The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up.

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okayfine
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by okayfine »

Lots of different compounds. When I had Wilwoods on my KA510 I ended up with Porterfield's street compound, which didn't dust excessively (had also run Wilwood's supplied pad, and a set of EBC Greens (DUSTY!)).

Still doesn't cure the flex/clicking. No issues so far with the Dynalite Singles on the 3-wheeler, but I wouldn't run the Dynalite four-pots on a 510 again.
Because when you spend a silly amount of money on a silly, trivial thing that will help you not one jot, you are demonstrating that you have a soul and a heart and that you are the sort of person who has no time for Which? magazine. – Jeremy Clarkson
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Byron510
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by Byron510 »

Came across this vid taken at our ANM a couple years back - fun stuff, thanks Spencer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGxuzc4gsoc

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Sleepys-14
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by Sleepys-14 »

I dont know what you guys are using for brake pads, but I have used a few different brake pads. Here is my short summary:
Wilwood:
BP-10: street pad, very low dust, low temp pad, good for cars with boosters as the cf is low and would require high pedal pressure if un-boosted
BP-20: street pad, low dust, very good medium temp pad, still requires more pedal pressure uf un-boosted, I run these in the rear
BP-30: race pad, extremely high dust when cold and hot, high wear at high heat, terrible street pad/mediorce race pad
Comp A: By far my favorite race pad, high dust when cold and hot, can handle anything you throw at it, low wear at super high heat

I have had good luck with COMP A in the front and BP-20 in the rear for track use

Hawk:
HP+: awesome street/track pad, great for auto-x and can take some high heat, medium dust
HPS: awesome street pad, can do auto-x without fade. cant take much more heat than that, low-medium dust

Lots of people use HP+ in the front and HPS in the rear for a good aggresive street car, and medium duty track
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Byron510
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by Byron510 »

I went out to pay tribute to the original builder of the Bronze in 1971 - Bob Stevens.

He was inducted into the Greater Vancouver Motorsports Hall of Fame.

The ceremony took place at the Cloverdale Fairground on Sunday (which is why I didn’t join Keith and James for their Sunday excursion). It was a good event, with many local Hot Rodders, Motorcyclists, Road Racers and significant persons in motorsports inducted, 17 in total this year.

I got to meet Bob two kids whom both participate in motorsports today; Bob Jr, Cindy and the late Bob Sr’s wife Carole and sat with them through the ceremony and presentations. I also met with a couple of people which raced with Bob over the years. One guy in particular - Rob McGregor - who drove with Bob in a Chevy wagon down to see BRE’s operation in Southern California when they had just built the first 3 BRE 510 cars at the time. Here Bob met Trevor Harris, who as you know was the suspension guru within the BRE 510 Trans Am effort. Trevor is a very tuned in guy, and went on to become a very influential person in motorsports. At any rate, Bob (Sr) asked a lot of question, took many notes and went home with Rob with that Chev wagon stuffed to the gills with as many BRE parts they could carry back.

When I first met Rob and shook his hand he came strait out and asked me “So are the rear weight jackers still in the car?”. At first I thought it odd that this would be the very first question for me. Bu the answer was yes, unaltered and in place to this day. As Rob shared his stories with me, he shared this one in particular. Apparently when Bob took many mental notes of the BRE cars, his intention was to cully take what he had learned and incorporate it into building his own cars. Bob got to compete directly with the BRE team cars at tracks across the Pacific Northwest, in Edmonton Alberta (and possibly Ontario) in the 1971 and 1972 seasons. Bob’s car was competitive and certainly caught the BRE teams eye. Trevor with a couple of his crew visited Bob in Seattle or Edmonton, according to Rob, on one of those race weekends and said of Bob car; “Many people have tried to copy our cars, but Bob has done an exceptional job of truly recreating our cars, a job well done.” Great praise for the BRE team directly.

It was good to meet with the family and friends of the man who originally built my car. Although today the Bronze no longer resembles itself as built in 1971, being that the closed chamber, Venolia pistoned, comp rod, comp crank, comp flywheel, comp front pulley, original MikuniSolex carbs on the first run comp intake manifold, roadster gearbox and R190 comp diff are no longer in the car. The parts are still around. The 12:1 motor would prove useless with today’s fuel, and the gear box and diff were used up. All parts have been replaced with similar and/or more suitable parts. The 2.2 EFI motor puts out more power than the hi comp L16 ever did, and is much more streetable than the original mill. The gearbox now is a wide ratio box which is much more suitable to the street driving Auto X and track sessions the car now sees. The worn 4.44 R190 was replaced with and an 4.375 R180 CLSD and now utilizes CV half shafts, keep in the original spirit of the drive train. I still have R compound rubber on the original 13X7 Libre’s bought in 1971 for the car, but street use now sees 15” wheel on the car due to the availability of tires. However the Bronze was never raced, which is why it survives today. Bough built 8 of these cars, all to similar caliber. The last known track car to survive was wrecked at Mission raceway in the early 2000’s, and was set to the Seattle area where it was “reshelled”. There was one other street car that survived, and it belongs to Realm member as well – Dave here in Delta. It was essentially a twin to my car. And like my car, it too has seen light duty, having run a few hill climbs and kept in very good shape over the years.

It was an enjoyable event on Sunday, and it was good to learn a bit more about the cars original constructor and pay tribute to him and his family.
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okayfine
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by okayfine »

Where else can you get stories and history like this? Thank you.
Because when you spend a silly amount of money on a silly, trivial thing that will help you not one jot, you are demonstrating that you have a soul and a heart and that you are the sort of person who has no time for Which? magazine. – Jeremy Clarkson
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by McShagger510 »

Found some old pics of your car from The All Nissan Show.
Did Dan Kelo still own it at this time or did you, and did Bob Stevens put in the wooden dash or did someone else??

James
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The person with the sun in their eyes has the right of way. - my brother

'72 2dr. 510 Turbo
'73 240Z all stock
'71 2dr. 510 stock......for now
'91 Nissan truck *SOLD*
'02 TOYOTA Tacoma
'78 Kawasaki Z1-R
'84 Kawasaki GPZ750 Turbo
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McShagger510
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by McShagger510 »

Ahhh never mind, I re-read page one! :wink:

James
The person with the sun in their eyes has the right of way. - my brother

'72 2dr. 510 Turbo
'73 240Z all stock
'71 2dr. 510 stock......for now
'91 Nissan truck *SOLD*
'02 TOYOTA Tacoma
'78 Kawasaki Z1-R
'84 Kawasaki GPZ750 Turbo
'99 Kawasaki ZRX1100
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gooned
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by gooned »

See the Bronze pictured on page C2 of today's province.
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bertvorgon
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up

Post by bertvorgon »

That is very cool, thanks for posting that Byron!

I have talked about this before, but, bear with me... Bob's "TOYO MOTORS" was just down the street from my work in the 70's. This was just when I started to get serious about racing. I popped in there one day, to see about some work on my 72'. Bob treated me with respect right off the bat, seeing that I was serious and was I ever amazed at his 510 of course. He helped me for a few years, even ordering me some parts from Japan, for my transmission. I delt with Bob up until I met Andy at Specialty, when I started to run into some turbo related issues, which was beyond Bob's realm of expertise. I was even invited into the "inner sanctum" the coffee room, which if any of you have ever hung around a shop know that that is quite special. I would listen to his race stories, he would ask me how the weekend slalom had gone. The common thing we most talked about was suspension, as I was still trying to figure out what worked best at the slaloms.

I have in my possession some original build pictures for his car, thanks to his son and Jason W. for letting me scan them in. His son is keeping the racing alive by running a Sprint car, and, runs the modern version of TOYO MOTORS. I will post them up at some point here. Unfortunately, at the time, 1972 - 1977, as I was living in that time period, I did not realize the significance of his car, as I stood next to it and sat in it. Film was expensive for me, so the only pictures I ever took were at Portland International Raceway, when I went down there to watch him race.

Note to everybody...with today's digital camera and phones...DOCUMENT everything, no matter how innocuous it may seem, cause after 40 years have gone by...who KNOWS?????

GREEN'S AUTO built the roll bar that is in my 510 to this day, cool to see their Camaro. I was lucky that when I flipped my 72", I was able to get the bar out an effectively winch it into my existing car. They also did the roll bar I had in my 1972 wagon.

Here are a couple of pictures from Portland
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"Racing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty" - Peter Egan

Keith Law
1973 2 Door Slalom/hill climb/road race / canyon carver /Giant Killer 510
1971 Vintage 13' BOLER trailer
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icehouse
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Re: Tie rod digression

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Byron510 wrote: Today’s task; retro grade the tie rods back to stock, eliminate the BRE style modified steering arm and replace this with a stock arm and use bump steer spacer.

Next was to remove the steering arms. For the heck of it, I got these shots to compare the two components – obviously the orange one that is coming off is the modified one – side by side, I was surprised to see that the center to center (outer tie rod end to ball joint) distance has not been effected very much (I was thinking that this measurement would have been shortened quite a bit more)

Image

Now, my curiosity was getting the better of me – how will the modified arm compare with the stock arm and 1” bump steer spacer – concerning geometry? Picture is worth a thousand words, or as these photos show – very little!

Image

Image

What this proves is that the late Bob Stevens, who built my car in 1971, knew what the heck he was doing! Good on ya Bob!



Byron

We've started back on the Rack and Pinion path..... I busted out the old BRE suspension chapter just to do some catching up. After seeing this picture I was reminded of your build! I knew I saw this somewhere at some point! This was done to counter act raising the LCA pivot. Using a bump steer spacer does not achieve the same thing. A bump steer spacer moves the tie rod and the ball joint together where as the BRE modded arm only moves the tie rod. I'll update the rack and pinion thread tomorrow.


Image
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up.

Post by icehouse »

Finally we put your suspension points into the model. The chart shows your car as it sits and with a early crossmember swapped in which would lower your LCA pivot points 7mm or so. As always the suspenson model boggles my mind! Nothing ever acts as you would think. We tried lowering the outer tie rod like the BRE team did on their car. It made the bump steer worse. If we raised the outer tie rod which wouldn't actually be possible but it made it better, not good though. We tired lowering the front TC rod, still bad bump. We did each modification separately. It may take a combination of things to fix the bump issue.


I should have changed the names but here is what they mean. Each 5 degrees of LCA angle is approximately 1" of suspension travel.

"real stock slammed wagon" = wagon steering arm (different than sedan) slammed means we aligned the suspension with the LCA at a 10 degree upward angle. So this creates a worse bump steer. This was taken from our front suspension jig and verified with our model.

"Bryon's standard arm" = your car with the suspension setup as it is.

"Stock real life late X member sedan A=10" = Sedan arm, late X member aligned with the LCA at a 10 degree upward angle. So this creates a worse bump steer. This was taken from our front suspension jig and verified with our model.

"Byron's early X member" = is your car with a early X member.


We spent the good part of the afternoon trying different combinations. I wish we would have found a simple solution. Although it seems straight forward its basically guess and check.




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"People don't like it when shit doesn't match their rule of thumb." Sam
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up.

Post by Byron510 »

Hi Jeff, the crossmember is a late style that I moved the LCA pivot points 1" upward.

A photo of the LCA modification is on P26 of this thread, unfortunately the link to the repair is broken however I did document that the LCA was moved up 25mm and the photo shows this.

Be interesting what this does in your calculator.

Jeff, as the steering arms came out of my pile of spare parts, did you conclude that these are intact wagon steering arms? I thought we ruled this out....

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icehouse
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up.

Post by icehouse »

Yes in the graph the less bad graph is your setup, with 1" raised LCA pivots (blue diamonds in the graph). The other is of your car with an early crossmember. which would have the LCA pivots 7mm lower than yours at 1" up. I was surprised to see moving the LCA's down making it worse. The front suspension never seems to act as one would like.

From the pictures you emailed me I'm pretty sure the steering arm is out of a "late sedan" It would still be cool to get the part number some day. I'm 90% sure thats what it is though.

The only thing we didn't mess with was the amount of caster your car is running. If one of use gets time again we'll mess around and see if we can figure anything out.
"People don't like it when shit doesn't match their rule of thumb." Sam
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up.

Post by Byron510 »

Wow, been a while since I posted on this thread - slipped back 6 pages in the project section!

Took delivery of my second set of wheels for the Bronze, these ones are to hold a set of R compounds for track days next year.
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Now to choose the tires. I'm leaning towards the A048's only becaue I have like the Yoko's inthe past.
However my shop mate has been using Toyo R888's and loves them. I see other options out there like BFG R1S, Hoosier A7 and R7, Nitto NT0, Hankook Ventus Z214, and Kumho V710 - no shortage of competition.

Now to also upgrade the helmet as my full face Snell SA approved OMP is out of date - too bad as it looks as good as it did the day I bought it.

Byron
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Re: The Bronze - '69er Resto Project and continuing build-up.

Post by iceD »

I have spent the last few days browsing through this project build from the beginning. I would call this car, not unlike most of the cars in this section, as developed, not simply a project. The ongoing tweaking of electrical, mechanical, suspension, brakes, and interior systems. Byron's fearless approach to not let anything stop him from repairing, replacing, improving and developing his Bronze car. I like so many are here to learn and to be motivated by the knowledge and craftsmanship on display by these developers. I would just say bravo Byron an amazing and ongoing project.

ice D
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