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Since Lights Out back in February we have been steadily working on the 84. Couple of things are at play.
1. We received a 25lb weight break from the Limited 235 class promoter. Taking our legal weight from 2950lbs to 2925lbs.
2. The DXP Street promoter killed the class as a stand alone, so from here on out we can only race in DXP trim combined with L235.
I got the great idea to build a new rear subframe. The factory aluminium subframe is pretty massive. I figured it would be a good place to lose that 25lbs. I bent up some 1.25" .065 wall chromoly and fabricated the mounting brackets so my new subframe would bolt right up to the factory locations. Turned out pretty decent. Tge design I came up with is excellent, my execution is passable and welding barely passable. I really need to spend more time on my TIG skills, espc before doing work like this but practice time has ben difficult to find.
Next on the list was moving weight further forward. Nothing exciting here really. Tore the bumper assembly off and MIG welded some reinforcement plates to the crash bar and hung one of my 25lb ballast bars off it. This is literally as far forward and as low as you can put ballast on a C4. I still have another 25lb bar in the front crossmember.
I also got my new Penske 7500 front shocks custom built by Chris Bell at Kinetic Engineering. These are beautiful pieces. Chris is the best shock builder/tuner in the country and did my rear Penske few yrs ago..... We had to build some new lower mounts as we wanted to lower the car as much as possible and the way the 84 has that plate assembly and the lower Arm has a big deep pockets under it made things easy. I copied a shock mount design I found pics of that some hot rod suspension swap/fab place in Ca makes.... I tried to just buy theirs but couldn't get them on the phone. Out of business I guess or temp closed from COVID. Last thing on the front end was we replaced the upper arms with the SPC fabricated arms.
Lowered the car. We did this with a combination of less front and rear spring rate and the dropped front lower mounts. It's not slammed like a Pro Mod but it's pretty darn low now. Changed the IC from 53 out 12 high to 51 out 9 high..... This along with the new shocks should help with the wheelstanding.
End result is 2906lbs with 50lbs of ballast. Big loss as we were 2955lbs in Feb. Still 53% front weight. Adding another 25lbs in the front crossmember to make legal weight... Pretty happy with that. We should be racing again in July.
Will
Turned out pretty decent. Tge design I came up with is excellent, my execution is passable and welding barely passable. I really need to spend more time on my TIG skills, espc before doing work like this but practice time has ben difficult to find.
Don't worry about the welds. Just do what I do. The next time you want to post a picture of something you've welded just take the picture from 10 feet away. It will look AMAZING!
Curious about the SPC arms, I usually see them on road racing cars.
Still looks like a few pounds of rubber on the rear quarters! lol
To tell the truth, I was frustrated with taking the factory upper arms apart to install new bushings. The lowers were super easy but the upper pulled most of the threads off the cross shaft even heating the nut up..... I could fix it or buy a new factory arm (which was pretty expensive on Ebay) and risk it again, I just bought the SPC arms andnew Moog ball joints. Way more expensive but I figured that I deserved to use the "easy button" on the one nice part someone actually mfgrs for these cars. The SPC arms were super easy to setup. Only complaint is the grade 5 hardware that is suppled, at these prices they should come with better......
Lol! For sure I need to scrape the rubber off..... This car is getting quite light. I'm up to 75ish lbs of ballast to make 2925lbs..... I feel like theres at least another 50lbs left in the car with a rewire. My brother (245lbs) and myself (220lbs) could both stand to loose some weight as drivers. Then there is the VFN hood and front bumper for even more weight off but of course with drag racing it's a game of getting weight in and out of the right areas and thats going to take weight off the front..... maybe this winter I'll get to the rewire and VFN stuff but I'm happy where the car is currently. Someday I'd like it to be super light for non class racing activities which have abundant opportunities in my area....
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More changes to drop weight on the 84
