broke the Vette on friday

84rzv500r

84rzv500r

Knows just enough to be dangerous!
Joined
Mar 23, 2008
Messages
390
Location
Big Pine Key, FL
So i am minding my own business short shiftin the old girl up a hill on RT15 South... BANG!!!

42 year old frame meets 500+ hp and 600 lbft of torque... With wide sticky tires = broken... Never fear.. redneck engineering is here.... Me and the boys fabbed up a new differential mount... Cranked in some pinion angle preload... With a new poly bushing... And wala... Oh I forgot to mention.$500 worth of spare telescoping halfshafts to replace the damaged but rebuildable ones... Wheel hop cured and back on the road again...

it is good to have spares when you build one offs... LOL :smash::smash::smash::smash:

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Looks like the frame held up pretty well. With the flimsiness of some of these frames, you could have ripped out half of that crossmember!

I'm still waiting for some enterprising aftermarket company to come up with a CV shaft kit. If they're being made for Lotus Elans, of which about 10,000 were built, surely there's a market for the 540,000+ C3s out there.
 
to be honest I kinda expected this failure... the two pieces of 2x2x0.120 tie the transmission xmember to to the W brace that mounts the seats and triangulates the center of the car in the horizontal plane of the frame... and the rear xmember.

I have the components to add two 1" dia links form the bottom strut rod mount to those 2x2 members and allow for the preloading of the differential housing....

the new mount I made out of a 0.125 thick washer and some 0.100 thick sheet that i plasma cut out to overlap the existing bracket and wrap around the washer to make a new cup...

now that I have a lift I guess I should build them...:D
 
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here is a better pic of the brace... It also holds the seat frames

Im gonna weld in the drive shaft loop this weekend... This ties the the forward ends together and bolts to the removable portion of the transmission mount...
 
I would like a clearer pic of that last post. This looks suspiciously like my super-secret frame stiffening project. :suspicious:
 
Thats all I can find right now... lots of pics of fabrication but not much of the completed setup... most likely cause i am rarely ever done modifying anything... :bonkers::bonkers:

I will put it on the lift and get some more pics so you can compare it to your super secret design :twitch::twitch::twitch:

The primary purpose of the structure was to hold the seats and the seat belts... as it evolved it was able to also stiffen the frame, mount the ebrake pulley and carry the drive shaft safety loop. And as I said before provide for a mounting point for my torque arms/traction bar

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Last edited:
Sam Cogley said:
I'm still waiting for some enterprising aftermarket company to come up with a CV shaft kit. If they're being made for Lotus Elans, of which about 10,000 were built, surely there's a market for the 540,000+ C3s out there.
Click to expand...

Never knew anyone was making such a thing, can't help but wonder why no one is doing this for vettes yet?!?!

Is it because in stock form the half shaft is a stressed unit?

lotus-d-shaft-03-illust.jpg
 
I'm not racing, so just what would be the advantage of a CV joint for the rear of our C3s.....??? the angle of the dangle just don't seem like it makes much diff....:bonkers::devil:
 
mrvette said:
I'm not racing, so just what would be the advantage of a CV joint for the rear of our C3s.....??? the angle of the dangle just don't seem like it makes much diff....:bonkers::devil:
Click to expand...

Overall they're harder to mess up than something like a slip axle. It's well-developed, robust technology that can take a pounding. Obviously, an upper link would be required to run them, but using the axle itself as the upper control arm always struck me as a rather stupid idea anyway.
 
mrvette said:
I'm not racing, so just what would be the advantage of a CV joint for the rear of our C3s.....??? the angle of the dangle just don't seem like it makes much diff....:bonkers::devil:
Click to expand...

Don't forget that the angle of the dangle, is multiplied by the mass of the ass.
These traditional calculations are best done on slide rules.
 
68/70Vette said:
mrvette said:
I'm not racing, so just what would be the advantage of a CV joint for the rear of our C3s.....??? the angle of the dangle just don't seem like it makes much diff....:bonkers::devil:
Click to expand...

Don't forget that the angle of the dangle, is multiplied by the mass of the ass.
These traditional calculations are best done on slide rules.
Click to expand...

That's a SLIPSTICK to you young one.....

:harhar:
 
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