Joe's Elco: Part 3

Our third day in Clovis was very productive. We wrapped up the rear suspension install, picked up new wheels, and started in on the rusty front suspension. Like the rear, the bushings and balljoints were shot. Getting the bushings out of the lower control arms required the noisiest tool on earth-the air chisel!

The stock lower arms didn't go back onto the car until we cleaned and painted the surrounding chassis area.

The stock upper arms were not reused. Instead, we assembled a pair of McGaughy's tubular control arms with urethane bushings.

One part that we didn't replace, and which would later bite us in the ass, were the stock front coil springs. We blasted them clean and repainted them black before putting them back into service.

The reason for keeping the stock springs was that we were going to drop Joe's Elco two-inches up front with these McGauhy's drop spindles.

Amazingly, Joe's Elco still had its original shocks up front. While this car was comfy because it literally felt like it was floating down the road. You could hit a railroad crossing at full-speed without feeling it. While that was cool, when you had to slow down to a crawl to take a corner, the car felt like it was going to end up on its lid. It leaned enough that you could reach out the window and damn near touch the ground. New dampers would help.

The steering was, to put it mildy, deadly. It was mushy, it had about 45-degrees of play in the wheel, it was like driving a 1955 Cadillac. A new quick-ratio steering box from ABS was called to action to cure many of the steering system's ills.

The final piece of the handling puzzle was the addition of another Hellwig anti-sway bar up front.

You might have noticed the disc brake attached to that  new spindle. That 11-inch rotor is part of a system that replaces the factory drum brakes.

The factory manual brake master cylinder wasn't going to cut it with the new brakes so we picked up another cool part from ABS. This 11-inch booster will work even with a mild camshaft inside of the engine and minimal vacuum.

The factory brake lines needed to be uncoiled and relocated. When we tried to move them they were so brittle that they began to crack. So, Shane cut them off, flared new ends in place and bent up his own lines to make the installation cleaner. It was easier to leave the factory proportioning valve in place on the framerail and remove the aftermarket one from the booster as well.

Now for the fun part. We threw the stock 14-inch wheels and cracked tires into the trash. We replaced the tires with BF Goodrich Gforce TA KDWS

How do the new tires look inside the fenders of Joe's Elco? Well, when we stuffed a new set of 17-inch Wheel Vintiques 68 Series chrome rally wheels inside of them and then set the car on the ground, this is what we saw.

The front end sits a bit too low (remember the stock front springs I spoke of earlier?) and that left front tire rubs the inner fender over bumps and when cornering hard. We'll need to install a new set of stock-length springs before we do any more hard driving. The drive home from Clovis was made in record time (for Joe's El Camino!) thanks to brakes that worked and steering that actually inspired confidence in the fact that when you turned the wheel left, the car would indeed go left. Except for the tire rubbing, Joe's Elco is now a dream to drive. It corners flat, stops quick, and tracks tracks straight. It doesn't float down the highway any longer but it also doesn't have the harsh ride characteristics of a sports car. It's damn near perfect now. It's too bad the motor was smoking worse than ever when we got home. We'll have to address that before we do any more driving in Joe's Elco.