The Mule rides again (sort of) - pics.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Of course after I made my last post I went and looked... I was a bit surprised to see how cheap they are.

Doesn't a *LOT* of grease end up between the cones and wasted?

I'm painting Corvette rotors this weekend.
I had a design ready to use 4th gen F-body (F4?) or C5 calipers on Fiero spindles with the 12" 4th gen F-body rotors. I drew them up in OnShape, then spaced the calipers out another 3/8" to fit the 12.75" C5 rotors. I'll have Corvette wheels *AND* brakes on the front end.
Tomorrow I'll order hub centric rings from the same outfit that made my adapters. For the record they are for a 57.1mm wheel pilot journal and a 70.3mm wheel pilot bore. I'll order them with a little extra length to make sure they locate both the brakes and the wheels.

[crzyone]

There is some waste but that never really concerned me. That's a job I'd go out and buy a fresh tube of grease for. After the job that tube of grease usually sits for years and gets wasted anyways.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Yeah, not enough waste to be worth worrying about. Do you see tubes of grease small enough to just do one set of wheel bearings?

I ordered custom centering rings to use the Corvette wheels and rotors on the Street Dreams hubs. The rotor pilot bore is actually about .015 bigger than the wheel pilot bore. I @$$umed they were both the same, but Lenny at Motorsport-Tech suggested I verify that. He does a lot of adapters for German cars, which usually (and inexplicably) have different pilot journals for the rotors and wheels. The Corvette basic diameter may be the same, but as I said the rotor bore is about .015 bigger than the wheel bore. That may be the tolerance that GM could get away with as it may just be "good enough" for a wheel speed rotating component that doesn't touch the road. Even though it's heavy, that .007 eccentricity is probably undetectable in terms of vibration.

So those should be here in a week or two.

I also ordered the front tires as well.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I'm at my dad's house and went looking for the 17" Corvette front wheels. They are not where I thought they would be. I'm wondering if they went on (and were sold with) ALLTRBO's 1990 Camaro with twin turbo L98 & T56.

[Shaun41178(2)]

email or call him and ask

[The Dark Side of Will]

or txt.

Found them... they were just in a non-obvious corner of the wheel shed that I didn't see when I was out there with the assistive light on my cell phone last night after dark.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Just grabbed this for test fitment purposes:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/122031105821



Specs per: http://www.z06vette.com/forums/f142/sto ... es-119671/

18x10.5 with 58mm offset. I've seen conflicting specs for the base C5 wheels at 65mm offset or 58mm offset.

[The Dark Side of Will]

The Corvette 17x8.5's weigh 18 lbs on the shipping scale where my dad sort of works.

The 4th gen F-body (F4?) 12x1.25" brake rotors have 2 1/16" overall height, while the C5 Corvette 12.75x1.25" rotors have 1 13/16" overall height. That means the C5 rotors are 1/4" further outboard than the F4 rotors, which means I'll have to make the adapter brackets 1/4" thicker.

[fieroguru]

You might want to verify the thickness of the rotor hats as they could be slightly different and will impact the caliper bracket thickness.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Z06 wheel arrived:



The auction photo looked like the tire was trashed, but it still holds air... so I got a wheel and serviceable tire for $60. Not bad. It's close to the wear bars, so the owner was getting his enjoyment out of it. It's a 295/35-18, so it's a bit taller than what I'd want to use on The Mule, but I'll be a good start for fit checking.

First order of business is to verify the offset of this wheel and the base model wheels. I've seen 58mm for this wheel and both 58 and 65mm for the base wheels. If it's the same offset, then I may have to go to a thinner adapter AND push the struts inboard in order to clear everything. I also currently have 1" adapters, and that's getting close to as thin as adapters can run. I can spot face the inside of the wheel to allow the lugs to stand 1/8" or more proud of the wheel mounting face, but I don't know if that will be enough.

[The Dark Side of Will]

You might want to verify the thickness of the rotor hats as they could be slightly different and will impact the caliper bracket thickness.

Good call. The F4 rotor hat is actually 0.020" thicker than the C5 rotor hat... Since it's a sliding caliper, I'll ignore that.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I went out to my wrecked hulk that I flipped when I was 19 and drilled a bunch of holes through the A-pillar skin, but not the steel:



Here's how deep the depth probe on my calipers went for each hole:

Code: Select all

1.	0.455
2.	0.570
3.	0.760
4.	0.493
5.	0.625
6.	0.612
7.	0.657
8.	0.635
9.	0.560
10.	0.566
11.	0.541
12.	0.527
13.	0.584
14.	0.608
15.	0.654
16.	0.682

I did this because I want to reinforce the slick top panel in order to make sure that it doesn't get damaged. I'm thinking about some fiberglass tube insulation laid flat and wetted... I'd like to vacuum bag it to keep its thickness to a minimum, but I realized I didn't know how much clearance I had to work with. Now I know.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Been looking up info on the GM Racing output flanges for the 4T65E-HD used with the Ecotecs in the early/mid 2000's. I've located a guy who has NINE sets of flanges on his shelf... He wants $280 each for the left and $310 each for the right. I could use them on The Mule just by swapping them left for right. That would certainly guarantee that the next thing I broke would be deep inside the transmission instead of an axle that's (relatively) easy to replace.

Those flanges are set up to take Porsche 930 CV joints.
Found this thread:
http://www.gt40s.com/forum/gt40-tech-po ... stion.html
That links to this drawing: http://www.gt40s.com/forum/attachment.p ... 1266753670
That shows an adapter to bolt Porsche 930 CV joints to an Audi transaxle. The Porsche joints appear to have 6x10mm bolts on a 94mm circle... I'll have to measure the BMW E34 540i 6 speed axles I have in the shed to see what their mounting bolt circle is... I might be able to come up with some bullet proof axles pretty cheap.

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do ... g=33&fg=10
RealOEM lists "94MM" in the comments for the E34 540i 6 speed output flange... that might refer to the bolt circle instead of the overall diameter of the flange. Intredestating.

Of course, then I'd still be using GM's Type II intermediate shaft, so that would be my weak link. I do have an extra unit which will have cryo'd and WPC'd regardless.

Zombie post...

This bug bit me again. Went and tracked down the vendor. He still has NINE sets (IE, he's sold zero since 2012) but now the prices are $242 and $268. Woohoo!
I'll go ahead and grab the flanges with my next paycheck and start thinking about inner CV joints.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Per this: http://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/aut ... 1571223836

Base C5 rear wheels have 68mm offset.
ZO6 C5 rear wheels have 58mm offset.

That means that the ZO6 wheels have 0.893 more front spacing than the base C5 wheels. Darn it... I won't be able to run those with the same adapter thickness as I have on the base C5 wheels. I'd actually need to cut my adapter thickness down by 3/4" to 7/8". At that point it would be 1/8" to 1/4" thick and obviously wouldn't be an adapter.

Going by the base C5 wheels, with at the limit front spacing for the Fiero bodywork as an example, my ideal offset for a 10.5" wheel would be 68+13 = 81mm offset. Yikes.

I guess I'll just have to resign myself to moving the hub inboard from my adapter face in order to use wider wheels, as 80 mm is neither practical nor common offset.

However, the Forgestar CF5 is available in 18x11-63 and 18x9-56. The 18x11-63 has only about 0.060 more front spacing than the C5 ZO6 wheel, so the same suspension combo that works with the C5 ZO6 wheel should work with the Forgestar, as long as I can find an extra 0.5" at the inner edge.

[The Dark Side of Will]

http://www.spcalignment.com/home/291





Of course for the OD that may fit my Fiero control arm sleeve design, the bolt holes are clearance for 3/8" bolts. I wonder if they could make that size for 12mm bolts...
Of course I could figure out how to clamp it down and drill it, but then I'd have to drill one every time I replaced one. May not be such a big deal, but sounds like a PITA and means they probably couldn't be replaced track-side.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Going back to oil coolers again, as that's the thing I want to try first (when I get back) to see what effect it has on oil consumption before I tear the engine down to replace the oil rings.

The ports in the block are ~.705" ID. The ports in the oil filter adapter start at .705" and taper slightly (due to draught on the die in which they were cast). That's 0.390 sqin.
1/2" pipe Sch 40 is .622 ID and .304 sqin, which is about 78% of the area of the block ports.
3/8" pipe Sch 40 is .493 ID and .191 sqin, or about 49% of the area of the block ports.

I just found this: http://www.go2marine.com/docs/mfr/seaka ... _Specs.pdf
Here's the main page of available parts: http://www.go2marine.com/product/100041 ... anode.html
Which indicates that custom 3" diameter coolers are available with 3/4" pipe connections! Awesome! I can use one cooler without undersizing the block ports.
I inquired about their ability to make a 3" cooler with a 12" core, 3/4" NPT oil connections and 1 1/4" water connections.

I could even go to 1 1/2" water connections, as the inlet to the Caddy thermostat is 1 1/2". I'd need a piece of flex hose with 1 1/4 on one end for the coolant pipe and 1 1/2 on the other for the cooler, though. I'm not sure where to snag one of those the right length.

[Shaun41178(2)]

When do you get back? Been thinking of getting a 3.94 getrag and I need someone to swap the bellhousings and take the proper measurements if you would be up for that

[eHoward]

This is a test.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Test observed

[The Dark Side of Will]

When do you get back? Been thinking of getting a 3.94 getrag and I need someone to swap the bellhousings and take the proper measurements if you would be up for that

Can do. I'll be back at the beginning of October.