Frnknsteen's '67 Barracuda

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Just realized I never came back and attached my alignment specs. I will try to remember to scan them tonight and add them.

Got my new shocks in the mail last Friday. The car had KYB's up front and some brand of air shocks in the back that weren't holding air. I took advantage of the PST discount and ordered a set of Bilsteins to put in. I went right out and put in the new shocks, but sorry,.... Didn't take any pictures. Didn't forget,.... Just didn't see the need to show pictures of changing shocks.

I did run into one issue, and took pictures of that (I will upload them as soon as I can pull them off my phone). The only issue I had was with the rubber bushings that came with the front shocks. I don't know what the proper term is, but the raised collar that seats in the mount opening, was too small. I haven't measured it, but I am estimating it at about 1/2", while the opening is closer to an inch. My old bushings off the KYB's were still in decent shape, and had the right sized collars, so I reused them for now. I talked to James from PST (who is on this site) and he has heard of this happening and said he would try to find me the correct bushings. In the mean time, The old bushings worked and I was able to take it out for a test drive.

Had things going on over the weekend, then it's been rainy and crappy here so, so just got the car out for a drive yesterday. It drives much better! I don't really know how to describe "better". The new shocks are firm, but not harsh like the KYB's were when hitting bumps or rough roads. Backs feel much better, and more controlled than the beat-up old air shocks. I can't compare to any other brands of shocks, but I WILL say that I like the way it drives with the new Bilsteins. I would buy them again. They are just smooth, yet handle nice. Good balance between ride and handling.

EDIT..... Adding pictures of front shock bushings. New Bilstein on the right, older KYB on the left. Older KYB was the right size.

1115171608.jpg
 
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Ok, So I finally scanned in my alignment printouts and will attach them on here.

A little background in case it helps anyone....

When installing my new front suspension rebuild, I had read that I needed to increase negative camber and positive caster, so I bought the Moog offset bushings and also bought the Moog eccentric bolt kit. I installed the bushings so the rear bushing hole was towards the frame and the front bushing so the hole was out towards the fender. That would shift the upper balljoint backwards to increase caster. Then when I installed my upper control arms and eccentric bolts, I set the rear eccentric so the bolt head was on the frame side (toward motor) and the front was out towards the wheel to give me maximum caster.

Once everything was done and the car was back on it's wheels, I checked camber by standing a right angle square next to outside edge of the tire, just in front of the bulge of tire sitting on ground so that bulge wouldn't throw me off. When straight edge was touching the tire, it was contacting the top of the tire and not the bottom. This told me I had positive camber, so I adjusted the front eccentrics in and checked it again. It helped, but not enough. Kept going back and forth until the square contacted the bottom of the tire, but not the top, meaning top of tire was leaning in towards motor (negative camber). Not knowing what 1/2 to 1 degree would equate to, I adjusted it until the gap between the top of the tire and the square was about half a finger width.

Then we lowered the car and set toe-in the best we could at 1/16 - 1/8" of toe in and took it to the alignment shop. I was hoping to get 1/2 to 1 degree of negative camber and as much caster as I could get. After reading many threads on here, I was looking to get in the area of +3 degrees of caster.

Attached below are scans of the printouts from the alignment equipment. First picture is the initial readings when I brought it in. Pretty close, but needed a little tweaking. Second picture is the settings we ended up with. A little more caster and camber than I probably needed, but the car drives great now. Third picture is just some extra information the machine gave us on other measurements.
 
Thanks Jeff! Bought it to be a driver and tinker with. Been having fun with it ever since. I've always liked the notchbacks too!

Mark
 
I can see clearly now!!!

I was reading around on here and came across the "How-To" article about brightening your headlights. Also stumbled across various people bragging up Crackedback's headlight relay kit. Well,... I decided to take a chance and buy one for my car and finished putting it in the other night. I started it Tuesday night getting the headlight pulled out and getting ready and finished it up Wednesday night.

I am happy to say it was worth every penny. Don't get me wrong, it's not expensive. Rob charges $135 + shipping for the two headlight kits, and he does such a nice job of pre-wiring everything that I couldn't help but be satisfied.

The toughest part of the whole install was getting the new headlight connectors into the headlight boxes (Rob warned me it would be a tight squeeze and to be careful with the new ceramic connectors,... and he was right!). Why the designers didn't give just a 1/4" more room in those little channels is beyond me. Rob sends the kit with nice rubber boots around the new connectors and it just wouldn't fit in mine with those on. Luckily I could just slide them up the wires to give me more room. Still it took a bit of careful prying with a prybar to wedge open the channel just enough to slip it through. No damage to anything and they were in. Slid the boots back up, added some dielectric grease to the connections and went to mounting and connecting everything else.

The original plan was to mount them under the battery tray, but the previous owner mounted the horns under there. I thought about relocating the horns, but they are more ugly than the nice wiring Rob provided, so I left them hidden and mounted the relays and fuses on the inner fenderwell right next to the battery. Nice clean install and easy access to the relays and fuses if needed. I will take a couple pictures of the final install tonight.

Drove it to work this morning and all I can say is wow! What a difference! I installed new Sylvania halogens in it and I have to say the new set-up is brighter than our 2012 F-150. Nice bright white lights!

Thanks again Rob! If any of you haven't done this update, go ahead and do it. It's just all around good! Better lighting and less wear and tear on factory wiring, plus dash lights are brighter!
 
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Just read your whole thread, nice car you have there, glad to hear you're having fun with it, that's the way it's supposed to be.

I'll bet a lot of the people on here can relate to your experiences on your project. I know I do, mentioning the sandblasting made me chuckle, incredible all the places the sand ends up getting into, I felt like a real dirtball by the first time I finished a blasting job.

You're right, Brewers are real good people to deal with, very knowledgeable and helpful, I got a rebuilt trans from them.

I too put in one of Rob's headlight relay kits. Not only are the headlights brighter, but it also takes a bit of load off of the wiring harness. I discovered that somewhere in my car's past life the wire that feeds power from the headlight switch to the headlights got so hot it MELTED part of the plug on the headlight switch.

Good call on using the Bilsteins instead of the KYBs. I bought a set of the KYBs for my car, but when I went to install them I discovered that they have a lot of gas pressure which would contribute to the ride harshness people on here have complained about. After getting a set of the Bilsteins I compared the gas preload to the KYBs and the KYBs have twice the preload, 100 lb. compared to 50 lb. The Bilsteins are a much better quality product.

Good luck on your project and keep smiling.
 
Thanks for the comments Red, I am having a lot of fun with it. I liked my 2010 Challenger, but I am having more fun with the new toy!
 
Well,... I gave the car a tune-up (Accel cap & rotor and Champion RJ12Y plugs) and adjusted the timing (33 all in with mechanical only) and idle circuit (highest vacuum on gauge) best I knew how. Decided to take the car to the chassis dyno at a local shop to let them see what it had, verify the A/F ratios and find the right timing setting for how it is sitting now.

As I said before, I bought this car from the previous owner who had done a lot work to it, but decided family needs came first and decided to sell. I wasn't able to get any of the motor specs from him other than him saying the engine shop did some machining and he put in a bigger Competition Cams camshaft in it. I have no idea what the cam is, what pistons he is running, or any idea of what the compression ratio might be. I CAN say it runs good. Little bit of a lope to it at idle, and is fun to drive, but like a lot of us,... I can't say it wouldn't hurt to have a little more uummpf behind it. Like I said, it runs pretty well, but as the shop owner said,... "It just seems a bit lazy".

Having little information on the condition of the motor, we decided we didn't want to push it, so we limited the runs to <5000 RPM. First run was just to get a baseline and gave us 245.8hp/324.4 ft/lbs. The tech didn't like the little A/F dip in the midrange where it was running a little rich, so he sprayed a little cleaner down the air tubes and ran it again. The A/F ratio seemed to level out on the next pass and hp/tq both increased. As I said before, the shop owner felt it sounded a bit lazy and thought it needed a bit more timing.

They added 2 degrees more timing to bring it to 17 initial/47 all in (mechanical and vacuum). Torque seemed to climb, but had a weird peak (see green broken line on chart around 2900-3100 rpm), but hp dropped significantly. I will say though, that looking at the chart afterwards, it looks like he shut is down early (about 3700rpm) but I don't know why. Seems like that would explain the drop off in horsepower. My guess is he saw it was tracking under the previous run (marked in red) and didn't bother to finish the pull. He made a comment that "Well, we've seen diminishing returns" and set the timing back to where it was at 15 initial/45 all in and Hp climbed back up to where it was before with torque at 340 ft'lbs.

So,..... Asking for your opinions..... I don't have anything to compare to. I know everyone brags (and sometimes exaggerates) their power and dyno results. Just wondering how I should feel about 254 rear wheel hp and 340+ ft/lbs of torque in a light little car like this. It's fun to drive, but seems a little lower than it could be

Am I in the ballpark of what should be expected for a cruiser, or could I draw some easy power out of this somehow. What can I look at to see where I need to go. I know the 400 was notorious for low compression when stock. I have a clean set of 915 heads I could easily clean up and install to bump the compression a bit. I've heard they will add about 1pt to the compression over stock 906 heads (is that true?).

Should I pull off the heads and see where the top of the piston sits in the hole so we can see what the static CR is? How do I tell what the cam is? Can I put a dial indicator on the rocker and roll the motor over to try to see lift and duration (I have CAD software and could easily model up a degree wheel to measure degrees)?

What I know of my set-up:
1977 400 block
906 heads
Demon Speed Demon 750 carb (I believe)
Shumacher Tri-Y headers
A833 4spd (Dyno run in 3rd gear)
3:23 8 3/4 Suregrip
 
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