Here is the promised body on the buck picture:

I finally got the rear caliper mounting bracket clean enough to start painting it blue to match the font calipers. However, it was raining tonight, so I could not finish painting them. The weather looks good tomorrow, so hopefully they will be done tomorrow.

The front suspension is all torqued down except for the lower control arms and the tie rods. The lower control arms are not torqued down, because they need to be torqued down under load. And the tie rods are not torqued down, as their position will have to be adjusted for the front alignment.

I need to make a trip to the auto parts store and buy the 84 Jeep MC, and preflared brake lines. I need to order my flexible brake lines from Summit, and I need order an adjustable MC push rod. I should have ordered this stuff a while ago, since this is what I'm supposed to work on after I finish the rear suspension. In the mean time, I decided to drill out some more rivit holes and hold them temporarily in place with some cleco's. Notice the passenger side foot box is all cleco'ed up.

The other big event of the weekend was... Cutting off the legs of my body buck and moving the body into the back yard. With the help of Neil, Jonathan, and my neighbor Brad, we got everything done in relatively short order. I'll take a picture in the morning with some sunlight and post it later. I actually like the body buck lower to the ground, as it looks more like a car now then it did when it was 4 feet higher in the air.

Loosely attached the steering shaft assembly. It looks like it goes together pretty easy, so it should get tightened down later this week. Tightened down the pedal box, the gas pedal is not tightly fastened per the instructions. It is actually held up with an elastic and some masking tape.

The pedal box story: The first time I tightened everything down the brake pedal was obviously not perpendictular. So, short of pending the brake and clutch pedals I shimmed the left side of the pedal box with 3 washers. While this straightened out the pedals, it shifted the bolt holes for both the master cylinder and the front pedal box mounting holes. This required a little bit of "persuasion", but in the end it all went together.

The sterring shaft story: The lower pillow block bearing didn't want to fit over the lower steering shaft. So, I had to clean/polisth the lower 5 inches of the shaft so it would slip on. Now, the question becomes, what do I do with the rest of the steering shaft? I'm thinking about polishing it, and clear coating it. Since it will be one of those things that you can see when the hood is up, I should try to make it look pretty.

And I guess it's worth mentioning, that I can turn the steering shaft by hand and it moves the spindle as it should. I need to order my wheels soon, but the wife is not too happy with my spending habits since she is trying to budget/buy Christmas presents.

With Neil's help I got the passenger side rear upper and lower control arms installed. We also got the brake face plate mounted. The pedals just need to be clear coated then they can finally be permanently mounted to the car.

I got the drivers side IFS bracket and spindle mounted.

My Factory Five parts came in!!! I started cleaning up the IFS bracket to be painted. I also, now have the IRS spacers I need to finish the rear. The only part that didn't come was the grease fitting for the upper ball joint. I'm just going to go to Lowes and try to source one myself.

I picked up some more caliper paint so I could paint the rear calipers to match the front ones. I cleaned up the old donor rear caliper mounting brackets some more in preperation for getting painted. Looks like tomorrow is going to be another paint day.

I've done some more wheel research and I'm closer to making a decision. I'm going to call a couple of places that sell wheels and see if they can't hook me up with some American Racing Hopster wheels. Here is a picture of some hopsters on a real car.

Not much going on, waiting on parts as usual. Here is a picture of the painted steering rack. The camera flash makes it alot brighter blue than it actual is, but o well, I'm too lazy to get enough light on it to not need the flash.

I've been spending the better part of today and yesterday researching wheels. It sucks but I think I'm getting close to a decision. More on that later.

I painted all the spacers and both upper control arm ball joints (since they rust if left alone) blue. I think the spacers look alot better painted. I'm pretty happy with the way it all turned out. Here is a picture.



Back to the wheels. I think unless someone beats me over the head telling me how ugly these wheels are, these are the ones! The plan is to run 17x8" wheels in the front and 17x9.5" in the rear. For tires I'm planning on 245/45/17 front and 275/40/17 for the rear. There are two things that are keeping me from ordering them right now. One, I'm not 100% sure the correct backspacing for my suspension setup. Two, I need to find a good place to order them from.