It’s been a while since I’ve made any updates mainly because there hasn’t been much drama. The new front end has been working out well, although the toe being off has chewed up the tires a little bit. I managed to DNF an event (PE6) due to the failure of the right side axle and I’ve also had a failure of the left side axle that required replacement.
One thing that I continue to fight is leaking Syncromesh from the left axle. For some reason, the axles I get from O’Reilly will not seat and leak like crazy, but the Advance axles seem to seal up and seat (after taking some of the shaft off to clear the bevel in the OBX). I though the axle that was in the car was from Advance, so I took the “extra” back to O’Reilly and exchanged it. As it turns out, I needed to go to Advance for that and I still might. For right this second, I’m going to leave it as-is with a top-off and just keep an eye on it. I may try shaving the axle a little bit more to see if that gets it to seat, although it doesn’t make sense that it would leak even if it’s not seating (which it isn’t). I really am starting to think that the O’Reilly axles are of a slightly smaller diameter which prevents from them sealing on the axle seal. Another possible fix would be to put a Redi-Sleeve on the axle to firm it up against the seal.
Another problem that developed was a lot of smoking from oil spraying all over the engine. Because I don’t really want to burn the car down, I installed a second catch can on the left side of the engine to try to capture the oil. That way I can also see just how much I’m losing. And it should keep the car from catching on fire, which is a good thing.
The cooling fan is having an issue as well. Actually, it’s the switch, not the fan — if the switch gets jostled a bit, the fan cuts out. That switch is probably the wrong size and shape for the dash, so I bought a new switch and I’m going to make a panel to put where the radio used to be. I’ve got some thin, textured steel sheets left over that I am going to cut to fit and then bolt on. On that panel I plan to put switches for the LED light bar, the gauge dimmer, and the cooling fan.
Right. LED light bar. I’ve been wanting to have some super-bright lights on the car and there’s going to be a night event coming up, so it seems like a good time to get a light bar. I found a 32″ light bar that should fit between the headlights and slightly above the turn signals. I’ve got some square tubing that I’ll use to make a mounting bar which will attach to the mount points for the little grille bar that used to be between the signals. It will probably need a little more securing, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’d like to try to figure out a tool-less mounting method and a trailer connector for power so I can take the light bar off easily (and maybe set it up so I could mount it on the van or something!).
Additionally, I’ve changed up the toe a bit. I’m not 100% sure how straight my strings were (but I spent a ton of time measuring trying to get the right), but as best as I could tell the right tire was almost perfect while the left tire had about 10 degrees of toe-in. I think they’re both where they need to be, but the car is still up on the trailer right now, so I can’t check yet.
On the gauge front, I finally got the replacement temp sender for the oil temp gauge installed, so that works now. I also tightened the connection for the oil pressure gauge. The third switch on my new panel is going to be a switch to dim the gauges — they each have an orange wire (I think) that switch the gauges to “night mode” with less brightness when that orange wire has +12V. The bright blue gauges right up against the windshield make it a bit hard to see at night, so that should help a lot.