pick up that hunk of exhaust that didn't fit in the car with all the lovely T4 parts in the trunk. Once my other two friends stuff and a dog was piled in the back seat, the back end of the car was hanging pretty low. My tires rubbed the fender moldings on occasion. Poor little Ford Focus.

At any rate, I got an assortment of parts from various T4 engines. I spent some time identifying parts and looking for sources for other parts. In the down time I started cleaning up some parts, and stripping others down to get ready for a rebuild. These pictures of stuff that was crammed into my trunk are not really in any particular order, just throwing them out there.







-EC 1800 short block from a 914
-1800 Carbureted heads
-'72 air cleaner and short intake manifolds
-Solex PDSIT 2/3 carbs (Still searching whether the jetting in them was for the 1700 or 1800)
-OIl Cooler
-Alternator
-Blower housing
-~50% of the cooling tin
-A pair of fans (both missing one blade. Going to selvage a blade from one fan and attach it to the other)
-Oval port exhaust manifolds
-Pushrods/tubes
-Engine Mounts
-Lots of other little odds and ends that I am forgetting about at the moment.

[vanapplebomb]

I stripped down my heads. A 25 buck security deposit at any AutoZone gets a valve spring compressor, fully refundable up to 90 days. A pick plucked the keepers right out, and valve removal was no fuss.





These heads still had the factory valves. I will NOT be reusing the exhaust valves, but my gut said my intake valves were reusable. I took the heads to a local Automotive Machine shop that has more accurate measuring devices than I do. No stretched valves, and no more than half a thousandth wear on the stems, which is well within the generally accepted one thousandth limit for reusable valves. Awesome. I have heard nothing but good things about this Machine shop. It is a husband and wife team that have been building performance European and American engines for decades. It is a modest size, but wicked cool place. He did some beautiful head work on my friends Audi a few years back, which was sadly wrecked while gearing up for rally driving. I sat and talked Cylinder heads with the guy for over an hour. He had a few good recommendations for me. He talked me out of using Italian made OSVAT valves, which are standard T4 replacements at many air cooled VW parts suppliers. Instead he wants to use SI or Manley valves, which are new brands to me. He also wanted to check out the valve seats to make sure they are still solid after 40 years. Happy birthday heads! He said there is plenty of material there to make fresh cuts after reaming out fresh valve guides, but if he suspects that they may come lose he said he would replace them with oversized seats to keep them from dropping at high cylinder head temperatures. This guy knows his stuff. Gota love Yoopers that have only done one thing their entire lives. Great honest people, not afraid to lay it down how it is, no BS.

[vanapplebomb]

On the topic of heads, I had a VW enthusiast at Calumet Machine do a job for me. He did a nice repair to the cracked exhaust stud boss on the bottom of the head. It looks like this head got whacked by something pretty good that snapped a good chunk of the boss right off around the stud. After taking a few measurements and setting up a fixture, he welded aluminum back onto the boss slowly in layers, machined it to the proper hight in a mill, then re-drilled and tapped it for the M9x1.25 stepped stud end. It turned out nice.