mike343sharpstick's 69 Javelin project

[fast Ed]

Great news, must have felt fantastic to finally get it on the road before you missed all the summer weather. Love what you have done with this car ...


cheers
Ed

[Deaf Bob]

Whoo hoo!

[DanStokes]

Glad that all your hard work is paying off. I'd love to meet you and the Jav.

Dan

[mike343sharpstick]

Yeah, summer is short enough! Looking forward to checking out Car Craft Street machine Nationals this weekend!
I hate getting stuff done last minute, but it seems to happen all the time.

Dan, always good to meet forum members, only met a few over the years. Partly because all the stuff I do is relatively close to home at the moment.
I'm lucky enough with Road America close by, and lots of car activities in Wisconsin I don't get out of the state much with my limited car time activities.

[74NovaMan]

Glad to hear you are back on the road!

[Bob Holmes]

Fantastic. Nothing like the first ride after that kind of effort.

[mike343sharpstick]

Good news is it's the first day this year bringing it to work. I must say for city driving the 3.70 gears are nicer than the 3.30-ish gears that were there before. Highway speeds are still ok, not sure the exact RPM at 70 Mph in 5th gear yet, but I think it's under 2,000 RPM.

Bad news is that I've now got a driveline vibration that starts at about 75 mph. Is there no end to this? OK, the answer is 'NO', just complaining.

Not sure why it just started, but the facts are that now the drive shaft is spinning faster at 75 mph than it was before, so the vibration may not be completely new, It may have vibrated before at a higher speed where it wasn't noticed.
This is the stock 46 year-old drive shaft, and I've never had it balanced. It was first behind the stock 343-Auto combination, then a couple iterations of engines and transmissions, and now 401-T5 with Moser9 rear axle and 3.70 gears.

I have an appointment first thing tomorrow morning to get the driveshaft balanced/fixed/or even replaced, Whatever it needs. Found a place up in Green Bay WI, about 50 miles north of my place. Looks like a nice shop! http://www.machineservice.com/. I love finding local businesses that can do work for me, even better when they can do same day service on short notice!

[DanStokes]

Hey Mike - I'm pretty sure these guys built some dyno driveshafts for us and did a great job. It's been a while and my ol' brain is foggy but their logo looks like what I remember. One of the good things was that they DIDN'T beat the joints in with a hammer like the old shop had taken to doing.

Sounds like you have the right shop on it.

Dan

[mike343sharpstick]

Drive Shaft is done. I drove up to Green Bay and handed it off at 7:40 AM. After some measuring and research it turns out it needed to be one inch longer as well as balanced. So they basically rebuilt the entire assembly and balanced it, and painted it black. All done by 11:30-ish.

I had some time to kill while I was waiting, so I went and got Breakfast, a hair cut, and stopped in at the KTM dealership to check out some helmets, mine is getting pretty old and stinky. While there I was distracted by NEW orange dirt bikes. No, I didn't come home with one, but the new stuff has evolved to a point where my 2005 KTM is getting a bit old, lighter, electric starters, refined this and that, but hell are they expensive! I never should have walked over to that part of the building!

At any rate back to the car, test drive tonight when I get home from work!

[mike343sharpstick]

That did it😄 ran it through the gears up to 100-ish mph in 4th, what a symphony of angry V8 sounds.
Then I spent an hour finding and killing a squeak! Then wax and clean up some loose ends.

[silver_bullet]

Glad to hear that you found and repaired the vibration issue before it did more damage!

[mike343sharpstick]

Mission accomplished! Drove an hour, did some auto cross and drove home 😄
The car WORKS! I've done so much prep, and fabrication for such a long time so I could get it on track, what a relief to finally get out there, and what fun!

[SuperBuickGuy]

awesome! there are those times when you're still doing the shakedown that it seems the problems will never end (or my favorite, wondering what will expire first, my wallet or my patience).... then it all comes together and works like you envisioned. Congratulations!

[mike343sharpstick]

Exactly, skipping car craft nat's today, heading back tomorow morning and getting in line for the autocross again 😀

[SuperBuickGuy]

2 AMCs in the same event? what is the world coming to?