Buttoned the car back up and it idled without incident for 30 min, last night. Planning to take it out and get winter tires mounted and balanced, today.
a clean drain is a happy drainHad already done so, before. So, not this time.
Nice! I didn’t think I needed them until I went off a driveway at almost full lock and scraped the inside lip of the wheel pretty good. It had been good up until then. Now I just deal with the reduced turning radius.Thanks. I imagined rack limiters being something more than they really are. Looks easy enough. Just ordered a set from LMR.
Nothing a quick blip of the throttle and dump of the clutch can't take care of...Nice! I didn’t think I needed them until I went off a driveway at almost full lock and scraped the inside lip of the wheel pretty good. It had been good up until then. Now I just deal with the reduced turning radius.
I have so many watched threads because of seemingly random useful information like this.Usually dropping the real lower control arm mounting point by 1 inch or so is sufficient to change the Instant Center enough to be advantageous for helping the car hook.
If more than 1 inch, then you should certainly check your pinion angle.
On average, with stock bushings in the rear upper and lower control arms, having 1.5-2.0* pinion down angle is needed due to bushing deflection under acceleration.
If you have Urethane bushings then only .75 to 1.0* pinion down angle is required as there is less deflection in the control arm bushings.
With Heim Joints or solid bushings, then near 0* down angle is required as no real deflection is taking place.
Ideally you want the driveshaft at 0* front and rear when under acceleration as this provides the least amount of friction in the drivetrain.
If you have more than 2* of pinion angle, then I suspect that this is the source of your vibration.
Typically, U-joints are designed to work with up to 1.5* of angle each. So 2 U-joints should handle 3* of angle total. This is why double cardan joints are used in some applications to accommodate more severe driveline angles..................................................^^^^
Should is the key word.
I know it's probably too late to mention this, but after looking pretty in-depth into the differences between long tube headers for 1994-1995 and Fox cars, there are only two differences: the EGR provision on the passenger side for 1994-1995 (passenger header is dimensionally the same as the Fox cars) and the 7-o'clock clutch fork position on the 1994-1995. The 1994-1995 headers and mid pipes are routed differently (above the clutch fork rather than below). These are the ONLY differences I could find and confirm. With that in mind, you could probably have solved the clearance issue with a set of 1994-1995 long tubes.Though, I haven't been in a hurry, I've made a little progress. I got the flywheel & clutch out of the car, and I mocked up the T56 to see whether the shortened SN95 clutch fork would play nicely with the BBK Longtubes. It didn't. So, I broke out the BFH, and we're working through our issues to see if we can find a resolution:
The red x indicates where I'll need to drill so that the clutch cable placement doesn't cause too much of an angle that will prematurely wear it out. With the Longtube back in place in the next pic, I was happy to see that I would not have to cut anything off the bellhousing, but you definitely start to get the sense of why the 7 o'clock fork position is not optimal with BBK longtubes:
I didn't get a great pic of the shortened fork on its own, but I'll take one when I pull everything back out before the final install. But basically, the clutch fork has been shortened 1.5"-ish, no longer has the hole that the cables like the MM and OEM cables need, and only has the outermost hole as close to the bellhousing as it can be. With the Steeda cable, I can just put the adjustment screw through and add the nut on the backside.
This pic, however, shows that shortening the fork still didn't provide the necessary clearance. My hope is that with a little massaging on the pipes and a little more grinding on the end of the clutch fork, I can make it all work together without resorting to some of the more extreme methods I've read that others have used, such as one post where a guy just used a jack to bend the pipes completely out of the way.
I reached my stopping point for the night, and I'm guessing it's not enough to clear the fork yet, but I think it's good start. Maybe it will work depending on how much more I take off of the clutch fork, and I don't mind mocking it up as many times as I need to. I don't want to do any more damage than I need to get the job done, and I'd really prefer not to punch through the header.
Once I get this part to work, I think the only other potential show stopper with the parts I currently have is the driveshaft length.