Jack-Stand
Active Member
I'm always down for more fab time... My wife on the other hand disagrees lol
'66 Monaco Resto-Mod
- Thread starter Jack-Stand
- Start date
67Monaco
Old Man with a Hat
I have to ask, what spindle/knuckle are you running?
Nevermind, I found the paragraph I was missing.
Nevermind, I found the paragraph I was missing.
Jack-Stand
Active Member
The knuckles, lower CA's and the rack and pinion all are out of an'03 ford crown Vic. I had to modify the upper ball joint mount up for fit into th knuckle. When Ford built the knuckles on the crown Vic, the upper ball joint mount was a through bore, with effectively a deep counter sink to keep it centered, and to provide better force transfer to the ball itself. Since I wanted to retain my Monaco's upper CA's, I drilled the hole out the hole to the appropriate size and then reamed it to the same profile as our uppers. I forget the step on my ream, but can go find out if you're interested.
67Monaco
Old Man with a Hat
I'm interested in the LCA fit up to be honest. I've been thinking on a way to change things up. Honestly I've been chewing the thought of pushrod/cantilever setup.
Jack-Stand
Active Member
The lower took quite a bit of extra fab. The reason I chose the 03 crown Vic lower was because the ball joint and front bushing (frame side) are on the same centerline, much like our stock LCA's are. The rear mount that ties the LCA to the frame rail on the back side was a little more complicated because it was out in space (there's nothing mounted there on the stock suspension). I had to order my long tube headers ahead of my engine build (still haven't started) because I needed to make sure they cleared where I fabbed the mounts.
Forgot to mention on my earlier posts that I centered up the engine and trans in the engine bay. Stock, our engines are mounted almost 2" to the passenger side to accommodate the steering box.
Forgot to mention on my earlier posts that I centered up the engine and trans in the engine bay. Stock, our engines are mounted almost 2" to the passenger side to accommodate the steering box.
Jack-Stand
Active Member
@67Monaco here's a better pic of the control arm. My description above was pretty rough. The rubber mount on the "right" is basically mounted on the backside of the main crossmember, and the post on the "Back left" is the one that I talked about having to fab a mount out in "space".
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
I gotta admit...
I'm impressed .
I'm impressed .
LocuMob
Fluid Technician with a hat
mopar_4life
Well-Known Member
1st for everything!
Triple Pickle
Senior Member
Very impressive!
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
I respect anything when done right.
71Polara383
Kid with ballcap
Awesome build! Look at all that room for headers! Keep up the fantastic work!
Jack-Stand
Active Member
Awesome build! Look at all that room for headers! Keep up the fantastic work!
Thank you much! There's a ton of room up front, but even then it's tight. I don't remember exactly how tight it was, but it was enough that I was worried about the headers touching the lower-rear CA mounts when it torques up. I think I gave it ample room but the frame rails are so narrow that I didn't have much to play with. The bushings I used to make my motor mounts came from ruffstuff specialties and they're rubber, so I'm thinking if I need additional rigidity, I'll run or fab poly bushings.
Jack-Stand
Active Member
I'll do a better job of writing this up later, but I had some fun doing my function checks this weekend... Even made the neighbor kids jump out of their shoes. 
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
Jack-Stand
Active Member
Haha my wife isn't a fan of them... Since our cars are the size of the Titanic, mine should have titanic sized horns... Besides, what else am I going to do with 10 gallons of 150 psi airWell, I don't know about those horns, though.
65sporty
Old Man with a Hat
Loving all the fab work, I am hooked.
Jack-Stand
Active Member
Over the weekend I was able to get even more done on the car, and I drove my wife nuts. It seems like every other question I asked her was "can I go outside and play...?"
One quick thing, I had a couple of folks reach out to me about how I do my tubing runs, and basically what the process looks like when I make one. The question effectively was, "how do I make such "pretty" runs, while having fixed points A and B?" The short answer... very carefully. lol While I appreciate the sentiment, my runs are far from perfect (I personally wouldn't even call the pretty). However, I do have a few tips and tricks for folks who might be interested in tackling tubing runs for fuel lines, brake lines, etc. Keep in mind, there are likely WAY better ways to do this, this is just the method that I've found works for me, and gets me my desired results.
Step one basically starts out with making "sacrificial" bends for reference. I've had friends argue with me on this one, but I feel that it's crucial to know how your bender is going to bend the tubing, and where it's going to wind up. I usually just take a little bit of tubing, and make the bends I want. Below are a couple of examples of the pieces I made for my trunk runs. The piece that has a sharper than 90 degree bend is the one that I used for running the tubing through the bulkhead fittings, underneath my tank mount. The other one is just a general reference for how tight I can make 2-90's in a complex pattern (this comes in handy when trying to route in tight places). The big thing to remember is that when measuring our your tubing, mark your tangent lines (i.e. mark where 0 degrees is, and mark wherever you bend it to, in most cases 90). I tried to include a picture of what I'm talking about in this. This allows you to measure to your next 0 point by which you'll make your next bend. This is where knowing your bender radius comes into play. My bender has a 15/16" radius, so that means, if I'm looking to make a part that's 6" from CL to CL, my 0 tangent to 0 tangent needs to be 4" (15/16"+15/16"+4-1/8"=6"). Another thing to note, not all benders are created equal, and the one I purchased for this project was crazy expensive. That's because I wanted everything to look good. I've had friends try to bend stainless with a cheapo from the auto parts store, and while it'll get the job done, it's not as nice in my opinion.
Another thing to note about making the sacrificial pieces, is that they allow you to actually use the piece as a reference point. Basically, if I'm wanting a 90 coming out of a fitting, I can insert the piece, match it up with the piece I want to bend, and then know exactly where to cut and/or bend my piece for the perfect fit. I've included a picture below.
All in all, I think the finished product turned out pretty good for using this method. If there are more questions, I'm happy to answer whatever I can. Again, I'm no expert at this, but this method has yielded me pretty good results.
One quick thing, I had a couple of folks reach out to me about how I do my tubing runs, and basically what the process looks like when I make one. The question effectively was, "how do I make such "pretty" runs, while having fixed points A and B?" The short answer... very carefully. lol While I appreciate the sentiment, my runs are far from perfect (I personally wouldn't even call the pretty). However, I do have a few tips and tricks for folks who might be interested in tackling tubing runs for fuel lines, brake lines, etc. Keep in mind, there are likely WAY better ways to do this, this is just the method that I've found works for me, and gets me my desired results.
Step one basically starts out with making "sacrificial" bends for reference. I've had friends argue with me on this one, but I feel that it's crucial to know how your bender is going to bend the tubing, and where it's going to wind up. I usually just take a little bit of tubing, and make the bends I want. Below are a couple of examples of the pieces I made for my trunk runs. The piece that has a sharper than 90 degree bend is the one that I used for running the tubing through the bulkhead fittings, underneath my tank mount. The other one is just a general reference for how tight I can make 2-90's in a complex pattern (this comes in handy when trying to route in tight places). The big thing to remember is that when measuring our your tubing, mark your tangent lines (i.e. mark where 0 degrees is, and mark wherever you bend it to, in most cases 90). I tried to include a picture of what I'm talking about in this. This allows you to measure to your next 0 point by which you'll make your next bend. This is where knowing your bender radius comes into play. My bender has a 15/16" radius, so that means, if I'm looking to make a part that's 6" from CL to CL, my 0 tangent to 0 tangent needs to be 4" (15/16"+15/16"+4-1/8"=6"). Another thing to note, not all benders are created equal, and the one I purchased for this project was crazy expensive. That's because I wanted everything to look good. I've had friends try to bend stainless with a cheapo from the auto parts store, and while it'll get the job done, it's not as nice in my opinion.
Another thing to note about making the sacrificial pieces, is that they allow you to actually use the piece as a reference point. Basically, if I'm wanting a 90 coming out of a fitting, I can insert the piece, match it up with the piece I want to bend, and then know exactly where to cut and/or bend my piece for the perfect fit. I've included a picture below.
All in all, I think the finished product turned out pretty good for using this method. If there are more questions, I'm happy to answer whatever I can. Again, I'm no expert at this, but this method has yielded me pretty good results.
Jack-Stand
Active Member
Anyway, so on to my progress for the weekend. This weekend, I set out to effectively plumb the rest of the car so that I could perform my system checks, and hopefully fire up the system. As I'm sure you all saw in one of my earlier posts, I was indeed successful, and I managed to completely test everything, including my obnoxiously loud train horns (rated at 147.7 dB 
). Unfortunately, I had removed my rear axle in order to run the front air lines, so I wasn't able to actually make the car stand up and sit down. Rest assured, everything works.
My first task was to finish up pluming everything up in the trunk, up to the bulkhead fittings. My previous post was from Friday evening, so I was successful in getting it set up. I had to take a break in the early afternoon to pick little one up from daycare that day, so of course, she helped Dad get everything tightened up as should be.
Later that evening I decided that I wanted to work on the control harness that links the Switchspeed ECU to the valve block itself. Because my bags are going to be controlled entirely differently than the "stock" Accuair configuration, the valve controls would need to be reconfigured to my specific setup. That meant cutting up a brand new, untouched, perfectly good wiring harness. It really wasn't that big of a deal, but for anyone else that's looking to do something similar to what I did, TAKE YOUR TIME! I can't stress this enough. To begin with, I marked their layout up, and I marked my configuration on a different page. This would allow me to effectively say "The signal from 3, controls valve 2", and so on. Basically by writing it down, it gave me a visual of what I was attempting to accomplish. Some may be able to do this without the diagrams (kudos btw), but I myself am a big fan of visual aid.
To start this project off, I cut the main harness, all at different lengths. The reason for the different lengths is because it makes the "bundle" more narrow, and makes it more sleek. While it's not necessary to do this, it's one of my practices, and I like the results. Another reason for doing this, is because I solder ALL of my electrical connections (sometimes leave sharp points). Those sharp points sometimes pierce shrink tubing, and can short across. By offsetting the wires, you have the shrink tube, plus the other wire's original insulation. Again, while this is not necessary, it eliminates the possibility of a loose connection, if you ever need to diagnose an electrical problem down the road. Another thing to consider (pictured below) is color coding your shrink tubing. For my harness below, Yellow are my "down" signals, and blue are my "up" signals. Final step is a layer of electrical tape, and voila, my harness is ready for install.
Next came the task of finishing up my connections to the bags themselves. Prior to running everything in the trunk, I had already run my lines to the front bags (I forgot to take pictures, my bad), so for this one, I needed to finish up the rear bags. The first picture below is from underneath the car, looking towards the front. Next came plumbing my rear bags. I was a little disappointed in my routing of the rear bags, simply because I couldn't make them symmetrical. There's a bracket on the passenger side of the axle tunnel that I can't remove, so I had to route around it, which ended up screwing up my symmetry.
Next I added the tee fittings that would be my sensing lines. Basically all in all, I have 5 sensing lines, 2 for the rear bags, 2 for the front bags and 1 for my main tank pressure. The reason I have so many is because each of my bags is valved individually, and for anyone considering running bags on their setup, I would HIGHLY recommend that you NOT tee your fronts together or your rears together. Basically if you tee them together, there's no roll stability, and the car is scary. With each bag independently valved, they act more like true springs, only with an adjustable spring rate. I can go into better specifics if anyone is curious, but that's kind of the basics.
Anyway, rant over. Next I was on to my train horns. Once again, I started with some rough measurements, and some steel stock I had in the shop, and I started making brackets. They're not very pretty now, but at the moment, I was going more for function, not form. I'll clean them up a bit later, but wanted to get everything mounted so that I could plumb everything. Basically the brackets were as simple as cutting the steel to length, squaring them up in the vice, then smacking them with a hammer to the point that I got the bend I desired.
Next i mounted them up, and started plumbing. I decided to hide them behind the rear wheel well, in between the "frame" rail, and the quarter panel (this is on both sides, 4 horns in total). All in all, I'm pretty happy with where they're mounted, and the installation is pretty clean.
Next I wired it up, and gave it a test. I already posted the video of the function checks of the horns, but I never posted the video of the compressors running. It's honestly kind of anticlimactic, but it's exciting for me in that I'm headed in the right direction.
Next on the list is to reinstall my rear axle, and do a full system check, including making the car stand up and sit.
). Unfortunately, I had removed my rear axle in order to run the front air lines, so I wasn't able to actually make the car stand up and sit down. Rest assured, everything works.My first task was to finish up pluming everything up in the trunk, up to the bulkhead fittings. My previous post was from Friday evening, so I was successful in getting it set up. I had to take a break in the early afternoon to pick little one up from daycare that day, so of course, she helped Dad get everything tightened up as should be.
Later that evening I decided that I wanted to work on the control harness that links the Switchspeed ECU to the valve block itself. Because my bags are going to be controlled entirely differently than the "stock" Accuair configuration, the valve controls would need to be reconfigured to my specific setup. That meant cutting up a brand new, untouched, perfectly good wiring harness.
It really wasn't that big of a deal, but for anyone else that's looking to do something similar to what I did, TAKE YOUR TIME! I can't stress this enough. To begin with, I marked their layout up, and I marked my configuration on a different page. This would allow me to effectively say "The signal from 3, controls valve 2", and so on. Basically by writing it down, it gave me a visual of what I was attempting to accomplish. Some may be able to do this without the diagrams (kudos btw), but I myself am a big fan of visual aid. To start this project off, I cut the main harness, all at different lengths. The reason for the different lengths is because it makes the "bundle" more narrow, and makes it more sleek. While it's not necessary to do this, it's one of my practices, and I like the results. Another reason for doing this, is because I solder ALL of my electrical connections (sometimes leave sharp points). Those sharp points sometimes pierce shrink tubing, and can short across. By offsetting the wires, you have the shrink tube, plus the other wire's original insulation. Again, while this is not necessary, it eliminates the possibility of a loose connection, if you ever need to diagnose an electrical problem down the road. Another thing to consider (pictured below) is color coding your shrink tubing. For my harness below, Yellow are my "down" signals, and blue are my "up" signals. Final step is a layer of electrical tape, and voila, my harness is ready for install.
Next came the task of finishing up my connections to the bags themselves. Prior to running everything in the trunk, I had already run my lines to the front bags (I forgot to take pictures, my bad), so for this one, I needed to finish up the rear bags. The first picture below is from underneath the car, looking towards the front. Next came plumbing my rear bags. I was a little disappointed in my routing of the rear bags, simply because I couldn't make them symmetrical. There's a bracket on the passenger side of the axle tunnel that I can't remove, so I had to route around it, which ended up screwing up my symmetry.
Next I added the tee fittings that would be my sensing lines. Basically all in all, I have 5 sensing lines, 2 for the rear bags, 2 for the front bags and 1 for my main tank pressure. The reason I have so many is because each of my bags is valved individually, and for anyone considering running bags on their setup, I would HIGHLY recommend that you NOT tee your fronts together or your rears together. Basically if you tee them together, there's no roll stability, and the car is scary. With each bag independently valved, they act more like true springs, only with an adjustable spring rate. I can go into better specifics if anyone is curious, but that's kind of the basics.
Anyway, rant over. Next I was on to my train horns. Once again, I started with some rough measurements, and some steel stock I had in the shop, and I started making brackets. They're not very pretty now, but at the moment, I was going more for function, not form. I'll clean them up a bit later, but wanted to get everything mounted so that I could plumb everything. Basically the brackets were as simple as cutting the steel to length, squaring them up in the vice, then smacking them with a hammer to the point that I got the bend I desired.
Next i mounted them up, and started plumbing. I decided to hide them behind the rear wheel well, in between the "frame" rail, and the quarter panel (this is on both sides, 4 horns in total). All in all, I'm pretty happy with where they're mounted, and the installation is pretty clean.
Next I wired it up, and gave it a test. I already posted the video of the function checks of the horns, but I never posted the video of the compressors running. It's honestly kind of anticlimactic, but it's exciting for me in that I'm headed in the right direction.
Next on the list is to reinstall my rear axle, and do a full system check, including making the car stand up and sit.
TxDon
Well-Known Member
Wow those compressors are loud! Regarding the tubing work, from an amateur who has tried it, your stuff is pro quality gorgeous!
Similar threads
