Took a couple of days off last week for the first time since October of last year. Got a much needed deep clean done in the shop and got rid of lots of stuff. Felt great.

Built a bunch of new storage stuff to hang on the walls a bunch of tig welded ****. Getting a little better on the TIG but still have a tough time feeding the filler and getting consistent results. I can fuse **** together and get halfway good results.

I have to give a shoutout to the twins, they have provided me with a ton of good parts for this old **** box.

Picked up a single round grille and headlight setup from them last week and went to town getting everything cleaned up, prepped and painted.

I would like to get the spring buckets zinc plated but my rebuilders cast is going to have to work for the time being.

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I had a little snafu on the drivers side. The spring bucket hit the end of the filter so I cut a 3/8" out of the middle and TIG welded it back up. Turned out pretty good for thin sheetmetal but welded.

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Built a new wire harness for the drivers side and got it all installed but have yet to drop the grille or passenger side headlight in.

Messed around with straightening a ****ty flathood saturday afternoon and did a little bit of bodywork on it on sunday. Its not going to be great but should be ok for the car. I am no bodyman.

Aside from painting and installing the hood, grille and headlights I am pretty much mechanically buttoned up. Waiting on the tuner at this point.

Happy Monday.

Sean

Well, been super busy with work and not much progress on the car the last few weeks.

I had been given a pretty messed up hood from the twins a while back to test and see if it would clear the blower and with just a little massaging of the bracing under the hood it actually did fit.

So I messed around a bit with it. Passenger side had been bent by trying to close the hood with stuck hood hinges. It collapsed the sheetmetal where the hood bolted to the hinges and put a good bit of a bend in the hood. I built a big bar with the hood bolt pattern and got the hood straight with some help of a buddy and we got creative to pull out all of the dent on the bottom of the hinge section. Getting better.

I kept going and did a little hammer and dolly work on the hood to get it ok, then slapped some body filler on it after sanding down most of the maroon off of it. Jeep in mind, its a really rough hood.

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This was about as much as I wanted to do at home, so made a call to a friend who has a friend with a booth.

We scheduled for Saturday for us to be able to work in there.

A little more sanding, we shot some self etch on the bare metal spots.

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Then I shot it with some super build primer and got to sanding.....I am without a doubt no body or paint guy so if you are look away, I am just learning this ****.

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Sanded with 220 and 320 with a long board to get it as flat as we cared to.....the rest of the car is rough and a perfect hood would not fit well at all. We got it better than I originally had planned.

Cleaned, wiped down and shot some sealer on it.

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Just in a t shirt and shorts with a respirator on and shot this. Its OMNI single stage. We got close with a color from Industrial Finishes and I tinted it with some base white to get it as close as I could at home.

Its got stuff in the paint and some sanding scratches from not going to 400 but all in all it turned out pretty good.

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I laid down a good amount of paint on the hood knowing that it was going to need some color sanding and buffing. I think I did 1 light and 3 wet coats on the hood.

We let it dry overnight in the booth (No heat but 67 degrees inside temps).

Got to it the next morning and hit it with 1500 to get the **** and scratches out of the hood. It sanded good once you got through the top layer of paint. Didnt go overboard on the sanding so you can see the little nips int he fluorescent lights but considering what I was into the hood and its color matched I am pretty happy.

Ran the buffer over it and brought it home.

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The front of the car had received a crappy repaint at some point in the past. Scott shot me an add for a beige car out in the gorge and I met up with the guy last week to snag some parts off of it. Driver side is perfect, its a dead on match for the car paint and finish. So I got to work swapping my better old ****ty fenders onto the car once the hood was done.

Seems as though I like going backwards eh?

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I am glad I did this though as I discovered my tire was actually going to hit the firewall pinch weld at full lock so it got some massaging while I was in there.

New Fenders going on. They are so much better than the ones that were on the car.

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First time seeing it all bolted together. Hoods far from perfect but fits with the car. Was a bitch getting it aligned and the drivers rear is still a little bit high.

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Had to modify the fender roller to work with the lower ride height...

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Rolling the new fender, still have the passenger side to do but should be able to get that all buttoned up tonight.

Non rolled and pulled...

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Rolled and pulled. I measured the non rolled and pulled on the floor next to the rolled and pulled one and I have gained about 1.5" of total tire clearance, only downside is the gap at the bottom of the door to fender doesnt line up as the metal gets pulled in a little bit.



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Tail lights are stuck in transit, gotta get the rest of the frontend buttoned up, bumper on, adjust some toe and get the passenger headlight wired up.

Got word that the wheels have been machined and were heading to powder coat last Wednesday, should be no problem to make Davis and LSFest.

Nicely done!! Now, finish that thing up and do some testing!!

No **** man. Seems like the little details are taking forever....been at a stand still on wheels and the tune.

Been waiting for these puppies to show up from Sweden for a while now. Who thought that getting tail lights would be a) so expensive and b) so exciting to get!!

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I got them on the car last night, they look killer, fit like OEM and are great quality!!

I also got the passenger side front fender rolled and pulled, now to drill some holes in the fender for trim clips, get the bumper mounted up and the trim installed. Ill get the lower door trims painted and installed with all new clips soon. Also have to figure out front hood trim piece, but I think its going to be custom made and super low profile. I should have welded up the holes.

Getting new windshield installed tomorrow along with replacing the seal on the rear window with one void of the chrome trim strip.

Happy Hump Day!!!

Nice progress.

Thanks!!

Had a day in the garage yesterday as the glass guys were coming!!!

They were withing their window, attentive and did a great job.

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He even gave me time to clean up all the old **** around the windshield before he set the new one in. Good peeps. Apple Auto Glass in Portland.

Got a ton of little stuff done. Hood a little closer aligned, hood latch installed and adjusted.

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Got this all masked off, painted, trim clips installed and the trim painted and installed.

Moved the front trim from the old fenders and fender clips installed.

Drilled all the holes in the front fenders for the later style trim and bumpers and got the bumper installed.

Got the wideband wired in to the serial port for Data Logging wideband.

Worked with a tuner from Detroit all evening on the tune since my buddy Ron has some family issues he is dealing with.

We got it running and he wanted a log so for the first time ever we went around the block.

Got everything but the speedo working, fans are on and controlling, IC pump running, ECU controlled alternator charging working and threshold set. Car runs pretty good.

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Just a little clip coming back down the road.

Thing is going to be a riot. Its stiff as hell, might need some different springs all the way around for street driving. Shifter needs to be moved over to the passenger side about an inch.

Other than that it all work, brakes feel amazing curious how they work once bedded in with some descent pads.

Going to keep trucking this weekend, hope to get the VSS working.

Wow! You’ve been busy, the car looks incredible.

:king:

What a weekend. Worked on the tune a little bit more Friday night and got it cleaned up and loaded the manual speedo segment swap with no luck. Got a ton of stuff done on the car though that night.

Got up 4 am on Saturday ( I have terrible insomnia lately so 3 or 4 hours of sleep is kind of normal for me) and got to it hoping to make it to cars and coffee. Had a bunch of stuff to get done. Pulled the drivers side wheel and tire off and fixed a little damage from tire hitting and pulled that fender out another half inch for clearance, much better.

Got the old front bumper trim cleaned and presentable, pulled the bumper again, installed old trim, rehung bumper and got it aligned. Pulled passenger door panel and installed lock cylinder, freed up all lock cylinders and got the door locks working. Installed the drivers rear window finally.

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Hard wired in the ground wire for the AEM to Serial port adapter so I can simply plug in the cable in the glovebox to data log.

Got the car up in the air and did a nut and bolt on anything critical, found a few things loose, so got them snugged up, torqued suspension hardware and got the car on the grounds, quick torque of all the wheels and we were ready for cars and coffee about 7:45.

I got about 500 feet from the house and the car started to stumble and run horribly. Backfire the whole works. Something going on, get back to the house and start looking around. Luckily Micheal was around so he remoted in. Bank 2 misfire, no o2 operation. So I start digging in, could be plug wire and also he recommends only running Denso or Delphi 02 sensors so I run some errands, get some new plug wires, new OEM o2 sensors but in my gut didnt think that was the problem.

Install parts, no fix, so I get it running and start pulling bank 2 plug wires and no change, I had no bank 2 firing. Start looking at grounds and sure as **** find that the ground wire for bank 2 coil packs on the back of the head never got tightened down and me doing some clean up back there caused the connection to get lost.

Back to square and the car running again but I burned up all day Saturday. Picked up some parts from the twins and had a nice dinner.

Got up Sunday and got back in the garage, installed new swing out tire carrier on the JK and fullsize spare tire finally.

Tuner DM's me at 9 and says you ready to tune? I say hell yes.

So we go do some driving around, some logs, some tuning and he has me run the car into boost, and a little more and a little more.

This thing is a riot, instant power and wheel spin. He did everything remotely and did an amazing job. We have everything setup, fans, tune, tip in, driveability.

I drove it around a bunch yesterday, have a few little things to iron out, rearend howls like a coyote so that is next to address. Clutch is a little chattery but hoping that gets better with a little use.

First fuel stop

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LSX badge installed

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For all the haters of the carpet color, I have to say that spending some time in this space has been nice, the interior came together pretty damn well.

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Now the bad news. The rearend is trash. Needs a full rebuild. SO True Track is on order and will be here in a couple of days will have gear guy Dan go through rearend and replace as needed. Limited Slip is super chattery and the dreaded howl.

It desperately needs more muffler, the car is annoyingly loud. Ill order up a U bend and a muffler and get going on that in the coming weeks.

VSS Still doesnt work, going to hard wire to the RacePak dash assembly, also need to add a trigger to dim the cluster.

High Beams dont work at all, so gotta figure that out.

Pretty minor stuff in my opinion.

Burnouts to come very, very soon.

Sean

Nice work! Looks great out in the wild...

How are the driver comfort ergonomics inside? All good?

Glad to see you made it to the next stage, Sean. We had the same plan on Saturday, but I actually made it to the cars & coffee in Folsom; it was Mercedes AMG and GTR club day, so I totally fit in. I only had to jump my Falcon's motorcycle battery, and it was on. It was funny seeing people ignore the nice Aston Martin next to my monstrosity . . .

You'll be making smoke for sure by next weekend. I highly recommend Borla for that whole muffler noise/age problem. Mine (single 3") only makes noise at the right time: when the car is making power and huffing lots of air.