The Official H-Body Internet Community

if you or anyone else has any helpful suggestions or comments I greatly appreciate them!

just one,, not sure if it's helpful or not?
but here it goes,,,,
HURRY UP ALREADY
you are making great progress and this thing is going to be WICKED!!!!!

Where are you going to run your car when it's finished? I had looked at a drag monza that was for sale locally to me last summer but no knowing what tracks are in Alberta and figuring mission raceway was too far of a drive for me I passed on it. I know it was traded for a Harley and is still somewhere in my area.

Hi guys, well it's been raining a lot here lately which is good but not so much in Fort McMurray apparently. The schedule for re-entry into FMM has been released and is going ahead even though some badly damaged areas have been delayed due to high arsenic levels and other chemicals found on the ground. This is from the burning houses and cars etc. and they are spraying a binding agent used at landfills to control the toxic dust. As far as my vega goes,,well I opened a can of worms when we mounted the mock-up engine! The headers hit the crossmember, the motor mounts are a little off [partly due to the reinforcement plates I added to the frame], and I'm not entirely sure the engine is sitting as far back as it should. This car has had engine swaps [more than two?] before I got it and some of the reference points for mounting the engine are a little "off" shall we say. It also had a lot of gobbed on, hacked off, welded bits, random holes and things hammered to fit. I want to approach this install as cautiously as possible because I have already done the jump in and go thing too many times and been bit on the butt for my trouble! However even with all the adventures I'm happy happy as its starting to look a little bit like what I have wanted for years! Your comments and encouragement are awesome and it is so cool to see others that enjoy this as much as I do!!! I have a question I would like to have the answer to as well, what is everyone using for the lower steering column bearing? I have been scrounging around for some uhmw plastic but no luck so far. Thanks for the support!

Oh , I almost forgot about Patrick's question! Well, I'm gonna drive it on the street of course. If I have to go racing there is a very nice drag strip just south of Edmonton.

Not sure what bearing your talking about,, do you have a picture of it? I might have one,, I had several columns and parts

I think I have come up with a solution for my steering column lower bearing. I removed the factory plastic sleeve thingy [cant really call it a bushing because it fits so loosely] and measured the inside of the column tube and the outside of the steering shaft. The shaft is one inch outside diameter and the column tube is one and seven eighths inside diameter. Since I live in farm country many hardware stores stock bushings and other farmer type spare parts so I went to the home hardware in Redwater to see what they had. What I found was that nobody had a bushing or bearing that was the exact size, but what they did have was a bushing that was 1" ID by 1 and 1/2" OD and another bushing that was 1 and 1/2 ID by 1 and 7/8 OD. The smaller bushing was a very tight fit into the larger one so thirty dollars later I was on my way home with my finds. At home I cleaned up the steering shaft and tube, drove the smaller bushing into the larger one and drilled the bushing and tube for a grease fitting. I then drove the bushing[s] over the shaft and into the tube. At this point I was feeling pretty smart until I realized that the shaft fit a little tighter than I wanted and then I realized that during the driving in of the bushing I had also driven the collapsible portion of the steering column into itself. So now I had to take the column down to it's bare essentials and use a 2x4 to drive the column back out to the correct length, luckily the steering shaft didn't collapse as well! I also took this time to adjust the ID of the bushing with a die grinder and sanding mop so it fit the shaft better. So to complete this long story it only took me about 8 hours to fix the column and now on to the next adventure tomorrow. Just not sure what, so many choices!!

these cars seem to fight us all the way,, i'm still messing with mine.. I take 2 steps forward and before I know it, I've worked my way backwards 5 steps

Hi guys, it's been a while since I have posted and mostly due to just being busy! I have gotten a couple of things semi sorted on the vega such as figuring out the lower control arms for coil overs, getting the correct front springs [350 lb ] sorting out motor mount position, door bars etc. None of this is that exciting just slogging along . However the best news is that we have aqquired the property next door which has a nice sized garage with a eight foot by three foot pit. The roof is pretty much toast but I am hoping to install a new roof next spring and in the meantime if it stays cold,, well frozen water won't drip . As soon as I can get the vega out of it's snowbank and setup in the garage I will post some more pics.