Those make so much more sense now. So clean! I would have just bashed the top flange.

I should have made the flange wider so that I could have made it all in one piece. I'm pretty satisfied with the result and it's the look I want. So now it's on to actually welding these panels in place. I'm thinking of doing the entire back part (except for the long floor part) as one clip. Then I'll weld the flanges from either inside the wheel wells or do what I can from the inside of the back seat. That way I can prime it all out of the car. We'll see how this week unfolds.

So much detail and work on a trunk area, can't wait till it's done and you move on to what's next.

Here's what I'm worried about right now. This inner fender is just not very strong. Even in stock form they are prone to cracking and need to be reinforced. Volvo did some bush-repair on the later 123 GT's which made it onto other 122's later on...but it's only a bandage. I don't like this solution.



I was going to tie the new suspension into this flawed part but it wasn't sitting very well. So out came the cardboard and tape again.





Played around with this as an idea for a while...decided it was just bandages again and therefore suboptimal. So I ditched that - and broke out the drinking straws.



That lead to larger ABS "straws" LOL. And a little orange tape.



And a quick trip to the border in a snow storm to get 1.75 X 0.095" DOM tube (they wanted $14 a foot in Canada for this stuff!).

I then quit playing around with the frame and built a frame table and jig for the frame.





Simulated rear cross member detail shot. I need more clamps.



I'm going to roll out a YouTube Channel for this build.

Front end goes in next week (when I get around to tacking it up and test fitting and trying it out again...and convincing myself that drinking straws are a workable solution (I'm familiar with Herb Adams's Chassis Engineering book). Then I'll toss that tube in my newly built tube bender and get this thing rolling. My goal was to have it as a roller by the fall. Now in Canada, that has a different meaning. We've already had a foot of snow, but fall doesn't end until December. So I've got time.

You drove to the border on Monday???!!! Man, you're hardcore

More good stuff, really interested in the fender reinforcement as it's so important in the strength of the front end.

Where did we leave off? Oh right, I was saying that I was forging ahead on the IFS install. Well, that went totally and completely off the rails. No joke. I could square the thing to the rear cross member from the LCA mounts, but then the rest of it was off by 1/4" - so I tried and tried, and built a giant trammel gauge to be sure...and guess what. It's junk.

The LCA's are not level, nor are they parallel (pinched 1/16" on the passenger side, and 3/16" on the drivers side!) then the entire thing isn't centred (the cross member sits 1/4" to the passenger side). So it's going in the metal recycling.



So this has led to a complete redesign of the front suspension. No more hot rod junk. I'm in the process of developing my own cross member and still have to keep to my timeline or this thread will never end. So back to the CAD drawing and head scratching we go.

Here's one of my current problems. The standard hot rod coil overs that I got with this part are junky. The shafts are not chromed and they chew through the seals. The spring rates are unknown and generally, I had resolved to sell them as soon as I saw them. They are urethane bushed and as I had to move the UCA mount back a full INCH to get the suspension back towards stock (let's not even discuss the amount of anti-dive the "engineering" company had dialled in to this mess), then the urethane mount won't work anyway as the coil over has to sit at an angle. This part only had 4" of total suspension travel to boot.

So I'm working around a Bilstein A2 racing coil over with 6" of stroke. This means the current mount has to go up quite a way...to about here.



At this sort of angle.



To get the straightest shot at the LCA mount - like so.



Now that would leave me with a rather funny looking mount - so I'm working on that. Other things that are now junk include my recently welded frame rails! The 4.5" kick on them is for the old cross member - and would have needed to be cut to make room for the tie rod. The existing cross member also just touches the steering monoball boot to get optimum Ackerman...I'll show you what I've cobbled together for a subframe when I get it done.

In the mean time - I'll be on the phone to Art Morrison Enterprises on Monday to see if they can bend me up a rail on the quick!

Quick update. I'm waiting on the laser guy to cut all the brackets and stuff that I designed for the new front end. I got the confirmation from Art Morrison Enterprises that the can do something for the build. It won't be one piece the way I wanted as the die (shown in the post above) needs about 9" of material to trace through a bend for grip. We have 6". So I'm getting two piece parts that I will then weld together.

Here's the drawing if people are interested.



I don't have a complete drawing of the entire front end design. It's a remix of various ideas and constraints I've seen for other projects dealing with Corvette suspensions. It all starts with the LCA - We're going to rely on a longitudinal tube to establish the reference plane to attach the laser cut brackets to provide the accuracy needed. The ends of this tube have round tube parts to provide an attachment point to the frame rail. The front will be 1.5" 120 wall square tube and the rear will be 1.5 X 2.5" 120 wall tube mounted in the 1.5" direction so that the additional rear position forces can be managed.

So I carefully transferred all the dimensions off this crappy cross member one more time. Broke out the CAD and got it all modelled up and off to the laser cutter.



For optimal Ackermann this is the steering centre line.



Angles and more angles.



These are the start parts. I was super pissed off about this entire build being stalled...so these parts have 5 thou of variance (total - using variance in the statistical sense - square it if you want the standard deviation - they're f'ing perfect - take that you hot rod piece of garbage).



All of the mill scale is cleaned off the weld areas prior to TIG'ing it all up.

You can sort of see the idea here. I should learn to photograph the welds better. They are nicer in reality than they look here.



A quick check with the oil pan shows the first consequence of doing the cross member this way - that fat-arsed pan is going to have to shrink a little. No biggie.



The soapstone line shows where the steering axis will be. We're going to be needing a bracket.

The real CAD.



This will be cut from 3/8" plate and have through brackets and be capped and all the strength that is needed. It'll be fun to weld up, I may even need to break out the 7018!

With that sitting on the bench, it's time to toss the engine and trans into the engine bay for the first time.



We all know it fits...but whatever.



Still needs a little more up at the back.



I'll have to cut a bit more out of the tunnel.



Floor mount pedal box clears nicely.



Bottom starter bolt is going to be an issue - the engine still has to come forward about a half inch.

I think once the tilt is settled, this clearance for the cam position sensor etc will be fine.



Even with the new frame rail being 1.5" taller, the AC compressor bolts are still going to be an issue - but I don't mind creating a little notch to get them out and installed. So that looks good.



And that's where we sit as of now.

Looking for a fun way to waste some time? I've just opened my YouTube Channel chronicling the build.

Video is a great idea, it is much easier for me to share with my Volvo buddies who might not be amenable to reading a big forum thread.

The Cold War Motors guys up in Ardrossan have a huge following.

Well that was fun!

I don’t believe I actually knew what colour the top of that set up table was...lol!

Great start Professor.

Sucks about the frame, will be cool to see what AM comes up with, hopefully not too $$$.

Love the video/channel, subscribed obviously.

Episode 2 is posted. I'm just waiting on the laser cut parts...which should be delivered today.

Well, it's been a trial.

Watch episode 3 - 5 for a good laugh as this project ONCE again - unravels for me.







Looks like I've got to make the opening graphic a little smaller!

Pardon me for saying, but doesn’t the tie-rod account for any misalignment that you might encounter with your a-arms? I understand wanting to get things perfect because that’s how your head is wired, but I’m not sure if you’d ever notice even a 1/2” of pinch on those a-arms if the alignment of the tires was spot on.

I don’t think there is any way around it, you have to cut apart that cradle and re-set those bobbins if you want the perfection you seek.

Can’t wait for the next installment.

As a bit of an insider and a general know-it-all, I'll provide one answer: While you're right about the static alignment - it can all be dialed out through caster & camber shims and tie-rods - you're forgetting about what happens in a bump. With the lower control arm mounts pinched like that, any travel in the suspension puts the wheel through an arc that isn't designed or desired. Compress the suspension and the lower arm begins to move backwards, removing caster. The backwards movement of the lower ball joint also promotes dive under braking. As long as both sides are the same, one could live with the error, but in this case they're not.

Besides, don't measure what you don't want to know and aren't willing to fix. Craig's seen it, he's never going to accept it, so he must deeeel vith it.

There are a few more things wrong with this hot rod junk than he's showing in the videos. He's been fighting it for a while now, it's just hit a breaking point.