csmith's Build Thread - Street Legal and POM

[burchfieldb]

So a combination of cold weather, travel, and waiting for POL has led to a slow start, but nonetheless I have been able to start installing some parts.

Building a car from parts is new to me. Where parts on hand allow, I'll be following the order of the book. Fortunately, this had me starting at the beginning with the power steering rack.

Power Steering Rack
I went with the FFR's power steering kit, and am using it as is other than the tie rod ends I swapped in the Moog part that Paul recommends. The install went ok. The hardest part was finding the correct hardware:

• The manual refers to "sleeves," but on the box 01 inventory they're listed as a 2.45" spacer. It took installing the bushings and then measuring the space with a caliper to confirm this, but yeah, some confusion was had.
• The 4" bolts in the pdf manual appear to be steel or maybe a clear coated zinc. In the coupe hardware box I found the two bolts listed as 1/2-13 x 4 HEX CAP SCREW GR8 ZINC. Other than being yellow zinc it matches exactly.

One thing I did that I think made installing this easier was for installing the bushing and sleeves I used a little bit of grease and then a squeeze clamp to get them in the hole. It was way to tight to just force in, and I was concerned I'd damage the bushing if I used a mallet.

Getting it installed on the car was straightforward. I now know when the manual refers to left or right on the orientation they're referring to them in the direction the vehicle is facing, not as you're looking at it. It pretty much slid into space once I had the mounting location in the right spot. Put the bolts on and that was it. No torque spec listed, so left hand tightened for now.

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Lower Control Arms
This was another relatively simple task.

Things worth noting:

• First tool purchase (well, non preemptive tool purchase), a 7/8" socket. I also didn't have the 15/16" wrench, but my adjustable wrench was sufficient.
• The flange bolt looked like it had a separate washer underneath it in my manual. Weird, but ok. After checking the colored photo it looks like it was just camera glare.
• It's much easier to install the rear bolt with the spacer first then do the front one. Because either the mount or the part isn't completely square I had to use the control arm as leverage pulling the front bushing inward to get the alignment just right, but it slipped in when I got it there. No hammer required.
• When I was pulling the arm forward to get the alignment, at one point I was pulling too hard and I felt the entire chassis move. My heart skipped a beat, but fortunately nothing bad happened. I plan to get some jack stands with wider bases now. That shouldn't be happening for sure.

Once I got the bolts on there I hand tightened them down, followed by torquing to 105 lbft (my torque wrench states a +/- 4% calibration) using a random board I had on hand to hold the control arm level.

Question: My lower control arm already had a boot installed on it, and I didn't see a separate boot for it. There's no instructions on installing it as it happens... it just shows up as being installed on the page after the parts are laid out. Is something different required here?

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Next steps: Shocks are still on back order, so need to move onto the next part. Planning to do the IRS.

Looks similar to mine, except my boots are blue. My lower control arms came with the ball joints installed. The uppers did not.20221204_174749.jpg

Heads up, you may want to flip the front bolt head around so that you can remove it in the future, once the radiator is in.