Revamp the Car 2011 Front End Work

At this point my cars done a fair amount of work. We’ve fought through a lot of problems and issues and we’re down to the nitty gritty. Beyond basic bolt-ons and various items that can be swapped, the car itself is bent. We don’t know why, the car was straight in its initial creation but its finally to the point where its a problem. We started by measuring up the car in the FSM, what we found was a bent driver side shock tower. So now we’ve narrowed down some problematic areas…

- Bent shock tower

- Fuel system issues

- Wiring issues and mishaps

- Splitter needs revamping

As I sat down and made my list of what all I wanted to fix and do I realized that it was going to have to go somewhere else to have it done as I didn’t have the tools or capability to do any of this work. I put some honest thought into how bad I wanted this and how much effort I was willing to put forth and I came up with the realization that I wanted to do this on my own. Not knowing where to purchase the tools I needed I started doing my research. First I picked up a Lincoln welder (great for the beginner, good consistent little box), a Woodward Fab tube bender, a Woodward Fab bead roller and a set of dimple dies. My friend Eddie heard about what I was doing and I had mentioned to him I was on the lookout for a set of paint guns as I was going to tackle every last bit of this at my house. He said he doesn’t use his anymore and it wouldn’t be a problem for me to take them, thank you very much Eddie (they worked fantastic)!

Before we were able to do anything on the car we had to pull the shock tower straight. With the FSM at our side we knew what measurements had to be achieved. We strapped the passenger side of the car down to my truck and built a shock tower hat for the driver side shock tower. We used 2 ratchet straps and went to town.

So now the cars back on the ground and straight as she was from the factory (well, close anyways). It was time to start the upgrades. I knew that as I learned more about my car I was going to want more adjustability out of the suspension so I built these new front lower control arms and got some good practice in with the welder.

I also ordered some drop spindles for the car from Driftworks

Now that the front suspension had been mostly addressed it was time to get to work on the front end. When we pulled the shock tower out we noticed that the front lower tie bar had come loose. I’ve fought with shifting caster issues most of the year and this may be why. Not only was the tie bar almost completely separated from the car but the nuts for the tension rod brackets had all broken free inside of the frame rails. I wanted something much stronger and sturdier so this is what I came up with.

This made everything very solid and will keep the tension rods located very well, I also fixed every nut inside the frame rail at the same time. Next item to keep solid and located was the now-fragile driver side shock tower. I’ve been envisioning a very beefed up triangulated strut tower bar so I laid it out in CAD and got to work. First thing I did was calculate some angles and draw up some strut tower mounts and firewall sandwich plates. This was the result

The plates on the ends and firewall are 5/16″ thick and the tube is 1.5/8″ ‘moly, safe to say the shock towers aren’t moving anywhere. At this point I was feeling very comfortable with the progress, I’d located everything in the front end just where I wanted, so it was time to cut off the remainder of the bent up front end. I started with the wheel wells to give myself enough room to run my front downbars, it was difficult for me to want to make these next cuts haha

Next step was to match it on the other side and start testing them out with fenders attached

Perfect! My first project with the new tube bender was complete and turned out exactly as I’d had planned. From here everything started flowing together really great!

I built a tube to house the tilted radiator and put up 3/4″ 90s for headlight support, then tested the front end fitment with all the new work

Next up was to address the sheet metal issue. Having never been a fan of cars without wheel wells (gets everything very dirty, harder to diagnose issues) I started making my own tubs and finally got to play with my new bead roller

Next up was time to address the floating radiator. I started by having it prepped for the -20 AN setup and got it hard mounted. I should take a minute right now to note the amazing quality of this piece. I used an Afco Racing radiator actually sized for more of a circle track car and it fits perfectly in the 240 (for my application). The craftsmanship is amazing, it really is a wonderful piece and the price can’t be beat!

Afterwards every remaining oe sheet metal piece that needed it got stitch welded throughout the whole engine bay

In order for them to clear the new strut tower bar I had to redo the front brake lines so I took some straight tube and this is what I came up with

And that just about does it for the front end, the remainder of the work lies in paint and final install which I’ll follow up with in the next couple of installments.