Getting ready for a 4/9 test day. I took the risk of running no tender springs with my new, stiffer rates at my last test day in November and this is the result on a rear corner:
Did not expect that to happen to that extreme. Going through video you can actually hear the spring re-seat at about the 21-22 second and 26 second marks:
Click for video
That ushered the order of some tender springs. Getting tender springs setup piece meal is a more expensive journey than I had anticipated, but then I stumbled on these from the land of Miata:
https://supermiata.com/dual-spring-kit-xida.aspx
Two tender springs (150 lbs/in), two needle thrust bearings, and HPDE spring couplers for $115 + shipping. It's a great deal. The only caveat is that they're 2.25" ID, which not many S-chassis people run. Luckily, I had just switched to 2.25" to gain a bit more tire/wheel clearance.
'Murica....kinda:
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Still got some forward momentum with the hood project also. It's fully welded and I've been hammering and dollying away on the metal near the weld seams to relieve stress and stretched metal relative to the heat affected weld zone. I've also been using a "shrinking disc" in between H & D'ing which has been nothing short of amazing for working the sheet metal and removing oil canning (sheet metal popping up and and down) and waviness. (Click here for what shrinking discs are and do). Again, I'm doing this to minimize the amount of filler that needs to be used. A heat cycled hood isn't ideal for filler by any means.
Fully welded up:
Passenger side weld seam after working it. Hard to tell how smooth it is in pictures, but it's night and day difference from how it was:
Here's the front seam area prior to me working it. Notice how different the crowns are between the Ram hood and S14:
After spending some time shrinking the metal adjacent to the seam to flatten it out, I then used a "slapper spoon" with some crown and hit from underneath and arrived here:
Worlds better. There's some slight oil canning going on after shaping it up so I'll need to do one more round of shrinking and and light slapping and it should be good to go. On to filler it goes after that.