[johnta1]

WOW!
Spink that is a lot of excellent work, there.

[Steve Barcak]

Originally Posted by taff2

Nice project Spink, I like that you make the bits yourself from nothing(like the wheelbarrow mod!) and do your own work,rather than just throwing wads of cash at it.
Girlfriends who like cars? My last four long termers all pretended to like cars at the start of the relationship,but after a couple of years the same old sh*t starts, you know,'Do you HAVE to go to the racing AGAIN this weekend?'. 'My mothers coming over/I want to go shopping/there's some diy to do around the house',etc etc (delete as appropriate)

ha ha. I've had a few of those too! So, I guess it just is not American girls who are like that.
I am glad I have stayed with my hobby instead of having to fight for control each and every day over stuff I do not want to do.

[BruceWilkie]

My ex turned anti-car about 13 months after wedding. Lot of years wasted. Odd thing Debs ex would have been a good match for mine. He did not like her getting attention from her 69 Firebird tried to ruin the car. Only time Deb and I had a car issue was whenI had my 68 bird convertible. If we entered car shows we were in same class. If I placed better than her she got a bit jealous. That was a bit of hassle. I wanted a hardtop anyway so after a few years sold my bird for quite a profit. Bought a 55 Starcheif a 59 Catalina(was going to be my race car and a 68Catalina. Job op and transfer then a cancer battle changed that. Now I have an 84 GP that I'm slowly getting Pontiac powered and up to the tasks ahead I have planned. Deb didnt want to part with any of the Pontiacs but sometimes life happens. Quite a partner and always there.

[spink7124]

Thanks for the great words about my car guys, I really appreciate it. While I was outside I snapped a few pics of a couple things of interest. I painted the core support and firewall thanksgiving weekend and since then its been sitting outside so everything's a bit dirty, but you get the idea.

Btw, the distributor comes out with the engine in the car, it can be pulled completely up and out without a problem.

Here is the best pic that I got of the wheelbarrow, it was dusk so my pictures didn't come out to great:



In this picture you can see some of the modifications to the core support. The inter-cooler I got from brad spidel (sp?) here on PY. I had to cut quite a bit out to get it to fit, its something like 17" tall 34" wide and 4" thick with 3.5" ins and outs.





The radiator is a stock four core brass unit for now; I had to move it something like two inches back to tuck the inter-cooler in. Most of the bracketry that holds things together is aluminum angle, pop rivets, and gripserts to try and save a little weight. The fan is from a Lincoln Mark VIII and the controller is from dc controls.



The wheels are the 17" snowflakes from year one, fronts only for now until I can afford the rears. Tires are nitto 555r II's. The front brakes are from Kore 3; thirteen inch rotors with a c6 caliper, the master cylinder is from a right hand drive newer s-10, and I have a wilwood proportioning valve so I can adjust the rear bias. Upper control arms are SPC, the lowers are fabbed pieces from Stock Car Products; they run a big Chrysler ball joint and heims instead of bushings. The toe links are adjustable for bump steer and the springs are from speedway motors with a hidden adjuster.



Here is a quick pic of the cage so you can kinda see how things sit inside, I used to have swing out door bars and a pinned in back brace but wasn't very happy with them. I notched the floor for the frame connectors and they also tie into down bars in the cage as well as the rockers. I can sit this thing on three jack stands now with no problems.



I think the dust in this picture may be from bondo? Anyways you can see the backside of the firewall from inside the car and how I did the tranny tunnel to clear the bell housing. It really doesn't intrude into the car as much as you think.



Lemme know if you all wanna see anything else or have any questions...

[spink7124]

Well it has been a while, but the motor is in and I have about 50 miles on the car so far. Please ignore the fact that it rained last night and this thing has to sit outside... On with the pics!













Still gotta put the front spoiler and spats on, Its going to take a little work because I had to chop the center piece up a bit to fit around the intercooler.





And now to the bad stuff. It's leaking oil pretty bad, either out of the rear main or the rear of the pan gasket, I used BOP stuff on both. I want to get under the car while its running to investigate but its still open header, so that's not gonna happen until exhaust gets here.

The clutch is slipping. Its a centerforce that I had in there before. I am running a hydraulic throwout bearing due to header clearance and I'm thinking that may be the problem. It has shims to set the preload and I've already had it apart, remeasured, and reshimmed so I dunno. It happens at about 4500 or so when it starts to build boost, just blows right through the clutch.

I need to change the blower pulley for more boost, I haven't really gotten it under a good load yet due to the clutch problem but so far I have only seen 5lbs and i was planning on 10-12lbs.

Exhaust should be on sometime next week, I have a 3" oval setup with x pipe and spintechs coming from ram air restorations. I went with the side exit, its gonna be a real pain to get it to fit with the frame connectors but I'm committed now.

This thing is going to be a beast! So far two steps forward and one step back but I'm getting there.

[Tom Vaught]

I see a LOT of Gale Bank's fabricators ideas in your TA. I copied off all of the info years ago when they were building the Camaro for his kid to drive. I thought the car looked similar when I saw how you did the front plate and the cross-member. Course the Wheel Barrow pics kind of sealed that cpmparison quickly.

I plan on doing the same mod with a 64 GTO Chassis car that I have that needs a bunch of work.

Excellent work and time to enjoy your labors.

Tom Vaught

[aronhk_md]

Looking great. What a sleeper she will be.

[opnwide]

Lookin' good. I'd keep it "hot rod black". And most people won't even realize those are 17" rims---sneaky!
I had a similar look to my '72 procharged vette back when I was running it vs the vipers. 50 series BFGs, a peeling paintjob, and no carpet.
Of course I could never hide the whine

[spink7124]

So.... believe it or not I still have this car!

I thought I would try to continue to update this thread.

In 2012 life happened and I got married and bought a house- the good news is I finally had a garage to keep this thing in.

The two biggest problems I had with the car were the original gas tank (it was sumped and I was running an Aeromotive a1000) and the blow through carb. The needle and seat was very problematic and one time I actually hydrolocked the engine with fuel-which eventually led to a small fire because of my own ignorance.

As time went on and I became more determined to drive the car I bought a replacement tank from Rock Auto, sold the A1000, and bought a phantom flex setup from aeromotive. I also ended up replacing all the -8 lines with ptfe stuff from summit.

This car was originally from Chicago so it had lots of rust. I found this when I was pulling it apart (this is the passenger frame rail).



I hate welding/grinding under a car so this took tons of time. I also too time to clean up some previous repairs a less experienced me had done.

Pic of all the old metal that was cut/ground off:



Finished product:

[spink7124]

It was about this time I started reading about FiTech and throttle body injection in general. After considering how much this would help the drivability of the car I knew it was the direction I wanted to head. So off came the headers to touch up some welds, some paint, and remflex gaskets.



After tons of reading I made the decision to order a Holley Super Sniper 1250 from Steve Morris instead of the FiTech. Here is the Sniper mean muggin' the old 750.



After cranking the car the next problem to solve was the running temp; it would routinely get up to 215. After trying lots of things the two that made the most difference were trashing the fan controller I had and letting the sniper control it via a heavy duty relay, and moving the intercooler to allow more air flow through the radiator.

[spink7124]

Moving the intercooler required new piping.



And here is a pic from one of the first times I drove it with the Sniper.



So far it seems ideal for my application. It's basically one of Holley's much more powerful efi systems with a few features diabled. Here is one of my early fuel maps.



One of my favorite features of the system is the datalogging. I just added a dual sync distributor to give the Snioer the ability to control timing as well- you can datalog a run through the gears to make sure timing is being pulled when boost is added.

[spink7124]

Right now I have the rev limiter set at 5800 rpms. It's making about 6lbs of boost so far which is conservative but the car already blows the tires off.

The other problem is when it gets warm and builds boost past second gear it blows through the clutch- currently a centerforce dual friction. It also has a rear main leak that has been there since the motor went together. I used a two piece viton seal but the motor was also line bored because of the main studs.

My next order of business is to pull the motor out, replace the clutch (with probably a ram powergrip hd, replace the rear main seal (I think I'm gonna try a graphtite from best gasket), and throw a little fresh paint on everything.

After that I'm going to try to make it a bit less ratty looking. I've already put a dash cap on:





But it also needs door panels and door skins (I also have parts to put manual window regulators in), carpet, and a headliner.

I will try to keep everyone up to date!

[Tom Vaught]

The wheel barrow firewall mod is not that new or unique of a mod to do on a firewall.

1) It adds a bit more protection to the driver/passenger if you have clutch/converter issues and something comes apart.

2) Steel Wheel Barrows are cheap to purchace and the shape is almost perfect for a set-back engine.

Gale Banks built a Twin Turbo car with that "wheel barrow" mod to the firewall at least 20 years ago.
The car was to be a Drag Car/ Bonneville car for his son. (Early Camaro Body).

Nothing wrong with copying good ideas from the past.

Tom V.

[opnwide]

Looking good. You've got to just keep chipping away at it to get it done.
I, too, swapped my BT Demon for fi. I went with microsquirt. The crank sensor was the hardest part for me.
I'm still having issues with pinhole leaks in my fuel tank, and someday I would like to install a serpentine belt system with AC. So you'll never really be done with it.

Even with the sticky 17s, you're still going to have some serious traction issues. I can spin my 335s from 55mph to 100 in 3rd gear.