72 Mercury Comet GT in Germany

while cutting springs is not the most ideal way, it is effective. the spring rate will increase as you remove coils unless the coils are already bottomed out at ride height. ive seen this on some progressive springs. when i cut springs i will measure the distance between the coils on the end im cutting when the car is sitting at ride height. now comes the guessing. if the spring has 1 inch between coils and you 1 full coil it will lower it about 1.25 1.5". the springs are about half way across the control arm so its going to lower it more than you remove.
with the progressive springs you 2 options on what you cut. the coils that are closer are the softer section and the coils that have more space are the stiffer section. i will usually cut the stiffer section because it going to be stiffer from the cut. the soft section will still be working as normal but the stiffer section will be stiffer to help prevent bottoming out from being lower.

 

bryant, you were right on track once again. cutting a bit resulted in a much larger drop.
overall i was pretty lucky with the first cut. i measured the distance between the first two bottom coils with the car on it's wheels - that only was about 1.5".
what i started with was wheel well about 28" above the ground - so i figured i could start cutting 1 complete coil.
that brought the car down a lot, more than expected - it's now 25.4".
sitting close to perfect now, could go a tiny bit lower. but i'm very happy with it.

the lowering was very much needed. with the front end that high, my car tended to take off at higher speeds. could be the front spoiler acting the wrong way, lifting the car. now it feels much safer at our insane highway speeds

 

cool. looks better. lets see some full car pics of the new stance.

 

you asked for some pictures of the current stance?
here's a 360° overview of the car!


http://www.do360s.com/automedia360.html?client=6000004&set=8zVS

i won that on a facebook campaign - the results are awesome...

 

ok thats just really cool! the stance looks perfect.

 

Looks much better than what you started with, Thomas

 

picked up a copy of the november issue of said magazine, there's a preview for my car in the next issue!

 

also, i received some still shots from that 360° shooting. still sits just a hair too high in the front, but i'll just leave it at that!
will try to readjust the front spoiler, though. sits a little too parallel to the ground.

 

I tinkered with the quickfuel carb A LOT this weekend - only to get the baseline set, but that was a big improvement.
In the end, I had to take it off and completely reset it. That was good, though - it now pulls stronger than ever.

After reading a lot on the web and viewing a lot of Holley videos, I reset both the primary and secondary butterflies.
The primaries were easy, adjusting the transfer slot was no problem with my newly gained knowledge.
The secondaries not so much - it's a 4 corner idle, and I have no idea how the butterflies should be set. I read everything from completely closed to adjusting the transfer slot the same as on the primaries. I noticed the transfer slot is considerably higher than on the primary side. In the end, I adjusted the secondaries the same as the primaries, I measured the distance to the base plate. It proved to be pretty much spot on, had to get the secondaries down maybe 1/4 of a turn.

I also reset the idle mixture screws. To adjust all four evenly, I marked the metering block with a pen - top and bottom of the screw slot, turned it 90° and marked it again - so I had a nice scale on each screw. Started with one turn out.

Plugged in my vacuum gauge and my Innovate LC1, and I was able to get it to idle better than before. Also, the slight hesitation from off idle now is completely gone - the transfer slot proved to be spot on.

While I was at it, I saw that one of the spark plug wires was arcing to the cylinder head - replace the whole set with MSD wires I still had on the shelf.

Today was a sunny day, the gas was cheap, so I just cruised around for the rest of the day!

 

I'm new to this thread. I like what you've done to that car, and am glad you've saved it from a worse fate.

 

hit a new speed record tonight. 235 kph, 146mph on the highway...

 

Today that is real impressive. How did the Comet handle? When I got one of my Mavericks up to 125 for any length of time it started feeling like it was floating around and drifting. Not a comfortable feeling to have. Western PA roads aren't the best roads to be running that fast on either.

 

Very nice Thomas