I cleaned up the wiper blade holders. They were painted black over blue overspray... but I think for a 71 they should be silver.

I found some pictures from Alan71 and his were black so not sure.....

 

I honestly can't remember whether the factory wiper bodies were painted black or just bare stainless. But, those look outstanding! And since you won't be driving in the rain for anyone to actually see the wipers, who cares?

 

good point, i am overthinking as normal 😀

 

No you don't overthink Craig. You wouldn't be where you are now without overthinking. And that is a good thing. We see too many builds where the corners have been cut.
As is the moto of Singer (the one of Porsche fame):



Keep up the awesome work!

 

Been a while but I have been doing small bits every few days.

Had some noises in the rear suspension that I was tracking down and I needed some shorter strut bars to get the rear wheels more upright.

Here is the new version of the Vansteel tow hook







Am almost ready to get a new exhaust built then found I had misplaced one of the v-band exhaust fittings so had to order one more from the US. Just waiting for it to ship to California so i can then ship it down here ...

Current exhaust now fouls the strut rod bracket so its hanging low at the moment while I do some shake down drives.

 

I purchased the same tow hook from Van Steel.
looks nice, I wish they designed one for the front.
Lets just hope we never have to use them on the Hwy.

 

yes hopefully we don’t need it.

I am thinking of leaving the spare carrier off, not sure you could easily get to the hook with it on anyway. Need to have a closer look.

 

I think the spare carrier really cleans up the space behind the rear end and may even assist with air flow.
If the tires I run on my 73 won't fit in the carrier, I won't run a spare, but would utilize the space to store a small tool kit, air compressor, tire plug kit and a few spare ignition parts, etc...

 

I purchased one of the Antique Automobile Radios.

This is my second one. The first ended up with a dry joint on the rear board that kept coming back so I decided to upgrade to the latest with Bluetooth.



Remounted centre cluster after updating all bulbs to yellow LED's that look fairly stock but a bit brighter.

 

Adjusted the wipers as per the AIM and they seem to go into a good stop position.

 

I got the new exhaust system fitted yesterday.

2-1/2" mandrel bent.



Did a good job of keeping it tucked up under the body.

 

Wow, That exhaust looks really good.
Did you have it custom built or was it ordered to fit?

 

it was custom built. Matt used 22 mandrel bends cut into pieces cut and welded with straight pipe to build it.

9 hours of tig welding on the bench once it was all tacked in position.

a couple of minor changes i will get him to do but he did a fantastic job.

 

That's tucked up really nicely , everything is looking good
M

 

Cleaned up the frame behind the side rocker panels before they went on as well as fitted sill plugs and sills.

 

The weatherstip on the passenger door was coming a bit loose so I took it off and cleaned off all the old glue etc.

Used Isopropyl alcohol to soften it then plastic scrapers to remove most and kerosine to clean the last bits off. What a pain that was.

 

Today my shorter 2" helper springs turned up for my rear Vansteel coilovers.

The normal springs Vansteel use are 9" but it did not go low enough. Dan from Vansteel got me some 8" springs but its not fully captive on full drop so I need a helper spring to be fully compliant.

However the Hypertech and Eibach ones are 4" and something like 4 lbs. When they fully compress they still take up more than 1/2”

So I found Faulkner spring from the UK 2" height 2.25" ID so will drop them in and should be able to lower the back a little more.

 

For those with Vansteel rear coilovers I have been doing some testing. This will be of no interest to most people but I documented it anyway :-)

I like the Vette fairly low and found the original 9" coils they supply not able to go as low as I wanted so Dan from Vansteel supplied me with a set of Hyperco 8" 500lb springs.

bluegtp had mentioned in other threads that he also swapped to lower springs.

When we go from 9" to 8” spring we gain 25mm but the 8” spring is not fully captive at full droop. Possibly not a big issue for some but I think having the spring captive in all situations is safer.

Dan provided 4” Hyperco helper spring to take up the stock and together with an Eibach coupler you can run both springs.

The 4” Hyperco helper spring is 15mm compressed + 2mm for the coupler and we have lost 17mm or our 25mm gain giving me a theoretical drop of 7mm when going from 9” to 8” springs.

If I take out the bearing plates at bottom I gain 5mm as well.

However I noticed something interesting and confirmed it when I had the shocks on the bench and swapped the helper spring between bottom and top.

The minimum gap between coupler and bottom spring base is 21mm
The minimum gap between coupler and top cap is 14mm





So when I had the 4" at bottom it never fully compressed as the coupler was touching the spring base before it could fully compress the helper spring. They looked compressed but I found this out when I fitted my 2" Faulkner helper springs and saw what was happening.

I fitted the helper spring to the top as it should fully compress in that situation and refitted to the car.

I also removed the bearing plate setup from the bottom as I won’t adjust them with weight on them to gain maximum drop,

Theoretically a drop of 7mm + 5mm = 12mm, or about half an inch from the 9" springs.

Much nicer stance than before.







So to go any lower I need to machine down the retainer lip on one side of the coupler and/or the coilover top seat and fit a 4" spring that compresses to less than 15mm. I found Faulkner in the UK have one and it goes down to 8mm so I ordered a set to have a play.

Probably low enough at present but I would like to have a little adjustment from bottom to play with.

 

looking at the gap between the tyre and the fender. looks plenty low to me. not certain of your ground clearance. but 100mm is the spec here in Australia.

 

So, are you saying that by changing out the springs from the 9 inch to the 8 inch, plus the additional work you did, you achieved a total of 1/2 inch lower stance in the rear?
Are you concerned about any contact between the top of the tire and the lip of the wheel well?
The stance is very nice.
I might need to contact Dan.
Thanks for costing me more $$$$$$