Birth of the Blue Missile

[daredevil]

I dont know if you have thought about this but newer mustang wheels have a lot of backspace, seven inches i saw somewhere and are a bolt up. that was a 17x8 wheel

 

[blue missile]

hey Pete,
do you know if I can put the brakes that are on the 7 1/4 on the8 3/4 as a temporary fix to parking on the incline?
Andrew

 

[Mopar318Guy]

thats looking pretty nasty man

 

[blue missile]

Thanks Mopar318,
I finally got the 7 1/4 rear out and cleaned up the area. The next step is to rehang the 8 3/4 axle on the existing springs so I can get measurements for a 4 link set up. I like RMS's set up but I cant pay $2000 for $340 worth of stuff.
I was under the car looking at the installation of a spring relocation kit because to not do that would waste the mini-tub.
It then occurs to me that you dont have to cut the side of the frame out if all you are going to put in there is a link bar. so I am exploring the geometry of a 4 link and will design on using the existing shock mounts and minimal frame alterations.
Here is a pic of the primed area, I am using a spray on bed liner product for the undercoating.
Andrew

 

[rjsjea]

Andrew,

You will wanna use more than the stock shock mount. Without leaf's the coil-overs will now support the whole rear of the car. Not to mention it puts the coils at more than the recommended angle (I cant recall the degree that Morrison recommended as the max right now).

We moved mine out and then wanted it in double shear(sp?) ,so bent some round tubing to support it on both sides. Pic for reference...

The RMS kit is a lot more than $340 worth of stuff

 

[blue missile]

RJ,
first of all where have you been?
I look for an update from you every time I come to the site
The stock mounts I was talking about were the lower ones. Yes you spelled it right. By supporting it from both sides you eliminate the bending moment and are only dealing with the shear strength of the bolt. I understand that there is an investment in tooling on the part of RMS, but the basic pieces are not that expansive. Besides I want a shock with a lot more travel than the short coil-overs RMS uses. The aft location for the shocks suits me more. I am still looking into the whole set up I definitely will be putting the lower links in the frame members not beside them.
Andrew
PS the angle you are talking about is the vert angel top to bottom, correct? If you could find that out it would help.

 

[rjsjea]

Been hiding under a rock......havent been working on the Demon much. Just some little detail stuff, but nothing substantial. Lack of funds.....

I looked at the RMS kit too, but it wouldn't work with the ride height I wanted without cutting out the floor.

I bought all my bracketry from Morrison, real heavy duty stuff. Good peeps to deal with.

Keep the progress rolling, it helps the slacker in me feel guilty for doing nothing!!

 

[blue missile]

Sometimes I cannot believe the prices people charge for the simplest things.
I forgot about the U bolts when I got the new axle. Now these are just Bolts!
I went on line and someone wanted $56 for four with nuts and washers! I then went to the auto parts store and they wanted $7 ea, better but still way too rich. I then found at a trailer place the entire kit 4 bolts and bottomplates included for $12.
I still had the bottom/shock plates from the 7 1/4 So I cut the perimiter off the originals and welded them to a piece of 3/8" plate and drilled holes for the new axle. Now I have a nice flat surface to put the lower link points on. I am going to hang the set up back on the car with the original leaf springs minus a couple of leafs so it will sit at the proper height.
Andrew

 

[DRENO]

Front end looks real mean.Like the turn signal/running lights.Nice work keep the post comin.8)

 

[blue missile]

So I finally got the rest of the rear belly of the beast all cleaned up and started on the four link set up. First pic is the insert, I am just pocketing the frame for the lower links. The second pic is the insert in the frame, and the third pic is it all welded up with 1/8" reinforcing plates on the outside of the frame. I will drill and weld washers tomm.
Andrew

 

[blue missile]

Got the axle tube reinforced and the lower link points in place
Andrew

 

[daredevil]

I think i need my housing back. I will return your money. lol Looks real good, I need something like that for the Orange Beast.

 

[blue missile]

After doing some research I had to re design the lower points so they wouldn't bind. I also had to re set the pinion angle. The factory angle was +6 deg, I reset to -2deg, making sure the shock posts are level.
A before and after look at the lower mounts.
Andrew

 

[blue missile]

I fabricated the upper shock mounts out of a piece of 2"x3" tube stock and lightened it by taking a third of it out of the sides.
I moved the attachment points out 6.5" to straighten the shocks up a bit.
Progress is slow but much labor/few dollars can produce a good product.
Andrew

 

[1971Scamp440]

The progress updates and pics are awesome...but I need another story!!!!!:cheers:

 

[blue missile]

Scamp,
I just got back on line at my construction trailer, I will attempt to find something else I can write about that Ive not already told you but there is a large chunk of my life I just can't talk about.
Be patient.
Andrew

 

[memike]

Dang man =P~ You are moving right along :clock: I need a good fab man here in northeast Arkansas to do my rear lower 1/4ers :happy10:.
Looking strong blue missile :cheers: digging your great fab work :cheers:

 

[2 Darts]

Really impressed with your fabrication talent. Nice work.

I hear you on the axle U-bolts. I've had a nasty scare and friends hurt by faulty Chinese metalurgy, so I'm extremely leery of fasteners of uncertain origin. The bolts are basically grade 5 and are still available from Mopar at around $20.00 a pop. I thought about using 4 grade 5 bolts and a saddle for the U-bolts. My price would have been about $25.00 per side.

Why a bolt that cost $9.00 each back in the day can sit on a shelf in MI for 40 years and now cost $20.00 now escapes me. The only reason I can think of is that the interest on the borrowed money used to put it there in the first place has been accruing all these years. lol.

 

[blue missile]

I decided to have some adjustment in the 4link system so I drilled a second set of lower holes and welded grade 8 washers to reinforce the positions.
more stories to come
Andrew

 

[1971Scamp440]

I decided to have some adjustment in the 4link system so I drilled a second set of lower holes and welded grade 8 washers to reinforce the positions.
more stories to come
Andrew

WOO HOO! Thats awesome! Great work Andrew...

 

[blue missile]

OK Scamp
I know the last post may have been minor in scope, but there are people I know here in Austin that are watching the build through this site. If nothing else that was for them.These are not car people, just interested.
In the mean time, as Captain Kirk would say you have identified yourself as one of my monkeys.
As a benevolent master I can not hold back your feed any longer.
This installment brings us back to the military academy just before I got the Duster.

Life at the Academy​

During the year of 1970 I was going to school in a small suburb of New York on Long Island.
The Vietnam War was raging and Huey Newton and the ‘Black Panthers’ actually came to my High school on a bus to rally people there. We all thought that it was pretty weird seeing as it was a mostly a white middle class suburb. The teachers never let them off the bus.
Rock and Roll had already infiltrated the school as well as the soft drug culture. Towards the end of that year there was a locker search and there were a couple of my friends that were popped for possession.
That fact along with some other factors led my mother to decide to send me away from the influence of my bad friends. She gave me a choice of a couple of military academies for the next school year.
One was in upstate New York; the other was in Georgia with a winter campus in Hollywood Florida.
This was a no-brainer, more snow or the beaches of south Florida.
So it was the summer of 70 my father and I drove to the school so I could get there for the summer session. My grades were not quite up to their standard for the first two years of school. If I wanted to enter as a Junior I had to attend the summer session and the next summer as well. So I could graduate in 72.
When we pulled up to the campus there was a large collection of multistory red brick buildings, which were quite intimidating. The front steps were say twenty feet wide and six feet tall. You entered into a large hall with a receptionist sitting at a desk. We checked in and were given a map and instructed to check in at one of the dorms. The dorm was a three quarter U shaped three-story building. I was on the second story about half way down the long leg. This was a typical military room arrangement with a bunk bed and a shared bathroom between two rooms. We each had a foot locker and a shared closet, and desk.
There was a resident advisor at each end of the building on each floor. On my floor it was a major K. who taught English at one end, and one who’s name escapes me at the other. Major K was a character, it appeared he had a sleep disorder that caused him to fall asleep at the strangest times. One day I stuck my head in his room and found him asleep reaching for a book on his library shelves while standing on a small step stool. Needless to say some English classes were rather lacking in content, but we quickly learned if we were quiet enough when he fell asleep, he would sleep until the bell rang for the next class.
As a student I was a quiet type and that never changed. At the academy this was not exactly a plus. This was a collection of kids, some with a rough past that were sent here to be straightened out. One of those was my roommate. It took a couple of weeks before the friction between us built up enough for there to be a physical confrontation. I really don’t remember what it was all about, but he started to wail on me and I just exploded. I was not big or heavy but I threw him down to the ground and was going at it when he tried to get up and grabbed the edge of his footlocker and sliced his hand to the point there was blood all over the room. There were enough witnesses to exonerate me as far as cause and we stopped fighting and got him to the infirmary. He was then whisked off to the hospital, for quite a few stitches. When he returned, it seems we were great friends. It was at this time I also met my partner in crime, Ernest, he lived down the hall, and was from the town the school was in.
The summer had a rather relaxed attitude about all the military things. We did have to dress up in the uniforms and there were weekly inspections of the rooms but that was all. Even the inspections were rather low key. This left us a lot of time after class to goof off. The area around the school was heavily wooded and we took advantage of this fact all the time, we were also within a short hike of lake Lanier. One of the stops in the woods was a manmade cave you could get three or four people in. The entrance was about two feet across and was about six feet long. It was dug into a hillside and the room at the end of the tunnel was about four feet high and about eight feet in diameter. It had a clay pipe in the ceiling to vent the cave for fresh air. You would crawl into the area and sit down in a circle. And we would go there and smoke a joint before going over to the lake. Now I’m not claustrophobic but the crawl into that dark tunnel was really a difficult one, especially the first time.
Now please remember the main reason I was sent there. Until I went to the academy, I had never smoked dope. We would get ripped in the cave and then go to the lake at the “Via-Duct” . This was a pipeline over an arm of Lake Lanier, and we would go swimming at the base of the two towers. These towers supported a main water line about 30” in diameter. The top of the pipe was about forty feet above the water. And was supported by towers with horizontal beams about ten feet apart. There was a fair amount of area between the bases but they did stick out quite a ways from the steel structure. One of the things we would do was climb up the structure and jump off into the water. This was not too difficult, but in order to jump off of the pipe, you had to walk out from the top of the hill all the way to the center of the span. A good seventy percent of the walk was over land and if you fell it was going to hurt. I myself never made that trip, I did go to the top rung just below the pipe and jump but I did not possess the fortitude to make the trip. I also remember that in the water there were fish that would constantly nibble on your feet and legs.




I was there for two years so there are more stories to tell, more later
Andrew

 

[1971Scamp440]

Excellent..:notworth:. I have really enjoyed reading your stories Andrew. Thank you SO much for sharing them.

 

[blue missile]

At the academy PART 2​

Now in the woods was a source of food. It was a type of wild grape called muscadines they were sweet and filling for those afternoons in the woods. The vines were everywhere and easy to get to. But for the more severe cases of the munchies we would travel west through the woods instead of north towards the lake. It was about a twenty-minute walk to the top of a hill overlooking the back parking lot of a Dairy Queen. During the summer the owner was sure to leave the back door open and the screen door closed. We would go to the back door with our order, place it, pay for it and retreat back to the top of the hill, a short walk away. When the order was filled he would stand at the back door and we would run down and get it. Most of these orders were consumed back at the top of the hill over the rise just out of sight of the road over looking the hills. After eating we would lie back and stare at the sky through the sassafras and beach trees do another doobie and then later wander back to the barracks.

Now if you didn’t feel like going to DQ there was a little “burger joint” called the grill attached to the back of the main dining hall. When you walked through the door you found three or four four-tops, a couple of pin ball machines, and an AM radio playing all the time. You would walk up to the counter and order your food, which were mostly burgers, the thin patty type and greasy French tries. Nothing fancy just a place for the cadets to get a little something extra on the weekends. The grill was open during the week after classes but most of the guys were in the dorm either studying or partying. If you were smart you would take advantage of the one study hall everyone had. It gave you more than enough time to get the bulk of you homework done for the classes that preceded study hall. The rest had to be done after school. That gave you three hours of free time before dinner and four hours after. During the summer there were no after school activities so your time was all yours.

Now the regularly scheduled meals were pretty good. This was the south remember. I was introduced to grits and eggs, collard greens, lots of fried chicken, and meat loaf that everybody called ‘Mystery Meat’. You ate off of a divided metal tray/plate affair which I had never seen before, but that I was told was standard issue in prison. You drank out of metal cups with little round handles on the side. They looked like metal tea cups, which if filled with ice and salt would freeze quite securely to the tray if given the appropriate amount of time. This made the kitchen workers time cleaning off the trays rather humorous to us. There was one meal I was introduced to that was the cause of many skipped meals. It was a cream like gravy with shaved beef served over a couple pieces of toast. It was called by all those had experienced it prior “**** on shingles” or SOS. When it was served, anything else available such as rolls and desert is what you ate. I do remember during the course of the regular school year, that one evening there was quite a commotion at the mess hall. About an hour later there were several Kentucky Fried Chicken vans delivering food to the back door of the mess. As it turns out one of the cooks had accidentally set off the foam fire extinguishing system, all over the chicken that was originally supposed to be for dinner. Let it be said there was no food left over that night.

The summer time was the school’s time to try out new staff. During the first summer there was a teacher just out of college, I don’t remember what he taught. One evening after lights out I was invited to a party on the second floor across from my room. When I arrived the lights were out and there were towels stuffed under the doors of both rooms and over the windows. I remember that Black Sabbath was playing and a nice sized spliff was being passed around a circle of us on the bed and all the chairs they could muster between the two rooms. As each person would take a toke his face would light up just for a moment then go dark. As it got around to the other side of the circle all of a sudden this teachers face lit up. My first reaction was Oh MY God we’re busted, but then reason took over and said he’s one of us, you know a stoner not the Man. Well for some reason he only lasted another couple of weeks, and he was gone, go figure.
More later
Andrew

 

[blue missile]

Bump

 

[Old Tired Rebel]

Great Reading and I really like what you are doing to your Duster.