Mostly pictures for a while here. Feel free to ask questions, it helps give me some motivation to get my nerd speak on.
The part:
A few small things to add if I felt like it. But not bad for just a couple of hours in front of the TV.
I did use zip ties on the sides of the bumper last year and they were a pain in the ass and didn’t make anything easier.
With my track bumper and street bumper this year, this will make it a breeze to switch it out. Also a hell of a lot easier to do work on the front end.
Nice build!! There’s a lot of time in that car. looks great
Yesterday’s work was sidetracked by some stuck heater hoses. My original plan was to remove the heatercore and all the underdash boxes to pull the wiring harness and finishing wiring up the new one. Since the hoses were stuck and impossible to reach underneath the intake manifold to get them off I ended up working on my quarter turn fasteners on my bumpers.
I found some captive dzus fasteners online with an allen head just for extra security from parking lot thugs. The track bumper has normal flathead ones and I used OEM holes on the radiator support to mount the springs under. Unfortunately my aluminum rivets don’t seem to be doing a good job holding them in place because after 5-6 times of putting in and taking out the fasteners one side of the springs pops loose. I’ll have to get that sorted out before the car is on the road so I don’t end up somewhere with the bumper off and no way to reattach it. The plates I created for the fenders are a bit more interesting and are the real key to a “quick release” bumper.
Now onto some old business,
Someone had asked me for some pictures of my roll bar with the seats removed and now since I have removed them I am happy to oblige:
and on a last note I bought an extremely overpriced piece of plastic with wheels on the bottom because I wanted an easier way to store and move around my wheels:
Awesome solution to the problem, its a simple garbage can dolly sold at lowes. Unfortunately it cost $35 which is waaaay to much for something so simple.
March 7th 2009
I last left off with quarter turn fasteners and stuck heater hoses. I’m glad to say that with a little help from my friends I was able to accomplish a good deal more in my most recent outings to my shop and am really getting somewhere (nowhere) fast. It’s an odd feeling when you work on your car for a week straight and all you seem to accomplish is dismantling it farther. I was thinking today that if my garage gets robbed they wouldn’t even need to take my car, I’ve already stripped it for them.
The heater hoses were removed from the opposite ends and forced through the hole in the firewall. With the boxes removed I quickly unplugged all the engine accessories and effectively junked my entire previous wire tuck cob-job. With a little more work the entire underdash harness was removed leaving me with the mess that is my alarm. Hopefully I will have a wiring diagram for it shortly so that I can clean it up too (viper 3000 anyone?)
The new wiring harness is still being worked on and cleaned up a bit. All accesories such as AC and cruise that are gone are 100% removed from the new harness. New electronics such as the boost solenoid, turbo timer, and gauges are being integrated into the new harness using OEM plastic connectors so that I can actually pull stuff out when I need to work on something, and best thing yet is all the wires will be located somewhere with easy access. No more running wires through frame rails.
The next accomplishment for the day was removing the A032R tires from the Enkeis, the Advans sold to someone in my hometown and I was lucky enough to find someone heading home on spring break today willing to be my pack mule and drive them back. The trick was dismounting the tires which always seems to be a challenge. I’ve been quoted $50 per wheel before to dismount rubber and I really didn’t want to be jerked around today. I decided I would post up on a local forum and see if anyone recommended a place. First place that was recommended wanted $50 “to not scratch the rim.” I know as well as they do that thats a BS price. Luckily a friend of mine directed me to Kost tire where they told me just to drop them off in the bay, come back in an hour, and give the guy $15 cash. Works for me.
So I am now left with my incredibly light wheels which are looking for a home
The rest of my time at the shop was divided up between installing the auto door locks from the parts car and beginning to move the front knuckles. The door locks where real easy except they won’t seem to line up properly. When the interior handle is installed it doesn’t provide enough static tension on the latch rod to actually be able to open the door when you pull on it. If I unscrew the interior door handle and pull it an inch or two forward then it works perfectly. I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing… probably just bend the rod a couple times to get the rest of the setup working properly. At least my Faux suede DIY upper door panels look pretty damn good.
The front knuckles seemed to come out alright at first but without a balljoint separator I once again was left with the brakes dangling on the car by just one small piece. I’m going to have to look up a trick to get them removed without the ball joint separator because honestly, that thing is expensive for a damn fork on a rod.
I was able to get the front knuckles off the car, but I did pretty much destroy the bolts by hammering them.
Next step was to heat up and hammer flat the inner fender seams. These had caused a groove in my old set of tires when I hit a bump on the highway. This should prevent a similar incident in the future:
I finally removed the exhaust by removing the sway bar. A few V-band clamps should make this easier in the future as well:
The last little thing was cutting out the excess metal on the radiator support in preparation for future mods.
I am now spending my time by rewiring the arm in a more sensible manner, fixing up the the wiring harness, and mocking up the oil cooler. Hopefully the brake swap will be found soon.
paper version with the transitions cleaned up
planned fitment:
the finished product:
before people complain about the core… its not the best, its not the most expensive, but my datalogs from last year showed my air temps cooler than expected and therefore I could save a ton of money my simply modifying my endtanks to lower my spool times a bit and improve flow.
Similar intercoolers cost nearly $1250 (of course with a more expensive core) such as this one:
damn this is a nice build, lots of time put in and it looks like quality. Even with all the problems and hold-ups, you kept pushing on :tup:
should I keep posting to get this thread up to speed or should I let it all sink in a little? lol
Keep posting.
fair enough.
mar. 23rd
I just got my latest purchases in and I just break out into uncontrollable laughter whenever I look at them.
you at RIT autox event last fall?
yea, great pic. Am I yawning or having a seizure? lol
these are the videos from that day, my times were aweful but it was from a combination of my driving, too much power even with the boost controller turned all the way down, and the hard compound tires never really getting sticky.
you can see my fantastic driving in this one.
i think you were having a seizure.
no wonder I don’t remember.
Finally got my hands on some open ended lug nuts so I could put this beast back on the ground.
keep in mind there is a lot left to do, it still needs spacers in front and rear, power steering isn’t hooked up, drivers side fender/bumper mount isn’t done, camber and toe are arbitrary with no attempt to line anything up. so if stuff looks off in the pictures… it is.
hah, not to jack your thread, but i had some great driving skills in a del sol once too.
these were the consequences…
I spent some time last night checking clearances and taking a look at how I might adjust the stance.
very tight here, but if I lower it just a bit more I will actually have a tiny bit more clearance:
(full lock)
Wow, I’ve seen a lot of wrecks with these but I don’t think i’ve ever seen it tweaked that much.
yeah it caught a tree on the driver side front, and then swung it into another tree on the pass. rear.
but anyway, the progress on your car is impressive, and those tires should keep you planted pretty well!