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All major pieces needed have gathered, just leaving me the odds and ends to acquire.
Subframe has been notched and boxed where cut. Thorough engine bay cleaning and some spruce up work to be done.
Have to pick up a new tail shaft for my trans, just need to make time to pick it up.
I have a good mini starter, distributor, a built by Jimmy's 700r4 w/ Vigilante torque converter available. Complete accessory drive may be available for serpentine all parts/pieces included. Also ported SLP runner and plenum to match, as well as SLP headers(have custom y-pipe for them along with 7 qrt Moroso pan as well). All of this stuff is for sale, PM me if interested and can bring it to ThirdGen Fest if we work something out.
As I think the only thing that will make me keep the IROC is a LS/T56 swap.... Im quickly losing interest, but I know a guy who can do the work professionally. I may just out source it to him...
Why? Those cars are at least 3,600 # and don't make their advertised power until 7K. With an LS and a little weight reduction these cars are 3,000 # and make the same or more power in a more usable range. And I thought Ford was still using a live axle.
These are for all the folks whining about pictures
This is where the magic happens and yes those boxes are filled with parts:
This is my primary assistant(Homer Simpson is the other one, see pic 1):
This is an empty engine bay and do not look at the driver strut tower, temporary holding pattern until we address the rust:
This is a LS1, it will be going into the empty engine bay:
This is how to notch a sub frame for AC(I'm too fat to sweat) all nice and pretty like(further cleaning and painting will happen after strut tower repairs):
If someone wants a specific photo, I will try and take it if I am at that point. I will also try and update with pics as this goes forward.
Stripped old harness off engine today, put new mounts on it, cleaned a few more things up and got the PIA to find 2 inch grommet on the new harness.
Shout out to Nick for extra hands/help and Craig for welding magic.
Last edited by 3.8TransAM; 06-02-2014 at 04:44 PM.
Dave, wait until I actually get the garage set up the way I want it
Going to get some more work in on it Thurs and Fri, maybe some Sat. morning then its back to work, have more overtime yet again for a couple weeks.
I like the money, but damn I want to be able to enjoy some of it and finish the car, but of course I'll need tires when its done from sitting and rotting
Me with a camera shoved in my face after tail shafts:
One thing at a time, at this point, just trying to keep doing one thing a day even if it is all I have time for. Work schedule is jacked up for next 2 weeks for vacation relief now too. It will run, this I command!!!!!!!!!!!!
Old 383 is gone from the garage as well as of today. Parts piles are beginning to shrink.
Engine bay is getting pretty paint since we had to do some strut tower work.
My buddy Craig did a stupid excellent job this afternoon. Once we got the etching primer on it, you can't tell we fixed anything looking at it from the engine bay. Luckily everything we cut out was all the rust that was there, so patch panel away and its all good to go.
Engine bay is getting done over the weekend, so as long as my oil pan gasket shows up, it might be going together next week.
Biggest damn hold up was getting the strut tower fixed, but we both have crappy schedules and I could never make it as nice as he could
I'll update some pics t'row, have to take some so I know where all the clips and bolts go in the engine bay when I'm done.
Have more stuff ripped off to make my engine bay all purty. I'm so jealous of people starting with stupid clean no rust cars
Found one more spot I will have to patch(always one more damned thing it seems).
Other than that, engine bay is cleaned up, primed and waiting for one last patch before we are good to go for final paint. I got a bunch of odds and ends cleaned and painted today, so no matter what I do, I'm always doing something.
I did get to pull about 3/4 inch of metal out of my left leg today. Must have come off the wire wheel on the grinder I was using. Didn't hurt or bleed until I pulled it out, then it poured lol
Been busting my butt, so haven't worried about camera or wasting time on pics, but I will get some on Thurs or Fri since I probably won't have time to work on it t'row and go back into work t'row night.
Have more stuff ripped off to make my engine bay all purty. I'm so jealous of people starting with stupid clean no rust cars
Found one more spot I will have to patch(always one more damned thing it seems).
Other than that, engine bay is cleaned up, primed and waiting for one last patch before we are good to go for final paint. I got a bunch of odds and ends cleaned and painted today, so no matter what I do, I'm always doing something.
I did get to pull about 3/4 inch of metal out of my left leg today. Must have come off the wire wheel on the grinder I was using. Didn't hurt or bleed until I pulled it out, then it poured lol
Been busting my butt, so haven't worried about camera or wasting time on pics, but I will get some on Thurs or Fri since I probably won't have time to work on it t'row and go back into work t'row night.
Time for that Tetanus shot!
I too am close, car should have fired last sunday, however Saturday morning I got a call from work, and promptly got screwed over for the entire weekend + Monday and Tuesday. Biz didn't have any power protection on vital equipment, so I spent most of the weekend doing disaster recovery on hard drives that the business should have had either backed up, or service contracts on to have the vendors rebuild the systems. Still dealing with issues.
me too...i'm install my a new painted door to my pick me up...need dave to stop by with the welder to tack up some weld spots on the hindges. Can't wait to get it going. Miss driving my truck.
Keep us posted Jeremy.. At least the weather temp wise has been cooperating (cooler temps in july!? that's unpossible!)
These are for all the folks whining about pictures
This is how to notch a sub frame for AC(I'm too fat to sweat) all nice and pretty like(further cleaning and painting will happen after strut tower repairs):
Shout out to Nick for extra hands/help and Craig for welding magic.
Man, I hate how easy that is to notch for A/C vs the LT1 compressor. I want A/C!
Guess I'll just have to convert to a LS1 to get it, what a shame!
Door panels peeled out and wiring harness in doors pulled. Peeled windshield trim off and got some good news, spot that was crappy looking appears to be far better than I thought.
T'row will probably be full harness peel out, any remaining dash stuff(95% removed), remove windshield, drill out spot welds where possible and functional plan of attack to start cutting once compressor arrives.
Sometimes I wonder why we do crap like this, but I keep thinking about the end result
Who am I kidding, I'll get bored and heads and cam it or make me some booooooooooooooooooooooooooost!
At 6' I wouldn't waste the time. At 6'6 and it gutted I thought about it, but easier options exist.
A lot of spot weld drilling and an extra hole or two in the floor board isn't worth the hassle for an inch or two.
Find Formula seats and use those instead, whatever the setup is they do give u enough extra room to notice it. I might go back to those in the future for that reason along. The "better" seats I think are more uncomfortable over distances than the base seats in my opinion.
I'm in fix it right and get it on the road mode, not going after "extras" I have enough work to do.
Fiero seat tracks on the driver side will give you at least another inch of head room, maybe more, it's quite noticable.
The seat studs are welded in the floor pan doublers. Kind of a pain to move them. When I mounted the lap belts for my race harness and had only the single layer floor pan to deal with, I welded a 1/2" nut to a piece of 3"x4"x1/8" plate, then welded the plate to the underside of the floor pan. Something like that would also work to re-locate seat studs, or put an auxillary set in for taller guys. I'm 6'4" and the seat all the way back is about right for me. Headroom has been my biggest issue, especially in hard top cars.
Here is my wonderful drivers side of the car before major surgery begins on Saturday.
This one is part of the reason the car is getting fixed, he wants to see it run....So sentimental for Mom and Dad and he walked up one day slapped the fender and said he wants to see this baby run so we can take it to where we see all the cars(he's my Blue Top side kick)
So I'm on nights Thurs and Fri, so I will get back at 5:30 AM or so on Sat. morning, pass out, wake up at noon'ish or so, go home and Nick and Craig will already have a 2 hour head start on me(awesome friends). They are starting before I even get there since we have so much trouble getting anyone together anymore
We have the stupidity and technology to do this :-)
was water getting inside? Thats odd rust from what I normally see. It looks bad but thats not a terrible fix honestly. I fixed similar on my old '91 TA. It looked like that all around the catalytic converter.
Cowl rot, probably since before I owned the car. Mice made themselves quite happy, pulled about 5 handfuls of their nest out of the drvrs corner.......... I been telling everyone to pull their wipers and cowl cover and check for any buildup and also to check the status of the seam sealer installed in the cowl. It will save u a tone of work later
Cutting start t'row morning 4/4/15.
Also compressor is on sale now :-) Probably won't come home until the end of next week though since I'm off Sat(get off at 5am...), Sun. is Easter and I go right back to work Mon-Wedns for an outage
Update, lots of work done and quite nicely as well. Made some great progress thanks to Nick and Craig.
Front floor pan nastiness to be worked on next round.
Rear floor pan nastiness, will be addressed next round of work.
This is what greeted me when I got home from sleeping(was on nights), my buddies showed up 3 hours before I even made it home. I have good friends.
You can see the size of one of the patch panels by checking out our handy dandy donor firewall.
Inside of the car saying "Hi!" to the outside of the car thru an unnatural hole.
We had to remove a little bit of metal obviously......Only thing left is good metal now.
Another angle of the full metal mayhem being cut out.
First patch panel welded in from our donor firewall.
You can see how big the second patch panel is(what we cut from the other 1/2 firewall)
It literally has been cut out by seams, joints, spot welds, etc. Anything we removed was replaced from the donor firewall or fabbed by us, so everything was also spot welded back in just as at the factory. When it gets done, it will be near undetectable and done the right way 100%. Side note Harbor Freight spot weld cutter is pretty damned good for $5 each.
Long story short, if you want it bad enough you will find away to do it. It sucks, its dirty, its nasty, but I'll be damned if its not coming around faster than any of us thought.
So enjoy my nightmare for your viewing pleasure. One more day closer until
Last edited by 3.8TransAM; 04-04-2015 at 11:19 PM.
Dave, I'm floored by how its coming along and how good it looks. We have pulled off some incredible stuff in the past, but its been a while.
Still amazed at how nice it is coming together.
That was about a 10 hour or so day. Nick and Craig got here about 10am or so and I got back around 12:30-1pm since I was on night and crashed for a bit at my folks before coming home.
Nice looking work. Rust sucks, but looks like you're taking care of it properly.
Yeah, its getting done right. I hate doing this stuff once let alone twice.
I sometimes think Craig might be able to weld toothpicks together for us He's pretty damned good at it.
Like I said earlier, everything that has been cut out has been replaced with pieces in kind from the donor firewall, so it was cut apart on the seams/spotwelds and reassembled the same way. Now just need to get another chance with us all together to get another day together on it.
PSH, how may quarter sized holes did we make fist sized holes in mine...we still fixed it. It held water well....any remember the foot of water in it during the initial swap at nicks? lol
05-19-2014, 12:36 AM
