Archive for July, 2009

New W5 Heads

I found a set of brand new, virgin, never before used, still in the box, Mopar Performance W5 heads on E-bay.  These are the good 1996 castings and of the two boxes, one of the boxes is not even opened yet.  After some furious bidding I won the heads!

These heads are the absolute best heads you can get for a small block Mopar.  Unfortunately Mopar stopped making them because they lost so much money on them.  The way the story goes, the foundry and machine shop that built these heads did such a horrible job that about 2/3 of the heads made were junk.  Eventually some of the later castings were good but by that time, Mopar lost millions on these and axed the project.  So, there are a few W5 heads floating around out there but they are quite expensive and getting quite rare.

Out of Gas

MIG welding gas, that is!

Keven and I worked most of the weekend on my car.  We are about 70% done with making the driver’s side rear wheel well opening larger.  It is turning out to be a bit more work than we initially anticipated, and much of it is because we were cutting out and welding back on stuff that didn’t need to be cut out in the first place.  But, so far it is looking good!  We test fitted the slicks under the new panel and there is a definite improvement in the amount of space in front of the tire.

The "before" shot.  See how the panel in front of the tire was chopped off by the previous owner?
Close up of the hack job - not very much room!
Keven taped up the section of the panel to cut out.
Keven cutting the existing quarter panel.
Some more cutting!
Drillig out the spot welds - there were a lot of them.
Now there's a nice big hole in the side of the car.
This is me!  Yes, I'm actually doing work other than taking pictures.  I'm cutting the new panel.
A quick test fit to see how it looks.
We thought we needed to cut a section of the well out.  Wrong.
Keven - stop cutting!  You'll just end up putting it back on later!
Cutting out some more stuff.
Now there is a nice big hole in the well that we didn't need to cut out.
Keven spot welded the new skin on, and I mounted the tire back on.
We lowered the car back to the ground to see how everything works out.
Check out the massive amount of room in front of the tire now!
We welded the piece we cut out back on and hammered out it out to give us 2 inches more room.
Another shot of the body work.
We're getting close to the end - and we ran out of MIG welding gas.
This is how the car looks now - not quite finished!

At about 2 pm on Sunday we ran out of gas for the MIG welder, and that was that.  Since we couldn’t work on the car any more until we get more gas, we decided to spend the rest of the day looking at Keven’s Ramcharger problem.  We even made a fun little video of that.

Big Box of Quarter Panels

The truck arrived sometimes in the past couple of days and somehow a big box of quarter panels showed up in Keven’s shop without him knowing about it.  We just walked into the shop today to chat about the car, and we were surprised to see the box there!  We opened it up like giddy little kids and sure enough, in it were the quarter panels that we ordered from Auto Body Specialities!  Keven says I have to get up really early in the morning and be at his place at 7:30 to start working on this stuff.  It might take two whole days to get the new quarter panels on.  We’re going to enlarge the wheel well openings by moving half of it forward about 3 inches, to make room for the big slicks.  I’m really looking forward to the hard work!

New drivers side quarter panel.
Another view of the new drivers side quarter panel.
New passenger side quarter panel.
Another view of the new passenger side quarter panel.

Riding Low

Today we lowered the car back on to the ground to see how high it sits with the new split mono leaf springs holding the car up.  Not very high!  Quite low, in fact.  After adjusting the traction bars according to the Caltracs guide, both tires sit less than a quarter of an inch from the wheel well lip.  I will probably end up narrowing the rear end about one and a quater inches off each side, if Henry says he can do it with my current axles.  The first two pictures below were taken right after we adjusted the traction bars.  The last two pictures were taken after we have adjusted the torsion bars to lower the front end.  We are definitely need to have some drop spindles put on.

How low can we go?!
See how the front end now looks ridiculously high compared to the rear?
Keven adjusted the torsion bars to lower the front end.  Looks better already.
But still, it needs to go lower... so drop spindles are needed.

More Body Work

Tiny, whom I still have not met yet, worked some more on my car in Keven’s shop.  He polished up my front wheels and welded in a small piece of the passenger side inner quarter panel.  Now it’s just sitting around until we get the new quarter panel skins.  We’re hoping to get the major work done next weekend if the panels arrive in time.

Tiny polished up the front wheels.
Tiny welded in a new piece of the inside quarter panel.
A closer view.