This is really just a quick blog with some photos to show a little progress (very little). I’ve been mocking up the steering and the brake lines to make sure that everything fits before I tighten everything together. A couple of things that I would love to have some advice on, however, are the proper placement for brake lines and the correct angle for the steering tie rods.
Looking from the top down
As you can see, there is a definite criss-cross angle to the tie rods as the approach the center, and I’m not sure if it is supposed to be angled in this way or not. Also, taking a look from the front shows that the center is raised above the end heights:
Now there’s an apex
There is still room for adjustment on the tie rods, however, so this can be sorted out. I’d just like some advice as to what it should look like when it’s finished so that I know what to aim for.
Brake Lines
The brake lines have been someone of a concern, too, but it turns out that with a proper brake line bending tool it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had feared it would be.
Because of the fact that I installed a dual master cylinder instead of the original single, the pre-fabricated brake line from the DMC to the front flex hose came about 6″ short:
Don’t ya hate it when that happens, guys?
Turns out I made a huge problem out of not much of one, as I thought I’d have to go find someone to cut a brake line to size, flare it, or go buy the tools myself. As it turns out, I was just able to go to a decent auto parts store and buy a pre-flared 8″ 3/16″ brakeline.
Mocking up the Ross steering box also helped a great deal, because I was able to ben the line around the form of the steering box, which in turn made the 8″ length of the new line not seem like overkill.
Following the lines
According to the original photos from Badger’s deconstruction (none of which were useful for reprinting here), the brake line originally snakes behind the engine’s support. So, I mocked up the support and started rebending the line around it. The tool I had didn’t get very close to the end of the line, though, so there’s about 2.5-3″ of slight arc before the bend actually took hold.
The copper line was bent so that I could specifically clip it to the frame (there is a small hole near the bend), to prevent it from moving while driving.
Is this sufficient?
I wanted to keep things as fix-able as possible. The 8″ section only cost me a little more than $2, so if I messed this up somehow it’s not going to break the bank to get new replacement lines. However, I want to make sure that the logic works, so if there is anyone who sees some egregious error, please let me know.
Comments
That is some really pretty work. I hope it works as well as it looks!