How much ground clearance is enough ground clearance for an exhaust system?
The truck is sitting about 1-1.5" lower than I want it to at ride height so I'm looking at about 3" of space between the ground and the exhaust at the lowest point.
How much ground clearance is enough ground clearance for an exhaust system?
The truck is sitting about 1-1.5" lower than I want it to at ride height so I'm looking at about 3" of space between the ground and the exhaust at the lowest point.
Hold up, I thought you were a minitrucker? How much ground clearance is not a minitrucker question 
I have run a lot of things down the road at 3" of ground clearance, and cruised even lower. At 3" you will need to strengthen your Spidey Sense for potential dragging and scrapping, but it is fine for most situations. The problem in this case will be damages to the part you are dragging. I hate dragging headers, that's why my SFCs on the Tbird are 2" tall when everyone else makes them 1-1.5"
And your headers are very pretty, right now....
gumby said:Hold up, I thought you were a minitrucker? How much ground clearance is not a minitrucker question
I like small trucks. Never cared much for the stanced out scene. Everything I have built and raced prior to these had mud tires and went off jumps. Building street(ish) cars is new to me.
But that's good to hear that you've run stuff with similar clearance without too many issues.
Making progress on the steering column. I had to wait on a double U-joint to show up and now I have some mcmaster hardware on the way to make a second bearing mount between the rack and the firewall. Too many joints in the system, I need something to eat up a couple degrees of freedom.
I'm also working on CAD and prototypes for a new version of the shifter relocation for the CD009 trans. I might finish bolting together the L33 tomorrow and yank the 4.8 out of the truck so I can finish my welding on the firewall and get ready for wiring.
Waiting on a couple parts to finish up the second steering shaft bearing. In the meantime I pulled the engine. Need to trim, weld and paint the bay and the tunnel before the new aluminum 5.3 goes in. I also need to clean out the bed so I can pull that to run brake and fuel lines.
Small update. Valve covers have a fresh coat of VHT blue wrinkle paint and the water pump is attached. I keep realizing I have forgotten about small parts like a PCV hose or an accessory belt tensioner. I trimmed and welded the rest of the firewall/trans tunnel today and seam sealed what I could with one 10oz tube of sealant. I have another tube on the way, I have a lot of odds and ends that need some paint. I'm getting close mechanically on this thing.
I touched the truck for the first time in 2 weeks yesterday. This Covid19 crap, working from home and the long dreary Midwest spring had me in a funk. Future Mrs. Racetruck and I decided to go spend some time down in Gulf Shores visiting her dad, I could still work remotely and it was 85° and sunny all week. Light traffic turned a normally 17.5 hour drive into 15 hours flat, that's a lot of time to think about stuff like how we had to cancel our big wedding, where to move to so we can escape E36 M3ty Midwest weather and how I really wanted to redo the passenger side header on the truck.
I took advantage of the week in Alabama to plan a lot of small details on the build and also order some parts. Tensioner and idler pulley installed, I need to get the power steering pump and alternator on and play the serpentine belt guessing game.
I don't like how my Alibaba shifter works, I have been trying to develop a toploader solution for this trans on a spare in my basement but it has been royally pissing me off lately. I'm one failed revision away from saying berk it and just doing a big Z shaped shifter for now.
So I discovered when I pulled the engine that the passenger side header is impossible to remove. You have to unbolt the trans and the header and wiggle them both out simultaneously. That is not going to cut it. So I did some thinking and measuring and decided that it needed to be shortened to about where the tape is in this picture.
And when I was out in the garage yesterday I grabbed the sawzall since that's the shot caller and chopped it up. If I cut it apart with the sawzall then I have to fix it. There's still a little bit of welding to be done but now I should be able to get it in and out of the truck and it won't hang so low. Win Win.
Love this build and your approach to fab work. I'm working on my own mini truck LS swap right now. I'll eventually start my own build thread, but this is what I'm working with. Hope you don't mind me posting in your awesome thread.
Truck has the ar5 so I'm going to use the Fab Bot adapter. Oh, and I'm also swapping the frame on this truck thanks to that E36 M3ty weather (road salt) you just mentioned.
In reply to Scotty Con Queso :
Oh you fancy huh? Painted the block and everything. I'll be following that build when you start the thread because small trucks are awesome and that is the last of the small trucks. I really like the AR5 Fabbot kits I wish I knew about those when I bought my trans.
What sort of issues are you having with the Alibaba remote shifter? That looked like a pretty solid solution short of a having an available mid-shift kit.
gumby (Forum Supporter) said:What sort of issues are you having with the Alibaba remote shifter? That looked like a pretty solid solution short of a having an available mid-shift kit.
There was some 3 dimensional trigonometry that I neglected. When you shift to 1-2 or 5-6 and reverse the knob on the trans side actually rotates towards that selection and doesn't stay aligned with the forward mounted selector. I'm more or less running out of patience on that part of this build and need to focus on something else right now to keep moving forward.
I managed to fully constrain the steering shaft using a couple nylon split bushings and a piece of steel tube. I also added a bunch of Thermotec heat shielding to the engine side of the firewall. I have all of the accessories on the engine, new rear main seal and oil pan gasket. Next up reinstall engine and transmission, pull the bed to do fuel and brake lines and then wiring.
So I missed that 5/25 goal I set a while back for starting the engine but I got the engine back in and almost fully dressed. The changes I made to the passenger side header have made it actually to insert or remove without removing the entire engine first so that's good.
Minor win, I pulled the battery that came with this truck out of storage and put a charger on it and it seems to be holding a charge. It's 6 years old and spent close to 5 of those years unmaintained in my various garages so I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being garbage.
I welded V bands and O2 sensors on the headers last night which means they are done now. I just have to wrap them in the itchy stuff before they go back on. I sprung for a nice stainless tight radius 2.5" bend for the passenger side header so now that header doesn't go below the frame rails. Hopefully the exhaust won't scrape too bad now.
This stuff better work well because it is a huge pain in the ass to install.
Starting to layout the fuel system. The rails have -8 inlets and I'm going to be running -6 line from the tank to the rails. I had a -8 to -12 union and a -6 to -10 union so I chopped those apart and welded the two sides I needed back together. That should work well enough.
I fabbed up a hot air intake out of an old Autozone cone filter from my first car and some 4" aluminum tube.
Got the trans installed last night which involved a lot of anger and grumbling at myself. I installed a new water temp sensor, headers and the driveshaft today during lunch. I need to cut an access panel in the trans tunnel so I can get to the shifter in the future.
The plan is to drop the truck down, roll it outside, pull the bed and roll it back in to do the brake lines, fuel lines, exhaust and to revise the rear suspension slightly. I'm going to pull the springs off of the coilovers, reinstall the rear leaf spring and add bump stops to all of the coilovers since travel is limited.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
many pages back, you stated that the C5 magnesium 17x8.5 weighs about 16 lbs. did you actually weigh them, or is that number pulled from some other source?
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to RacetruckRon :
many pages back, you stated that the C5 magnesium 17x8.5 weighs about 16 lbs. did you actually weigh them, or is that number pulled from some other source?
I pulled that number from the C5 section on Corvetteforum I did confirm that number buy weighing myself on a bathroom scale and then weighing myself holding two front Magnesium wheels to get a decent average. I think this might have been the source of that claim. Linkerino
Thanks! I found a square set of Mg fronts, on the fence about buying because they're more $ than thin-spokes or wagon wheels. But I berkeleying *hate* the wagons. Not even close to what a corvette wheel should look like.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Do it! The mag wheels are hawt and then you can ramble about metallurgy for extra science points.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Could you post a pic of the backside of one of your mags please?
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I searched through my pictures, nothing. I'll jack up the truck and yank a wheel off for you tomorrow.
RacetruckRon said:In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I searched through my pictures, nothing. I'll jack up the truck and yank a wheel off for you tomorrow.
no longer necessary, thanks! I found what i was looking for, just had to alter my search terms a bit.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Sounds good. Is a 17x8.5 going to hold enough rubber for Monzora?
Now there's a sight I haven't seen in a couple years... Core support welded back into place. Radiator mounting is next up on the list and shouldn't be too bad. I might have to change the intake system again but that's small potatoes.
Interior all seam sealed and painted.
And now since the core support is back in place that means we can put the hood on, latch the hood just to get jazzed up and take some pictures of it. I'm need to get a couple friends to come over this weekend to help pull the bed and tip it upright in the corner.
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