Chuck's '83 TBird Turbo - The reanimation

[Chuck W]

What is the story on the front upper strut mounts?

I'd love to run a single 3" exhaust on my wagon when it is done, but I don't think it has any chance of fitting around the MM panhard bar setup.

The upper strut mounts are more silliness from 20-25 years ago. They were done in conjunction with reworking the front control arm mounting points to change (lower) the front roll center. The strut plates added a whole bunch of positive caster, to help with camber gain on turn. I only run about -0.25* of static camber, but the camber change on turn is really aggressive. Keeps tire wear down and a flatter contact patch when braking, but gets spicy when you turn at speed. Again, more stuff I did "because I could".

You might be surprised on the exhaust.


I needed to squeeze one of the tubes up next to the frame rail, but the main trick was limiting movement of the exhaust. None of the exhaust hangers are the "hanging type". They're all more firmly located, to keep the thing from swinging around and banging on stuff. I still have a flex section at the bottom of the downpipe.

[Chuck W]

Well, I was wrong about things being OK mechanically.
I went to reinstall the wheels/tires and discovered both inner tie rods were very loose.

Once the replacement parts showed up, I got them swapped out and the new shoes installed.






That's sorted, and now the starter (or solenoid) is deciding to act up. It starts 75% of the time, but once in a while, I turn the key and no crank. Didn't have time to investigate deeper this weekend.