Aaah, the FUN is coming! Vroom, vroom as they say!

I then decided that I was ready for the final mock up assembly of the rear suspension and I needed to get the car back on the ground and make final adjustments to the height of the wheelie bars. As I have mentioned before I want to have the wheelie bars as far off of the ground as possible so that they don’t try to steer the car and possibly unload the slicks. And, of course, I still want to do BIG wheelies! They are nothing other than emergency keep-the-shiny-side-up bars!

The bars were fabricated from a kit available from Competition Engineering (#C2145) and are made from 4130 chrome moly for strength and unsprung weight savings. They also have a coil spring on the top tubes to help dampen the load in a controlled manner. I added the “X” reinforcement that comes in the kit to the top tubes to allow more room for rolling a floor jack under the car.

I then finished welding them with the Tig welder because they are chrome moly. The position of the bars is such that at full collapse of the coil springs the upper tubes are touching the bottom of the bumper.

The next project I completed was finishing the Competition Engineering parachute mount (#C3451 & C3450). This was a fairly straight-forward installation that I added a couple of my own features to such as incorporating the stock steel bumper reinforcement into the assembly. I drilled a hole in the desired position for centering the mounting tube in the bumper. I then welded a tube to the bumper where it passed through and the front end of the tube to a frame cross member between the rails. I then figured out the proper length of the actual parachute anchor mount and cut it on the band saw.

Finished wheelie bars and chute mount.

I wanted to make the entire assembly removable, leaving only a hole in the plastic bumper cover if for some reason I ever want to remove the parachute. So, I chucked the tube in my lathe and turned it down a small amount so that it has a nice slip fit into the permanently welded tube housing. I then installed it and drilled a hole through both tubes under the car and will use a  ½” grade 8 bolt to secure everything. I figure if they use a ½” bolt to secure the tail of the chute it should be fine. I then cut the parachute pack mount to the required length and welded it all together with the Tig.

That’s it for this month, but I will return and, as the picture shows, I have started mocking up the engine installation and I will cover that in more detail next month. Thanks for reading and remember:

There is always hope,
And when in doubt, DO A WHEELIE!!!