Today Keven and I started work on putting the Caltracs on the car.  Keven got up early and put the car on the lift and was actually almost done putting on the drivers side split mono leaf when I got there.  One of the bolts for the rear shackle broke off so Keven whipped up a new one with his metal lathe, and welded it on.  We took the rear offset shackles to a wire wheel, and got all the rust off of them to make them look like new.  Then Keven cut up some pieces of metal and welded them on the back side of each spring perch – this is supposedly to stop the Caltracs from crushing the axle housing.  After that, we proceeded to try and finish hooking up the Caltracs.

We noticed a few odd things – first, the rear offset shackles were rotated all the way to the back.  We also noticed the shocks were butting up against the axle housing and brake lines.  I read the instructions on how to set up the preload and it said to adjust the bars until the spring is just touching the spring stops.  What spring stops?  I looked at the Caltracs setup and compared it to the pictures of the setup in the instructions.  We (meaning Keven) had mounted the springs using the wrong hole!  No wonder everything was super tight and felt just wrong.  We took off the springs and mounted them using the correct holes, and poof – everything lined up so much better.  One problem was that the bolts used to secure the springs to the front shackles were pretty much gone.  By the time we had realized this, all the stores were already closed for the 4th of July celebration.  So… we had to leave finishing the installation for another day.

An interesting thing happened after lunch while working on the car – Keven’s evaporative cooler started overflowing with water, so water got everywhere on the shop floor and we spent a good 30 minutes cleaning that mess up and fixing the cooler.

Here are a bunch of pictures – All of the pictures show the springs hooked up to the wrong hole except for the last few.  So I guess you could call this a “how not to install your Caltracs”.  Heh.

Note how the spring is installed into the wrong hole! The spring and spring stop are reversed.
The old super stock springs.
Keven getting water out of the evaporative cooler.
Marvin used the floor squeegee to push all the water out the garage door.
Keven welds on a new bolt to replace a broken one on a rear spring shackle.
Keven welded up all 4 bolts on the rear shackles so they are super strong - we hung them off the cooler to cool them down.
Keven cuts a piece off the front hangers to make room for the Caltracs.
Pretty sparks!
You can see how the bottom 1/3 of the front hangers are cut off, also he had to hammer out a bump to make room.
Keven and Caltracs
Cutting pieces of steel up for boxing in the spring perches.
A test fit of the steel plate used for boxing in the spring perches.
Grinding the plates so it fits better.
Welding the plates on.
All boxed up! Crushed axles are a thing of the past now!
Part of the Caltracs
More Caltracs - springs still in the wrong holes.
Getting one of the shocks on - it was bumped against the axle housing and brake line pretty hard.
Boxing in the other spring perch.
Driver's side perch boxed in.
More Caltracs stuff - springs still in the wrong holes!
Here we finally realize the springs are hooked up to the wrong holes and fix it. Everything fits so much better now!
Fixed the other side (swapped the spring and spring bumper)
The rear shackles are hanging straight down now instead of rotated all the way back.
That's all we can do for today - the stores are all closed. We need new bolts!