Hey Kirk,

Sorry it's taken so long to get the height measurements.. I just kept forgetting!

Front = 22 5/8"
Rear = 21 7/8"

 

Nice job, I see you prefer fly by wire too. I went out of my way to source fbw parts for my 5.3 build

 

I just like DBW for sure! It's easier to do cable TB, but this way it's all wiring and no extra holes in the firewall or a mechanical pivot.. I have the DBW pedal bolted to an aluminum plate, which is then separately bolted to the firewall with standoff spacers so I can totally fine tune the location of the pedal in all directions relative to the brake pedal.. it only took 2 tries to get the pedal exactly where I want it!

 

Since I've received a bunch of positive comments on the ride height of the car, and with Kirk's ride height question, I thought I'd post here my suspension fiddlings from this afternoon.

I jacked the car up level and supported it on 2x4 "stands", but with the front wheels on swivel caster'd dollies, and cycled thru the steering to take clearance measurements and find steering angle for full lock both left and right. At the ride height I have been driving all of 2015 (front fender lip 22 5/8" and rear fender lip 21 7/8"), the steering angle was ~21* before the tire outer sidewall would rub on the fender inner lip.

I then jacked up the car the required amount (only 0.25" higher) to achieve full mechanical steering lock at the same point that the tire outer sidewall touched the fender inner lip. This only improved the steering angle to ~25* both direction lock-to-lock limited by the steering box.

This is all with untrimmed fender inner lips, using a 12.7:1 power steering box with [EDITED: long 6.0" slow ratio manual steering arms and short 5.25" manual pitman/idler arms].

The wheels used for all of these measurements are 235/45/18 tires on 18x8" rims with equivalent backspacing of 4.75" ("equivalent backspace" value takes into account the 0.75" aluminum slip-on spacer I have on it).

Here are all the measurements I took for the "2015 driving ride height" and "raised" conditions. There's a bunch of info in here but it does include the tire clearances for the 235/45/18 tires to the subframe for the listed steering angles:

 

Joe I finally caught up on your build...that's a ton or great work! What's next for the Nova? cheers

Dave

By the way what actual steering box are you using?

 

Hey Dave,

Good to talk to you again! How goes the Camaro?

What steering box do I have? Good question... I think it's a 1st gen Camaro 12:7:1 box, but that was ordered off of eBay probably a good 10 years ago so who knows if that's accurate.

What's next for the Nova is a whole shitload of things that I've needing to do for a while, like rewiring the speedo output from ECU to make it actually work, remake exhaust in 3" or 3.5" stainless oval from downpipe to rear quarters, finish my modifications of the front bumper brackets to make the bumper level, get a high-flow BOV, grease all suspension pivots, rewire oil cooler fan relay, and a whole bunch of other stuff that are small or that I'm forgetting.

Of course I ignore all that as I have already been doing, and I'm gearing up to stuff 275's on the front. For my ride height I simply can't bump the wheels outboard any more, so I'll widen inwards 1.5" bringing the rim up to 9.5" total width. This will make the rim inner lip interfere with the outer tie rod end. I'm prettymuch mimicking the Ridetech TruTurn by using flipped G-body steering arms that raise the outer TRE's up 2". Of course this means the inner TRE's need to go up as well, but I also want to minimize the bumpsteer so I'm making a bumpsteer gauge to check. I'll tack-weld a plate onto the top of the drag link, and clamp the inner TRE in various new X & Y locations to test which yields the least bumpsteer at my low ride height, with the new G-body steering arms. Once a location is found, I'll weld 3/4" plate to the drag link, add a center reinforcement ridge to the top of the drag link and extra gusset plates etc to ensure strength, then drill & ream the inner TRE tapers.

Since the outer TRE goes up 2", of course this puts it exactly where the caliper is. My 13" rotors are getting worn, and I've wanted a bit of a step up in braking power especially since I'll have more front rubber, so I'll kill two birds with one stone.. make a new half caliper bracket for the Wilwoods to not only rotate up to clear the raised TRE, but also radially out for the bigger rotor. Phewf that's a lot of work!

Initial measuring of what was in my last post..



Front of tire clearance at full mechanical box lock..



Back of tire clearance at full mechanical box lock..



Back of tire clearance at full mechanical box lock..







Start of the bumpsteer gauge, still need to make a T-bar platform for the two dial indicators needed, as well as accurately scribe lines onto the aluminum guide plates...

 

Do you think it's possible to just swap the plates left to right and relocate the calipers to the front of the wheels and not have to make new brackets and all?

 

That should be totally possible since on these F & X body cars the drum brake spindle is the same unit for left and right sides.. however I'm not a huge fan of the front-mounted caliper look (some Nissans have it) as well as it not solving my want-bigger-rotors issue.

 

Right, I guess I'm always under the mindset that I want to accomplish as simple a task as possible in the shortest amount of time, so I guess I may use this approach on my car when I get to moving the tie rod for my 275's.

 

Wide body. You know you want to.

 

But scrub radius! Also.. that means I'd have to touch the body for bodywork.. and I'm hastily avoiding that task.

I'll leave my aspirations of widebody awesomeness to a future project.. an e30 bimmer done up boxy 80's DTM style like this Lancia was...

 

Do you know how much scrub you have now? Considering the combined effects of SAI, camber, and tire/wheel sizes/offsets, I'd be interested to know where your current steering axis intersects the ground relative to the center of your contact patch.

 

I started plotting out points the other night.. will continue that tonight or on the weekend.



I'm curious what the scrub is too. David Pozzi posted that the SAI for this front suspension (1st gen F-body & X-body) is 8.75*. Apparently the convergence point for the lower control arms on our Nova's might be different than on the Camaro's.. someone was measuring the differences between a 1st gen Camaro subframe and a Nova subframe and noted that the angles and locations of the pivot holes for the LCA's were different.. David Pozzi thought that maybe this was because the convergence point was designed to be at the rear diff center, and since a Nova is longer this meant the LCA lower pivot axle is at a lower angle relative to the center plane of the car. If true this would be beneficial for us Nova guys since the "67-69 Camaro and 68-74 Nova" control arms are likely designed off a Camaro subframe, giving our Nova's more static caster and dynamic caster gain when the Camaro arms are used on our Nova subframes. Anyway who knows if this is actually true or even makes a difference..

 

Got the bumpsteer gauge dial indicator guide plates scribed and leveled. After the cutting and drilling of everything, and bolting the two 8mm aluminum plates to the 2"x1/4" angle iron support, one plate was only out of parallel by 0.05" from +3" to -3" of wheel travel as scribed, and the other plate was 0.010" difference which I bench vise flexed back to about 0.003" total out-of-flat.. this will be more than good enough.

For supporting the two dial indicators, I found drill rod at work that I'll mount both dial indicators to, then mount to a single magnetic dial indicator stand which is stuck on a big heavy steel block as the base.

 

Finished the bumpsteer gauge today and gave it a whirl.. it was pretty sturdy so I'm quite confident in the measurements +/-0.005". I measured a shitload of toe out (total, not just one side) under bump... 3/4" from ride height to full 2.5" shock compression!! Even at 1/2" compression from ride height it toe'd out 0.140"! Needless to say, this will need to be addressed. I also scraped the internets for as much camber/bumpsteer data as I could find for 1st gen Camaro's. Got some good stock 1st gen Camaro data form David Pozzi's site, but I found a slew of contradictory data on Ridetech's site.. every different setup they measured toe's IN under bump and not out like what I measured as well as David's measurements of his '67 and a '69. I'll just let the graphs below speak for themselves, and some pics at the very bottom showing my bumpsteer setup at full compression, ride height, and full droop [EDIT: this must be due to where the TruTurn bolt-on drag link plate vs knuckle steering arm relocate locations end up relative to each other.. I bet the outer TRE end is moved up less than the inner TRE, resulting in a toe-in conditon as wheel travel is bumped up].

 

Yup I'd say you've been up to a lot! Nice work by the way...I'll bet that thing Nova hauls ***.Me,I've just pulled the engine and am going through it to see what I'll keep.Looks like just the bottom end will make the cut.New heads/intake/cam/lifters,etc. and maybe get the T-56 in before May...that's the goal but it ran solid all summer and the suspension worked really good for what little work I did...it's winter project season so I'll be busy!
We'll have to see about getting out for a rip this summer for sure...cheers

Dave

 

Do you have any sort of build thread for it on any other forum?

Absolutely have to go for some cruises in the summer when you have yours back together! We'll have to gang up on Marktainium to convince him to order the rebuild parts for his T56 Magnum soon even tho the exchange rate is horrendous right now.. he needs to be in on the summer fun too!

 

No build thread Joe...my progress is slow at the moment but if all goes well the T-56 and new motor will be up and running by May.Just ordered a bunch of engine parts this evening (the Canadian Peso hurts) it had to be done.This exchange rate sucks big time but I've found a few bargains here and there...but it's still brutal

 

Finally made it through the thread. Thanks again Joe

 

No worries Jesse.. glad that the info/experience I've gained and shared can help others.

In other news, I found a video from September of a little fun...